On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz was laying out plans for the open-ended Israeli occupation of parts of Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip. Those statements weren’t in any way out of the ordinary, and very much in keeping with Israel’s stated policy, which is to continue the wars and to continue to occupy territories.
That didn’t sit well with US officials, apparently, and the State Department issued an unusual rebuke of the Israeli policy, reiterating US support for Lebanon’s sovereignty and that Katz’s occupation would violate the understandings reached in various US-brokered Israel-Lebanon deals.
To be clear, none of those agreements ever actually mandated a timeline for the Israeli withdrawal, but just presented a vague sense that at some point in the future the occupation might conceivably come to an end. In that sense, Katz will doubtless argue that Israel isn’t violating anything, and Katz simply ordered preparing for a “long-term” presence.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz visits southern Lebanon
Lebanese officials, for their part, are accusing the Israeli government of violating international law with their ongoing attacks on southern Lebanon, and the systemic demolition of civilian infrastructure across the occupied area.
Meanwhile, US involvement in the invasion and occupation of Lebanon hasn’t exactly been pro-peaceful resolution, which is the subject of a new lawsuit filed in a Michigan court against Secretary of State Marco Rubio and multiple US military contractors.
The lawsuit was filed by the Arab-American Civil Rights League and seeks class-action status for tens of thousands of Lebanese Americans who lived in or owned property within Lebanon that was destroyed by the US-backed Israeli invasion.
The lawsuit cites the Leahy Law, which prohibits the State and Defense Departments from providing aid to foreign forces amid evidence of gross violations of human rights, and argues that Israeli war crimes in Lebanon, which have been repeatedly documented, have failed to produce any tangible change in US support for the IDF.
Among the individual plaintiffs in the case are Michigan businessman Nasser Beydoun, whose family home in Bint Jbeil was destroyed during the Israeli invasion “without any military necessity or justification.”
That’s far from an isolated incident, as Katz was bragging earlier this week of Israel totally wiping out 24 villages in southern Lebanon, and tens of thousands of homes have been demolished in the Israeli invasion, destruction which is still ongoing. How many of those homes have a US citizen connection is unclear, but its pretty much a foregone conclusion, given the size of the Lebanese diaspora in the US, that Beydoun is just one of many.
