Why reporting the Lebanon war is harder than Iraq or Syria
35:18 Share

Americans are durable. We take pride in hard work and high quality. American Giant makes durable, quality clothing right here in the USA. Because what we wear reflects who we are.

When you buy American Giant, you're not just wearing the best clothes money can buy. You're helping keep jobs and pride in your own backyard. Premium clothing built to last decades like it should. Get 20% off your first order at American-Giant.com with code RIGHTHERE24.

That's the average number of apps used by many companies. This leads to a lot of context and tab switching that drains employee focus and costs your company. Grammarly can help. Grammarly's AI works in over 500,000 apps and websites, making it easy for your team to write clearly and on brand without disrupting workflow.

Join 70,000 teams who save an average of $5,000 per employee per year using Grammarly. Go to grammarly.com slash enterprise to learn more. Political leaders in Lebanon right now recognize the risk. There's obviously the war itself. There's the displacement crisis that will not end when the guns stop firing. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering of

And I will not be silent. President Zelensky has for the first time acknowledged that his forces are conducting a cross-border offensive inside Russia. I just find bombs and I find dead people. But it's a really scary thing. I'm Venetia Rainey and this is Battle Lines. It's Monday, November 11th, 2024.

Welcome back to another episode focused on the latest in the Middle East, including updates from North Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and an interview with Maya Jebeli, the Reuters Bureau Chief for Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Let's begin with a catch up of the latest death tolls, both civilian and military, since October the 7th, 2023.

Gaza's death toll is 44,383 people. The West Bank is 732 people. Lebanon is 3,189 people. And Israel is 1,771 people. And I just want to say a thank you to Yanir, who wrote in to provide me with a proper source for Israeli death tolls. He also challenged me on why I've been saying that it's vague. And I just want to quickly explain to our listeners that

that I hadn't been able to find one consistent number from the Israeli health ministry. I've been clubbing together numbers from military death tolls, civilian death tolls, from various news reports and from our reporters in Israel. Yanir has now pointed me towards the Institute for National Security Studies, so I'll be using that going forward.

Now, let's crack on with military updates. Roland, start us off. I'm just going to start with the very latest kind of military activity that we're aware of this morning on Monday morning. So in Gaza, so Palestinian medical officials are saying that an Israeli strike in Nusrat refugee camp, that's in central Gaza, it's one of those urban built up refugee camps that's been there for many, many years.

strike their hitter tent, sheltering a displaced family, killed at least three people, including the parents of two 10-year-old twins. The twins were wounded. There were also reports of heavy bombing late Sunday in the western areas of the camps. That's separate, and we're told about 24 people were wounded and taken to hospital, according to the local hospital's ambulance service. That's how many people they saw arriving there, so I'm not sure if that's a total of actual injuries reported.

Now, in northern Gaza, where a lot of Israel's major effort is going on at the moment, the Palestinian civil defense agency there said at least 30 people were killed in Israeli strikes on two houses in the besieged enclave around Jabalia. It said the first strike on Sunday hit a house killing at least 25 people, including 13 children. That is, again, the civil defense agency there.

which presumably answers to the Hamas-controlled government there. A separate strike on a house in Gaza City, which we think is outside the Israeli siege there, but still in northern Gaza, is said to have killed Wael al-Kurr. He was a minister in the Hamas-run government, as well as his wife and three children. Now, Israel's military says it targeted a site where militants were operating and said the details of the strike...

are under review. That's referring to that strike in Jabalia with that high death toll. Now, the World Health Organization on Saturday warned that famine is imminent or may already be underway in Jabalia and the nearby north Gaza towns that Israel surrounded and largely isolated for the past month, where it's only allowing a trickle of humanitarian aid. That's the World Health Organization was citing a report by the Famine Review Committee that said action was required within days, not weeks, to avert a catastrophic famine.

famine. The left-wing Israeli paper Haaretz on Sunday published an editorial saying that the operation there amounted to ethnic cleansing. And of course, Joe Biden last month set a 30-day deadline for Israel to allow more aid into Gaza or as possible restrictions on US military funding. That falls on well, people...

There's two reports. Some people say it's tomorrow on Tuesday. Some people say it's on Wednesday that that deadline falls. So there's an awful lot of pressure on Israel about what's happening in Jabalia and what's going on. There was... Just to speak to this, there was a little scandal last week. So last week...

An IDF officer, Brigadier General Itzhak Cohen, was quoted by Israeli reporters saying that since troops had had to enter Jabalia twice and go back in, he said there was no intention of allowing residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes, which, of course, would stand up with that Haaretz opinion that it's ethnic cleansing. The Guardian took that to the IDF, and the IDF said, well, they didn't deny he said it. They said his comments were taken out of context.

and it did not reflect the IDF's objectives and values. So still very, very big questions about what's going on there. Obviously, very deeply concerning humanitarian situation in northern Gaza. We're keeping an eye on it. Just one other development. The Israeli military over the weekend released footage of what it said was Hamas abusing detainees. And this is footage they obtained from Hamas laptops and so on during operations in Gaza. It shows kind of, you know, hooded men chained in stressed positions,

nasty kind of torture interrogation stuff. It's understandable why they're putting it out there. Before we move on to other parts of the Middle East, let's just quickly hear a voice note. This is from an MSF staff member who was trapped in Jabalia and recently fled to Gaza City. We've dubbed it over with our producer's voice. I didn't know it was going to be a ground invasion. We used to go downstairs if there was intense bombing so the kids could sleep. At night, we didn't sleep. We used to wait for the sun to rise.

Slowly we prepared ourselves to flee. We didn't know where to go. There were no cars or carts. I was sheltering in the surroundings of the Yemeni hospital, not inside it. There were strikes that hit the hospital. Shells hit the hospital gate and the street. Quadcopters bombed at the houses around us. The children were crying. The bombing increased and we left. While we were fleeing, we witnessed people who were targeted on the street. There was blood on the street.

and the remains of young bodies. It was a situation that I do not want to remember, honestly. We arrived to the Indonesian hospital and we found Israeli soldiers there, ordering us to go south towards Kuwait roundabout. We arrived at Kuwait roundabout and they separated us, the women and kids in one area and the men in one school. They took my husband, my uncle and my cousin.

We walked again and reached a large pit made of sandbags, where the Israeli forces made us wait. We sat for two hours in the sun. They asked us to walk towards Almawazi, Kan Yunis, but no one was able to walk. We kept walking and resting a bit. The road was filled with tanks. We kept lightening our load. I couldn't even carry my baby's formula. After that, we arrived to Gaza City.

Turning to the northern front of the war, Israel's ground forces continue to operate in that narrow strip about five kilometers deep along the border. That's where the infantry ground war is going on. We don't have much insight into the day-to-day operations. But airstrikes continuing around the country. The big one that's grabbing headlines this morning came yesterday on Sunday. Lebanon's health ministry says 23 people were killed, seven of them children, and an airstrike on the village of

of Almut in Mount Lebanon province that's up near the city of Byblos about an hour's drive north of Beirut I know we're going to have the Reuters bureau chief Maya Jebeli is going to be joining Venish to talk in more detail about that later I'll just note for now that the IDF

says that Hezbollah was restoring weapons and operating at that site. The IDF was also struck in Syria. So the Syrian Defense Ministry says that there was an airstrike hit an apartment building south of Damascus. Now, there are some reports appearing in Lebanese media that a senior Hezbollah official called Ali Moussa Dakdok was killed in that strike.

And there are reports in Saudi media saying that another Hezbollah operative by the name of Salim Aish was killed in a separate strike in western Syria. And looking at munitions coming the other way, which is worth mentioning, the BICOM, the British-Israeli lobby group, has said that rockets, missiles and drones coming into northern Israel, that's continued over the weekend, but at a lower rate. So they're talking at a rate of about 50 to 70 launches a day. They say that's lower than in recent weeks.

Interestingly, they also note that three people were hurt by an anti-tank missile in the northern border town of Metula, which is right up in that very northern eastern bit of Israel that kind of pokes up into Lebanon. And BICOM note that the threat of ATMs, which rely on a direct line of sight...

was meant to be eliminated by the Israeli ground operation. So that threat obviously is persisting despite the Israeli operation there. Elsewhere, Yemen, the Houthis fired what they called a hypersonic missile at Israel overnight. The Israeli military says it intercepted it and it didn't get into Israeli airspace. That's the first Houthi attack on Israel since September. It seems to be probably a response to recent UK-US airstrikes on the Houthis, and that's

the only obvious kind of immediate reason we can see for that happening now. That's the military situation. But I want to get into the diplomacy because we have some quite interesting developments. I'm going to save the big one till last, if that's okay. So first thing, so Qatar says that it suspended its work as a mediator in the ceasefire.

Now, Qatar, for anyone who's been following the Middle East, knows that this very small island nation, kind of peninsula nation, sticks out into the Persian Gulf, a tiny place, but they've really positioned themselves in recent years as a kind of mediator, as the place people go to for tricky talks. You know, they played a big role in the kind of, in the Americans' talks with the Taliban during the withdrawal from Afghanistan and so on. They've kind of inserted themselves in the same way here. So they were hosting the talks between Hamas, Israel, and America. Now,

Earlier over the weekend, several news agencies reported that Qatar had basically bowed to American demands to tell them to close the Hamas office there. That was citing U.S. officials who'd said Washington would no longer accept the presence of Hamas representatives in Qatar because they've rejected proposals on how to end the war. Qatar's flatly denied that now. Qatar is saying we're not kicking them out.

We're just not working as a mediator anymore until Hamas and Israel both show the willingness to negotiate. So Qatar are very much basically saying, there's not much else we can do. We're not kicking them out, but it's going to be up to them to restart the talks.

Another big event. Lots and lots of Arab and Muslim leaders are gathering in Saudi Arabia today for a big summit addressing both the wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Clearly a chance to send a message to President-elect Donald Trump. So this was announced by the Saudi foreign ministry in October. It's meant to be what they call an international alliance to press for the establishment of a Palestinian state. It comes back.

pretty much exactly a year after a similar gathering also in Riyadh of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation which again condemned Israeli actions in Gaza. It's worth we don't know what's going to come out of this and you've got to remember that this is a huge you're talking about

I think there's about 52 members of the Arab League, or no, of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. The Arab League's a bit smaller, but you're talking about a lot of people here. Lots of countries, lots of different objectives, and of course you've got countries there like, let's say, UAE, Morocco, who normalised relations, recognised Israel under the Abraham Accords, Egypt, fairly cordial relations with its neighbour, and others who are much more antagonistic towards Israel. So a whole gamma of opinions and views there. It's quite...

It's quite unlikely to produce like a single unified position. But that said, this really underscores, I think, how Middle Eastern diplomacy and the landscape there, the diplomatic landscape has changed since Donald Trump was last in office. And that's why I'm bringing it up now, because you see Trump's big, big...

big signature achievement was this thing called the Abraham Accords, which was the idea of the Abraham Accords was the Arab kingdoms would normalize their relations with Israel. They would recognize its right to exist, recognize that it exists, partly in exchange for a lot of American security support. And part of the goal there was to kind of create a kind of united front, get the Sunni Arab kingdoms and Israel together in one anti-Iranian kind of

block, if you were. And at that point, Saudi and Iran were basically fighting a massive proxy war. It's why the war in Yemen was going on. That's changed a lot. So the Iranian president isn't going to be at this conference, but he did call MBS yesterday and speak to him on the phone ahead of this conference. And the Saudi military chief of staff flew to Tehran yesterday for talks with his Iranian counterpart.

This is not a new thing, by the way. This has happened over the past kind of year. But you can definitely see Saudi and Iran kind of putting to bed their own antagonisms recently. And also you can see how the Gaza war has made it much, much more difficult for the Arab kingdoms, even the kingdoms, autocratic regimes, remember, to talk about any kind of normalization with Israel.

without solving the Gaza war and without dealing with the question of a Palestinian state. So this is all stuff that Donald Trump is going to have to deal with when he comes in. He might find that things are very different to the way he remembered. That's why I'm noting that. Now can I get to the big diplomatic update? I know I've been talking a bit. Please. This is important. We're excited. This is it. This is it. OK. OK.

actual possible movement on getting a bit of peace possibly this morning on the wires Israel's foreign minister has said here's the quote certain progress

What does it mean? I don't know. But certain progress on a ceasefire in Lebanon. Now, the Israeli line is that this is because their operation has succeeded. So going back to BICOM, the British-Israeli lobby group, they're saying that basically the IDF thinks that they've massively eroded Hezbollah's huge stockpile of weapons. I don't have the numbers to hand now, but really, really degraded those huge stockpiles, especially of medium-range rockets, they're saying, which was an objective. And BICOM say...

that they've got a sense of the contours of the deal. And they say it's going to look like this. So Hezbollah will withdraw north of the Litani River. For the first 60 days, the IDF will remain deployed in the first row of villages, so in that tiny little buffer zone, and continues to remove weapons and military infrastructure, I suppose more demolition and stuff,

Instead of the IDF going further north, the Lebanese armed forces will operate in the space between the Latani and that first IDF line. And after that, the IDF redeploys to the internationally recognized border. So that's the outline of the deal. We don't know if it's definitely going to happen, but it's definitely being signaled that there's serious stuff here. And you can tell because...

You can see other bits of mechanics. So another thing from BICOM, which they know, is that part of this is being underwritten by Russia, of course. Russia is presence of Syria. The idea is the Russians guaranteed to prevent arms being smuggled across Syria into Lebanon. Apparently, in exchange for that, the Biden administration is going to exempt Russian companies operating in Syria from sanctions. Again, it's from BICOM. I can't stand that up, but you can see the kind of

gritty little details that you could imagine going into one of these complicated deals so that is to my mind a sign that we might just just be

be getting to at least an end of the war in Lebanon. Keep your eyes on it. Not quite sure how it's going to go or how soon we might see it. And I don't know if that's going to affect things in Gaza. But again, coming back to Donald Trump, we know that he wants to end the war. We know Biden wants to end the war as well. And there is perhaps a sense that Netanyahu feels that he's got an opportunity to

you know, get what he wants out of this for now. So possibly, for the first time, I think, movement towards an actual diplomatical settlement of one tiny part of the conflict. Fascinating. Thank you so much, Roland Oliphant. We'll definitely be keeping an eye on that in the weeks to come.

Have you heard of Goldbelly? It's this amazing site where they ship the most iconic, famous foods from restaurants across the country, anywhere, nationwide. I've never found a more perfect gift than food. They ship Chicago deep dish pizza, New York bagels, Maine lobster rolls, and even Ina Garten's famous cakes. So if you're looking for a gift for the food lover in your life, head to goldbelly.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code GIFT.

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile, unlimited premium wireless. How did it get 30, 30, how did it get 30, how did it get 20, 20, 20, how did it get 20, 20, how did it get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month? Sold! Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes each detail. It took a lifetime to find the person you want to marry. Finding the perfect engagement ring is a lot easier. At BlueNile.com, you can find or design the ring you've always dreamed of with help from Blue Nile's jewelry experts who are on hand 24-7 to answer questions and the ease and convenience of shopping online. For a limited time, get

Now, to get a bit more deeply into the situation in Lebanon, I earlier caught up with Maya Jebeli, the Reuters bureau chief for Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. We had a wide-ranging conversation about how Israel's war with Hezbollah is going.

how Lebanon's political figures are coping with the crisis, and also how things have shifted recently in Syria. But I started by asking her what her job is like right now. I mean, you know, there's days where it's, you know, there's an airstrike and we're trying to pin down how many, you know, how many people and women and children, were they displaced, etc. Is this, you know, if they struck in this area, is that a signal to a certain type of politician? You know, you're trying to kind of read it, you know, three, four, five layers in.

trying to understand how this war is developing. And then today it's a bit more about the diplomatic track because all of a sudden everybody is talking about Russia. And so now we're trying to, we're like, oh, okay, now we need to go try to pin down what, you know, what involvement Russia has in this. So yeah, it's an exercise in just kind of really trying to find

you know, trying to find the new thread that could tell you where this conflict is headed. It's obviously a huge beat that you cover and we'll come on to Syria and Jordan in a bit. I want to start in Lebanon. What's the mood like on the ground right now? So Lebanon is a bit of a mixed bag. And as you know, from your time here, it's a very compartmentalised country. And so you have parts of the country in the south and in the Bekaa Valley that have been hit very, very hard by

by Israeli strikes and have left entire towns as piles of gray and brown rubble. And then you have parts of Lebanon that are still almost oblivious to the conflict playing out. Restaurants are full further north. Clubs are full further north. You have a lot of people that have continued fighting

more or less the pace of their lives as normal. So you have parts of the country that have been turned completely upside down, including areas that have received thousands and thousands of displaced families. But you also have parts that are almost continuing on as if nothing is playing out in the south and Beirut and in the Bekaa Valley.

And I know that at least 41 people were killed yesterday in strikes across the country. But there was one strike in particular that killed 23 people in the village of Almat, just north of the capital of Beirut. And that includes seven children. What more can you tell us? Well, unfortunately, we've seen actually a pattern of strikes on homes, housing displaced people. And Almat actually, about seven or eight weeks ago, was one of the first areas that was hit in such a strike. And this is one of the areas that really stood out to us at the time, because

up until Israel's significant escalation at the end of September that saw it, you know, very much geographically expand and intensify its airstrikes across Lebanon. Up until then, most of the strikes, whether it was airstrikes, tank fire, drone strikes, etc., most of them really had been focused on southern Lebanon. There had been, you know, a few targeted assassinations in Beirut's southern suburbs. We had seen some rare strikes on the Bekaa Valley, but that was pretty much it.

And starting in September, we saw those really escalate and intensify and include really for the first time towns way further north than Beirut that are kind of Shiite Muslim pockets in areas that are otherwise demographically from a different section. In Lebanon, you do have such a mix of sects that a lot of areas are kind of demographically known to be mostly, let's say, Maronite Christian or mostly Orthodox or mostly Sunni or mostly Shiite.

And you have some Shiite villages in these areas. And Almat is one of these towns where it's in an area that is otherwise predominantly Christian. And it was a town where a lot of displaced families went to seek refuge with their relatives, people that they knew in apartment buildings, in homes, etc. And it's one of many strikes in Lebanon. And these have often been the deadliest, actually, where you will have, you know, 20, 30, 40 killed because it's a series of families that have died

taken in shelter with one another, with their extended families or with their friends. The issue that we often face in reporting about these types of incidents in particular is that we don't often get to the bottom of what

the military target was. And so we see kind of these really, really horrifying scenes where you have women, children, you know, rescue operations that take days and days and days just to be able to get people out from under the rubble. And by the end of that, it's usually just pieces of people. Unfortunately, we don't get any, you know, our bureau in Jerusalem will check with the Israeli military. And we oftentimes don't get a straightforward answer on what the military target was.

And that's, you know, and that poses a big question about the legality of these strikes, obviously, because we don't have the full story on what, you know, who or what may have been targeted in these buildings. And unfortunately, we're seeing that just repeat itself over and over again. We had several similar strikes, whether it was in the south, just outside of Beirut,

in an area called Damaisera as well, further north. And it's really devastating. It also creates a lot of fear for towns that are hosting displaced people because it creates this kind of paranoia and this anxiety that, you know, who are these displaced people bringing with them or who might visit them that could then

possibly open up a window for a strike to hit, you know, my building or the building that's next to me. So it's really created this really painful dynamic around the displacement itself, which is already a very difficult experience for these Lebanese. And is it fair to say that things have intensified even further over the last week or so? And if so, do you think that's related to the US election?

You know, we've tried to interpret so many different ways how the U.S. election could influence the dynamics in Lebanon. And we haven't really come to a clear-cut answer. We've gotten a lot of mixed signals on that. It's the intensity, let's say just today, because we should take it day by day, the intensity today and even over the weekend is certainly not as dramatic as we saw on September 23rd, which was the day that Israel, you know, very much escalated its strikes.

More than 550 people were killed on that day alone in Lebanon, which was a really, you know, a really striking number. And I think one of the deadliest days probably since the end of Lebanon's civil war. And so we haven't really seen a day like that. That was by far the worst violence and deadliest spree of strikes that we've seen so far.

But everyone's kind of waiting to see where this could go. We've seen some comments from people that were involved in Donald Trump's campaign who are saying that they would be taking on a mediating role once he enters the White House and hoping to secure peace for Lebanon. We spoke to a couple people here in Beirut on what they think of that. And there's also, you know, people are interpreting that in mixed ways. Some people think that it would be great

you know, to have more Lebanese input in the next Trump administration. And some people think that it doesn't really matter, you know, who's in the White House because U.S. policy will consistently support the Israeli military. And this is the perception of Lebanese people that we've spoken to. And so they're actually not very optimistic about what could come next. I'm wondering what you think about how Israel

Israel's military campaign in Lebanon is going. I'm sure you've seen Israel Katz, the new Israeli defence minister's comments over the weekend, but I'll just read them out for our listeners. The blows we inflicted defeated Hezbollah and the elimination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is the crowning jewel. Now it's our job to continue to put pressure in order to bring about the fruits of that victory.

He also said that Israel is not interested in meddling in internal Lebanese politics because Israel has learned its lessons, but that he hoped an international coalition would capitalize on the opportunity and that Lebanon would join other countries in normalizing relations in Israel. I guess there's two parts to his comments that I'm keen to get your view on. One, has he succeeded in eliminating Hezbollah? And two,

Is there any chance of Lebanon normalising relations with Israel? So I'll start with the first one because it's a much easier question to answer. What Hezbollah has consistently said is that as long as there are rockets that are still

going out of Lebanon and landing into Israel, then Hezbollah is still alive and kicking. And we are still seeing that. So we're still seeing them launching multiple salvos of rockets every morning, launching drone attacks. And those include attacks on Israeli soldiers who are fighting within Lebanese territory right along the border,

strip in the south. And they also include attacks that are launched into Israeli territory. So from Hezbollah's perspective, they're certainly not defeated because they are still able to launch missiles as deep as 130 kilometers into Israeli territory. And that is enough for them to feel that they are, you know, that they are posing a security threat to Israel.

In terms of the second question, I think it's just there is so much that would need to change and so far that these, you know, that politics would have to get these two, you know, these two neighbors before there can be talk of a normalization. I mean, now we're in a situation where people are, you know, people are not just impacted by their homes being destroyed. People are scared of driving on the highway because they're afraid of an Israeli drone strike that might hit the car right in front of them and then, you know, lead to a crash. I mean,

I can probably count the number of hours over the last seven, eight weeks that I have not had an Israeli drone flying above my head and buzzing 24-7. So it's, you know, there's a perception in Lebanon right now that the Israeli military can strike wherever it wants, whenever it wants. And if you have a population that believes that, then it's going to be very, very difficult to get that population to then turn around and say,

let's normalize relations with that country. So I think we have so far to go for that to be possible, for that to be acceptable to people that have lost family members, that have lost their children, that have lost their parents in the past couple of weeks. So no, I would say we're probably further away than we were a year ago from that reality being possible.

I'm interested in how Lebanese politics, Lebanese political figures are dealing with the crisis of Israel's invasion and its war against Hezbollah. Lebanon's political landscape is obviously such a patchwork of competing and overlapping political sectarian interests. Has there been just one unified voice against Israel or is the risk of Lebanon fracturing again along sectarian lines growing as a result of the war? No, it's a very good question. I think

Again, probably as you remember from your time in Lebanon, there were often a lot of complaints about the fact that the current political class are the same wartime figures that were leading their own militias during the war. And what a disappointment it is that there wasn't a new political class that could come forward and kind of steer Lebanon into a different era.

I think another element of having another, you know, the flip side of that, not to say that, you know, not to say it's enough of a pro to counterbalance that con, but the flip side of that is that you have figures who remember very, very well how horrible the Civil War was. And they are really, and what we've noticed is that there has been a rhetoric for the most part, there has been a kind of,

you know, a certain level of self-restraint, a certain level of discipline when it comes to public statements in an attempt to avoid triggering anything, you know, anything like the civil war. I think political leaders in Lebanon right now recognize the risk. They recognize, as you said, you have these very different kind of interlocking crises that are happening. There's obviously the war itself. There's the displacement crisis that will not

and when the guns stop firing because people's homes have been reduced to rubble, so they do have nowhere else to go. So they recognize that this is going to be an issue for the long haul Lebanon will have to deal with. And it will not be in a best position to do that if we start seeing clashes here and there, if we start seeing a breakdown in security. And so what you do hear from

top Lebanese political leaders, including the Karateka Prime Minister Najib Meati, including Speaker of Parliament Nabi Haberi, including even Walid Jumblaz, including Samir Janjan and others who are on very different ends of Lebanon's kind of multipolar political spectrum. They all kind of have really tried to put the ideas

the idea of civil peace kind of at the, you know, at the forefront of their approach, how long that lasts, whether or not there's going to be an event that, that kind of derails those, those efforts. I don't know, but, but it is kind of notable to us that there has been that much of an effort on that.

That's really interesting. And just finally on Lebanon, what's it been like to report there? How many restrictions does Hezbollah place on your reporting? I mean, are you finding it? Is it possible to go into the south where there are active military operations? What's it been like? Yeah, it's a good question. I have to say, you know, after having covered conflict in Syria and covering conflict in Iraq, this is by far the most difficult conflict to cover. Not because of what you're seeing in terms of difficult to digest. It's

It's difficult because you have...

kind of, you know, two parties who are very different. You know, usually when you're in a conflict and you're embedded with one force against another, this is a situation in which the political realities almost make that impossible. It's very, very difficult to get a kind of frontline view of what's happening, in part because of the restrictions that are in place by Hezbollah in terms of access to the southern border villages, but also in part because we've seen, you know, we've seen over the last year,

13 months, really, Israeli strikes that have killed journalists in Lebanon. Certainly not in the same number as they have in Gaza. But we just a couple of weeks ago saw another three journalists that were killed while they were sleeping in an Israeli strike on a town in southern Lebanon that had not been struck thus far, but the specific kind of bungalow where they were sleeping in this collection of bungalows that had been, you know, basically reserved for press for months. And

that bungalow was hit and three journalists were killed. And of course, the first journalist who was killed in Lebanon was our colleague, Issam Abdullah, who was killed by Israeli tank fire on October 13th of last year. And so you're kind of stuck in a reality where there isn't an application of the rules of war in a way that makes media 100% comfortable covering in the way that they would like to cover. But we do still see, you know, we have many, many brave colleagues, not just from international media, but very much from local media who are

risking their lives, as we've seen, to get as close as they can to the conflict, to make sure that they can, you know, that they can document all the developments playing out, including, you know, possible violations of international law, including the impact on UNIFIL, including the impact on communities in the south. So it has been a really complicated war to cover. But I think, you know, I think the collective effort by local, regional, international outlets in Lebanon has really tried to continue to document every detail of it, even within those difficulties.

I want to close up by asking a bit about Syria and Jordan, countries that we hear a lot less about in the international media. In Syria, we've seen consistent Israeli strikes on various Iran-related targets, Hezbollah mainly. We saw one over the weekend that, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, killed nine people, including a Hezbollah commander. And that was on a residential building in the Sayyida Zainab district south of

Can you tell us a bit more about what impact these strikes are having in Syria, where the civil war is still continuing, albeit at a very low level? You're right. I mean, the Israelis have carried out what we've long referred to as the shadow war or the war between wars in Syria, which is a reference to, you know, strikes that have been carried out that have been attributed to Israel, that people on the ground and security sources have often, and the Syrian government itself,

have accused Israel of carrying out. But the Israeli military was not in the habit of taking credit for those strikes. What we're seeing now, the shift that we're seeing now, I mean, just recently in the last two weeks or so, is that we're seeing the Israeli military more consistently take credit and take responsibility and explain in detail who they were targeting and what they struck, which we can interpret as a message essentially to the Syrian government that

We know that our enemies, Hezbollah, Iranian officials, etc., continue to be based in Syria and that this is going to continue to be a problem for us. And we may become more bold in carrying out these strikes.

So we're actually seeing a little bit more of a kind of a bullseye or a focus on Syria in the past couple of weeks that I think is really of interest. And we're working on some reporting now, so I'm not going to reveal more until we publish. But I think, you know, I think it really is going to be a critical part of, you know, what Israel is going to seek in terms of security arrangements in the weeks and months ahead.

And on Jordan, I mean, Jordan has been, you know, there's a couple of different angles here. Jordan has been in large parts, you know, focused on Gaza and the West Bank, because that's kind of the immediate neighborhood where the developments are of immediate concern to them. But obviously, they're also concerned with any, you know, possibility that there could be a further breakdown in security in Syria, that there could be, you know, growing Israeli incursions, maybe into Syrian territory that would that would pose a threat to

to Jordanian security eventually because it's in the, you know, it would be taking place in Southern Syria near, you know, near, near Jordan as well.

And Jordan also has long wanted to see, I mean, since, you know, for years, wanted to see a stop to smuggling operations that are taking place from southern Syria into northern Jordan. It was Captagon for a long time. And then for a period of time, it was also weapons that were being smuggled through from Syria into Jordan and then on into the West Bank. So this is something that, you know, that border security and that border zone is something that Jordan as well is very concerned about.

Great. Thank you so much for joining us. That's Maya Jebeli, Reuters Bureau Chief for Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. Thank you. Battle Lines is an original podcast from The Telegraph created by David Knowles. The producer is Yolaine Goffin.

To stay on top of all of our news, analysis and dispatches from the ground in Israel and Gaza, subscribe to The Telegraph or sign up to Dispatches, which brings stories from our award-winning foreign correspondents straight to your inbox. We also have a live blog on our website where you can follow updates as they come in throughout the day, including insights from contributors to this podcast. If you appreciated the show, please consider following Battlelines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it helps others find the show.

As disinformation is a particular problem during conflict, we are relying on your support more than ever. Battlelines is part of wider Telegraph foreign coverage in our podcasts. If you're interested in finding out more about the war in Ukraine, you can listen to our sister podcast, Ukraine The Latest.

Have you heard of Goldbelly? It's this amazing site where they ship the most iconic, famous foods from restaurants across the country, anywhere, nationwide. I've never found a more perfect gift than food. They ship Chicago deep dish pizza, New York bagels, Maine lobster rolls, and even Ina Garten's famous cakes. So if you're looking for a gift for the food lover in your life, head to goldbelly.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code GIFT.

1-800-Flowers.com knows that a gift is never just a gift. A gift is an expression of everything you feel and helps build more meaningful relationships. 1-800-Flowers takes the pressure off by helping you navigate life's important moments by making it simple to find the perfect gift. 1-800-Flowers.com

From flowers and cookies to cake and chocolate, 1-800-Flowers helps guide you in finding the right gift to say how you feel. To learn more, visit 1-800-Flowers.com slash ACAST. That's 1-800-Flowers.com slash ACAST.