Lebanon's Unbalanced Ceasefire Teeters on the Brink

Only Israel has opened fire since the start of the "ceasefire", and Israel has done so repeatedly. Nobody has fired back.

Israel has for three days in a row attacked alleged Hezbollah rocket sites with bombs or missiles, killing at least four people and probably more. Israel has opened fire on journalists. It has critically wounded two mourners at a funeral. There are numerous reports of Lebanese civilians returning to their homes in the South coming under fire from Israeli troops.

This video shows the two people shot by snipers at a funeral. The man is saying that they had permission for the funeral from UNIFIL and from the Lebanese Army.

Israel has also used the "ceasefire" to advance its forces including tanks into towns and villages from which they had been repulsed and which Israel could not take by fighting. It has entrenched positions in Southern Lebanon, issued orders to Lebanese civilians not to return to over sixty villages in South Lebanon - none of which it had managed to permanently occupy in the fighting - and is reinforcing, re-arming and re-equipping.

Israel in fact is treating the "ceasefire" as unconditional surrender. All of this was entirely predictable, not only from Israel's past and normal behaviour, but also on the face of the "ceasefire" agreement itself, which is a wildly unbalanced document.

It offends my own sensibilities as a former diplomat that the Lebanese foreign ministry signed up to such an abject and undisguised document of submission.

Let us start by analysing paragraph 2 of this document: