![Israel must continue to be able to deter Hezbollah, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar stressed on Wednesday, speaking amid efforts to reach a ceasefire with Iran's Lebanese terrorist proxy. "We need to keep the freedom to act if there will be violations. And we will have to act in time, before the problem will grow," the minister told a gathering of nearly 100 foreign ambassadors in Jerusalem, the Times of Israel reported. A deal to end more than a year of fighting on the northern border must be durable, Sa'ar said, saying Jerusalem “would like to reach an agreement that will stand the test of time." He added that a ceasefire would be an "opportunity" for Lebanon to regain its sovereignty after the Israeli military severely degraded the Iranian-backed group in recent months. He called for the Lebanese Armed Forces to be strengthened and urged the international community to invest more in the economically devastated country, which is drowning in debt following years of mismanagement and corruption. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also emphasized on Wednesday the necessity for Jerusalem to be able to act against any Hezbollah threats that may arise after a ceasefire deal is implemented. “The condition for any political settlement in Lebanon is the preservation of the intelligence capability and the preservation of the [IDF’s] right to act and protect the citizens of Israel from Hezbollah,” Katz said. Meanwhile, U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein remained in Beirut for a second day on Wednesday to discuss "technical details" of an American ceasefire proposal with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who heads the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement. President Joe Biden's point man in the Land of the Cedars announced he would travel to Israel on Wednesday night, speaking after he made "additional progress" in a second meeting with Berri. Hochstein was scheduled to meet with Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer shortly after his arrival, followed by a tête-à-tête with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the following day. “The meeting today built on the meeting yesterday, and made additional progress,” Hochstein said. “So I will travel from here in a couple hours to Israel to try to bring this to a close if we can.” The Biden envoy added that he will work with the incoming Trump administration on ceasefire efforts, saying that he has kept the president-elect's transition team informed of progress. Hochstein described as "very productive" his meetings with Lebanese officials on Tuesday. “We have a real opportunity to end the conflict, and now is the moment to decide. We are committed to doing everything we can to work with Lebanon and Israel to end this conflict,” Hochstein said at a press conference on Tuesday. Hochstein also met on Tuesday with Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, and he was scheduled to meet with Lebanese Armed Forces commander Gen. Joseph Aoun. Mikati emphasized that Lebanon’s primary objectives are achieving a ceasefire and safeguarding its sovereignty. He highlighted the need to implement international resolutions and bolster the Lebanese Armed Forces in the southern part of the country. Lebanon delivered its written response to the latest U.S. proposal on Monday. According to Ali Hassan Khalil, an aide to Berri, the response included “comments” that were “presented in a positive atmosphere.” He did not provide details on the nature of the comments, saying only that they “affirm the precise adherence to [U.N. Security Council] Resolution 1701 with all its provisions,” according to Reuters. Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said in a speech on Wednesday that the terrorist group had "read the ceasefire proposal. "We have our comments, and Nabih Berri has comments, and ours and the Lebanese government's comments are, Inshallah ['God willing'], identical," Qassem said. "We have decided not to discuss these ceasefire proposals or our comments in the media. All I will say is that Israeli is trying to obtain through negotiations what it couldn't through war." The terrorist leader vowed to “continue our efforts on the ground, whether the negotiations succeed or not. “We are confronting a savage enemy, and we will remain on the ground, no matter the cost, as we will also increase the cost for the enemy. We are facing Israeli human monsters supported by American human monsters,” threatened Qassem. Disarm and retreat Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War, stipulated that Hezbollah must disarm and retreat north of the Litani River, but was never enforced. The Litani lies some 20 miles from the Israel-Lebanon border. Its enforcement, along with Israeli freedom of operation in Lebanon should Hezbollah violate the terms of a ceasefire agreement, are the key sticking points in the current negotiations. Netanyahu emphasized during a speech in the Knesset plenum on Monday that Israel will not allow Hezbollah to “return to the state it was in on Oct. 6, 2023. “We will be required, in order to ensure our security in the north, to systematically carry out operations—not only against Hezbollah’s attacks, which could come. Even if there is a ceasefire, nobody can guarantee it will hold. So it’s not only our reaction, a preventive reaction, a reaction in the wake of attack but also the capacity to prevent Hezbollah from strengthening,” he said. Hezbollah has launched some 16,000 rockets, missiles and drones from Lebanon at Israel since joining the war in support of Hamas on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after the Gaza-based terrorist group’s massacre in southern Israel. More than 60,000 residents of northern Israel remain internally displaced due to the ongoing rocket and drone attacks from Lebanon. Seventy-six people in northern Israel have been killed by Hezbollah cross-border rocket, missile and drone attacks since the start of the war, including 31 soldiers and six foreign citizens, according to the latest data provided by the Prime Minister’s Office, updated on Sunday. In addition, 729 people have been wounded, including 497 civilians and 232 soldiers. Of these, 29 civilians and 37 soldiers were severely injured; 63 civilians and 38 soldiers were moderately injured and 405 civilians and 157 soldiers were lightly injured. Hezbollah’s leadership has been left in tatters following a series of targeted killings by Israel, including that of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut on Sept. 27. This was preceded by Israeli sabotage of Hezbollah communication devices that killed 39 people and wounded more than 3,400 members of the terrorist group. Israel has been waging a devastating aerial campaign against Hezbollah throughout Lebanon, including its stronghold of Dahieh south of Beirut. According to Israeli estimates, the terrorist group has lost most of its arsenal to the ongoing strikes. Then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in late October that Hezbollah had lost an estimated 80%-plus of its long-range rockets since the start of the war. Israel also continues to battle Hamas terrorists in Gaza. The terrorist group still holds 101 hostages in the Strip, 97 of whom were kidnapped on Oct. 7. Many of the captives are believed to be dead. Brazil summit Meanwhile, G20 leaders gathered in Rio de Janeiro for a summit put out a joint statement on Monday calling for “comprehensive” ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon. The leaders of the world’s biggest economies called for U.S. proposals to end fighting in Gaza and free the hostages, and one for Lebanon “that enables citizens to return safely to their homes on both sides of the Blue Line.” The 13-point U.S. proposal presented to Lebanese officials on Nov. 14 includes a 60-day truce, during which Lebanon would redeploy its troops along the border. The proposal also calls for Moscow to prevent Hezbollah from resupplying itself via Syrian land routes. Hezbollah would retreat north of the Litani River, with the border area then being under control of the Lebanese Armed Forces, overseen by the United States and Britain. Israeli officials are emphasizing, however, that the Israel Defense Forces must retain freedom of operation in Lebanon to thwart attempts by Hezbollah to violate the agreement and rearm and reestablish itself. A senior Israeli diplomatic official told Israel Hayom on Saturday that the IDF will retain operational freedom to respond to any security threats from across the northern border, regardless of any diplomatic arrangements. However, a source close to Hezbollah told The Washington Post that the group’s “condition for progress remains clear: Israel must be prohibited from conducting operations within Lebanese territory.” Berri emphasized at the time that any ceasefire agreement must not include the ability for Israel to attack by land, sea or air, Channel 12 reported. “Otherwise, what’s the purpose of an agreement?” he remarked. Another sticking point is Lebanon’s objection to the United Kingdom and Germany monitoring the implementation of U.N. Resolution 1701. Beirut reportedly favors the United States and France. If the ceasefire efforts fail, there are plans in the works to expand ground operations in Lebanon, an Israeli military official told the Post. Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer discussed the proposal with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump during a visit to his Florida estate earlier this month, as well as with senior Biden administration officials in Washington. Dermer also traveled to Russia to discuss the ceasefire proposal. Tehran is telling its Lebanese terrorist proxy Hezbollah that it supports ending the war against Israel, The New York Times reported over the weekend. Ali Larijani, senior adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, met with senior Lebanese officials in Beirut on Nov. 15 to discuss the matter. Two Iranians affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps told the Times that Larijani conveyed messages to Hezbollah from Khamenei that he supported the end of the war and that the regime would assist with rebuilding the terrorist group’s forces and recovering from the war.](https://jewishwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Gideon-Saar-1320x880-2-218x150.jpg "Sa’ar: Israel must be free to act against Hezbollah truce violations")
Palestinian stone-throwing incidents against Jews in Judea and Samaria spiked in 2021, capping a disturbing rise in the total number of attacks since 2018. Observers tell JNS that one reason is Israel’s failure properly to punish the perpetrators. Likud Knesset member Keti Shitrit introduced a bill on Feb. 8 with a potential fix, establishing a minimum penalty for the offense.
According to the Israel Defense Forces, a total of 5,532 rock-throwing attacks occurred in Judea and Samaria in 2021, a jump of 38% over 2020 (4,002 attacks). There were 3,805 in 2019 and 1,881 in 2018.
Since the maximum penalty is 20 years, one-fifth is four years in prison. The bill includes a caveat that if intent to harm cannot be proven, the minimum sentence will be two years.
“The problem is that 99% of the people who are indicted receive a punishment more suited for a child than a grown man,” said Matan Asher, spokesperson for Im Tirtzu, a Jerusalem-based NGO, which worked with Shitrit’s office to draft the legislation.
Asher was referring to an October report by the Knesset Research and Information Center which found that of 7,213 cases opened between 2015 and May of 2021, 95%—or 6,796—were closed without an indictment. In 2020, in 82% of cases that involved any prison time, the sentence was less than a year.
Asher said the security situation has deteriorated. “If you told somebody two years ago that there would be stone-throwing during the day, it would have been science fiction, but they’ve started throwing rocks in the middle of the day,” he told JNS.
“The reason is they get such a light sentence,” he said.
Asher traces the rise in stone-throwing and Molotov-cocktail style attacks over the last few years to the expiration of a law introduced by now-Minister of Interior Ayelet Shaked back in 2015. It set a minimum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment for throwing stones at vehicles. Shaked’s law was itself a response to a rise in Palestinian stone-throwing incidents.
Occurrences fell in the wake of the law. When it expired in 2018, those incidents began to increase, said Asher, adding that “this bill tries to recreate the situation that had been in effect between 2015 and 2018.”
‘The Palestinians indoctrinate their children’
IDF Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, a fellow with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, confirmed that there appears to be a correlation between the sunset of Shaked’s law and the spike in stone-throwing attacks. “The proof of causation in these kinds of things is very problematic, but it seems that there is some sort of synergy between the two phenomena,” he told JNS.
“It’s clear that the current punishment is not enough to deter them,” he said, adding that military courts hearing these cases aren’t taking full advantage of the punishments at their disposal. He noted a January report by Bitchonistim, a group of former Israeli military and security officials, which found that the average sentence in Judea and Samaria was 8.3 months in prison for throwing stones and 13 months for throwing Molotov cocktails. (The report covers the period from Jan. 1, 2019 to Oct. 12, 2020.)
Asher and Kuperwasser agreed that one of the reasons that the courts issue lenient sentences is due to the youth of those committing the crimes. “The courts aren’t looking at the punishment as a deterrence measure. They say, ‘Oh, you are a student, I want to help you to get back to school. So you will get just two to three months, and then you can get on with your life. The problem is that everybody around sees that, and they also throw stones,” said Asher.
“Up until now, you pay very little, if at all, and you gain a lot because you will be seen by your peers, by your entire village, as a hero,” added Kuperwasser.
He stressed that one of the causes of the stone-throwing phenomenon that should not be lost in the discussion is ongoing incitement by the Palestinian Authority geared towards Arab youth. “Textbooks are just getting worse and worse. No wonder you have more people carrying out these kinds of attacks,” he said.
“The Palestinians indoctrinate their children that they are in some sort of ongoing battle against the Zionists. … They’re telling them that the best tool to fight against Zionism is what they call popular resistance,” he said.
More recently, they have added the idea of “ ‘peaceful popular resistance.’ In their understanding, ‘peaceful’ includes stone-throwing, Molotov cocktails, and sometimes stabbings and car-rammings.”
Kuperwasser said that if he were to produce a plan to confront stone-throwing, he would hold the P.A. accountable for its incitement, enforce the laws currently on the books and introduce still tougher sentencing to improve deterrence.
The likelihood that the recent Knesset bill will pass seems dubious given that Shitrit, who introduced the bill, sits in the opposition. However, Asher is optimistic, pointing to the Citizenship Law that seeks to reduce the number of Palestinians gaining Israeli citizenship through marriage. It first suffered a defeat but has since been resuscitated with support from both opposition and coalition members.
“We think that eventually they will come to their senses and understand this is not a political bill. Open the newspaper, and every day you see another incident. The reality is tough for people who live there,” he said.