Ceasefire plans fail to impress
French and American Diplomatic maneuvers over the ongoing war between Hezbollah and Israel have failed to impress the Lebanese government. Under a Security Council deal, a truce has been drafted which calls for peacekeeping troops to monitor the Lebanese-Israeli border, following an “immediate cessation of attacks by Hezbollah”. The plan would also call for a halt in quote “offensive military operations” by Israel. But the plan does not call for the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from Southern Lebanon. And Hezbollah, the group that started the conflict through the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, is, at least officially, being shut out of negotiations. Sydney University’s Professor Ahmad Shboul, the chair of Arabic and Islamic studies and Ammal Saad Ghorayeb, assistant Professor at the Lebanese American University in Beirut and author of Hezbollah, politics and religion spoke to the Wire.