Elsewhere today (380)
Aljazeera:
Dozens feared dead in Israeli air strike
Monday 07 August 2006, 15:33 Makka Time, 12:33 GMT
Dozens of people are feared dead after Israeli warplanes destroyed several houses in a Lebanese border village.
It is feared that people are buried under rubble of the houses in Houla, security officials said.
Fuad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, said more than 40 people had been killed in a "deliberate massacre."
Sources said aircraft first destroyed a house where 17 people were hiding in the Hamameer district of the village. Up to six other strikes a short time later hit four nearby houses where about 40 other people were staying.
Israeli soldiers had been fighting Hezbollah close to the border village early on Monday.
Ground fighting
Fighting on the ground also intensified on Monday.
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said that there had been were heavy exchanges of fire in the region, mainly in built-up areas.
"There has been no change in terms of territory. But there has been an intensification of exchanges of fire on the ground in different areas all along the border," Milos Strugar, the UNIFIL spokesman, said.
Hezbollah's television station, Al-Manar, said the group had engaged Israeli infantrymen attempting to advance on the border villages in south Lebanon.
One Israeli soldier has been killed during fierce fighting with Hezbollah, the army said.
Four other soldiers were lightly wounded in the fighting in Bint Jbail, the army said. Israeli forces also claimed they had killed five Hezbollah gunmen in the battle.
Commando raid
About 30 Israeli commandos landed by helicopter on a hill overlooking Ras al-Biyada, south of Tyre, they raided an apartment before clashing with Hezbollah, Lebanese security officials said.
At least five Lebanese people - including a soldier at a nearby checkpoint - were killed in the raid, officials said. The Israeli military reported eight soldiers wounded, two seriously.
Seven members of one family were killed in an Israeli air strike on a house in the village of Ghazzaniyeh in the south of Lebanon, police said.
Four people were killed and 13 people wounded in a similar strike in Kfar Tibneet village. Two more civilians died in a strike in the nearby Harouf village and one when an Israeli bombardment struck his building in Ghaziye, close to Sidon.
Tyre cut off
The port city of Tyre has been completely cut off from the rest of the country by Israeli bombardments, witnesses and police said.
A makeshift bridge in Qasimiya, north of Tyre, and the road leading out of the city to the south, have both been bombed.
UN force spokesman Milos Strugar said "the provisional bridge north of Tyre, over the Litani river, and which connects the city to Sidon has been cut."
The temporary bridge had been built after Israeli warplanes destroyed two bridges two weeks ago.
Two Israeli raids targeted the road leading to the Masnaa border post, knocked out by previous attacks and hit again each time residents filled in the craters so as to be able to drive around, Lebanese police said.
Warplanes pounded the road between Baalbek and Rayak, linking the Baalbek region with Zahle in the centre of Lebanon, they said.
Two other raids hit the Aita al-Fukhar road linking villages in the Bekaa Valley with Syria.
The warplanes also carried out four raids on hills east of Baalbek, about 10km from the border with Syria, the police said.
The Hezbollah stronghold of southern Beirut was targeted. Four loud explosions were heard but it was unclear what had been hit.
The raids came after Hezbollah launched its deadliest rocket attack since the beginning of the conflict, killing 12 Israeli soldiers and three civilians on Sunday.
Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/257AE230-F227-44ED-A515-4AC6F01ABC15.htm
allAfrica:
Flash Floods Kill 190 in the East
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
August 7, 2006
Addis Ababa
More than 190 people have been confirmed dead after heavy rains in Dire Dawa, 525 km east of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, caused the Dechatu river to burst its banks, the police said on Monday. It was feared more bodies would be recovered.
The flood waters also washed away hundreds of homes as they swept through Ethiopia's second largest city after midnight. Many of the dead, including 40 children, drowned because they were sleeping. The city was also dark because the electricity supply was off.
"The bodies of the 101 residents, which were washed away by the floods, have been recovered by a joint army and civilians rescue operation," police inspector Biniam Fikru told IRIN. A road was washed away along with a number of cars.
Ninety-four injured people, who had been taken to the hospital, returned to their homes after receiving treatment. Of the six who had been admitted, two died.
The police warned that the risk of flooding was still high because heavy rains were falling in the highland areas outside the city. The Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agency (DPPA) dispatched some aid to those affected on Sunday. Sisay Tadesse, a DPPA public relations officer, said it had distributed food, water containers, household items and plastic sheets for shelter.
"The agency estimates that more than 10,000 people have been affected," Sisay said. A rapid disaster assessment team, he added, would arrive on Monday at Dire Dawa to evaluate the situation.
In the meantime, local authorities had established six emergency crisis committees to deal with the problem in different parts of the town.
Flooding in southern and eastern Ethiopia is a frequent occurrence. Last week, more than 1,000 people were rescued from flooded villages in the south. A 12-year-old boy was killed, Shewangzaw Worku, spokesman for the Oromia Food Security and Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission, said on Friday.
In April last year, flooding killed 155 people in eastern Ethiopia's Somali region. A month later, flash floods killed 45 people in Dire Dawa.
The floods, according to Ethiopian weather experts, occur due to unseasonal heavy rains in the Ethiopian highlands that flow into the lowland areas. Dire Dawa is 3,000 feet above sea level.
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
Copyright © 2006 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200608070003.html
allAfrica:
President Dissolves Cabinet
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
August 7, 2006
Nairobi
Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the President of the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG), on Monday announced the dissolution of the country's cabinet.
"The President has dissolved the cabinet and has asked [the] Prime Minister [Ali Muhammad Gedi] to come up with a new one in one week," Abdirahman Dinari, the government spokesman, told IRIN.
The announcement comes a day after three top officials of the TFG agreed to resolve their differences and reshuffle the cabinet. Dinari said the leaders had also agreed to reduce the cabinet from 42 to 31 ministers. "This will be a much leaner and a more efficient cabinet," he said.
The president, prime minister and parliamentary speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden agreed on Saturday to reconcile following a meeting in Baidoa with a 20-member delegation of senior Ethiopian officials, led by Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin.
But a power struggle between them could still erupt, thwarting efforts to establish the fragile government across the country, according to a member of parliament and civil society representatives.
"This was a power struggle between the president and the prime minister and it is far from resolved, despite the announcement," an MP, who declined to be named, told IRIN in Baidoa, the temporary seat of the transitional government.
A civil society representative in the capital, Mogadishu, said he hoped the agreement would herald a new and more unified transitional government. "I hope this means they will move quickly in re-establishing dialogue with the Islamic courts," he said. "The suffering of the Somali people will hopefully take centre-stage, instead of petty rivalries."
The leadership of Somalia's Transitional Federal Institutions (TFIs) has been divided, with Gedi on one side and Yusuf and Aden on the other, over talks with the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which controls Mogadishu and much of the south.
The TFG and the UIC met on 22 June in the Sudanese capital Khartoum and agreed to meet again on 15 July. The TFG had, however, refused to attend the July meeting, accusing the UIC of violating the earlier agreement.
Gedi survived a no-confidence vote on 30 July brought by MPs apparently angered by his refusal to send a team to Khartoum. This was followed by the resignations of at least 40 ministers and assistant ministers, who said they were leaving because Gedi was obstructing the reconciliation process in the country by delaying talks between the Union of Islamic Courts and the government.
The MP in Baidoa told IRIN he feared the leaders had glossed over their differences. He said the resignations and the call to meet the UIC were just a cover.
Dinari, however, said that "whatever misunderstanding existed between them has been resolved. The aim now is to put all efforts into serving the people."
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
Copyright © 2006 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200608070001.html
Arab News:
The Yoke of Zion: World’s Patience May Come to End
Israel Shamir, Arab News
Monday, 7, August, 2006 (13, Rajab, 1427)
A small band of determined warriors takes on and fights off the mightiest army of the region — this is the stuff history is made of. Thermopylae, move over, Bint Jbeil is coming in! Bishop Philip of Antioch compared the leveling of this small Lebanese town with the destruction of Stalingrad, but these cities are also comparable by courage of their defenders. Seldom is a generation able to witness such a shining example of valor: For three long weeks a handful of Hezbollah warriors — two thousand by the most optimistic count — fought to standstill ten, twenty, thirty times more numerous Israeli troops. Forty years ago, Israelis defeated three armies in one week, but now the invader’s charm has worn off, or it has passed over to the vanquished.
Qana massacre has overshadowed a greater going-on, and that is the steadfast resistance of the Lebanese fighters.
Why this war? Leave small details to a future Plutarch; this is another round of battle for Palestine. Supported and supplied by their captive empire, the US, the Jews had all the weapons, all the ammunition, all the diplomatic support, when hubris-drunk they drove into disarmed and starved Gaza to kill off its last resisters and impose the yoke of Zion. Their invasion was prepared by a yearlong siege and incessant shelling; they were cock sure they could devour Gaza at will. And indeed, everyone kept mum. The Jews felt secure as they stooped to finish off Gaza: Who would disturb the lion of Judah roaring at his prey? And a tiny force from the Mount Lebanon said: We will. The Israeli Army roused from its prey turned north and lashed with all its might at the Hezbollah fighters. But they stood fast.
This was most unexpected. The Israelis were used to killing — or dispersing — weaponless untrained Palestinians. Instead, the fighters of Nasrallah dug their heels into the bare hills of Bint Jbeil and gave battle. If they were destroyed quickly, Israeli generals would lead their victorious troops to Damascus and Tehran before turning back and despoiling Palestine of its priceless jewel, Haram Al-Sharif. It still could happen, but the chances were diminished by the steadfastness of Hezbollah.
More importantly, Hezbollah refused to cease fire as long as Israel occupies the land of Lebanon. This daring step undermined the whole strategy of Zionists. They planned to occupy the south and wait there until an international (or NATO) force entered to do their job for them. Hezbollah’s decision lacks one detail: Any cease-fire must extend to Palestine, as well. It is inconceivable that Lebanon will lay down its arms, while Gaza is besieged and Nablus ravished.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “We have changed the Middle East”. I do not know whether all the Middle East has changed, but in Israel we witness a great change. Until now, only a few just men and women of Israel called their government to desist in their aggression against Gaza and Lebanon. But the Katyusha rain changed minds of many. Early complaints about the army’s failure to deliver have given place to critique of the policy itself. They have begun to understand that time is not on their side.
Neil MacFarquhar reports in the NYT (July 28): “...with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements. “
The report sees the popular opinion, “the Arab street” as the vehicle for change; but the change can come from above, too. The cruel bombardment of Beirut and of all Lebanon was supposed to frighten the Arab nations into obedience; instead, it convinced the rich and powerful Arabs that as long as the Jews run the writ in the Middle East, their own riches and power can be taken from them anytime by will of a Jewish general.
Beirut was peaceful, Beirut agreed to expel Syrians, Beirut was the capital of the most pro-Western state, and yet it did not save the city from Jewish — not even vengeance for there was nothing to avenge — but arbitrary heavy-handedness. The Arabs in power ask, whether the Jewish state can be a peaceful neighbor at all, or whether (as the Iranian President Ahmadinejad says) it is bellicose by its nature and must be dealt with as the Crusader Kingdom once was.
Indeed, the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem existed longer than the Jewish state, and probably would have lasted for centuries, but for its innate aggressiveness and its preparedness to serve as bridgehead for European invasions.
In our time the US pays heavily for Israel’s wars. A poor American may hate to think about the fact that while he has no medical insurance, his government has to pay tribute to rich Israel. The average American filling his average car may dislike paying for support of the Jewish state since before the neocons got into power in the administration, gas was much, much cheaper. A wealthy and worldly American may feel vexed that he is not welcome wherever he goes — from Paris to Istanbul — as he was before the yoke of Zion.
An American politician, maybe even an American president may get tired by the Jewish lobby’s endless need to demand sympathy or to protest an outrage; by necessity to watch out, by ideological censorship and party discipline, by their blackmailing habits, by their fat pockets and grip on media, by the Damocles Sword they hanged above his head.
Even a Jew in the US or Europe may give a thought as to whether he wishes to be a secret weapon of Israel in the words of Prime Minister Olmert who said: “Arab weapons, even when they hurt us, are nothing like the powerful, secret weapon we possess: The Jewish people... across the world, and the special feeling of love and mutual commitment that prevails between all Jews, regardless of where they are”.
Israelis, i.e. dwellers of Palestine who consider themselves Jewish, may also contemplate whether they want to fight and support the ideological yoke of Zion which brings them only hatred outside and poverty within. Even Germans may one day kick their masochist habit of endless repentance.
— Israel Shamir is a leading Russian-Israeli intellectual, writer, translator and journalist. Shamir (50) lives in Jaffa.
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=84989&d=7&m=8&y=2006
Asia Times:
The loser in Lebanon: The Atlantic alliance
By Mark Perry and Alastair Crooke
Aug 8, 2006
The United States and France have produced a United Nations resolution of sorts aimed at ending the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, but the negotiations between US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton and France's Jean-Marc de La Sabliere nearly ended in disaster.
Through the course of a single week, the US and France came as close to a bitter split over Middle East policy as they had on the eve of the Iraq war. At issue in the confrontation was a US insistence that an international force (led by France) be deployed to Lebanon prior to the declaration of a ceasefire - a requirement the French thought ludicrous. They weren't the only ones.
"The position that we're taking in the UN is just nuts," a former White House official close to the US decision-making process said during the negotiations. "The US wants to put international forces on the ground in the middle of the conflict, before there's a ceasefire. The reasoning at the White House is that the international force could weigh on the side of the Israelis - could enforce Hezbollah's disarmament."
All of this, this former official noted, "is covered over by this talk about how we need a substantive agreement that addresses the fundamental problems and that will last. But no one is willing to say exactly what this means."
A former US Central Intelligence Agency officer confirmed this view: "I am under the impression that [President] George [W] Bush and [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice were surprised when the Europeans disagreed with the US position - they were running around saying, 'But how can you disagree, don't you understand? Hezbollah is a terrorist organization.'"
The normally taciturn La Sabliere was particularly enraged when Bolton indirectly accused him of naivety. Responding to a reporter's question about the French position calling for a ceasefire prior to a troop deployment, Bolton was at his arrogant best: "I think it simplistic, among other things. I want somebody to address the problem on how to get a ceasefire with a terrorist organization."
Bolton then took a leaf from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's 2003 criticism of France and Germany as "old Europe" - calling the French ceasefire initiative "old thinking". La Sabliere not only bristled at Bolton's language, he threatened to end all discussions with the US over ending the Lebanon conflict.
While Bolton and La Sabliere eventually buried their differences, the US-French face-off reflected deep-rooted and long-lasting French resentments over America's apparent willingness to allow the conflict to run its course - under the belief that it is only a matter of time before Israel destroyed Hezbollah.
"The Bush people have never heard a shot fired in anger, and it's apparent," an official in the UN Secretary General's Office noted. "The French were quite fearful that one miscalculation, one stray rocket could set the region on fire. No one in Washington seemed willing to admit that as a possibility."
Bolton's continued "cheerleading for Israel" didn't help, according to this same official. "It's a real row that started with Bolton's statement that you couldn't compare the deaths of Lebanese to the deaths of Israelis," the official said. "He implied that because Lebanon harbored Hezbollah, Lebanese lives were forfeit. It was a stupid thing to say. It tore the scab off the wound."
Bolton refused to back down, reiterating that the death of Lebanese civilians, while "tragic and unfortunate", was understandable considering Israel's right to "self-defense". In any event, Bolton went on to say, Israel did not "desire" the deaths of innocents - unlike Hezbollah.
The US press was quick to pick up on this, parroting the administration's line. Even the venerable Washington Post implied that seven Canadians who had died as a result of Israeli air strikes in the war's first days were of lesser value than other Westerners - since they were "Lebanese holding Canadian passports".
The French, as well as the British, also resented what they viewed as Israel's "high-handed" lecturing of the Europeans on their own constituent problems. The European anger boiled over, according to one UN diplomat, during an exchange between Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman and a French official during a meeting on the composition of a proposed international force.
While the diplomat would not recount the words used by Gillerman, he confirmed that the phrases Gillerman used "he repeated in the media". The diplomat was referring to Gillerman's remarks during an appearance on CNN, where he was spurred on by host Anderson Cooper's comparison of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to Adolf Hitler. "I certainly hope the world understands [that] this war is not just about the safety of Israel or the freedom of Lebanon, it is about preserving civilization as we know it," Gillerman said.
"When you see Hezbollah flags in London and in Brussels and in Paris and you see that most of the demonstrators in Trafalgar Square and in the other cities are Muslims, I would advise these European countries to look very carefully at what is happening in Beirut today because to a very great extent, what they're seeing in Beirut, what they're seeing happening in Lebanon, what Hezbollah has done to the Lebanese people is really just a preview of what they may expect if they don't take care of that problem as they say in this country, soon to be seen in theaters everywhere."
Even the British were enraged: "Take care of that problem? Take care of that problem? What would Ambassador Gillerman suggest we do with our Muslims? That's a hell of a thing for him to say," a British member of parliament sputtered.
Bolton's inflammatory statements, US insistence on the deployment of an international force prior to a ceasefire, and Gillerman's offensive hectoring of European diplomats deepened French suspicions over US-Israeli aims at the height of negotiations over a UN resolution.
But despite his offensive characterizations of the Muslim problem, Gillerman is right in one sense - the shifting demographics of Europe, where Muslim minorities constitute increasingly powerful voting blocs, is beginning to exact a toll on America's long-standing ties with its erstwhile allies. The French, in particular, are painfully aware that their Muslim minorities are capable of making their presence felt, particularly if they believe their political grievances are not being aired.
"The difference between the US and Europe on how to handle the Middle East is stark," a Finnish diplomat said during a recent private meeting in Washington. "In the US your political parties worry about the Jewish vote - in Europe, political parties worry about the Muslim vote. It's just that simple."
Some of these concerns, and the divide that Europe's new demographics are cleaving between Washington and European capitals, is now finally beginning to make its way into the press. At issue is US and Israeli terminology, which tends to paint Muslims as terrorists and Israelis as Westerners fighting for civilization.
"It's not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism," UN deputy secretary Mark Malloch Brown said last Tuesday. His voice edged with anger, Brown hinted that the United Kingdom could be forced to rethink its by now predictable support for the US initiative.
"Britain has tried very, very hard to keep with the US on this; no one respects the reasons for that entirely, but you have a Security Council and international public opinion, while fully understanding what has been done to Israel, now believes strongly in a cessation to hostilities."
After hesitating for only a moment, Brown issued a warning on a future British vote - stating almost baldly that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government might decide to side with Europe over the United States. "This is where the UK is a crucial swing vote," he said. "When it comes behind a cessation of hostilities, it makes it that much harder for the last stalwarts to hold out."
The Saturday announcement that France and the United States had agreed on a draft resolution has not helped to allay these growing fears. The draft resolution finesses the divide between America's call for the deployment of an international force and France's call for a ceasefire - saying that there should be a "full cessation of hostilities" prior to the tabling of a second resolution, which will deal with the more difficult political issues posed by the Israeli-Hezbollah war.
In truth, a number of UN diplomats concede that the battle between the US and France inside the Security Council only diverted the attention of both countries from the conflict in the Middle East. Getting Arab nations to sign on to the resolution was postponed in order to get the resolution agreed to. Nor, it seems, were the Lebanese consulted at all during the process. The resolution, in fact, seems to satisfy the French and Americans - but no one else, and so angered Arab diplomats that Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, denounced it publicly, while privately calling the resolution "a surrender document".
A spokesman for Hezbollah in Beirut was even blunter, saying that the resolution was "dead on arrival". He added, "The French caved in to American and Israeli pressure. Israel gets to stay on our land. We are required to disarm. Why isn't an international force deployed in northern Israel? Our arms get cut off and the US gets to fly cluster munitions into Ben Gurion [Airport in Tel Aviv]. Just who do they think is winning this war?"
For now, Condoleezza Rice is hailing the US-French draft as a symbol for US-European cooperation. But for many European diplomats, agreement on the draft resolution has only papered over a deepening rift between the United States and its European partners, with some European diplomats muttering that America's real goal is to induce the Europeans to wade into Lebanon on the side of a defanged and humiliated Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "bragged that Israel would destroy Hezbollah", a French diplomat said in Washington, "and if he can't do it that's his problem. I don't care what the secretary of state says, we're not going to do it for him."
There are more difficult days ahead - particularly when the US and France square off in the coming week over the draft of a second resolution. With nearly everyone now wondering whether the US position in the Middle East is unraveling, one UN diplomat said the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict may spell the end of an era in which the US and Europe established a tradition of diplomatic cooperation: "We might as well face up to it. Sooner or later the United States is going to have to choose what is more important - its strategic alliance with Europe, or its friendship with Israel."
No matter what the answer to that question might be, the very fact that it has been asked means that the real loser in the current Middle East conflict is the Atlantic alliance.
Mark Perry and Alastair Crooke are co-directors of the Conflicts Forum, based in Beirut, London and Washington, DC.
They are the authors of the Asia Times Online series How to lose the 'war on terror'.
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH08Ak01.html
Asia Times:
Dodging drones on the road from hell
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
MARJAYOUN and NABATIYEH, Lebanon - While Israel pushes its ground troops deeper into south Lebanon toward the Litani River, Hezbollah is responding by retreating to the mountains around the towns of Marjayoun and Nabatiyeh, Asia Times Online on-the-ground investigations show.
In preparation for its push north, Israel has dropped pamphlets urging all civilians to leave the cities around and including Tyre and Sidon. This is likely to be followed by heavy aerial attacks, and then the ground troops.
The plan is that once Israeli forces reach the Litani, Hezbollah would have no option but to retreat up to the Bekaa Valley or into northern cities, where its fighters would be more isolated.
However, this is not as simple as it appears, and a visit by this correspondent to the mountain vastness of Marjayoun and Nabatiyeh confirms that the Lebanese resistance also has a two-pronged plan.
According to people close to the resistance, the first stage is to rain rockets on to any Israeli troops in south Lebanon from the Marjayoun area. Then long-range Hezbollah rockets will be fired into Israel.
A journey from hell
The area around Marjayoun, which lies midway between Tyre and Sidon but to the east toward the Israeli border, is not for the faint-hearted: with no understatement it could be described as the hottest war front in the country.
Three of us set out in a black Mercedes - this correspondent, a Dutch photojournalist and a Hungarian documentary maker.
As one gets closer to the border - about 10 kilometers away - the more the towns have been bombed, and the more they are deserted. The aim is to cut off logistical support for Hezbollah.
We proceeded slowly on narrow tracks, but were brought to a halt at a bombed-out bridge that prevented us from crossing the Litani, just 5km from the border.
With the car stopped, the sounds of Israeli drones in the sky above became all too clear. My colleagues refused to go further on foot. As we discussed what to do, the driver, Jehad, announced that we had a flat tire, and the spare was for the wrong make of car.
The driver called civil defense for assistance, but despite their positive reply, he proceeded to drive back with the flat tire. "I swear if we stop here they will bomb the car. We should keep moving," a clearly agitated Jehad insisted.
Soon the tire was in shreds, and we implored him to stop before the rim was damaged. He halted, but the constant sound of the drones above pushed him to move again. He told us to follow on foot if we wanted, which we did.
Only as the car disappeared over a ridge did we realize what a target we must make: three figures walking in the middle of nowhere, lugging bags that could easily be carrying ammunition.
The tension was palpable as we silently trudged on. Then we came across our car, with the welcome sight of civil defense and Lebanese army helpers. The tire was quickly fixed and we drove to the nearby town of Janine.
Our sojourn had not gone unnoticed, though. The civil defense told us later that just 10 minutes after we left the area, Israeli bombs began to fall. Their reconnaissance can't be faulted.
Nevertheless, we pushed on for the city of Nabatiyeh, near the border, another favorite Israeli target.
Passing through the destroyed villages of Marmta and Rehan we were stopped at many checkpoints by civilians and asked to produce identification. At one point we were stopped for about half an hour.
I had only one query for my interrogators when they had finished their inquiries: "If all the routes have been destroyed, how can Hezbollah get supplies and move its men?"
The answer came with a smile: "Mules and donkeys."
But there is more to it than that.
The village of Jarjauh lies on the way to Nabatiyeh. It's a mess; what buildings haven't been totally razed are just piles of rubble. We sniffed around, and in one of the partially damaged buildings we found a brand-new truck, covered with a sheet and clearly loaded with something. I was about to take a picture, but Jehad objected strongly, a terrified look on his face.
"This truck certainly belongs to the resistance, and if they see us taking pictures, they will chop us to pieces. Move!" Without waiting for our protestations, he pushed us into the car and drove off - though we managed to snap a few shots.
After just 500 meters we were again face-to-face with some men wanting to check us out. They were carrying radio sets, but were friendly and guided us all the way to Nabatiyeh.
As we were leaving Jarjauh we saw the yellow smoke trail of a Hezbollah missile arcing from a nearby mountain toward Israel. The driver stepped on the gas.
Earlier, near Farfilla village, we came across two lads walking on the road. They were injured. They had been driving a car, but became spooked by the drones overhead and spun off the road down a 50-meter slope. We gave them some water and food and informed the civil defense of their location.
We roamed all over Nabatiyeh and found virtually all houses and shops destroyed. Nabatiyeh was the main financial artery of the resistance, deriving much of its wealth from the diamond trade, especially with East African countries. Most of the city dwellers have now fled. Some of the few remaining residents sat on the sidewalk of an empty market, drinking tea and waiting for more bombs to fall.
Suddenly, we heard of some casualties and we ran toward a hospital managed by the Iranian Red Crescent. Apparently four guerrillas had been wounded in air strikes. On their way to hospital they were spotted by the ever-vigilant drones and their car was hit by a bomb right in front of the hospital.
Dozens of bearded lads had descended on the hospital. They prevented the press, including us three and a cameraman from Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV, from entering the emergency area. They only allowed us to take shots of the destroyed car. The wounded men were not hurt further in the second attack.
Apart from our mishaps and constant nagging fear, the journey was illuminating in that it revealed to us how Hezbollah has dug in deep across the countryside, and is still capable of launching missiles. They command the high ground of a ridge overlooking Israel.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH08Ak02.html
Clarín: Un nuevo bombardeo israelí
en el sur del Líbano deja 57 civiles muertos
La aviación israelí destruyó el último puente sobre el río Litani, que era la única vía que quedaba para el envío de ayuda humanitaria. Ayer Hezbollah había lanzado su ataque más duro hacia objetivos israelíes en la frontera y en la ciudad de Haifa. En tanto, se reunieron hoy los ministros de Exterior de la Liga Arabe para analizar la crisis.
Clarín.com, 07.08.2006
Israel respondió esta mañana a la ola de misiles lanzados ayer por Hezbollah. Al menos 40 personas murieron hoy en un ataque israelí contra una población fronteriza del Líbano, denunció el primer ministro, Fuad Saniora, incrementando la cantidad total de personas muertas en la jornada a cerca de 57.
Saniora dijo que el ataque sucedió en la aldea de Houla, escenario en los últimos días de fuertes combates entre los milicianos de Hezbollah y las fuerzas israelíes. El ejército israelí señaló que estaba investigando las denuncias sobre lo que sucedió en Houla, pero reiteró que los residentes de los pueblos del sur del Líbano recibieron advertencias para que abandonaran el área.
En Tiro, los aviones israelíes bombardearon un complejo de apartamentos y mataron a por lo menos cinco personas, dijeron testigos y rescatistas.
Asimismo, los aviones israelíes bombardearon esta madrugada los barrios del sur de Beirut, Nabatiye, el valle de la Beka y una aldea cercana a Sidón.
"Los aviones dispararon de madrugada contra una casa en la que dormían ocho personas de la misma familia. Seis han muerto y dos han sido rescatadas con vida", informaron fuentes libanesas.
También la ciudad de Nabatiye, bastión de Hezbollah, sufrió durante la pasada noche y el amanecer de hoy los bombardeos de la aviación israelí, que causaron cuatro víctimas mortales, según fuentes de la televisión libanesa LBC.
Asimismo, la aviación israelí castigó de nuevo los barrios sur de la capital del país, donde esta madrugada se escucharon cinco fuertes explosiones. Los proyectiles impactaron contra edificios de Haret Reik, Dajie y Ruweiss, cercanos al dañado aeropuerto internacional de Beirut.
Mientras tanto, un soldado israelí murió y cuatro resultaron levemente heridos en enfrentamientos en Bint Jbeil, expresó el ejército de Israel. Indicó que cinco milicianos de Hezbollah también fallecieron en el combate.
Hezbollah dijo también que mató a cuatro soldados israelíes en enfrentamientos en Houla, en el sur del Líbano. Pero el ejército israelí indicó que sólo tres resultaron lesionados.
Copyright 1996-2006 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/diario/2006/08/07/um/m-01248007.htm
Guardian:
Israeli strikes kill 24 as UN talks continue
Staff and agencies
Monday August 7, 2006
Israeli air strikes killed at least 24 Lebanese people today and Israel said it may expand its ground offensive.
Meanwhile, confusion surrounded an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, said that 40 people died in the attack before revising the death toll to just one.
It appeared that most of those believed dead had survived in a bunker.
The hostilities continued as diplomats at the UN in New York tried to win agreement over a resolution drafted by the US and France, which Lebanon and key Arab states rejected last night.
Israeli warplanes hit the Hizbullah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, eastern regions around the Bekaa Valley city of Baalbek and other targets in the south of the country.
There was also heavy fighting between Israeli ground troops and Hizbullah guerrillas in the south, about three miles (five kilometres) west of the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona.
The Israeli defence minister, Amir Peretz, said the ground offensive would be expanded if there was no diplomatic solution soon.
Earlier today, Mr Siniora told a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Beirut that an Israeli air strike in the southern village of Houla had "resulted in more than 40 martyrs".
But most of those feared killed were later found alive in a bunker. Local television stations reported that rescuers pulled out 65 survivors, including 35 children, from under the rubble.
Speaking later, Mr Siniora said: "It turned out that there was one person killed. They thought that the whole building smashed on the head of about 40 people and it turned out, thank God because we are not happy if someone is killed, they have been saved."
Houla is inside the proposed southern Lebanese security zone.
Other Israeli air attacks today targeted the last remaining crossing on the Litani river between Sidon and Tyre, cutting the main artery for aid supplies to civilians in the south, Reuters reported. Aid groups said Israel was paralysing aid delivery.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, yesterday warned that she expected fighting to continue once the text of the draft resolution was formally adopted. Speaking today in Crawford, Texas, the US president, George Bush, said he recognised that there were still divisions over the resolution but called for it to be adopted as quickly as possible. "We all recognise the violence must stop," Mr Bush said.
Hizbullah guerrillas fired more rockets into northern Israel, wounding one person.
Yesterday was the deadliest day of Hizbullah rocket attacks since the conflict began on July 12, with 15 Israelis - including 12 reservist soldiers - killed.
At least 19 Lebanese civilians died in Israeli air attacks yesterday, and the Lebanese health minister, Mohammad Khalifeh, today told Reuters that 925 people had so far been killed in the conflict, one third of them aged under 13. Another 75 are missing, presumed dead.
More than 90 Israelis, most of them soldiers, have been killed, with 48 dying in Hizbullah rocket attacks.
Arab foreign ministers who met with Mr Siniora in Beirut today warned the UN Security Council against adopting resolutions that do not serve Lebanon's interests. The top Arab diplomats said they had decided to send a delegation to New York to press Lebanon's case.
The ministers warned of "the consequences of adopting resolutions that are not applicable and complicate the situation on the ground and do not take Lebanon's interest and stability into account".
Arab leaders are considering holding an emergency summit on Lebanon in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, later this week.
Israel expects the UN security council to pass a resolution calling for the end of Israeli operations, but leaving the door open for air strikes on Hizbullah arms convoys and rocket launchers, this week.
The Lebanese government wants the UN draft resolution to call for the immediate withdrawal of around 10,000 Israeli troops from south Lebanon.
However, Israel wants to keep the troops there until an international stabilisation force, probably led by the France, moves in.
Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, criticised the draft resolution, dismissing it as "another operation against the Lebanese nation", the Associated Press reported.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1839023,00.html
Guardian:
UN truce plan under threat as conflict spirals
Israel suffers deadliest day yet and Arab states reject draft resolution
Ewen MacAskill, Oliver Burkeman in New York, Rory McCarthy in Kfar Giladi and Simon Tisdall in Tehran
Monday August 7, 2006
A UN ceasefire initiative for Lebanon ran into almost immediate trouble last night after it was rejected by key Arab countries and provoked Hizbullah's deadliest strike on Israel so far.
Hours after the draft security council ceasefire resolution was published, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, also issued a sobering warning that she expected fighting to continue once the text was formally adopted today or tomorrow.
The prediction came as Lebanon and Hizbullah dismissed the deal and Israel, Syria and Iran embarked on a fresh war of words highlighting the potential for the war to turn into a regional conflict.
Within 24 hours of the draft being agreed, Hizbullah launched a rocket barrage that killed 12 Israeli soldiers. They followed up with the heaviest attack yet on the port city of Haifa, with a volley of missiles flattening buildings and pulling down electrical lines. Three were killed and at least 120 injured. Israel responded stepping up its aerial bombardment, with the port of Tyre bearing the brunt.
Ms Rice, speaking at George Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, said she hoped the resolution would reduce violence but warned that no single resolution was going to bring peace overnight. "These things take a while to wind down," she said. "It is certainly not the case that probably all violence is going to stop."
A Foreign Office source echoed Ms Rice, saying: "No one is naive enough to think there will be peace once the resolution is rubber-stamped by the security council."
The draft resolution was agreed between the US, Israel's biggest backer, and France, the former colonial power in Lebanon, at the UN headquarters in New York on Saturday. All 15 members of the council last night discussed the draft, which calls for "a full cessation of hostilities".
Lebanon, through Qatar, which has a seat on the council, tried unsuccessfully to change the draft, calling for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops rather than having them remain in the country until a UN-backed international force is put in place. The draft allows Israel to continue "defensive operations" in Lebanon after a ceasefire.
Ms Rice said the resolution would provide some clarity this week by showing who obeyed the ceasefire call. "We're going to know who really did want to stop the violence and who didn't," she said.
Lebanon and Hizbullah said the draft offered no timetable for an Israeli troop withdrawal. "If Israel has not won the war, but still gets this, what would have happened had they won?" asked Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament negotiating on behalf of Hizbullah.
Israel said little in public yesterday about the draft, but reports in the press suggested political leaders were happy with the result. Key parts of the agreement were seen to be in Israel's favour.
One Israeli political source told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper: "We got what we wanted. The meaning of the decision is that there is no black hole or quiet vacuum. Israel will leave only when someone comes to replace her."
In the most explicit threat yet from Israel to Iran, Dan Gillerman, the ambassador to the UN, said in an interview with the BBC that an attack by Hizbullah on Tel Aviv would be tantamount to an "act of war" and Hizbullah would not make such an attack without an explicit order from Iran. The implication of his words was that Israel would retaliate by attacking Tehran.
Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's leader, said on Friday that any attack on the centre of Beirut would be met with a rocket attack Tel Aviv, which has so far escaped harm. He was speaking just days after Mohsen Rezai, secretary of Iran's expediency council, said Israel should expect "very difficult days in cities such as Tel Aviv" unless it ended the war.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry, said: "No one wants to see an expansion of the conflict. But there is no doubt that Hizbullah is the long arm of Iran, that the missiles landing in Israel are not Lebanese missiles, that the fortifications we are dealing with in Lebanon were built with somebody else's money not Lebanese. The idea that Hizbullah is a tool of Iranian foreign policy is correct."
Asked what Israel's reaction would be to a rocket strike on Tel Aviv, he said: "There is nothing I can say about that."
Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran's foreign minister, in an interview with the Guardian, described Mr Bush and Tony Blair as "codefendants" in war crimes and claimed they had foreknowledge of Israeli plans to launch a "campaign of aggression" in Lebanon which he claimed was part of a "war on the whole Middle East". But Iran did not fear an American attack, he said.
Syria, which also backs Hizbullah, rejected the draft resolution. Its foreign minister, Walid Moallem, normally one of the more moderate voices in Damascus said on a visit to Beirut that he personally was prepared to volunteer to fight with Hizbullah and described the draft as a "recipe for continuation of the war".
Mr Blair is to remain at Downing Street today delaying his holiday further in a bid to ensure the UN resolution is passed by tomorrow and the ground work is laid for a fresh UN resolution setting out the terms of a multinational force operating in Lebanon. The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, left for a carvanning holiday in France at the weekend but the Foreign Office said she would fly to New York if the presence of ministers was required to vote on the resolution.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,1838703,00.html
Guardian: Israel's bloodiest day yet
as Hizbullah hits troops and Haifa
Strike on northern kibbutz results in biggest death toll
Rory McCarthy in Kfar Giladi
Monday August 7, 2006
Israel yesterday endured the bloodiest day of the war so far when at least 15 people, among them 12 soldiers, were killed in a series of Hizbullah rocket strikes on the north of the country.
The soldiers, all recently called-up reservists, were gathered around two parked cars under a row of fir trees at the edge of an historic cemetery next to the kibbutz of Kfar Giladi, when a barrage of rockets rained down on the northern hills. One landed just in front of one of the cars, gouging a shallow crater in the road. Both cars were left blackened and burnt out.
Hours later, another barrage of Hizbullah rockets hit Haifa - Israel's third biggest city - killing at least three people and wounding more than 120, medics said. A police commander told Israel Radio that a rocket had hit two adjacent houses, causing their partial collapse. Rescuers and relatives were last night trying to pull survivors out from the burning rubble.
The most heavily bombarded areas were Haifa's Arab neighbourhoods.
"The deadly missile doesn't differentiate blood from blood, and this we saw tonight," said the city's mayor, Yona Yahav.
The greatest loss of Israeli life came after sirens sounded at the Kfar Giladi kibbutz at midday yesterday, warning of an imminent rocket attack. The few residents left on site took shelter in a strong room, but the reservists remained where they stood. A heavy barrage of rockets followed, with about 100 Katyushas thundering into the hills around them in 15 minutes.
"I heard the sirens too. I know the sirens in the kibbutz were working," said Major Zvika Golan. "The people here were just relaxing, just resting. Some had been here overnight, others were just coming and going." He said the rocket had been filled with ball-bearings, which spread around an area of 20 to 30 metres. Soldiers spent several hours removing the bodies on stretchers and then studying the scene, looking for information about the rocket.
"They were all wounded and scattered in every direction, some of them were in very bad condition," said Eli Peretz of the Magen David Adom rescue service. "It was a very, very difficult scene. I have never seen anything like it." Rescue workers at the scene laid the dead on stretchers on a grassy patch by the roadside, their boots stuck out from underneath the blankets laid over them. Army helicopters evacuated the injured to hospital.
The soldiers appeared to be part of a larger number of troops, with trucks, tanks and armoured cars, deployed in the kibbutz and nearby. There are several artillery and logistics positions along the length of Israel's northern border, hidden in forests and against the hillside.
"This shouldn't have happened," one resident in the kibbutz told Ha'aretz newspaper. "We sounded the alert several minutes before the rocket hit." Another witness said: "I was sitting with my friends in a parking lot and got up to get a cigarette. I heard a big boom and came back running to see the bodies of my friends." A pair of blood-stained boots stood against the wall at the scene of the attack.
After the attack, a group of ultra-religious Jewish volunteers from the Zaka organisation arrived and proceeded to remove the body parts of the dead. Wearing white surgical gloves, they hosed down the road and swept the area. One stood on the shoulders of a colleague to clear body parts from a nearby tree.
The cemetery is the burial place of Josef Trumpeldor, a Zionist who was killed in 1920 fighting against the Palestinians and is famed in Israeli history for his dying words: "It is good to die for our country."
Israel's military responded quickly with a heavy artillery barrage directed at southern Lebanon and an air strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Israel said later that its warplanes had attacked the town of Qana and destroyed the launchers that fired the rockets on Haifa. Qana was the scene of an Israeli attack last Friday in which 28 civilians died. Israel acknowledged that last week's attack was a mistake, but insisted Hizbullah was hiding its launching sites among the town's civilians.
In southern Lebanon yesterday at least 19 people were killed, most in air strikes on buildings near the border. Two civilians died when an Israeli air strike targeted a pickup truck that was driving 40 metres from a UN aid convoy heading to the southern city of Tyre. In a separate incident a Lebanese soldier and another civilian were killed near Tyre.
More than 250,000 Israelis have fled the north in recent weeks, and, though there are many public shelters for those who remain, civilians continue to die.
Three were killed and five injured in rocket strikes on Saturday. In the conflict, so far 90 Israelis have died, most of them soldiers. In Lebanon more than 700 people are confirmed as having been killed.
Thousands of Israeli troops were still fighting their way through southern Lebanon, in villages close to the border yesterday.
Israel's justice minister, Haim Ramon, said the fighting would continue despite work on a UN ceasefire resolution.
The Israeli military said it had captured one of the Hizbullah fighters who took part in the capture of two Israeli soldiers last month, an act which triggered the conflict.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,1838853,00.html
Guardian: Lebanon rejects UN truce proposal
which it claims favours Israel
Oliver Burkeman in New York and Clancy Chassay in Beirut
Monday August 7, 2006
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, piled pressure on Hizbullah to comply with the proposed UN call for a truce yesterday, reiterating Washington's insistence that a cessation of hostilities would be the first step towards a longer-term settlement. "We're trying to deal with a problem that has been festering and brewing in Lebanon now for years and years and years," she said.
But Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament, rejected the 6,500-word text thrashed out by Washington and Paris. Mr Berri, who has been negotiating on behalf of Hizbullah, said the draft resolution legitimised Israel's occupation, adding that it would "open the door to never-ending war". Philippe Douste-Blazy, France's foreign minister, said obtaining Lebanese and Arab support for the plan was his government's priority.
The draft's demand that Israel halt "offensive operations" leaves open the option of pursuing defensive activities - a definition that could be interpreted not just as permitting a response to Hizbullah attacks, but also pre-emptive action. "If we see there are launchers who are going to fire Katyusha [rockets] at Israel, we have the right to respond," said the country's justice minister, Haim Ramon, though he broadly welcomed the UN text.
The resolution was the result of concessions on both sides. If the text is passed, Paris will have won on the basic structure: a two-part process, consisting of a halt to violence, followed soon after by a second resolution to approve an international peacekeeping force. Any such force would be led by France. But Washington, which has supported Israel, gained crucial concessions - above all the terminology on "offensive operations" - and the absence of any mention of troop withdrawal.
Lebanese diplomats tried to overturn that yesterday, circulating a proposed amendment calling on Israel to hand over its positions in Lebanon to the Lebanese armed forces. The amendment would also have required Israel to withdraw from the disputed Sheba'a Farms area and hand it to the UN, a key Lebanese demand that goes unmentioned in the US-French text.
Nouhad Mahmoud, Lebanon's UN ambassador, said his proposals only represented "what everybody asked for", and that there was "no excuse" not to accept them. But Israel has repeatedly said it will not withdraw in the absence of a multinational force to maintain a buffer zone.
Syria and Iran, Hizbullah's main backers in the region, opposed Paris and Washington's terms for a cessation of hostilities.
In a telephone call with Syria's president, Bashar Assad, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the US, "which has been supporting the Zionist regime until today" had "no right to enter the crisis as a mediator". Syria's foreign minister, Walid Moallem, visiting Lebanon, said it was "a recipe for the continuation of the war".
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,1838869,00.html
The Independent:
While the UN fiddles... the Middle East burns
By Donald Macintyre in Kfar Giladi, Eric Silver in Jerusalem, Anne Penketh and Colin Brown
Published: 07 August 2006
Israel suffered its worst casualties in its 26-day war on Hizbollah while United Nations negotiations for a ceasefire intensified.
A direct hit by a Katyusha rocket killed 12 Israeli soldiers in the border kibbutz of Kfar Giladi yesterday while a barrage of rockets aimed at Israel's third city, Haifa, left three civilians dead and 150 wounded.
On the other side of the border, 19 Lebanese civilians were killed by Israel's bombardment of southern Lebanon. The heavy casualties reinforced Israel's insistence that any UN ceasefire resolution must ensure that Hizbollah gunmen cannot return to its northern border. Diplomats hope that foreign ministers will vote in the next day or two on a United Nations resolution, despite Lebanon rejecting the US-French draft because it failed to order an immediate ceasefire and Israeli troops out of southern Lebanon.
But the US and Britain warned that a UN resolution was only a "first step" towards ending the violence, as Israel and Hizbollah militants used the window before a vote to inflict maximum damage.
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, said: "We're trying to deal with a problem that has been festering and brewing in Lebanon now for years and years and years. And so it's not going to be solved by one resolution in the Security Council. These things take a while to wind down."
The Kfar Giladi attack was the worst in numbers of Israeli victims since the conflict began, and also caused the highest single death toll of Israeli soldiers in the same period. But Haifa was in chaos after Hizbollah launched its worst attack on the city. Last night Israel claimed it had hit the Hizbollah site that had launched the rocket attacks at the city.
The 12 reservists in Kfar Giladi appeared to have been sitting and standing in the shade of a cemetery wall for a briefing when a Katyusha rocket landed right by them, incinerating two cars in the parking lot beside the wall.
As heavy smoke hung in the air from brush fires ignited by other rockets in a withering 15-minute barrage, which landed in the hills above the town of Kiryat Shmona, the charred remains of the vehicles and other debris had been piled high by the wall. Sponge mattresses, possibly from the men's packs, were also piled in the parking lot.
A member of the Kfar Giladi security committee said that, unlike local civilians, the victims had not taken cover in shelters when sirens sounded.
"This shouldn't have happened," he said. "We sounded the alert several minutes before the rocket hit." An officer at the scene said that the explosion had blasted shrapnel 30 metres away. The front of one of the destroyed cars was compressed, suggesting the rocket might have landed directly on it. There was also what looked like a small crater close to the wall.
Intensive diplomatic activity was going on behind the scenes last night, as Tony Blair telephoned President George Bush and the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. He also sought to contact Jacques Chirac, whose country is expected to lead a multinational force in southern Lebanon that would be part of a longer-term solution described in the draft plan.
"They discussed how they will get the resolution through," said a Downing Street aide. "We can't take anything for granted."
The draft text calls for a "full cessation of hostilities". Whereas Hizbollah is expected to observe an "immediate" ceasefire, Israel is instructed to immediately halt "all offensive military operations". Israel would therefore be allowed to hit back if Hizbollah did not refrain from all attacks. The draft would allow Israeli troops to stay in southern Lebanon until an international force was deployed there.
In Beirut, Hizbollah announced it would agree to the ceasefire only after Israel stopped all attacks and withdrew from Lebanese territory. Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament, who represents Hizbollah in negotiations, said the draft resolution was unacceptable since it did not deal with Beirut's key demands, including a release of prisoners held by Israel.
Fouad Siniora, Lebanon's Prime Minister, said that his government would demand amendments to the resolution.Israeli officials were reluctant to comment on the provisional text, which was published on Saturday and which security council diplomats continued to discuss yesterday, probably because it meets far more Israeli demands than Lebanese.
The Israelis were less happy, however, with a supervisory role assigned to Unifil, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, until a more robust international force was in place. Israel has long complained that Unifil has failed to prevent Hizbollah attacks. The draft also provides for an eventual handover of the Shebaa Farms to Lebanon, although UN cartographers confirmed when Israel pulled out of Lebanon in May 2000 that the area had been captured from Syria in the 1967 war. The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is reported to be flexible on the territorial dispute, provided Israel's other requirements are met.
Margaret Beckett will fly to the UN to press for "humanitarian corridors " to get food and medical supplies to the shattered communities as a priority immediately after the cessation of violence is agreed on the ground in the Lebanon.
The British efforts to establish humanitarian aid convoys without the fear of being attacked by Israeli jets may deflect some of the criticism against Tony Blair for agreeing to a UN resolution which falls short of an immediate ceasefire.
Day 26
* In the deadliest day of the war for Israel, Hizbollah rockets kill 12 soldiers in the town of Kfar Giladi.
* Further Hizbollah rocket attacks on Haifa kill three civilians and leave 150 people injured. Several are trapped under rubble.
* Israel says troops will remain in Lebanon until a foreign force arrives.
* Israeli army claims it has captured a Hizbollah fighter who took part in the abduction of two Israeli soldiers which triggered the conflict.
* At least 19 Lebanese civilians and a soldier are killed by Israel's bombardment on the south of the country. Israeli air strike hits a truck near a UN convoy, killing two people.
* The conflict has killed more than 800 people, mostly Lebanese civilians.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1217432.ece
The Independent:
This draft shows who is running America's policy... Israel
Robert Fisk,
Published: 07 August 2006
So the great and the good on the East River laboured at the United Nations Security Council - and brought forth a lemon. You could almost hear the Lebanese groan at this draft resolution, a document of such bias and mendacity that a close Lebanese friend read carefully through it yesterday, cursed and uttered the immortal question: "Don't these bastards learn anything from history?"
And there it all was again, the warmed-up peace proposals of Israel's 1982 invasion, full of buffer zones and disarmament and "strict respect by all parties" - a rousing chortle here, no doubt, from Hizbollah members - and the need for Lebanese sovereignty. It didn't even demand the withdrawal of Israeli forces, a point that Walid Moallem, Syria's Foreign Minister - and the man the Americans will eventually have to negotiate with - seized upon with more than alacrity. It was a dead UN resolution without a total Israeli retreat, he said on a strategic trip to Beirut.
A close analysis of the American-French draft - the fingerprints of John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, were almost smudging the paragraphs - showed just who is running Washington's Middle East policy: Israel. And one wondered how even Tony Blair would want to associate himself with this nonsense. It made no reference to the obscenely disproportionate violence employed by Israel - just a sleek reference to "hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides" - and it made only passing reference to Hizbollah's demand that it would only release the two Israeli soldiers it captured on 12 July in return for Lebanese and other Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.
The Security Council said it was "mindful of the sensitivity of the issue of prisoners and encouraging the efforts aimed at settling the issue [sic] of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel". I bet Hizbollah were impressed by the "mindful" bit, not to mention the "sensitivity" and the soft, slippery word "settle" - an issue which can be "settled" in maybe 20 years' time. Then came the real coup de grâce. A demand for the "total cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks" and the "immediate cessation" by Israel of "all offensive military operations". Bit of a problem there, as Hizbollah spotted at once. They have to lay down their arms.
Had the council demanded an immediate resolution on the future of the Shebaa farms, the Israeli-occupied territory which once belonged to mandate Lebanon - and for whose "liberation" the Hizbollah have fought - the whole fandango might have stood a chance. After all, Shebaa is the only raison d'être that the Hizbollah can produce for continuing their reckless, ruthless, illegal war across the UN blue line in southern Lebanon. But the UN document wished only to see a delineation of Lebanon's borders "including in the Shebaa farms area". There was even a wonderful paragraph - Number 9 for aficionados of UN bumf - which "calls on all parties to co-operate ... with the Security Council". So the Hizbollah are to co-operate, are they, with the austere diplomats of this august and wise body? Isn't that exalting a guerrilla army a little bit more upmarket than it deserves?
No one was fooled and few disagreed with Syria's Walid Moallem when he said the UN's draft resolution was "a recipe for continuing the war". As both the Hizbollah and the Israelis did yesterday, the former killing 13 Israelis and the latter bombing houses in Ansar - once an Israeli POW camp - which destroyed five more Lebanese civilian lives. Mohamed Fneish, a Hizbollah government minister - who scarcely represents all Lebanese but talks as if he does - thundered away about how "we" [presumably the Hizbollah, rather than the Lebanese] will abide by it [the resolution] on condition that no Israeli soldiers remains inside Lebanese land."
There were more Israeli air attacks on Beirut's southern suburbs yesterday - though heaven knows what is left there to destroy - ensuring that even more Shia Muslim civilians will remain refugees. Fearful that the Israelis will bomb their trucks and claim they were carrying missiles, the garbage collectors of this city have abandoned their vehicles and the familiar 1982 stench of burning rubbish now drifts through the evening streets. Petrol is now so scarce that a tank-full yesterday cost £250.
About the only gift to Lebanon in the UN resolution was the expressed need to provide the UN with remaining Israeli maps of landmines in Lebanon. But Israel has again dropped lethal ordnance all over southern Lebanon. Oh yes, and as usual, the UN draft on these ambitious, hopelessly conceived ideas "decides to remain actively seized of the matter". You bet it does. And so, as they say, the war goes on.
What the UN wants...
* A full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks and the cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations;
* Israel and Lebanon to support a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution based on the following principles and elements:
* Strict respect by all parties for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Israel and Lebanon;
* Full respect for the Blue Line by both parties;
* Delineation of the international borders of Lebanon, especially in those areas where the border is disputed or uncertain, including in the Shebaa farms area;
* Security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Lebanese armed and security forces, and of UN-mandated international forces;
* Full implementation of the relevant provisions ... that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon;
* Deployment of an international force in Lebanon;
* The Secretary General to develop, in liaison with key international actors and the concerned parties, proposals to implement the relevant provisions ... and to present those proposals to the Security Council within 30 days;
* The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), upon cessation of hostilities, to monitor its implementation and extend assistance to ensure humanitarian access to civilians and the safe return of displaced persons;
* The government of Lebanon to ensure arms or related material are not imported into Lebanon without its consent and requests UNIFIL, conditions permitting, to assist the government of Lebanon at its request;
* The Secretary-General to report to the Council within one week on the implementation and provide any relevant information in light of the Council's intention to adopt a further resolution.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1217413.ece
ZNet | Israel/Palestine
What Can Israel Achieve?
by Immanuel Wallerstein; Commentary No. 190, August 1, 2006; August 06, 2006
The State of Israel was established in 1948. Ever since, there has been continuous violence between Jews and Arabs in Israel, and between Israel and its neighbors. Sometimes, the violence was low-level and even latent. And every once in a while, the violence escalated into open warfare, as now. Whenever full- scale violence broke out, there was an immediate debate about what started it, as though that mattered. We are now in the midst of warfare between Israel and Palestine in Gaza and between Israel and Lebanon. And the world is engaged in its usual futile debate about how to reduce the open state of warfare to low-level violence.
Every Israeli government has wished to create a situation in which the world and Israel's neighbors recognize its existence as a state and intergroup/interstate violence ceases. Israel has never been able to achieve this. When the level of violence is relatively low, the Israeli public is split about what strategy to pursue. But when it escalates into warfare, the Jewish Israelis and world Jewry tend to rally around the government.
In reality, Israel's basic strategy since 1948 has been to rely on two things in the pursuit of its objectives: a strong military, and strong outside Western support. So far this strategy has worked in one sense: Israel still survives. The question is how much longer this strategy will in fact continue to work.
The source of outside support has shifted over time. We forget completely that in 1948 the crucial military support for Israel came from the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites. When the Soviet Union pulled back, it was France that came to fill the role. France was engaged in a revolution in Algeria, and it saw Israel as a crucial element in defeating the Algerian national liberation movement. But when Algeria became independent in 1962, France dropped Israel because it then sought to maintain ties with a now- independent Algeria.
It is only after that moment that the United States moved into its present total support of Israel. One major element in this turn-around was the Israeli military victory in the Six Days War in 1967. In this war, Israel conquered all the territories of the old British Mandate of Palestine, as well as more. It proved its ability to be a strong military presence in the region. It transformed the attitude of world Jewry from one in which only about 50% really approved of the creation of Israel into one which had the support of the large majority of world Jewry, for whom Israel had now become a source of pride. This is the moment when the Holocaust became a major ideological justification for Israel and its policies.
After 1967, the Israeli governments never felt they had to negotiate anything with the Palestinians or with the Arab world. They offered one-sided settlements but these were always on Israeli terms. Israel wouldn't negotiate with Nasser. Then it wouldn't negotiate with Arafat. And now it won't negotiate with so-called terrorists. Instead, it has relied on successive shows of military strength.
Israel is now engaged in the exact same catastrophic blunder, from its own point of view, as George Bush's invasion of Iraq. Bush thought that a show of military strength would establish U.S. presence unquestionably in Iraq and intimidate the rest of the world. Bush has discovered that Iraqi resistance was far more formidable militarily than anticipated, that American political allies in Iraq were far less reliable than he assumed they would be, and that the U.S. public's support of the war was far more fragile than he expected. The United States is heading towards a humiliating withdrawal from Iraq.
Israel's current military campaign is a direct parallel of Bush's invasion of Iraq. The Israeli generals are already noting that Hezbollah's military is far more formidable than anticipated, that U.S. allies in the region are already taking wide distance from the United States and Israel (note the Iraqi government's support of Lebanon and now that of the Saudi government), and soon will discover that the Israeli public's support is more fragile than expected. Already the Israeli government is reluctant to send land troops into Lebanon, largely because of what it thinks will be the reaction of its own people inside Israel. Israel is heading towards a humiliating truce arrangement.
What the Israeli governments do not realize is that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah need Israel. It is Israel that needs them, and needs them desperately. If Israel wants not to become a Crusader state that is in the end extinguished, it is only Hamas and Hezbollah that can guarantee the survival of Israel. It is only when Israel is able to come to terms with them, as the deeply-rooted spokespersons of Palestinian and Arab nationalism, that Israel can live in peace.
Achieving a stable peace settlement will be extremely difficult. But the pillars of Israel's present strategy - its own military strength and the unconditional support of the United States - constitute a very thin reed. Its military advantage is diminishing and will diminish steadily in the years to come. And in the post-Iraqi years, the United States may well drop Israel in the same way that France did in the 1960s.
Israel's only real guarantee will be that of the Palestinians. And to get this guarantee, Israel will need to rethink fundamentally its strategy for survival.
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein, distributed by Agence Global. For rights and permissions, including translations and posting to non-commercial sites, and contact: rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically, or e-mail to others, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To contact author, write: immanuel.wallerstein@yale.edu.
These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10713
ZNet | Israel/Palestine
The “Complex” Issue of “Humanitarian” Intervention
by Peter Watt; August 06, 2006
A few years ago, the sanctimonious Tony Blair lectured us on the new era of “humanitarian” intervention. Now we would be “fighting not for territory but for values,” he proclaimed. The governments of Western nations, spearheaded by Britain and the United States, in an about turn, had decided that old-fashioned imperialism was simply out-of-date. Enlightened countries could no longer merely oppress, kill and exploit the world’s needy into liberation. They needed to modernise. In the enlightened 1990s military intervention could only be justified on humanitarian grounds. Racism was out, human rights were in. Anything else wouldn’t fit with the vacuous image Blair’s PR team concocted of “Cool Britannia.”
The shift, of course, had nothing to do with a brave new era of concern for the world’s oppressed. Rather, it was the recognition that the neo-imperial powers would have to dress up military action in comfortable liberal language in order to deceive the population to believe the next imperial intervention was justified. Unfortunately, the dim-witted and indignant public just doesn’t think much of going to war. Yet spending on PR does provide some dividends, as was proved by the NATO escapade in Serbia. Journalists accepted the Blairite rhetoric – despite its evident contradictions – and parroted them on the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 news and in the print media. Leaving aside the fact that NATO action actually made the humanitarian catastrophe worse, the same journalists were blind to the paradox that if the enlightened powers were compelled to act in Serbia, they were not in East Timor where a third of the population had been killed with US/UK support. In the mainstream media it just wouldn’t do to mention such inconvenient facts.
Similarly, when the US/UK coalition bombed Afghanistan, it was for Afghanistan’s own good, we were supposed to believe. Journalists repeated the doctrine and suddenly discovered a hitherto concealed compassion for the women of that country. Writer Arundhati Roy observed sardonically that Bush, Rumsfeld, Blair and company all of a sudden had become feminists! And then, Iraq. When the justifications for war ran out, exposed for the lies they were, the imperial powers could always turn to humanitarian intervention. Amazingly, in the media, there are still slaves to this pathetic dogma, who claim, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary, that Iraq is better off than it was pre-invasion and that Iraqis are truly savouring the fruits of our Western “democracy.” A simple test to determine whether or not the Western powers are willing to intervene for humanitarian reasons is revealing. This has been missed, ignored and avoided in the mainstream media, so let’s spell it out. Surely, if ‘we’ intervened in Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq to save those people from violence and oppression, ‘we’ should intervene in Lebanon to stop the indiscriminate killing of civilians and decimation of the infrastructure.
Yet the response of Blair and Bush has been to rule out any chance of a ceasefire, although Hezbollah has offered one if Israel stops its bombardment and releases kidnapped prisoners. This is not what Bush and Blair want, and it would be foolish to take seriously Condoleeza Rice’s gormless ruminations about wanting peace because the invasion of Lebanon is paid for by the United States itself. The US lavishes Israel with $15 million in military aid every single day and the arms, tanks and missiles that are being used to destroy Lebanon come directly from the US, courtesy of the taxpayer. It is now the fourth largest military power in the world with a huge nuclear arsenal – no small achievement for a country about the size of New Jersey. With friends like the government of the United States can anyone seriously believe that Israel is going to get pushed into the sea?
America’s proxy army in Israel is propped up and armed to the hilt up by the same people who claim to champion peace and democracy. Blair longs for peace, he tells us, but says that it would be wrong to stop the shipment of arms to Israel from the US and continues to authorise the use of Prestwick airport in order to lend a hand in the new arm of America’s war. Blair claims a ceasefire must be achieved soon to stop the suffering but lends his undying support to the war’s principal aggressors. War is peace indeed. As long as this goes on, the message from Rice, Bush and holier-than-thou Mr Blair is that any ceasefire will have to wait. “If the ceasefire is not on both sides,” he warns, “Israel will continue to take action. That's the reality.” Israel, he and Bush remind us, has a right to defend itself. Implicit in this reversal of reality is the view that Palestine and Lebanon don’t possess that same right although the crimes against the two countries, spanning several decades, are incomparably worse. Given that the broader context of the 50 year long Israeli occupation of Palestine – oppression and murder of its people, destruction of its infrastructure, stealing of its natural resources, torture and imprisonment of thousands who have never received trial, cantonisation of its land – is considered irrelevant and cast aside by Blair and the media. Israel merely defends itself from irrational Islamo-fascists. Even is this were true, the vast majority of those killed have been civilians and not members of Hezbollah.
So much for humanitarian intervention. Remember the urgency with which Blair and company wanted you to believe that NATO forces had to intervene in Serbia? In his speeches the prime-minister pushed for “a new internationalism where the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups will no longer be tolerated,” and “for a world where those responsible for such crimes have nowhere to hide.” In 1999, Blair warned, “We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe.” So why is Blair’s standard inapplicable to Arabs? Remember how the media repeatedly warned that to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in the Balkans, ‘we’ had to do something? Remember the purported humanitarian motives for coalition forces bombing Afghanistan and for occupying Iraq? How often have you seen, in our free and open media, that most radical suggestion that human rights are either everybody’s or nobody’s? How often has a parallel been made with other crises – where ‘we’ supposedly intervened for the sake of human rights – and that therefore ‘we’ must now? How often has the question been raised by supine BBC journalists – like Huw Edwards, whose fawning interview with Israeli ex-prime minister Barak the other night on the 10 o’clock news was as insipid as it was revealing about pro-Israeli bias at the BBC – that either international law applies to everyone or it applies to no-one? Evidently, it does not apply to Israel, the US and Britain just as human rights are inapplicable to Palestinians and Lebanese. With over 800 Lebanese dead, that makes the total killed equivalent to around fifteen times the number of people killed in London in July last year. Over 3,000 wounded and almost a million people displaced. How many more Arabs will have to be killed to equal the respect and mourning afforded those Britons killed on 7/7 before enough outrage is felt to stop the unspeakable tragedy of Lebanon? How many more to equal 9/11?
Now that a force is needed to stop the Israeli slaughter of civilians and destruction of Lebanese infrastructure, there’s little talk of intervening. These are complex issues, we’re constantly told, by the likes of Louise Ellman, MP and vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel, as she reversed history on Channel 4 news last night. For Ellman, the only crimes that count are those of Hezbollah or Hamas – Israel by definition is exempt, as it’s an ally of the West. “Complex issues” is government newspeak for, “we’re not going to anything about it” – and so the killing will continue. The Middle East is too “complex,” which really means that the interests of global political power are at stake, so best forget about human rights, albeit “regrettably.”
Just as the humanitarian West deliberates over its next PR initiative on how to stall condemnation for its inaction, the UN’s lacklustre response hardly bears much hope. The UN offices in Beirut were attacked because the UN is seen (quite accurately) as a tool of the United States, afraid to offend America and Israel, rendering it impotent in this time of great crisis.
“Humanitarian” intervention, just like its predecessor, imperialism, is a political force. When it is politically expedient to do so, the West must intervene to save lives, no matter – “regrettably” – how many innocent people die. For the rulers of the world, the people of Lebanon represent little political capital. The goals of the Western powers to fully control and take over the Middle East cannot be secured by halting Israel’s aggression against the country. On the contrary, the primary agent of this war is the government of the United States, backed up by its faithful lapdog, Great Britain.
And so to Blair’s latest pronouncement, the “arc of extremism.” Like the “axis of evil,” such pronouncements would elicit hilarity were the consequences of the actual policies not so brutal. Of course, Blair is highly selective in his choice of extremism. He evidently sees no extremism in the Saudi regime, which he actively supports, but then there’s a lot of oil there. No extremism in the occupation of Iraq and the invasion of Afghanistan – that’s humanitarian intervention, not extremism. Neither is there an arc of extremism in Israel’s 50 year long campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians, who now see only 22% of their land not occupied by Israel. The maiming of Lebanese civilians and the destruction of their homes and their country’s infrastructure is not extremism. “Disproportionate,” perhaps, but nothing as vulgar as extremism.
There was a good reason why the UN last year could not agree on a clear definition of terrorism – the activities of states participating in mass-scale terror such as the United States, Britain and Israel might be included in such a definition. Because if it’s terror to kill innocent civilians in New York, London, Madrid or Israel it’s also terrorism to kill them in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and Lebanon. To a child, this might seem like simple logic – in the media and the political sphere, it’s a “complex issue.”
Still, many people are refusing to buy the empty Blairite rhetoric about humanitarianism, democracy and the “arc of extremism” even if columnists at the “left-wing” Guardian and The Independent and CNN-style TV journalists still take such lofty pronouncements seriously. Some of those people will take to the streets this Saturday to demonstrate against the brutal assault against Lebanon and the ongoing apartheid occupation of Palestine.
Despite the new language and the new PR, parallels to the Bushite and Blairite nightmare for the world leap out at us from the past. At the respective pinnacles of their power, the European imperial powers – Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, France and Britain – all embraced an ideology based on racial superiority. The lives of colonial subjects were simply considered of less value than those of their European masters. Without that conceptualisation, division and hierarchy of human beings, the European colonial projects would have found it more difficult to justify the taking over and exploitation of vast tracts of the globe. The terms “humanitarian intervention” and “democracy” have replaced colonialism and imperialism, but the racism – particularly now against Arabs – is still palpable, to say the least. The underlying message from Blair, Bush and their Oxbridge educated media courtesans is one of racist contempt for the unpeople of the Middle East, whose deaths they claim are “regrettable,” but not to the extent that they will curb their neo-imperial ambitions. Looking at the gruesome images of dead children killed by Israel’s bombs amid the rubble, I reflect that any one of them could have been my own two-year old daughter. She, who by virtue of a natal lottery was born in the West and not in expendable Lebanon, is spared the horror.
How dare the politicians and the media talk of justice and democracy when our own government’s real role in the world is one of murderous and brutal invasions and direct support for the terror unfolding daily in Lebanon and Palestine. Now more than ever, a strong anti-war movement is needed to halt the unadulterated political and military power of the West and Israel.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10714
ZNet | Israel/Palestine
Out to Lunch
by Remi Kanazi; August 06, 2006
The US media's biased coverage of the crisis in Lebanon should come as no surprise. While the White House and Congress claim a "special relationship" with Israel, our news outlets are not supposed to have a "special relationship" with anyone. Their job is to fairly reports on matters; anything less is a disservice to those watching their news programs and reading their newspapers.
Shockingly, Larry King Live has been "fair" in its coverage of the conflict consuming Lebanon in contrast to Fox News' O'Reilly Factor, MSNBC's Scarborough Country and yes, CNN's darling Anderson Cooper 360. There is, however, much criticism to be doled out to CNN's "longest-running interview program." One need look no further than Larry King Live's first two guests, Republican Senator George Allen and Democratic Senator Evan Bayh. It was nice to see—in this nine minute segment—two senators putting their congressional partisan politics aside to stand together in solidarity with the state of Israel. When Larry King asked Senator Allen if the US should be a true broker in the region, Allen replied, "We support Israel, you're right Larry. Israel is a wellspring in the wilderness in the Middle East and we do support them and their right to protect themselves."
The next guest on the show was positioned as the "Lebanese side." Larry King Live passed off the nearly four minute interview with Chibli Mallat—one of the leaders of the Cedar Revolution, deep critic of Hezbollah and candidate for President—as the voice of the Lebanese people. When Larry King asked Mallat about Nassrallah's remark that the conflict is an Israeli/American plot to control the Middle East, Mallat responded, "I'm afraid that I do agree with the senators. He [Nassrallah] initiated the conflict, and all this talk about a great plot between Israel and America is out of place. The conflict was initiated…by [Hezbollah's] reckless action through the Blue Line that separates Lebanon from Israel. That was a grave violation of international law and I think also a grave violation of Lebanese law." Like a true patriot, Mallat later urged "restraint" from Israel, echoing comments made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice weeks earlier.
Now that the "Lebanese people" were heard, it was necessary to bring on the Israeli side, Israeli Consul General Ehud Danoch, to counter any "Lebanese" propaganda. For nearly four minutes, Danoch defended Israel and extensively illustrated its commitment to root out "terrorism." As icing on the cake, Danoch took softball emails from viewers and general questions from Larry King such as, "Why do you oppose a cease-fire now?" and "Are you optimistic?"
One would think that after Larry King Live came back from break, the show would cut to the carnage in Lebanon, the destruction of its infrastructure, or an analyst discussing the humanitarian implications the siege on Lebanon presents. Not exactly. When the program returned from the break, Larry King cut to Anderson Cooper in Northern Israel, who—given the amount of reporting he's doing in the North—may as well be looking for a second home. Larry King then cut to Dr. Sanjay Gupta in Haifa. While Gupta spoke of the horror Katyusha rockets exact (thousands have been fired, inflicting very little damage relative to Israel's 500 pound bombs and artillery shells), pictures crossed the screen of injured Israeli women and children. The producers, however, were still unsatisfied. Before going to commercial, Anderson Cooper needed another six minutes explaining that the "terrorist group," Hezbollah, is hiding within the civilian population. Cooper makes no mention of the fact that Hezbollah formed as a resistance group to fight off an Israeli military that slaughtered nearly twenty thousand innocent Lebanese and Palestinian civilians in 1982. To justify the mass murder of the Lebanese population today, Cooper makes clear to the viewer that while Israel is trying to be as accurate as possible, even "the most moral military in the world" can only be so precise. It's ironic that Cooper always has the exact number of Katushya rockets fired on Israel, but the exact number of cluster bombs, artillery shells, and missiles used against the civilian population of Lebanon seems to evade his statistical charts.
A simple cut to commercial would not suffice; the producers of program realized that any decent show must have a good outro. Larry King Live eased into commercial with a "balanced" set of pictures: first, a young Muslim girl holding a picture of Hassan Nassrallah, followed by what is assumed to be a group of Lebanese burning American and Israeli flags, followed by a man carrying a blanket-covered lifeless body, succeeded by two young covered Muslim girls (one of them is in tears), and the sequence ended with three injured Lebanese boys (one of the boys is in tears). Apparently, when showing pictures of injured Israelis (they'd show dead ones, but it doesn't happen often) and "heroic" Israelis, the producers of Larry King Live misplaced the Associated Press pictures of little Israeli girls writing messages on missiles that were about to be fired on the civilian population of Lebanon. Ironically, the only person killed the day of this particular episode was a Palestinian-Israeli girl.
Estimates of dead Lebanese civilians surpassed 900, while the Israeli civilian death toll is at 27. Although thirty three Lebanese civilians die for every one Israeli, the US media deems it necessary to give the Israeli agenda ten minutes of airtime for every minute allotted to the Lebanese voice. The war crimes being carried out against the Lebanese and the Palestinian people by Israel should be newsworthy enough to receive proper coverage. As the conflict drags on, thanks to the US administration's "green light," the coverage is becoming ever more skewed, compounded with additional justifications for Israel's actions, the further villainizing of Hezbollah and now that the Lebanese-American community has been evacuated, the silence of the Lebanese voice. One civilian is one death too many; yet it looks as though thousands more will perish at the hands of Israeli forces, and once again, the US media will be out to lunch.
Remi Kanazi is the primary writer for the political website www.PoeticInjustice.net He lives in New York City as a Palestinian American freelance writer, poet and performer and can reached via email at remroum@gmail.com
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10715
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