Guardian Special

Guardian:
Israeli air strikes continue despite 'cessation'

Staff and agencies
Monday July 31, 2006

Israeli air force jets bombed southern Lebanon this morning, despite a 48-hour suspension of air strikes negotiated by US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice yesterday after an attack that left more than 60 dead.

The strikes, near the village of Taibe, were carried out in support of ground forces operating in the area and did not target anything specific, the Israeli army said.

But they called into question the 48-hour suspension that was the most significant outcome of Ms Rice's aborted visit to the Middle East at the weekend.

The cessation was negotiated after Lebanese leaders cancelled their meetings with Ms Rice following yesterday's attack on the southern Lebanese town of Qana, which rights group Human Rights Watch today labelled a "war crime".

The 48-hour window was intended to allow civilians trapped in southern Lebanon to escape to the north of the country, away from the threat of bombardment.

However, Israeli military officials today said it would not apply to strikes launched in retaliation for Hizbullah rocket attacks, or to stop the importation of weapons from Syria.

"If we identify a rocket launch there will be an air strike, or if we identify a truck loaded with weapons there will be one too," an army spokesman told Israel Radio.

The Taibe strike happened as Israeli troops pushed towards the village. Hizbullah rockets were fired from the border area close to Taibe this morning, landing near the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona.

Earlier today, defence minister Amir Peretz told the Israeli parliament the army would "expand and strengthen" its attack on Hizbullah guerrillas and promised the cabinet would discuss an expansion of the ground operation.

His speech was interrupted by Israeli Arab MPs' calls for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict, which has killed at least 545 Lebanese and 51 Israelis since it began three weeks ago.

Mr Peretz said that there were no plans for an immediate ceasefire and described the 48-hour suspension of air attacks as a "humanitarian gesture".

"If an immediate ceasefire is declared, the extremists will rear their heads anew. In a few months we will be back in the same place," he said.

The renewed violence calls into question Ms Rice's further objective of a UN security council resolution on a ceasefire, which she hopes to achieve by the end of the week.

"This morning, as I head back to Washington, I take with me an emerging consensus on what is necessary for both an urgent ceasefire and lasting settlement. I am convinced we can achieve both this week," she told reporters in Jerusalem.

US domestic opinion is the major stumbling block to a UN ceasefire resolution - which in any case would not necessarily force Israel or Hizbullah to down their weapons.

Tony Blair said last night that all parties would need to show "maximum restraint" in advance of the resolution vote, and that the process would need to be speeded up after three weeks of diplomatic stalemate.

"Everyone is going to have to exercise maximum restraint, and maximum pressure and will, to get the UN security council resolution agreed where there is security for Israel but also the backing of Lebanon," he said.

An actual ceasefire agreement may well be more remote. A senior Israeli political source told Israel Radio today that an international peacekeeping force would need to be deployed before a ceasefire could take place.

"A ceasefire between Israel and Hizbullah will only take effect once the international forces are deployed on the border between Israel with Lebanon," the source was quoted as saying.

That proposal would put any ceasefire weeks into the future, since plans for an international force are still barely on the drawing board and its deployment would require further diplomacy at the UN.

The cessation was announced so that the Israeli military could carry out an investigation into the Qana attacks, and may end before the 48-hour period is up if the report is concluded beforehand.

The halt on air strikes was announced at midnight last night, but they were still taking place at around 1.30am. Israeli officials later said it had begun at 2am.

Hizbullah had also temporarily halted the shelling of Israeli territory until today's attack on Kiryat Shmona.

Hassan Fadlallah, a Hizbullah MP and spokesman for the group, said that it would halt rocket attacks altogether if Israel stopped shelling and air strikes.

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'They found them huddled together'

More than 60 people, including 34 children, killed by Israeli attack on home where families were sheltering

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Jonathan Steele and Clancy Chassay in Qana; Rory McCarthy at the Israel-Lebanon border; Wendell Steavenson in Beirut and Julian Borger in Washington
Monday July 31, 2006

It was an unremarkable three-storey building on the edge of town. But for two extended families, the Shalhoubs and the Hashems, it was a last refuge. They could not afford the extortionate taxi fares to Tyre and hoped that if they all crouched together on the ground floor they would be safe.

They were wrong. At about one in the morning, as some of the men were making late night tea, an Israeli bomb smashed into the house. Witnesses describe two explosions a few minutes apart, with survivors desperately moving from one side of the building to the other before being hit by the second blast. By last night, more than 60 bodies had been pulled from the rubble, said Lebanese authorities, 34 of them children. There were eight known survivors.

As yet another body was removed from the wreckage yesterday morning, Naim Raqa, the head of the civil defence team searching the ruins, hung his head in grief: "When they found them, they were all huddled together at the back of the room ... Poor things, they thought the walls would protect them."

The bombing, the bloodiest incident in Israel's 18-day campaign against Hizbullah, drew condemnation from around the world. Late last night Israel announced a suspension of aerial activities in southern Lebanon for 48 hours and said it would coordinate with the UN to allow a 24-hour window for residents in southern Lebanon to leave the area if they wished.

The bombing sparked furious protests outside the UN headquarters in Beirut. Lebanon's prime minister, Fouad Siniora, accused Israel of committing "war crimes" and called off a planned meeting with the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. Israel apologised for the loss of life but said it had been responding to rockets fired from the village.

Muhammad Qassim Shalhoub, a slim 38-year-old construction worker, emerged with a broken hand and minor injuries, but lost his wife, five children and 45 members of his extended family. "Around one o'clock we heard a big explosion," he said. "I don't remember anything after that, but when I opened my eyes I was lying on the floor and my head had hit the wall. There was silence. I didn't hear anything for a while, but then heard screams."

"I said: 'Allahu Akbar [God is most great]. Don't be scared. I will come.' There was blood on my face. I wiped it and looked for my son but couldn't find him. I took three children out - my four-year-old nephew, a girl and her sister. I went outside and screamed for help and three men came and went back inside. There was shelling everywhere. We heard the planes. I was so exhausted I could not go back inside again."

Ibrahim Shalhoub described how he and his cousin had set out to get help after the bombs hit. "It was dark and there was so much smoke. Nobody could do anything till dawn," he said, his eyes still darting around nervously. "I couldn't stop crying, we couldn't help them."

Said Rabab Yousif had her son on her knee when the bomb fell. "I couldn't see anything for 10 minutes and then I saw my son sitting in my lap and covered with rubble," she recalled. "I removed the dirt and the stones I freed him and handed him to the people who were inside rescuing us.

"I then started freeing myself, my hands were free, and then went with two men to rescue my husband. We pulled him from the rubble. I tried to find Zainab, my little daughter, but it was too dark and she was covered deep in rubble I was too scared that they might bomb us again so I just left her and ran outside." She was in hospital with her son and husband, who was paralysed and in a coma. There was no news of her daughter.

Rescue workers were pulling bodies from the rubble all morning. They came across the smallest corpses last, many intact but with lungs crushed by the blast wave of the bombing.

"God is great," a policeman muttered as the body of a young boy no older than 10 was carried away on a stretcher. The boy lay on his side, as if asleep, but for the fine dust that coated his body and the blood around his nose and ears.

The house stood at the top of a hillside on the very edge of Qana and its disembowelled remains had spilled down the slope. Bodies were lined up on the ground - a baby, two young girls and two women. The rigid corpse of a young man lay nearby, his arm rising vertically from beneath a blanket, his index finger pointing up to the sky.

"Where are the stretchers, where are the stretchers?" a rescue worker cried as Israeli warplanes roared overhead. Sami Yazbuk, the head of the Red Cross in Tyre said they got the call at 7am, but had to take a detour to Qana because of shelling on the road.

In a nearby ambulance the smallest victims were stacked one on top of the other to make space for the many to come. A boy and girl, both no more than four years old had been placed head to toe. They were still wearing pyjamas.

Family photos - one showing two young children - were scattered in the debris. Mohsen Hachem stared at the images. "They had to have known there were children in that house," he said. "The drones are always overhead, and those children - there were more than 30 - would play outside all day."

Anger at the attack erupted in Beirut, where windows in the UN building were smashed and its lobby invaded by demonstrators furious at the rising Lebanese death toll. After extensive coverage on Lebanese TV of corpses being taken from the remains of the building, thousands turned out in the city's main open square to vent their fury. Likewise, in Gaza crowds clashed with Palestinian police after smashing into a Unesco building.

Over the border, Israeli leaders expressed sorrow for the civilian deaths, but the military said that Qana had been targeted because Hizbullah had been using it as a base from which to launch rockets. "There was firing coming from there before the air strike. We didn't know there were civilians in the basement of that building," one Israeli defence force spokesman said. He added that rockets had been fired from Qana "in the last few hours" before the air strike.

The strike that destroyed the building was a precision-guided bomb dropped from the air, the same kind of bomb that destroyed a UN position in Khiyam last week, killing four UN observers. Writing on an olive green fragment of the munition which appeared to have caused the explosion read: GUIDED BOMB BSU 37/B.

"We don't know what the people were doing in the basement. It is possible they were being used as shields or being used cynically to further Hizbullah's propaganda purposes," the spokesman said. "We apologise. We couldn't be more sorry about the loss of civilian life."

More than 750 Lebanese, most of them civilians have been killed since Israel began its strikes in response to the kidnapping of two soldiers. A total of 51 Israelis, 18 of them civilians, have been killed.

For Qana, history has repeated itself. Ten years ago, more than a hundred civilians taking refuge in a UN compound there were killed by Israeli shelling.

At the site of the latest tragedy, a man broke down as another small body was brought out, followed quickly by another. The civil defence workers cradled the corpses before placing them delicately on the bright orange stretchers.

"He was the son of Abu Hachem," said a young man in the crowd outside the house. "They're Ali and Mohammed - they're brothers," a neighbour shouted.

At Tyre hospital, Dr Salman Zaynadeen said the casualties were the worst thing he and colleagues had ever faced. Twenty-two bodies were in a refrigerated lorry serving as the hospital's morgue, 12 of them children. "At least 20 more are expected. They range in age up to 75. They were crushed," he said.

Five dead boys lay in the yard outside. Army staff photographed them for identification purposes.

The youngest, Abbas Mahmoud Hashem, lay on his back with his head turned and his right leg drawn up. A dummy hung on a blue plastic chain round his neck; concrete dust covered his face and hair. He looked about 18 months old.

On a hospital bed, a 13-year-old survivor, Nour Hashem, lay fiddling with her bed sheet, her eyes welling with tears. She had been in the house where so many of her family had been killed but had miraculously escaped with only slight injuries.

"We were all sleeping in the same room, my friend, my sister and my cousin," she said, her voice still shuddering.

"I pulled the rubble off my mother and she took me to another house, then she went looking for my brothers and sisters. But my brothers and sisters didn't come and my mother didn't return."

Backstory

The small village of Qana, south-east of Tyre, was a symbol of Lebanon's tragedy before yesterday's air strike. Ten years ago, in remarkably similar circumstances, Israeli artillery shelled a UN compound there, killing more than 100 civilians . The bombardment was part of the Israeli operation codenamed Grapes of Wrath, aimed (then, as now) at punishing Hizbullah for cross-border attacks and dislodging it from the border.

Israel apologised and said it had been an accident caused by old maps and poor calculations. Backed by the US, Israel blamed mainly Hizbullah for using civilians as human shields. But a UN report noted many inconsistencies in the Israeli account and said it was "unlikely" the deaths were the result of technical errors.

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Syria stands to gain from Lebanon's pain

Hizbullah's stock is rising among the Arab public, and the Syrian regime is making the most of it, reports Brian Whitaker from Damascus

Brian Whitaker in Damascus
Monday July 31, 2006

The Bakdash ice-cream parlour is one of the great institutions of old Damascus, established in 1895 and renowned throughout the city. Among the more distinguished visitors to have sampled its produce is the king of Jordan, whose photo hangs prominently on the wall.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah, may be too busy just now to drop in for a pistachio-sprinkled cornet but his photo has recently joined that of the king. Interspersed between the elegant chandeliers hanging from Bakdash's ceiling, meanwhile, are images of a fist clasping a rifle: the yellow-and-green flags of the Lebanese Shia movement.

In a street around the corner, the owner of a jewellery shop also sings the praises of Hizbullah. He's an Armenian Christian, but that makes little difference. "It's the first time that Arabs hit Haifa," he says.

Reaching for a scrap of paper, he draws a rough map of the Syrian-Lebanese-Israeli border and points to the Shebaa Farms, the tiny patch of land claimed by Lebanon but still occupied by Israel.

"Five km, 10km - what does it matter? Give it back, sign an agreement. Finished!"

Less than three weeks into the war in Lebanon, Hizbullah's standing is rising dramatically among the Arab public. The reasoning in Damascus is that, short of annihilating Lebanon's Shia population, Hizbullah cannot be destroyed. At some point, the argument goes, Israel will have to back off and Hizbullah will claim victory for having survived the onslaught.

In anticipation of this, the Syrian regime, while trying to stay out of the conflict itself, is seeking to bask in Hizbullah's glory. Posters on sale in the streets, and displayed in the back of car windows, depict President Bashar al-Assad shoulder to shoulder with Hassan Nasrallah.

"Syria doesn't have to do very much to be potentially in a position to gain," said one western diplomat in Damascus.

After years of international isolation, the regime is acquiring leverage again through its ties with Hizbullah, though political analyst Sami Moubayed doubts Syria can impose its will on the Lebanese Shia if acting on its own.

"Only with Syrian-Iranian support can this war come to an end," he said. "Bringing Syria alone into talks will not end it."

Damascus would also expect rewards for its help, he added. "The Syrians need carrots - big carrots." Among these would be a resumption of talks about the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the lifting of US-imposed sanctions.

Internally, meanwhile, after a sticky period following the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and the reluctant withdrawal of its troops from Lebanon, the Syrian regime looks far more secure. People have rallied round in support of a popular cause and reformists are once again in the wilderness.

"The Syrian opposition will be silenced by growing dislike of the United States," Damascus-based commentator Joshua Landis wrote in his blog. "Syrians are less likely to trust the proposals for democratic or pro-western change being put forward by the opposition. A month ago there was considerable attention being paid to Assad's crackdown on the opposition. Not today."

Another result of the war is that despite international efforts last year to end Syrian hegemony over Lebanon, Israeli bombing is driving the two countries together again.

"Lebanon needs Syria more than ever," Mr Landis wrote. "It needs Syria to be kind to the many refugees who have found protection and safety in Syria. The Lebanese economy will be increasingly vulnerable to Syrian pressure."

In the eyes of many Syrians, this simply proves that President Assad was right all along when he predicted the Lebanese would regret casting off the protection of their larger neighbour. His prophecy that without Syrian troops Lebanon would once again descend into civil war has not yet been fulfilled, though some Lebanese fear it may if Israeli attacks continue.

Ultimately, the Damascus regime may emerge as the war's real winner, but the stakes are high and so are the risks, especially the risk of being drawn into direct conflict with Israel. In the last few days, Israeli warplanes have been probing Syrian airspace and Syrian forces responded - as they always do in such a situation - with anti-aircraft fire.

A week ago Syria quietly raised its military alert to the highest level and cancelled all leave. All units are at full strength, contingency plans are in place, and troops and equipment have been dispersed in what one diplomat called a defensive posture.

"They are being very careful not to be provocative," the diplomat said, though he thought there was still a 20% to 30% chance that unforeseen events might drag Syria into the war.

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How can the violence be stopped?

Simon Tisdall
Monday July 31, 2006

Has the Qana tragedy ended hopes of a ceasefire to halt the Lebanon war?

Hizbullah threatened to retaliate against Israeli civilian targets with additional and possibly longer range rocket attacks, saying: "This horrific massacre at Qana will not go without a response." An MP from the ruling Palestinian party, Hamas, predicted suicide bombings might resume. And while expressing regret, Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said he was in "no hurry" to stop the fighting. But the news appeared to shake Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, who has been criticised for in effect delaying an end to the fighting while she pushes wider US ambitions for a "new" democratic and pro-western Middle East. "I think it is time to get a ceasefire ... We actually have to try and put one in place," Ms Rice said in Jerusalem. The Lebanese government's decision to cancel her visit until an immediate ceasefire is agreed added diplomatic embarrassment to political discomfort.

Where does the diplomatic process go from here?

George Bush and Tony Blair remain committed to passing a binding resolution at the UN security council this week. Their principal proposal is the staged introduction into southern Lebanon of an international security force with a fresh UN mandate. It would supplement the Lebanese army which, under the US-British plan, would reclaim control of the south lost to Hizbullah and thereby reassert the Lebanese government's sovereignty over all of its territory. The resolution is also expected to call for a Hizbullah withdrawal and the disarming of the Shia militia in line with previous UN demands.

How would the proposed international security force work?

The countries that have offered in principle to contribute soldiers - France, Italy and Greece from the EU and predominantly Muslim Turkey and Indonesia - insist that a full ceasefire must precede its deployment. They have heard the threats from Hizbullah that any deployment without its agreement could lead to an Iraq-style insurgency against "occupiers". But Israel wants an initial deployment to take place immediately. This would enable Mr Olmert to claim that his strategic objective of rendering the Lebanon border area secure has been attained. Otherwise Israel fears Hizbullah will use the gap between a ceasefire and international deployment to re-arm and regroup along its northern border.

Who will disarm Hizbullah?

Hizbullah is convinced it is winning. In the absence of any incentives, and given the Israeli army's inability so far to defeat it, Hizbullah has no reason to disarm. Neither Israel, the US nor Britain are prepared to talk to the militia. Nor have they made much effort to engage its main supporters, Iran and Syria. Hizbullah is theoretically committed to destroying Israel. But its leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has a pragmatic streak. Israeli acceptance of a ceasefire now would allow him to claim a second victory, following Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, and would establish him as the Islamic world's foremost popular hero. That would strengthen his hand in Lebanon's internal politics and reduce his dependence on Iran and Syria.

Has Qana shifted the Arab world's view of the Lebanon war?

Angry statements yesterday from Jordan, normally regarded as a tame, pro-western ally, reflected growing public outrage in the Arab world. States such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan tacitly welcomed the assault on Hizbullah, a group they associate with region-wide fundamentalist jihadism that potentially threatens their own existence. But as the fighting has intensified, Arab rulers have become concerned that anger in the street could translate into regime change of a kind not envisaged in Washington.

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Forgotten army sides with Hizbullah

Jonathan Steele in Marjaayoun
Monday July 31, 2006

"Any Hizbullah in the town?" I asked the Lebanese soldier who had hitched a lift outside this mixed Christian and Shia area just five miles north of the Israeli border. "A few," he replied, as his right eye creased into a cheerful wink.

We dropped him in Marjaayoun's cobbled main square, where three other soldiers in the green camouflage of the Lebanese army were leaning against a wall in the shade. Nearby, outside a shuttered cafe in the otherwise deserted hub of what was obviously once an attractive hillside town, four men were chatting.

Two sported beards and wore black trousers and military-style boots. The younger and tougher-looking man had a walkie-talkie on his belt. His dark and calloused hands were stained with grease and oil. After inquiring who we were, they revealed they were indeed some of our soldier's "few". It was also obvious that the two groups, Hizbullah and the army, had a comfortable relationship, each with its own mission to perform, untroubled by the presence of the other.

In Washington, Jerusalem and London there is much talk of the need to get the Lebanese army to move into southern Lebanon and disarm Hizbullah. On the ground there is little to suggest any antagonism. It looks more like mutual sympathy. The notion that the army could forcibly remove Hizbullah's weapons seems fanciful.

All the evidence suggests that in the current conflict it is Hizbullah which is taking the lead; it is Hizbullah which has won popular admiration for its actions. The army's role is marginal.

As we drove south down the Bekaa valley in eastern Lebanon, we came across regular army checkpoints. Sentry boxes painted red and white, with the green symbol of the cedar of Lebanon, stood in the centre of the road with a slalom arrangement of barbed wire on the approaches, forcing drivers to slow down. It looked neat and efficient, except that they were all unmanned. If Hizbullah is hiding rockets in vehicles going towards the border, the Lebanese army is not checking.

The Bekaa valley used to be Lebanon's breadbasket, as well as the source of its wine. Rows of vines stretch across the gently sloping terrain around estate houses with names such as Chateau Ksara and Chateau Nakad. South of an artificial lake on the Litani river the road skirts a dam and climbs into rougher, less fertile, boulder-strewn country.

Every small town has a welcome arch at the entrance with the yellow flags of Hizbullah, and pictures of its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, often flanked by Iran's two ayatollahs, the Islamic republic's founder Ruhollah Khomeini and its current leader, Ali Khamenei. At Yogmor the arch has two plywood rockets, a reminder that Hizbullah spreads its message not by word alone.

About 10 miles north of Marjaayoun we found half a dozen soldiers lying on the grass by the road. They made no effort to check us, but we decided to stop and ask whether any risk lay ahead. A few cars with white flags were driving north and town after town was almost completely deserted. Bombs had gouged three craters along a 20-mile stretch of road but traffic could negotiate a narrow strip beside each one.

Identity-checking was in the hands of civilians. No one flagged us down, but when we stopped to buy water at one of the last shops still open a middle-aged man asked to see our press cards and wrote down our names.

In Marjaayoun itself, as well as the lounging soldiers, we saw two jeeps with about 20 troops in the back racing into the square and up a sidestreet. They came from over a brow, where a few minutes later the crump of Israeli artillery fire sounded. We heard at least 20 shells, apparently hitting the south-facing slopes beyond Marjaayoun.

From another vantage point we could see the roofs of the Israeli border town of Metulla on a ridge six miles away. Two miles to our left was the town of Khiyam, where Israeli bombs hit scores of houses as well as a UN building last week, killing four observers.

"People who've been down there say the whole town stinks of bodies trapped in the ruins," said Simon Diab, a guard at Marjaayoun's Orthodox church. Windows in the church and its outbuildings were shattered by the blast from an Israeli bomb which demolished a suspected Hizbullah house the day before.

Marjaayoun had been enjoying a revival in fortunes after the last Israeli occupation ended in 2000. A sign in English and Arabic from the US charity Mercy Corps advertises its project for restoring the ancient souk. In the school 200 refugees are sheltering. They are not totally cut off. Two white Toyotas from the International Committee of the Red Cross raced in as we were leaving.

The Lebanese army has grown from 35,000 to 70,000 since the civil war ended in 1990, far outnumbering Hizbullah's estimated 6,000 fighters. But half the troops are thought to be Shia, which means their loyalty could be uncertain in the unlikely event they were ordered to confront Hizbullah.

In spite of its numbers the army is thinly spread in the section of southern Lebanon we visited, offering little more than symbolic defence. Hizbullah, by contrast, is active. "Israel came in too easily in 1982," said the Hizbullah unit leader in Marjaayoun. At that time Hizbullah didn't exist. He gave his name as Hussein Bitar. "Either we are here or they are here. We are not leaving this land, it is ours, not theirs. Israel thinks the United States is with them, but we have God," he said.

The grease on his hands could have been a sign that his mission was launching rockets. It might have a more innocent explanation. Either way, the Lebanese army troops we witnessed clearly did not mind a Hizbullah commander in their midst.

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White flags, not a legitimate target

Israel must take responsibility for the dreadful human toll in Lebanon, says Peter Bouckaert in Beirut

Peter Bouckaert
Monday July 31, 2006

Day after day, Israeli government spokesmen insist that everything they are doing accords with international humanitarian law. Endless communiqués insist that Israel's behaviour is "proportionate". Let us be blunt: those claims are fantasy, as the carnage in Qana has shown once again.

I have seen my share of modern wars, as a researcher at Human Rights Watch. In Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, we found many civilian casualties due to bombing campaigns. Civilians fleeing attacks were hit by mistake. In Iraq, US bombs often hit civilian homes, hours after Saddam Hussein or members of his inner circle had left, missing their legitimate targets but killing civilians. In Lebanon it is a very different picture. Time after time, Israel strikes at civilian homes and civilian vehicles attempting to flee the besieged southern border zone, killing families without any military objective in sight.

In an extraordinary, and extraordinarily revealing comment, the Israeli Justice Minister, Haim Ramon, reportedly said, "All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hizbullah." So if you take to the roads to flee, you are a terrorist - who else would travel the southern roads now? And, if you stay at home because the danger is so great, you are also a terrorist. For the innocent civilian, there is literally no way out.

Take the example of Manal, a 22-year-old housewife, who had just arrived in Beirut when I met her a few days ago. For nearly two weeks, Israeli warplanes struck Manal's border village of Aitaroun, obliterating homes and families. A Canadian-Lebanese family vacationing in the village was killed; the next day, another rocket destroyed a home 100 meters away from Manal's house, killing at least nine members of a family. So many were killed in her village that she finds it difficult to remember all the names.

When the Israelis dropped leaflets instructing all villages south of the Litani River to evacuate immediately "for your own safety," Manal and dozens of her neighbours set off in three cars, waving white flags. As they left, an Israeli warplane dropped bombs 10 meters in front of and behind the convoy, which raced on. As far too many Lebanese civilians have found, Manal's experience is not exceptional, on the contrary.

In another case, Israeli forces struck the home of a Shi'a cleric Sheikh Adil Mohammad Akash, who was reportedly affiliated with Hizbullah but without a direct military role. Even if the sheikh had been a fighter, the bomb killed him, his wife, their ten children, and the family's Sri Lankan maid. The ratio of twelve for one reveals Israel's disregard for civilian lives.

Although mistakes are made in the fog of fighting, the pattern of Israeli behavior in southern Lebanon suggests a deliberate policy. My notebook overflows with reports of civilian deaths, day after day.

Israel blames Hizbullah for the massive civilian toll in Lebanon, claiming that they are hiding the rockets they are firing at Israel, in civilian homes, and that they are fighting from within the civilian population. This is a convenient excuse. Human Rights Watch has consistently documented Hizbullah's war crimes, including deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians, as well as the taking of hostages. But our investigations have not found evidence to support Israeli allegations that Hizbullah are intentionally endangering Lebanese civilians by systematically fighting from civilian positions. We can't exclude the possibility that it happens - but time and again villagers tell us that Hizbullah is fighting from the hills. Meanwhile, the homes hit by Israel have only civilians in them.

The current Israeli actions are not only wrong, but - short of compelling evidence to the contrary, which so far is nowhere to be found - also war crimes. Israel's leaders, and their friends elsewhere in the world, must face up to that truth.

· Peter Bouckaert is Emergencies Director at Human Rights Watch

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Reaping the whirlwind

Gerald Kaufman
July 31, 2006 09:03 AM

Israel's current adventure has turned out to be a disaster not only for the Lebanese, being slaughtered in increasing numbers by Israeli attacks, but for Israel itself and its sponsor, the United States. Three weeks after their invasion, the Israelis have accomplished none of their objectives. The two soldiers whose kidnapping was the casus belli remain in Hezbollah hands - just as Corporal Galid Shalit is still a prisoner of Palestinian insurgents in the Gaza strip.

None of the Israelis' military objectives has been achieved, or shows any sign whatever of being achieved. The Hizbullah infrastructure remains intact and has inflicted heavy casualties on Israeli forces. Hizbullah rockets continue to pour down on Israel, with the entire northern half of the country unprecedentedly a vulnerable target.

The Israelis are calling up thousands of reservists and saying their forces will be in Lebanon for weeks more. It is impossible to see how these additional men or this additional time will improve this situation for the Israelis, or for the Americans - the only two countries who have seemed to believe that the running sore of Hizbullah can be cauterised by a short, sharp shock.

Moreover, they appear to have believed that, under cover of anticipated military success in Lebanon, Israel could put a stop to what it regards as the Palestinian threat in Gaza. True, the Israelis have killed many Palestinians in Gaza; but there is no sign whatever that this problem has been solved, either.

Taking into account that previous Israeli incursions into Lebanon were total failures, with no objectives attained and many Israeli servicemen killed, and taking into account, too, that the Americans suffered 241 servicemen killed in Beirut at the hands of Hizbullah, it is difficult to understand how even ultimate buffoons like Ehud Olmert and George Bush could have expected anything else.

Furthermore, in the whole history of the state of Israel, this is the first time that that country, in all its wars, has been subject to almost unanimous condemnation, worldwide. Not only has Olmert failed abjectly to protect his country. He has turned it into an international pariah.

Now it is reported that Condoleezza Rice, Bush's obedient but ineffectual catspaw, has called off her latest, planned trip to Beirut on the basis that there is no sign of what she regards as the necessary condition for a cease-fire - the protection of Israel. The rest of us, watching heart-rending scenes of death and devastation in Lebanon, want an urgent cease-fire to protect Lebanese civilians. The United States secretary of state sees Israel as the vulnerable party, which is ironic taking into account that the Israelis and the Americans insanely saw this operation as one which would end Israeli vulnerability once and for all.

It is ironic, too, that United Nations headquarters in Beirut has been subject to attack by Lebanese, when Koffi Annan, however impotent, does understand the nature of the situation and wants to cure it - not surprisingly, since his own personnel has been subject to murderous Israeli assault.

Of course, a ceasefire is needed, on both sides. But it is folly to believe that this whole cauldron of death and hatred will stop bubbling until there are genuine negotiations to solve the Israel-Palestine issue. And it is no use the Israelis and Americans insisting that they cannot negotiate with the Hamas government.

Whatever one's opinion of Hamas, it was elected in precisely the kind of valid democratic contest the Americans say they want throughout the Middle East - provided, of course, that the result is to the liking of the White House. That wise Israeli statesman Abba Eban once said to me: "If you want to end a war, whom else do you negotiate with except your enemy?"

The Bible says: "They have sown the wind and shall reap the whirlwind." I feel deeply sorry for the families of killed Israelis, just as I feel deeply sorry for the families of killed Lebanese and Palestinians. But when the Israeli electorate decided, in its folly, to elect Olmert, they voted to reap the whirlwind.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/gerald_kaufman/2006/07/kaufman.html