Israeli Clandestine Mission Violates Cease-Fire, Again.
Zionism, Irrelevant Within A Generation | 20.08.2006 17:29 | Anti-militarism | World
The whole point to a cease-fire is to get the two sides in a particular conflict talking, so that peace can be achieved, making war unnecessary, saving the lives of countless innocents civilians. Israel, or at least the current Israeli Government under the Olmert/Netanyahu Extremists, is interested in no such thing, and have the "next round" of attacks planned already.
Israeli Incursion Strains Truce With Hezbollah
The military says it was trying to intercept arms, but observers suspect that it wanted to rescue soldiers or abduct a guerrilla for a swap.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a statement later Saturday saying he was "deeply concerned about a violation by the Israeli side of the cessation of hostilities."
Hezbollah fighters and residents of Boudai, a small agricultural village west of Baalbek, said the Israelis tried to pass themselves off as a Lebanese army patrol, and appeared bent on a clandestine mission, perhaps a kidnapping.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mideast20aug20,0,4996063,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Or perhaps, fire some rockets into Israel, blame the Lebanese, and start the war all over again?
... the Israelis tried to pass themselves off as a Lebanese army patrol, and appeared bent on a clandestine mission...
... the Israelis tried to pass themselves off as a Lebanese army patrol, and appeared bent on a clandestine mission...
... the Israelis tried to pass themselves off as a Lebanese army patrol, and appeared bent on a clandestine mission...
Breaking the ceasefire
Eli Stephens, Left I on the News
August 19, 2006
The news is filled with the story of Israel breaking the ceasefire in Lebanon; even the bold Kofi Annan said he was deeply concerned. Three points:
1. Israel has already murdered numerous alleged Hizbollah fighters since the ceasefire went into place; not once have those attacks been labelled as "violations of the ceasefire." Yes, Israel says they were defensive acts against Hizbollah fighters pointing guns at them or whatever. Maybe they were. Is there any proof? And does Israel have the slightest credibility which would allow us to believe anything they say?
2. News reports I have read and heard simply repeat the Israeli claim that this operation was a "defensive" operation intended to "stop arms smuggling." Not one has even asked the question of whether there is any proof for that assertion. Were there any captured or destroyed weapons, for example? As I said, not only haven't I heard the answer to that question, I haven't even heard the question.
3. Finally, there is the question of how a "commando raid" could possibly be a serious way to stop arms smuggling. Hizbollah has thousands of rockets and was shooting them off a hundred or two a day. I'm no military expert, but that's more than will fit in a van or a truck or whatever it might be that a commando raid could intercept. If Hizbollah is going to be resupplied at a rate that would come anywhere close to replenishing what they used up, it's going to take a lot more than a "commando raid" to do the job. It would be kind of like thinking that Hizbollah could stop the U.S. from resupplying Israel with weapons with a commando raid. It's not going to happen.
http://www.uruknet.com/?p=m25917&hd=0&size=1&l=e
UN says Lebanon truce may unravel
Sun Aug 20, 2006 4:00 PM BST173
By Laila Bassam
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Sunday the week-old truce between Israel and Hizbollah could easily collapse, a day after it condemned an Israeli raid on the guerrillas in Lebanon as a violation.
Senior U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said the truce that halted the 34-day war had provided the Lebanese government with a good chance to extend its authority over all of the country.
"We also do believe that unfortunately there is a tilting edge where things very easily, within the next weeks or months, can slide out of control," Roed-Larsen told reporters in Beirut.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-08-20T150024Z_01_L19857256_RTRUKOC_0_UK-MIDEAST.xml
Remember that Annan personally stated to the Olmert Regime that, even if they believe they have a justified reason for attacking Lebanon, under the terms of the agreement, they are bound to ask the UN for permission to carry out military operations. Of course, this would mean Israel would have to provide evidence to support its claims, which it seems incapable of doing.
Israeli officer: No solution for Nasrallah, he must die
In New York Times interview, senior IDF officer says, 'there is only one solution for Nasrallah. This man must die.' Officer talks about war's achievements, says 'Lebanese government took control of southern Lebanon. Now we can deal with them as a country and a government. This is the huge change this operation created'
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3293160,00.html
Dangerous Scenario
Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah ended after the United Nations resolution for cease-fire, whether the decision qualifies for a “cease-fire is another matter.” Israel probably will not withdraw from the Lebanese territory it is occupying until U.N. Resolution 1559 is fully implemented.
Planes can only land in this so-called independent and sovereign state (Lebanon) after getting clearance from Israel. Nearly 1,000 Lebanese are being held in Israeli prisons. Israel calls them “inmates.” The term “inmate” refers to a person serving a sentence after being tried and proven guilty in a court of law. Hamas Cabinet ministers and MPs are also “inmates” in Israeli jails, yet no one is asking Israel to give an account of its actions.
The situation in Lebanon remains unstable and precarious. It is still not clear whether the so-called cease-fire can be implemented. Even if this truce holds for a while, the United States and Israel will eventually attack Syria and Iran unless there is a change of heart on their part. It almost appears to be a common knowledge that the U.S. knew Israel’s plans to attack Lebanon month in advance. The abduction of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah forced Israel to move early, maybe two months earlier than planned. Israel suffered an unprecedented defeat. Israel expected to finish Hezbollah in a few days. Israel won the 1967 war in six days, and the offensive launched on July 12 was expected to end on July 15 or July 20 at the latest. However, it lasted several weeks, and the U.S. was saying repeatedly that no one should expect “an early cease-fire.” Israel was allowed more time to accomplish its mission. As it became clear that Israeli forces were facing a real resistance, they agreed to the so-called cease-fire.
The outcome leads to two possibilities:
1) Following their defeat in Lebanon, Israel and the U.S. have abandoned plans to attack Syria and Iran. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad referring to this point, said, “The Greater Middle East Project” has been put on the shelf. We also wish this project is abandoned for good.
2) Israel and the U.S. have not completely given up plans to attack Syria and Iran, but they only stopped for a “short” break and will resume the project in the upcoming months, September or October, or even on August 22, as modern-day prognosticator Bernard Lewis claimed.
If Syria and Iran are attacked, sooner or later, we should take into account the Hezbollah factor. This war failed to dislodge Hezbollah, though it only used 20 percent of its rockets. And its small weapons still are under ground. It achieved great psychological superiority, and gained the sympathy of the entire Arab and Islamic worlds. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood officially announced it wants to send 10,000 mujahedeens to fight under the command of Hezbollah. Young men in Asia, from Indonesia to Bangladesh, want to fight in Lebanon.
One point is clearly understood: If Syria and Iran are attacked, Hezbollah will definitely hit Israel. Turkey, which is contemplating to send troops to a proposed peacekeeping force aimed at “enforcing the so-called peace,” should consider the following questions: God forbid, what will Turkish troops do if Syria and Iran are attacked and Hezbollah hits Israel? Will they fight Hezbollah? Israel wants the peacekeeping force to dislodge Hezbollah by using the U.N. as a pawn. To that end, a 15,000-strong Lebanese force is expected to take over control of southern Lebanon, disarm Hezbollah and cut off its supply lines. Furthermore, if Turkey is involved in the fighting against Hezbollah, in case Israel is attacked, it will inevitably have accepted fighting against Syria and Iran. Hence, Turkey will be in a most undesirable situation. No wonder the US is all for Turkish troops; otherwise, why should Turkey be included in such a plan drawn up by this or that country? This is only a “scenario,” but highly likely one. Turkey should refrain from taking inappropriate stance in this ever-spreading wildfire. No one has the right to get Turkey between its neighbors and world powers, not even the world powers themselves.
August 18, 2006
http://www.zaman.com/?bl=columnists&alt=&trh=20060820&hn=35814
Robert Fisk's Beirut Diary: A land reduced to rubble
'These places now look like French villages did after German bombardment during the First World War'
Published: 20 August 2006
Sunday 13 August
A series of profound explosions from the south of Beirut; the Israelis "jostling the rubble" of the suburbs, as we now say, although who knows how many corpses lie in this pit? An Israeli calls me from Los Angeles. She thinks she has discovered a reason why the Lebanese Red Cross may have been targeted by the Israeli air force. "I will send you a fax proving that they are helping the Hizbollah," she says.
I await the fax, which turns out to be a New York Times report from southern Lebanon, recording how the Red Cross gave medical assistance to wounded members of the Hizbollah. I call Rachel back. The Lebanese Red Cross helped wounded American marines after they were suicide-bombed in Beirut in 1983, I tell her, and they gave help - and were criticised for it by their Lebanese neighbours - to wounded Israelis after a suicide bombing in Tyre the following year. Isn't it the duty of all Red Cross teams to help all those who are suffering? "Perhaps, but they should have detained the Hizbollah," comes the voice from Los Angeles. What? The Red Cross is now supposed to imprison Israel's enemies?
I receive another fax from Rachel. "I am for dialog (sic) but not with the Devil, Nazis et al," she says. "Reality and justice are derived from the ability to discern between good and evil, between truth and lies, and between the fireman and the arsonist. Keep safe."
A ceasefire at 8am tomorrow, or so we are told.
Monday 14 August
The Israelis and the Hizbollah fought to the end, 200 rockets into Israel and a few final bombing runs on the suburbs of Beirut. Among the last to die was a small child in the Beirut Dahiya district whose body was found clutched in her dead mother's arms. A final kick to the civilians of Lebanon, just in time to meet the truce deadline.
Cody and I set off to southern Lebanon over smashed bridges, round vast bomb craters, beating the earth down to allow Hassan's "Death Car" to drive over them, trying to avoid the thousands of unexploded shells lying in the fields. So many bombs on the Litani that the river has partly changed its course and we walk into the water. We drive to Srifa, a village which clearly was - heaven preserve us from these clichés - a Hizbollah "stronghold", but whose ruins now cover dozens of civilian dead. I am photographing the wreckage - using real film because I still feel that digital cameras lose definition - and I find that I see through the lens more pain than I see with my own eyes. I think this is because the sheer extent of the bomb damage is focused in a frame. Later, I look at my developed pictures in Beirut and am appalled by the level of destruction. Some of my pictures look like the photographs of French villages after German bombardment during my dad's First World War. They will find 36 bodies under the Srifa rubble upon which I have walked.
Epic traffic jams on the way back to Beirut as hundreds of thousands of Muslim Shias try to return to homes which in many cases no longer exist. Cody, normally a cool customer, jumps out of the car in rage to remonstrate with a man who refuses to reverse up the road to let our queue of cars through to Beirut. "The arsehole says the reverse in his car doesn't work," he says in fury. I remind Cody that Captain Cook lost his life when, after many years, he lost his temper with a native and got pierced by a spear.
Tuesday 15 August
I am sending my dispatch to The Independent from an internet café when an American nurse whom I have known for years walks up to me. "We have a badly burned woman in emergency and we've just had to tell her that her three children are dead," she says. And how did she take this news? "You can imagine. We found out she'd had her tubes tied so she can't have any more children." And her husband? "Dead," the nurse replies.
The Lebanese papers carry the news of the death in action of David Grossman's son Uri, killed fighting the Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. That Grossman, a brilliant and compassionate writer well known in Lebanon - his books are on sale here and the local newspaper reports are written with dignity - should suffer in this way seems especially cruel. I turn to his work on the Palestinians of Israel, which nestles in the bookcase beside my desk. "Every acrobat knows the secret of walking a tightrope over an abyss; the Arabs in Israel have learnt something even more difficult - to stand still on the wire," Grossman wrote in 1993. "To live a provisional life that eternally suspends and dulls the will... So it has been for decades, for hundreds of thousands of acrobats."
Wednesday 16 August
Sixteen-hour power cuts, worse than before the ceasefire. Plenty of oil tankers in Cyprus but the shipowners - and the insurers - are cravenly waiting for Israeli permission to sail their vessels to Lebanon. Hizbollah says it doesn't want to disarm. The French say they want a clearer mandate before sending troops to join the international force in southern Lebanon. I hear the ceasefire creaking.
Thursday 17 August
All the talk is of a "robust" international force and my journalistic colleagues have become besotted by the word "robust". The BBC talks about a robust mandate for a robust army and robust United Nations peacekeeping. It reminds me of the Nato manoeuvres in Germany that I watched back in the 1980s when the Reuters correspondent expressed his belief that generals loved missiles because they could no longer have erections. In the Arab world, to be arrogant is to "have a big nose", and the problem is that whenever generals in Lebanon become "robust", they tend to get their noses chopped off. We shall see.
Friday 18 August
Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, has appeared on television, talking like a president - though admittedly a more impressive one than the Syrian satrap currently installed in his palace above Beirut - but acting as if the Shias of Lebanon will now define the future of the country.
Through my office window I watch the Shia poor still driving back to the blasted south of Lebanon, mattresses on the roofs of their cars, mothers and babies in the back, interspersed on the roads with Lebanese troop trucks, tanks transporters and armoured vehicles which will soon be joined - or not, as the case may be - by foreign troops to augment the UN army in the south.
Sunday 13 August
A series of profound explosions from the south of Beirut; the Israelis "jostling the rubble" of the suburbs, as we now say, although who knows how many corpses lie in this pit? An Israeli calls me from Los Angeles. She thinks she has discovered a reason why the Lebanese Red Cross may have been targeted by the Israeli air force. "I will send you a fax proving that they are helping the Hizbollah," she says.
I await the fax, which turns out to be a New York Times report from southern Lebanon, recording how the Red Cross gave medical assistance to wounded members of the Hizbollah. I call Rachel back. The Lebanese Red Cross helped wounded American marines after they were suicide-bombed in Beirut in 1983, I tell her, and they gave help - and were criticised for it by their Lebanese neighbours - to wounded Israelis after a suicide bombing in Tyre the following year. Isn't it the duty of all Red Cross teams to help all those who are suffering? "Perhaps, but they should have detained the Hizbollah," comes the voice from Los Angeles. What? The Red Cross is now supposed to imprison Israel's enemies?
I receive another fax from Rachel. "I am for dialog (sic) but not with the Devil, Nazis et al," she says. "Reality and justice are derived from the ability to discern between good and evil, between truth and lies, and between the fireman and the arsonist. Keep safe."
A ceasefire at 8am tomorrow, or so we are told.
Monday 14 August
The Israelis and the Hizbollah fought to the end, 200 rockets into Israel and a few final bombing runs on the suburbs of Beirut. Among the last to die was a small child in the Beirut Dahiya district whose body was found clutched in her dead mother's arms. A final kick to the civilians of Lebanon, just in time to meet the truce deadline.
Cody and I set off to southern Lebanon over smashed bridges, round vast bomb craters, beating the earth down to allow Hassan's "Death Car" to drive over them, trying to avoid the thousands of unexploded shells lying in the fields. So many bombs on the Litani that the river has partly changed its course and we walk into the water. We drive to Srifa, a village which clearly was - heaven preserve us from these clichés - a Hizbollah "stronghold", but whose ruins now cover dozens of civilian dead. I am photographing the wreckage - using real film because I still feel that digital cameras lose definition - and I find that I see through the lens more pain than I see with my own eyes. I think this is because the sheer extent of the bomb damage is focused in a frame. Later, I look at my developed pictures in Beirut and am appalled by the level of destruction. Some of my pictures look like the photographs of French villages after German bombardment during my dad's First World War. They will find 36 bodies under the Srifa rubble upon which I have walked.
Epic traffic jams on the way back to Beirut as hundreds of thousands of Muslim Shias try to return to homes which in many cases no longer exist. Cody, normally a cool customer, jumps out of the car in rage to remonstrate with a man who refuses to reverse up the road to let our queue of cars through to Beirut. "The arsehole says the reverse in his car doesn't work," he says in fury. I remind Cody that Captain Cook lost his life when, after many years, he lost his temper with a native and got pierced by a spear.
Tuesday 15 August
I am sending my dispatch to The Independent from an internet café when an American nurse whom I have known for years walks up to me. "We have a badly burned woman in emergency and we've just had to tell her that her three children are dead," she says. And how did she take this news? "You can imagine. We found out she'd had her tubes tied so she can't have any more children." And her husband? "Dead," the nurse replies.
The Lebanese papers carry the news of the death in action of David Grossman's son Uri, killed fighting the Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. That Grossman, a brilliant and compassionate writer well known in Lebanon - his books are on sale here and the local newspaper reports are written with dignity - should suffer in this way seems especially cruel. I turn to his work on the Palestinians of Israel, which nestles in the bookcase beside my desk. "Every acrobat knows the secret of walking a tightrope over an abyss; the Arabs in Israel have learnt something even more difficult - to stand still on the wire," Grossman wrote in 1993. "To live a provisional life that eternally suspends and dulls the will... So it has been for decades, for hundreds of thousands of acrobats."
Wednesday 16 August
Sixteen-hour power cuts, worse than before the ceasefire. Plenty of oil tankers in Cyprus but the shipowners - and the insurers - are cravenly waiting for Israeli permission to sail their vessels to Lebanon. Hizbollah says it doesn't want to disarm. The French say they want a clearer mandate before sending troops to join the international force in southern Lebanon. I hear the ceasefire creaking.
Thursday 17 August
All the talk is of a "robust" international force and my journalistic colleagues have become besotted by the word "robust". The BBC talks about a robust mandate for a robust army and robust United Nations peacekeeping. It reminds me of the Nato manoeuvres in Germany that I watched back in the 1980s when the Reuters correspondent expressed his belief that generals loved missiles because they could no longer have erections. In the Arab world, to be arrogant is to "have a big nose", and the problem is that whenever generals in Lebanon become "robust", they tend to get their noses chopped off. We shall see.
Friday 18 August
Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, has appeared on television, talking like a president - though admittedly a more impressive one than the Syrian satrap currently installed in his palace above Beirut - but acting as if the Shias of Lebanon will now define the future of the country.
Through my office window I watch the Shia poor still driving back to the blasted south of Lebanon, mattresses on the roofs of their cars, mothers and babies in the back, interspersed on the roads with Lebanese troop trucks, tanks transporters and armoured vehicles which will soon be joined - or not, as the case may be - by foreign troops to augment the UN army in the south.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1220400.ece
The military says it was trying to intercept arms, but observers suspect that it wanted to rescue soldiers or abduct a guerrilla for a swap.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a statement later Saturday saying he was "deeply concerned about a violation by the Israeli side of the cessation of hostilities."
Hezbollah fighters and residents of Boudai, a small agricultural village west of Baalbek, said the Israelis tried to pass themselves off as a Lebanese army patrol, and appeared bent on a clandestine mission, perhaps a kidnapping.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mideast20aug20,0,4996063,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines Or perhaps, fire some rockets into Israel, blame the Lebanese, and start the war all over again?
... the Israelis tried to pass themselves off as a Lebanese army patrol, and appeared bent on a clandestine mission...
... the Israelis tried to pass themselves off as a Lebanese army patrol, and appeared bent on a clandestine mission...
... the Israelis tried to pass themselves off as a Lebanese army patrol, and appeared bent on a clandestine mission...
Breaking the ceasefire
Eli Stephens, Left I on the News
August 19, 2006
The news is filled with the story of Israel breaking the ceasefire in Lebanon; even the bold Kofi Annan said he was deeply concerned. Three points:
1. Israel has already murdered numerous alleged Hizbollah fighters since the ceasefire went into place; not once have those attacks been labelled as "violations of the ceasefire." Yes, Israel says they were defensive acts against Hizbollah fighters pointing guns at them or whatever. Maybe they were. Is there any proof? And does Israel have the slightest credibility which would allow us to believe anything they say?
2. News reports I have read and heard simply repeat the Israeli claim that this operation was a "defensive" operation intended to "stop arms smuggling." Not one has even asked the question of whether there is any proof for that assertion. Were there any captured or destroyed weapons, for example? As I said, not only haven't I heard the answer to that question, I haven't even heard the question.
3. Finally, there is the question of how a "commando raid" could possibly be a serious way to stop arms smuggling. Hizbollah has thousands of rockets and was shooting them off a hundred or two a day. I'm no military expert, but that's more than will fit in a van or a truck or whatever it might be that a commando raid could intercept. If Hizbollah is going to be resupplied at a rate that would come anywhere close to replenishing what they used up, it's going to take a lot more than a "commando raid" to do the job. It would be kind of like thinking that Hizbollah could stop the U.S. from resupplying Israel with weapons with a commando raid. It's not going to happen.
http://www.uruknet.com/?p=m25917&hd=0&size=1&l=e UN says Lebanon truce may unravel
Sun Aug 20, 2006 4:00 PM BST173
By Laila Bassam
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Sunday the week-old truce between Israel and Hizbollah could easily collapse, a day after it condemned an Israeli raid on the guerrillas in Lebanon as a violation.
Senior U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said the truce that halted the 34-day war had provided the Lebanese government with a good chance to extend its authority over all of the country.
"We also do believe that unfortunately there is a tilting edge where things very easily, within the next weeks or months, can slide out of control," Roed-Larsen told reporters in Beirut.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-08-20T150024Z_01_L19857256_RTRUKOC_0_UK-MIDEAST.xml Remember that Annan personally stated to the Olmert Regime that, even if they believe they have a justified reason for attacking Lebanon, under the terms of the agreement, they are bound to ask the UN for permission to carry out military operations. Of course, this would mean Israel would have to provide evidence to support its claims, which it seems incapable of doing.
Israeli officer: No solution for Nasrallah, he must die
In New York Times interview, senior IDF officer says, 'there is only one solution for Nasrallah. This man must die.' Officer talks about war's achievements, says 'Lebanese government took control of southern Lebanon. Now we can deal with them as a country and a government. This is the huge change this operation created'
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3293160,00.html Dangerous Scenario
Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah ended after the United Nations resolution for cease-fire, whether the decision qualifies for a “cease-fire is another matter.” Israel probably will not withdraw from the Lebanese territory it is occupying until U.N. Resolution 1559 is fully implemented.
Planes can only land in this so-called independent and sovereign state (Lebanon) after getting clearance from Israel. Nearly 1,000 Lebanese are being held in Israeli prisons. Israel calls them “inmates.” The term “inmate” refers to a person serving a sentence after being tried and proven guilty in a court of law. Hamas Cabinet ministers and MPs are also “inmates” in Israeli jails, yet no one is asking Israel to give an account of its actions.
The situation in Lebanon remains unstable and precarious. It is still not clear whether the so-called cease-fire can be implemented. Even if this truce holds for a while, the United States and Israel will eventually attack Syria and Iran unless there is a change of heart on their part. It almost appears to be a common knowledge that the U.S. knew Israel’s plans to attack Lebanon month in advance. The abduction of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah forced Israel to move early, maybe two months earlier than planned. Israel suffered an unprecedented defeat. Israel expected to finish Hezbollah in a few days. Israel won the 1967 war in six days, and the offensive launched on July 12 was expected to end on July 15 or July 20 at the latest. However, it lasted several weeks, and the U.S. was saying repeatedly that no one should expect “an early cease-fire.” Israel was allowed more time to accomplish its mission. As it became clear that Israeli forces were facing a real resistance, they agreed to the so-called cease-fire.
The outcome leads to two possibilities:
1) Following their defeat in Lebanon, Israel and the U.S. have abandoned plans to attack Syria and Iran. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad referring to this point, said, “The Greater Middle East Project” has been put on the shelf. We also wish this project is abandoned for good.
2) Israel and the U.S. have not completely given up plans to attack Syria and Iran, but they only stopped for a “short” break and will resume the project in the upcoming months, September or October, or even on August 22, as modern-day prognosticator Bernard Lewis claimed.
If Syria and Iran are attacked, sooner or later, we should take into account the Hezbollah factor. This war failed to dislodge Hezbollah, though it only used 20 percent of its rockets. And its small weapons still are under ground. It achieved great psychological superiority, and gained the sympathy of the entire Arab and Islamic worlds. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood officially announced it wants to send 10,000 mujahedeens to fight under the command of Hezbollah. Young men in Asia, from Indonesia to Bangladesh, want to fight in Lebanon.
One point is clearly understood: If Syria and Iran are attacked, Hezbollah will definitely hit Israel. Turkey, which is contemplating to send troops to a proposed peacekeeping force aimed at “enforcing the so-called peace,” should consider the following questions: God forbid, what will Turkish troops do if Syria and Iran are attacked and Hezbollah hits Israel? Will they fight Hezbollah? Israel wants the peacekeeping force to dislodge Hezbollah by using the U.N. as a pawn. To that end, a 15,000-strong Lebanese force is expected to take over control of southern Lebanon, disarm Hezbollah and cut off its supply lines. Furthermore, if Turkey is involved in the fighting against Hezbollah, in case Israel is attacked, it will inevitably have accepted fighting against Syria and Iran. Hence, Turkey will be in a most undesirable situation. No wonder the US is all for Turkish troops; otherwise, why should Turkey be included in such a plan drawn up by this or that country? This is only a “scenario,” but highly likely one. Turkey should refrain from taking inappropriate stance in this ever-spreading wildfire. No one has the right to get Turkey between its neighbors and world powers, not even the world powers themselves.
August 18, 2006
http://www.zaman.com/?bl=columnists&alt=&trh=20060820&hn=35814 Robert Fisk's Beirut Diary: A land reduced to rubble
'These places now look like French villages did after German bombardment during the First World War'
Published: 20 August 2006
Sunday 13 August
A series of profound explosions from the south of Beirut; the Israelis "jostling the rubble" of the suburbs, as we now say, although who knows how many corpses lie in this pit? An Israeli calls me from Los Angeles. She thinks she has discovered a reason why the Lebanese Red Cross may have been targeted by the Israeli air force. "I will send you a fax proving that they are helping the Hizbollah," she says.
I await the fax, which turns out to be a New York Times report from southern Lebanon, recording how the Red Cross gave medical assistance to wounded members of the Hizbollah. I call Rachel back. The Lebanese Red Cross helped wounded American marines after they were suicide-bombed in Beirut in 1983, I tell her, and they gave help - and were criticised for it by their Lebanese neighbours - to wounded Israelis after a suicide bombing in Tyre the following year. Isn't it the duty of all Red Cross teams to help all those who are suffering? "Perhaps, but they should have detained the Hizbollah," comes the voice from Los Angeles. What? The Red Cross is now supposed to imprison Israel's enemies?
I receive another fax from Rachel. "I am for dialog (sic) but not with the Devil, Nazis et al," she says. "Reality and justice are derived from the ability to discern between good and evil, between truth and lies, and between the fireman and the arsonist. Keep safe."
A ceasefire at 8am tomorrow, or so we are told.
Monday 14 August
The Israelis and the Hizbollah fought to the end, 200 rockets into Israel and a few final bombing runs on the suburbs of Beirut. Among the last to die was a small child in the Beirut Dahiya district whose body was found clutched in her dead mother's arms. A final kick to the civilians of Lebanon, just in time to meet the truce deadline.
Cody and I set off to southern Lebanon over smashed bridges, round vast bomb craters, beating the earth down to allow Hassan's "Death Car" to drive over them, trying to avoid the thousands of unexploded shells lying in the fields. So many bombs on the Litani that the river has partly changed its course and we walk into the water. We drive to Srifa, a village which clearly was - heaven preserve us from these clichés - a Hizbollah "stronghold", but whose ruins now cover dozens of civilian dead. I am photographing the wreckage - using real film because I still feel that digital cameras lose definition - and I find that I see through the lens more pain than I see with my own eyes. I think this is because the sheer extent of the bomb damage is focused in a frame. Later, I look at my developed pictures in Beirut and am appalled by the level of destruction. Some of my pictures look like the photographs of French villages after German bombardment during my dad's First World War. They will find 36 bodies under the Srifa rubble upon which I have walked.
Epic traffic jams on the way back to Beirut as hundreds of thousands of Muslim Shias try to return to homes which in many cases no longer exist. Cody, normally a cool customer, jumps out of the car in rage to remonstrate with a man who refuses to reverse up the road to let our queue of cars through to Beirut. "The arsehole says the reverse in his car doesn't work," he says in fury. I remind Cody that Captain Cook lost his life when, after many years, he lost his temper with a native and got pierced by a spear.
Tuesday 15 August
I am sending my dispatch to The Independent from an internet café when an American nurse whom I have known for years walks up to me. "We have a badly burned woman in emergency and we've just had to tell her that her three children are dead," she says. And how did she take this news? "You can imagine. We found out she'd had her tubes tied so she can't have any more children." And her husband? "Dead," the nurse replies.
The Lebanese papers carry the news of the death in action of David Grossman's son Uri, killed fighting the Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. That Grossman, a brilliant and compassionate writer well known in Lebanon - his books are on sale here and the local newspaper reports are written with dignity - should suffer in this way seems especially cruel. I turn to his work on the Palestinians of Israel, which nestles in the bookcase beside my desk. "Every acrobat knows the secret of walking a tightrope over an abyss; the Arabs in Israel have learnt something even more difficult - to stand still on the wire," Grossman wrote in 1993. "To live a provisional life that eternally suspends and dulls the will... So it has been for decades, for hundreds of thousands of acrobats."
Wednesday 16 August
Sixteen-hour power cuts, worse than before the ceasefire. Plenty of oil tankers in Cyprus but the shipowners - and the insurers - are cravenly waiting for Israeli permission to sail their vessels to Lebanon. Hizbollah says it doesn't want to disarm. The French say they want a clearer mandate before sending troops to join the international force in southern Lebanon. I hear the ceasefire creaking.
Thursday 17 August
All the talk is of a "robust" international force and my journalistic colleagues have become besotted by the word "robust". The BBC talks about a robust mandate for a robust army and robust United Nations peacekeeping. It reminds me of the Nato manoeuvres in Germany that I watched back in the 1980s when the Reuters correspondent expressed his belief that generals loved missiles because they could no longer have erections. In the Arab world, to be arrogant is to "have a big nose", and the problem is that whenever generals in Lebanon become "robust", they tend to get their noses chopped off. We shall see.
Friday 18 August
Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, has appeared on television, talking like a president - though admittedly a more impressive one than the Syrian satrap currently installed in his palace above Beirut - but acting as if the Shias of Lebanon will now define the future of the country.
Through my office window I watch the Shia poor still driving back to the blasted south of Lebanon, mattresses on the roofs of their cars, mothers and babies in the back, interspersed on the roads with Lebanese troop trucks, tanks transporters and armoured vehicles which will soon be joined - or not, as the case may be - by foreign troops to augment the UN army in the south.
Sunday 13 August
A series of profound explosions from the south of Beirut; the Israelis "jostling the rubble" of the suburbs, as we now say, although who knows how many corpses lie in this pit? An Israeli calls me from Los Angeles. She thinks she has discovered a reason why the Lebanese Red Cross may have been targeted by the Israeli air force. "I will send you a fax proving that they are helping the Hizbollah," she says.
I await the fax, which turns out to be a New York Times report from southern Lebanon, recording how the Red Cross gave medical assistance to wounded members of the Hizbollah. I call Rachel back. The Lebanese Red Cross helped wounded American marines after they were suicide-bombed in Beirut in 1983, I tell her, and they gave help - and were criticised for it by their Lebanese neighbours - to wounded Israelis after a suicide bombing in Tyre the following year. Isn't it the duty of all Red Cross teams to help all those who are suffering? "Perhaps, but they should have detained the Hizbollah," comes the voice from Los Angeles. What? The Red Cross is now supposed to imprison Israel's enemies?
I receive another fax from Rachel. "I am for dialog (sic) but not with the Devil, Nazis et al," she says. "Reality and justice are derived from the ability to discern between good and evil, between truth and lies, and between the fireman and the arsonist. Keep safe."
A ceasefire at 8am tomorrow, or so we are told.
Monday 14 August
The Israelis and the Hizbollah fought to the end, 200 rockets into Israel and a few final bombing runs on the suburbs of Beirut. Among the last to die was a small child in the Beirut Dahiya district whose body was found clutched in her dead mother's arms. A final kick to the civilians of Lebanon, just in time to meet the truce deadline.
Cody and I set off to southern Lebanon over smashed bridges, round vast bomb craters, beating the earth down to allow Hassan's "Death Car" to drive over them, trying to avoid the thousands of unexploded shells lying in the fields. So many bombs on the Litani that the river has partly changed its course and we walk into the water. We drive to Srifa, a village which clearly was - heaven preserve us from these clichés - a Hizbollah "stronghold", but whose ruins now cover dozens of civilian dead. I am photographing the wreckage - using real film because I still feel that digital cameras lose definition - and I find that I see through the lens more pain than I see with my own eyes. I think this is because the sheer extent of the bomb damage is focused in a frame. Later, I look at my developed pictures in Beirut and am appalled by the level of destruction. Some of my pictures look like the photographs of French villages after German bombardment during my dad's First World War. They will find 36 bodies under the Srifa rubble upon which I have walked.
Epic traffic jams on the way back to Beirut as hundreds of thousands of Muslim Shias try to return to homes which in many cases no longer exist. Cody, normally a cool customer, jumps out of the car in rage to remonstrate with a man who refuses to reverse up the road to let our queue of cars through to Beirut. "The arsehole says the reverse in his car doesn't work," he says in fury. I remind Cody that Captain Cook lost his life when, after many years, he lost his temper with a native and got pierced by a spear.
Tuesday 15 August
I am sending my dispatch to The Independent from an internet café when an American nurse whom I have known for years walks up to me. "We have a badly burned woman in emergency and we've just had to tell her that her three children are dead," she says. And how did she take this news? "You can imagine. We found out she'd had her tubes tied so she can't have any more children." And her husband? "Dead," the nurse replies.
The Lebanese papers carry the news of the death in action of David Grossman's son Uri, killed fighting the Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. That Grossman, a brilliant and compassionate writer well known in Lebanon - his books are on sale here and the local newspaper reports are written with dignity - should suffer in this way seems especially cruel. I turn to his work on the Palestinians of Israel, which nestles in the bookcase beside my desk. "Every acrobat knows the secret of walking a tightrope over an abyss; the Arabs in Israel have learnt something even more difficult - to stand still on the wire," Grossman wrote in 1993. "To live a provisional life that eternally suspends and dulls the will... So it has been for decades, for hundreds of thousands of acrobats."
Wednesday 16 August
Sixteen-hour power cuts, worse than before the ceasefire. Plenty of oil tankers in Cyprus but the shipowners - and the insurers - are cravenly waiting for Israeli permission to sail their vessels to Lebanon. Hizbollah says it doesn't want to disarm. The French say they want a clearer mandate before sending troops to join the international force in southern Lebanon. I hear the ceasefire creaking.
Thursday 17 August
All the talk is of a "robust" international force and my journalistic colleagues have become besotted by the word "robust". The BBC talks about a robust mandate for a robust army and robust United Nations peacekeeping. It reminds me of the Nato manoeuvres in Germany that I watched back in the 1980s when the Reuters correspondent expressed his belief that generals loved missiles because they could no longer have erections. In the Arab world, to be arrogant is to "have a big nose", and the problem is that whenever generals in Lebanon become "robust", they tend to get their noses chopped off. We shall see.
Friday 18 August
Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, has appeared on television, talking like a president - though admittedly a more impressive one than the Syrian satrap currently installed in his palace above Beirut - but acting as if the Shias of Lebanon will now define the future of the country.
Through my office window I watch the Shia poor still driving back to the blasted south of Lebanon, mattresses on the roofs of their cars, mothers and babies in the back, interspersed on the roads with Lebanese troop trucks, tanks transporters and armoured vehicles which will soon be joined - or not, as the case may be - by foreign troops to augment the UN army in the south.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1220400.ece
Zionism, Irrelevant Within A Generation
