Since the August 4 explosion in Beirut, Paris has sought to take an active role in helping its former colony’s recovery, and overseeing political reform. One major obstacle is Hizballah, which, in Matthew Levitt’s words, serves “as the militant defender of the corruption and cronyism of the current government system.” While France has historically been reluctant to confront the terrorist group, its president seems to be losing patience:

In late September 2020, Hizballah threw a wrench into . . . Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to stabilize the Lebanese political system . . . by insisting that the party or its allies remain in control of key ministries as a condition of any future government or program of political reform. . . . President Macron’s response was uncharacteristically blunt for a French politician speaking about Hizballah. In a public statement, [he] said, “Hizballah cannot operate at the same time as an army against Israel, a militia unleashed against civilians in Syria, and a respectable political party in Lebanon.”

In the past three decades, the Iran-backed guerrilla group has repeatedly attacked French soldiers in the Middle East and French civilians at home—most notably by carrying out a number of bombings in Paris during a nine-month period in the mid-1980s. As Levitt explains, France has responded with a policy of appeasement, first refusing to consider Hizballah a terrorist group, and, once it finally did, insisting on a meaningless distinction between its illegal “military wing” and its legitimate “political” one:

By the 1990s, . . . French decisionmakers . . . opted not to cross Hizballah or Iran and risk terrorist retaliation. Today, a primary concern French officials articulate about designating Hizballah in its entirety is that the group could retaliate by striking French forces serving in the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). In fact, many countries have designated Hizballah in full, and in no case did the group respond with retaliatory attacks. Moreover, regardless of whether France were to designate Hizballah in full, the group already targets French soldiers attached to UNIFIL.

Indeed, while France has been effectively deterred from taking action against Hizballah, the group periodically works to undermine French interests in Lebanon.

One primary reason Hizballah engages in such brazen activity is that it believes it can get away with it. Indeed, failure to hold Hizballah accountable for its illicit conduct has not prompted any moderation in the group’s behavior, but rather has emboldened it to amplify its aggressiveness. That is true in Lebanon, and it is true in France.

As this newsletter noted last week, Gaza is not suffering from famine, and the efforts to suggest that it is—which have been going on since at least the beginning of last year—are based on deliberate manipulation of the data. Nor, as Shany Mor explains, does international law require Israel to feed its enemies:

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention does oblige High Contracting Parties to allow for the free passage of medical and religious supplies along with “essential foodstuff, clothing, and tonics intended for children under fifteen” for the civilians of another High Contracting Party, as long as there is no serious reason for fearing that “the consignments may be diverted from their destination,” or “that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy” by the provision.

The Hamas regime in Gaza is, of course, not a High Contracting Party, and, more importantly, Israel has reason to fear both that aid provisions are diverted by Hamas and that a direct advantage is accrued to it by such diversions. Not only does Hamas take provisions for its own forces, but its authorities sell provisions donated by foreign bodies and use the money to finance its war. It’s notable that the first reports of Hamas’s financial difficulties emerged only in the past few weeks, once provisions were blocked.

Yet, since the war began, even European states considered friendly to Israel have repeatedly demanded that Israel “allow unhindered passage of humanitarian aid” and refrain from seizing territory or imposing “demographic change”—which means, in practice, that Gazan civilians can’t seek refuge abroad. These principles don’t merely constitute a separate system of international law that applies only to Israel, but prolong the suffering of the people they are ostensibly meant to protect:

By insisting that Hamas can’t lose any territory in the war it launched, the international community has invented a norm that never before existed and removed one of the few levers Israel has to pressure it to end the war and release the hostages.

These commitments have . . . made the plight of the hostages much worse and much longer. They made the war much longer than necessary and much deadlier for both sides. And they locked a large civilian population in a war zone where the de-facto governing authority was not only indifferent to civilian losses on its own side, but actually had much to gain by it.