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Guardian:
Israeli troops kill 20 Hizbullah guerrillas

Agencies
Tuesday August 1, 2006

Israeli troops killed 20 Hizbullah guerrillas during fresh incursions into southern Lebanon today after Israel's cabinet approved a wider ground offensive late last night.

An army spokeswoman said the latest casualties were inflicted during clashes in the villages of Taibe, Adayseh and Rob Thalantheen, a few miles across the Lebanese frontier.

Last night the Israeli cabinet unanimously backed a widening of ground operations with the aim of pushing Hizbullah forces back to the historic Litani river, 13 miles north of the border.

The operation, which is expected to take at least two weeks, was confirmed by Israel Radio and an anonymous senior government official.

Ephraim Sneh, a senior Labour party politician, also indirectly confirmed the plan. Asked by Israel Radio how long troops would hold on to that territory up to the Litani, Mr Sneh said: "We are not talking about days we are talking about longer, but not about months."

Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a senior cabinet minister, said Israel wanted to establish a Hizbullah-free zone in south Lebanon. "This is the same area where we want a multinational force to be deployed," he said.

"I reckon the time required for the [army] to complete the job, and by that I mean that the area in which we want the international force to deploy is cleansed of Hizbullah, will take around 10 days to two weeks," he said.

Around 300,000 people, mainly Shia Lebanese, lived in the area south of the Litani before the war began.

The apparent push northwards comes after the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert rejected renewed pressure for a ceasefire, in the wake of international outrage at the bombings of the Lebanese village of Qana.

"The fighting continues," he said.

Today the village of Qana was preparing for the burial of the bodies of 54 people, including 37 children, killed in the raids.

Tony Blair today predicted days of further intense diplomatic negotiation before a UN resolution to halt the Middle East bloodshed could be agreed.

But he defended his bid to find agreement, saying: "The most important thing is to try."

Mr Blair, in Los Angeles on the latest leg of a visit to California, has spoken in the last 12 hours to the prime ministers of both Israel and Lebanon, the French president, Jacques Chirac, the Italian prime minister, Romano Prodi, and other leaders.

He said: "We are trying to negotiate the right resolution that allows the conflict to stop and the basic issue is how we give some certainty to both sides that it genuinely is going to stop on both sides.

"We are working on a resolution and a plan to make sure that happens but it will be a very, very intense negotiation over the coming days."

Meanwhile, Hizbullah forces were reported to be fighting Israeli incursions near the border areas of Aita al-Shaab and the village of Kfar Kila.

Lebanese security sources also said Israeli jets bombed south Lebanese border villages, despite pledging to hold off air raids for 48 hours.

The Israeli army claimed that three Hizbullah rockets hit an Israeli border village last night.

For many in the region the Litani river is synonymous with previous Israeli military operations. In 1978, Israel invaded Lebanon in what became known as the Litani river operation, since it extended as far north as the waterway.

The offensive was meant to root out guerrillas of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. At the time the UN security council called on Israel to withdraw and outlined the establishment of an international peacekeeping force for south Lebanon.

The operation largely failed, leading Israel to invade again in 1982, stage a two-year war and then occupy a southern strip of Lebanon, which included the Litani river. In 2000, Israel withdrew from south Lebanon.

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'There is no ceasefire. There will not be any ceasefire'

Israeli PM Olmert issues grim warning as US blocks moves for immediate cessation of hostilities

Ewen MacAskill, Simon Tisdall and Clancy Chassay in Beirut
Tuesday August 1, 2006

An international drive for a ceasefire in Lebanon halted yesterday amid sharp differences at the UN security council, Israel's rejection of any truce in the near future and a Hizbullah warning that it would oppose the deployment of a multinational security force.

Amid undiminished outrage after the Qana tragedy and complaints that the UN was doing nothing, Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said she was convinced a sustainable ceasefire could be achieved at the security council this week.

But Israel signalled dissent hours after she left Jerusalem for Washington. Ehud Olmert, its prime minister, shrugged off international pressure: "The fighting continues. There is no ceasefire and there will not be any ceasefire in the coming days.

"We are not fighting against the Lebanese people. We are not fighting against its government. We are fighting terrorism and we will not stop the fight against them until we push them away from our borders."

Late last night Israel's cabinet approved a wider ground offensive after military chiefs pressed to take forces deeper into Lebanon. An extra three divisions of reservists, about 15,000 soldiers, are to be called up, with reports suggesting the IDF plans to drive Hizbullah back to the Litani river, 13 miles north of the border.

Israel, backed by the US, is insisting that the multinational force be put in place before it halts its operations. France and other countries which could contribute to a proposed 20,000-strong force are determined that a ceasefire and the framework for a political agreement between Israel and Lebanon must precede deployment.

A senior official from one of the countries that may make up the force said: "We are quite adamant. You have to have an immediate ceasefire and then you need a political agreement, and only then can this encompass an international force. The purpose of the force is to help the Lebanese government and the Lebanese people. It is not to fight Hizbullah."

The differences over the timing of the deployment led to the last-minute postponement yesterday of a planned UN meeting of potential troop donors - including France, Italy, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Indonesia, Turkey and Egypt. There are also disagreements over the rules of engagement for the force, including the extent to which it should be involved in forcibly expelling Hizbullah from the Israeli border.

Mohammed Fneish,a Hizbullah cabinet minister,told the Guardian that Israel's agreement to suspend air strikes for 48 hours while the Qana attack was investigated was "nothing more than deception". He said Hizbullah wanted "an immediate ceasefire and prisoner exchange, adding: "The discussion of a comprehensive solution is, in our opinion, a cover for the aggression. This war is no longer an Israeli war. The US took over this war to achieve goals that go well beyond the prisoners. Condoleezza Rice wants to rearrange the region and settle scores.

"In principle we have nothing against Unifil troops [the existing 2,000-strong UN force in Lebanon]. We will only accept Unifil troops. No other foreign forces are acceptable."

Yesterday's developments suggest the plan put by Tony Blair to George Bush in Washington on Friday was overly optimistic. Mr Blair promised a swift insertion of the force, suggesting it was the key to a solution and saying a ceasefire was a matter of urgency.

But Mr Bush repeated that any ceasefire must contribute to "a long-lasting peace, one that is sustainable" and again cast the conflict as part of a global battle between good and evil: "The current crisis is part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East.

"Lebanon's democratic government must be empowered to exercise sole authority over its territory. A multinational force must be dispatched to Lebanon quickly so we can help speed the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Lebanese people. Iran must end its financial support and supply of weapons to terrorist groups like Hizbullah. Syria must end its support for terror and respect the sovereignty of Lebanon."

But, in another sign of international division, Philippe Douste-Blazy, France's foreign minister, praised Iran as "a great country, a great people, and a great civilisation which is respected and which plays a stabilising role in the region".

Despite such disagreements, Ms Rice said there was an "emerging consensus on what is necessary for an urgent ceasefire and a lasting settlement". She said: "Based on what we have accomplished, and the urgency of the situation, we will call for the UN security council action this week on a comprehensive settlement that includes three parts: a ceasefire, the political principles that provide for a long-term settlement, and the authorisation of an international force to support the Lebanese army in keeping the peace."

But a French draft resolution, circulated at the UN, makes its top priority "an immediate cessation of hostilities" and says an agreement on a political framework between Israel and Lebanon must come before the deployment of an international force. It also foresees a continuing role for Unifil, at least until the new deployment takes place.

Lebanon will be discussed by EU foreign ministers in Brussels today, where Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, faces isolation. Alone among EU members, Britain has supported the US-Israeli line in blocking an immediate ceasefire and has refused to condemn Israeli actions as "disproportionate".

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Desperate survivors use truce to flee for safety

Jonathan Steele in Bint Jbeil
Tuesday August 1, 2006

They came in sorry procession down the hill from Bint Jbeil yesterday, the last four patients from the abandoned hospital pushed in wheelchairs, families holding sticks with white flags, a father struggling with four small children propped on pillows in a wheelbarrow.

Taking advantage of an Israeli pledge not to bomb southern Lebanon for 48 hours, the last survivors of the town's two-week siege seized the chance to escape, fear and exhaustion etched on their faces.

Bint Jbeil has seen the fiercest fighting of this war in which nine Israeli soldiers died. The Israelis withdrew from the town four days ago.

Coming out of the basements for the first time yesterday the people of Bint Jbeil found their town in ruins, as though an earthquake had struck.

"We were in an underground room with 20 people. I have a four-year-old son. We ate nothing but boiled rice. Bombs were falling day and night," Roula Bazzi said.

"You can't wash. You can't go out. When we heard about the truce on the radio, we decided to walk."

But some were too shellshocked or old to do so. Bint Jbeil's main streets are a maze of rubble, concrete and dangling electric wires. Two unexploded shells lay in the road. Huge blasts had left the metal shutters on dozens of shops jagged and twisted.

An elderly woman was sitting on the floor of a gutted pharmacy, moaning feebly. Dibi Ibrahim was confused. "I have had no food for six days, and was only drinking water," she said.

It appeared she had walked into town from her home in search of help last week, tripped on the rubble, and limped about, sleeping in the ruins. Red Cross workers led her to an ambulance.

Other rescuers clambered over rubble yesterday, finding frightened old people. A wizened woman in a white scarf was carried in a blanket from a ruined house before being transferred to a stretcher. Another woman called out desperately to an ambulance crew: "Please come and take my husband's sister. She's too ill to move."

Other crews were stopping outside Bint Jbeil to pick up the weakest people walking along the road.

The four children in the wheelbarrow were put into an ambulance with their mothers, who were sisters. Their grandmother was allowed in too. There was a wail as the door slid shut. The father was told men had to make their way to safety on foot.

At the Shaheed [martyr] Salah Ghandour hospital, named after a Hizbullah hero and financed by Iran, Dr Fouad Taha was preparing to leave. "This was the only hospital in this part of southern Lebanon," he said. "We used to have 40 staff but are down to five now. "I want to make sure there are no civilians left. Then I'll go."

Bloodstains covered the floor of the outpatients' department. The fuel tank for the generator had been destroyed. A cat was wandering through the wards.

"Since the bombing started we have treated 160 people, but by the end all we could give was first aid," Dr Taha said. He had no idea how many people had been killed during the town's ordeal.

Devastation

Israeli bombs and artillery had cut a swath of destruction through virtually every building on the southern slopes of the town facing the ridge of Maroun al-Ras, where Israeli forces are still thought to be deployed.

A young man emerged from the ruins in angry mood. Asked if he spoke English, he denied it at first. Then he burst out: "I hate speaking English or French. The Israelis got the green light from Britain, France and the United States for what they've done.

"I've lived here 20 years and I have to say all these [Hizbullah] fighters are my friends."

Describing himself as a teacher at the nearby technical college, he indicated he was helping Hizbullah, though not as a fighter.

"Hizbullah is forbidden from coming out now. This truce is a trap," he said. "But the resistance is still here. They can see you."

His wife and two boys were in Beirut, he said with a sudden catch in his throat. "Wouldn't I prefer to be a father? This is an emergency. I can't see my wife. I have to do this," he said.

Had Hizbullah won at Bint Jbeil? He looked round and shrugged: "We won. So what? My children are in the Mahdi scouts [a Shia youth movement]. If I die, they will carry on. I hate the Jews who live in Israel, because they are not people."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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The king of fairyland will never grasp
the realities of the Middle East

A US leader in his second term should have the power to rein in Israel. But George Bush is no ordinary president

George Monbiot
Tuesday August 1, 2006

Of all the curious things that have been written about Israel's assault on Lebanon, surely the oddest is contained in Paddy Ashdown's article on these pages last Saturday. "There is only one solution to this crisis, and it is the same solution we have to find in Iraq: to go for a wider Middle East settlement and to do it urgently. The US cannot do this. But Europe can."

The US cannot do this? What on earth does he mean? At first sight his contention seems plain wrong. While Israel intends to sustain its occupation of Palestinian territory, a wider settlement is impossible. It surely follows that the country that has the greatest potential leverage over Israel is the country with the greatest power to broker peace. Israel's foreign policy and military strategy is dependent on the approval of the United States.

Though Israel ranks 23rd on the global development index - above Greece, Singapore, Portugal and Brunei - it remains the world's largest recipient of US aid. The US government dispensed $11bn of civil foreign assistance in 2004. Of this, Israel received $555m; the three poorest nations on earth - Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone and Niger - were given a total of $69m. More importantly, last year Israel also received $2.2bn of military aid.

It does not depend economically on this assistance. Its gross domestic product amounts to $155bn, and its military budget to $9.5bn. It manufactures many of its own weapons and buys components from all over the world, including - as the Guardian revealed last week - the United Kingdom. Rather, it depends upon it diplomatically. Most of the money given by the US foreign military financing programme - in common with all US aid disbursements - is spent in the United States. Israel uses it to obtain F-15 and F-16 jets; Apache, Cobra and Blackhawk helicopters; AGM, AIM and Patriot missiles, M-16 rifles, M-204 grenade launchers and M-2 machine guns. As the Prestwick scandal revealed, laser-guided bombs, even now, are being sent to Israel from the United States.

Many of these weapons have been used to kill Palestinian civilians and are being used in Lebanon today. The US arms export control act states that "no defence article or defence service shall be sold or leased by the United States government" unless its provision "will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace". Weapons may be sold "to friendly countries solely for internal security, for legitimate self-defence [or for] maintaining or restoring international peace and security".

By giving these weapons to Israel, the US government is, in effect, stating that all its military actions are being pursued in the cause of legitimate self-defence, American interests and world peace. The US also becomes morally complicit in Israel's murder of civilians. The diplomatic cover this provides is indispensable.

Since 1972 the US has used its veto in the UN security council on 40 occasions to prevent the passage of resolutions that sought either to defend the rights of the Palestinians or to condemn the excesses of Israel's government. This is a greater number of vetoes than all the other permanent members have deployed in the same period. The most recent instance, on July 13, was the squashing of a motion condemning both the Israeli assault on Gaza and the firing of rockets and abduction of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian groups. Over the past few days, the United States, supported by Britain, has blocked all international attempts to introduce an immediate ceasefire, giving Israel the clear impression that it has a mandate to continue its assault on Lebanon.

It is plain to anyone - and this must include Paddy Ashdown - that Israel could not behave as it does without the diplomatic protection of the United States. If the US government announced that it would cease to offer military and diplomatic support if Israel refused to hand back the occupied territories, Israel would have to negotiate. The US government has power over that country. But can it be used?

A paper published in March by the US academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt documents the extraordinary influence the "Israel lobby" exercises in Washington. They argue that the combined forces of evangelical Christian groups and Jewish American organisations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee ensure that "Israel is virtually immune from criticism" in Congress and "also has significant leverage over the executive branch". Politicians who support the Israeli government are showered with funds, the paper contends, while those who contest it are cowed by letter-writing campaigns and vilification in the media. If all else fails, the"great silencer" is deployed: the charge of anti-semitism. Those who oppose the policies of the Israeli government are accused of hating Jews.

All this makes an even-handed policy difficult, but not impossible. Standing up to bullies is surely the key test of leadership. A US president in his second term is in a powerful position to demand that Israel pulls back and negotiates.

But if Ashdown meant that it is impossible psychologically and intellectually for the US government to act, he might have a point. At his press conference with Tony Blair last Friday, George Bush laid out his usual fairy tale about the conflict in the Middle East. "There's a lot of suffering in Lebanon," he explained, "because Hizbullah attacked Israel. There's a lot of suffering in the Palestinian territory because militant Hamas is trying to stop the advance of democracy. There is suffering in Iraq because terrorists are trying to spread sectarian violence and stop the spread of democracy." The current conflict in Lebanon "started, out of the blue, with two Israeli soldiers kidnapped and rockets being fired across the border".

I agree that Hizbullah fired the first shots. But out of the blue? Israel's earlier occupation of southern Lebanon; its continued occupation of the Golan Heights; its occupation and partial settlement of the West Bank and gradual clearance of Jerusalem; its shelling of civilians, power plants, bridges and pipelines in Gaza; its beating and shooting of children; its imprisonment or assassination of Palestinian political leaders; its bulldozing of homes; its humiliating and often lethal checkpoints: all these are, in Bush's mind, either fictional or carry no political consequences. The same goes for the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and the constant threats Bush issues to Syria and Iran. There is only one set of agents at work - the terrorists - and their motivation arises autochthonously from the evil in their hearts.

Israel is not solely to blame for this crisis. The firing of rockets into its cities is an intolerable act of terrorism. But to understand why the people assaulting that country will not put down their arms, the king of fairyland would be forced to come to terms with the consequences of Israel's occupation of other people's lands and of its murder of civilians; of his own invasion of Iraq and of his failure, across the past six years, to treat the Palestinians fairly. And this he seems incapable of doing. Instead, his answers last Friday suggested, Bush is constructing a millenarian narrative of escalating conflict leading to the final triumph of freedom and democracy.

So I fear that Paddy Ashdown may be right. The United States cannot pursue a wider settlement in the Middle East, for it is led by a man who lives in a world of his own.

www.monbiot.com

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After Castro?

John Harris
August 1, 2006 11:14 AM

Two weeks ago, I sat in the gardens of Havana's Hotel Nacional, talking to Dr Gerardo De La Yera, the 76 year-old vice-president of Cuba's 120 Club, a society for people who fancy racking up six score years. As well as talking about his work as a surgeon (for a man of his age, he has an unbelievably steady hand), we chewed over the recent news that Fidel Castro's personal physician - in this instance, an apparent master of romance rather than science - thinks the Cuban president might make it beyond even that milestone, and on to 140. His secret, said Dr De La Yera, was simple: exercise, healthy eating, "working with the mind" and the fact that he long ago quit smoking.

This morning, however, the wires bring unexpected news: owing to surgery for intestinal bleeding, Castro has "temporarily delegated" power to his brother Raul, who's a sprightly 75. The move was announced via a press release that suggests something rather graver than a few days in hospital; indeed, one would be forgiven for interpreting its closing paragraphs as an admission that Castro's illness puts the Cuban model of socialism in some peril. "I have not the slightest doubt that our people and our revolution will fight until the last drop of blood to defend these and other ideas and measures that may be necessary to safeguard this historic process," it says. "Imperialism will never be able to crush Cuba. The battle of ideas will continue."

So, Cuban exiles - represented, as usual, by those dependably imbalanced conservatives who claim to speak for them - are reportedly dancing in the streets of Miami, and I would imagine that flights to Havana are now fully booked. One correspondent I met there sums up the situation crisply: "Something serious is happening; this may be a major turning point."

Which way Castro's beloved "battle of ideas" may now turn is a particularly fascinating question. Towards the end of the 1990s, there was talk of a subtle progress towards a managed kind of market economy, heralded by the authority's embrace of joint ventures with foreign companies and a new liberal attitude to small businesses, like the paladares: restaurants than can remain in private hands as long as (and how's this for beautifully communist logic?) they have no more than 12 tables. With an influx of money from Venezuela and China, however, the door to private enterprise has once again slammed shut. Moreover, it is guarded by a breed of young apparatchiks, devoted to the party line and reportedly set on the approach known locally as "safeguarding the achievements of the revolution".

So, as and when Castro exits, will the Cuban people let loose a bottled-up liberalising instinct and bang up against the Caribbean's equivalent of the Red Guards? Could the ensuing clash snuff out the power of the hardline Castro-ites and finally open the economy for the American corporations that are presumably rubbing their hands already? Or might pragmatic minds within the party shove dogma to one side, embrace the more unthreatening aspects of the free market, and nudge Cuba towards the kind of old-fashioned mixed economy that seems to be taking root in the countries with which Castro currently aligns himself - chiefly, Venezuela and Bolivia?

One thing should certainly be borne in mind. Cuba may look forlorn, all peeling buildings and pockmarked roads. Its economy may have long since tumbled into creaking anarchy. But unlike the old states of eastern Europe, the revolution has a few genuine jewels to defend: chiefly, its education system, and globally-acclaimed healthcare.

I traveled to Cuba to make a film for Newsnight's new series on the world's best public services, which airs tonight. Our four days in and around Havana were spent exploring a health system that emphasizes preventive care, locks doctors into the local populations that they serve, and is built around a simplicity from which the British NHS - particularly in its ever-more fragmented, Blairite incarnation - would do well to learn. The country's health indicators speak volumes: Cuba has an average life expectancy of 77.3 as against the USA's 77.4. The two countries' rates of infant mortality and maternal morbidity are similarly close. Their respective health spends, however, underline the Cuban miracle: in the states, the annual figure is $5711; in Cuba, it's $251.

Gazing into the post-Castro future, few would deny the imperative for fair elections, press freedom, and the kind of liberalisation that would free up the initiative and ambition that currently finds its outlet in the country's labyrinthine black market. There is, however, one caveat: anyone who would let loose a free market hurricane and sweep away Castro's public services would be in deep, deep trouble. As the president goes under the knife, I would imagine it's that thought that may be keeping his more enlightened supporters calm.

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