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Thursday, August 31, 2006

In case you've forgotten...


Darfur is still a disaster. One might be tempted to think that things have gotten better there since it hasn't been in the news. If anything, it's just getting worse:

So far, negotiations over a proposed United Nations force to shore up the shaky peace in Darfur have limped along with no sign of compromise. The opposing sides in the conflict now seem headed toward a large-scale military confrontation, bringing Darfur to the edge of a new abyss -- perhaps the deepest it has faced.

"Unfortunately, things seem to be headed in that direction," said Gen. Collins Ihekire, commander of the beleaguered 7,000-member African Union force that is enforcing a fragile peace agreement between the government and one rebel group.

Nearly four months after signing the agreement, the government is preparing a fresh assault against the rebel groups that refused to sign. Years of conflict have already killed hundreds of thousands of people here and sent 2.5 million fleeing their homes. But that may be a prelude of the death likely to come from further fighting, hunger and disease. In the past few months, killings of aid workers and hijackings of their vehicles, mostly by rebel groups, have forced aid groups to curtail programs to feed, clothe and shelter hundreds of thousands of people.

Add to that the fact that many people are cut off from humanitarian aid and the African Union's mandate is about to expire next month.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Last Refuge


Again from the Times magazine, an article by Hassan Daoud about last refuges, and how even they can be destroyed.

Israel and Hizbollah to negotiate prisoner swap


It seems that after the destruction of much of Lebanon, and the death of around 1,100 Lebanese (most of whom were civilians) and over 150 Israeli deaths (most of whom were soldiers), there will be an exchange in prisoners after all.

Interestingly enough, Hassan Nasrallah said last night that had he known that Israel was going to react so strongly, he would not have captured the two Israeli soldiers:

"We did not think, even one percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude," Hassan Nasrallah, the cleric who leads Hizbullah, told Lebanon's New TV channel. "You ask me, if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not." He said Italy would play a part in negotiating the soldiers' eventual release. "Contacts recently began for negotiations," he said. "It seems that Italy is trying to get into the subject." From the start, Mr Nasrallah has said he wanted to exchange the soldiers for Lebanese and Palestinians held in Israel.

Sergio de Gregorio, head of Italy's senate defence committee, said that Iran, Hizbullah's backer, wanted Italy involved. Mr de Gregorio told Reuters he expected talks to start this week. He said the two Israelis were "still alive, fortunately", but would not talk about how they were or what kind of deal might free them.

An Egyptian newspaper reported that German diplomats had helped negotiate a deal to have them freed in two or three weeks. A number of Lebanese held by Israel would be freed in return a day or two later, it said.

While it is true that Israel's reaction to the capture of one soldier by militants in Gaza should have been viewed as a bellwether for Israel's reaction in Lebanon, not many people expected such a violent reaction. After all, attacking Gaza is like shooting fish in a barrel for the IDF, whereas Hizbollah, as we have seen, is capable of not only withstanding an Israeli attack, but fighting back. So in the end, I'm inclined to believe Nasrallah, first because he's not prone to political bluster and usually says what he means and means what he says, and second, because I didn't see the war coming either.

This was obviously not a deterrent to Israel, but it might make Tel Aviv think twice about rushing into a large-scale military solution rather than continuing the status quo of small-scale tit for tat military action or, hopefully, initiating a broad diplomatic process that would help stabalize the region in the long run.

Disarming Hizbollah


In Sunday's Magazine in the Times, there was an article on disarming Hizbollah, in which parallels are made to the situations in the Ivory Coast, Kosovo, the Congo and Northern Ireland. The point is made that disarmament cannot realistically be done by force (unless one is prepared and able to destroy the force) and that there has to be a good political and diplomatic framework that offers the militants a reason to disarm themselves.

Israel launched its air, land and sea attack on Lebanon with the goal, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it, of "disarming this murderous organization"; in that regard, the campaign failed. How, then, could any lesser force succeed? Lebanon's defense minister, Elias Murr, has defended Hezbollah and flatly asserted that the Lebanese Army "is not going to the south to strip Hezbollah of its weapons and do the work that Israel did not." Neither will a U.N. peacekeeping force, however large. "You cannot impose peace on these people if they?re ready to fight you," as a D.D.R. [disarmament, demobilization and reintegration] expert in the U.N.'s peacekeeping department puts it. "You need to be able to annihilate them, because they?re not going to lay down their arms voluntarily." Even robust United Nations forces do not seek to annihilate their adversaries.

If Hezbollah cannot be forcibly disarmed, can some political arrangement induce the militia to disarm itself? This, of course, raises a question about Hezbollah?s aspirations: is it seeking to achieve through force a goal that can be attained through diplomacy, or through political activity? That this is in fact the case is the unspoken premise of United Nations Resolution 1559, passed in 2004, which sought to release Lebanon from the suffocating grip of Syria, and thus to begin a national dialogue that would ultimately lead to the incorporation of Hezbollah into Lebanese affairs.

I've said this before, but the only realistic way to get Hizbollah to disarm is politically and diplomatically. Israeli attacks on Lebanon only serve to strengthen Hizbollah's raison d'être, showing that they do need a strong paramilitary force to defend Lebanon from another Israeli invasion. That the invasion might not have occured if it weren't for the conflict is not really important: the conflict does exist. If Israel were really interested in getting rid of Hizbollah's militia forces, then Tel Aviv would have to start another round of "land for peace" negotiations. The problem is that since Lebanon's (and perhaps more importantly, Hizbollah's) policy toward Israel is inextricably linked with that of Syria, the process would have to be much wider. This means that it wouldn't be enough to just give back Lebanese territory; a peace initiative would have to include at least the Syrians if not the Palestinians in order to work.

This would be a lot of hard and complicated work; however, if Israel is really interested in peace, they're going to have to start sometime. And the sooner the better.

Friday, August 25, 2006

More French and Italian peacekeepers


France has agreed to send 2,000 peacekeepers to Southern Lebanon, and Italy is expected to confirm its offer of 3,000 troops. France was waiting for clarifications on the force's mandate, chain of command (which will be military and not civilian), and "freedom of movement and capacity for action."

It is still unclear exactly to what extent UN troops will be excpected to disarm Hizbollah and to what extent the latter will cooperate with the force. It seems clear to me that the only way to successfully disarm Hizbollah is politically and diplomatically, dealing with its grievances, such as the Shebaa Farms currently occupied by Israel and Lebanese prisoners being held in Israeli jails. The IDF's recent attacks have shown how difficult it is to disarm Hizbollah, and if French and Italian troops try to engage Hizbollah militarily with the aim of disarming them, they will certainly find themselves in a repeat of the 1980s when French and American troops were attacked and then withdrew from Lebanon.

US investigation into Israeli use of American munitions


The US State Department has decided to conduct an inquiry into Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs in Lebanon. The two countries have a secret agreement that such munitions are only to be used against military targets:

The investigation by the department?s Office of Defense Trade Controls began this week, after reports that three types of American cluster munitions, anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area, have been found in many areas of southern Lebanon and were responsible for civilian casualties.

...Several current and former officials said that they doubted the investigation would lead to sanctions against Israel but that the decision to proceed with it might be intended to help the Bush administration ease criticism from Arab governments and commentators over its support of Israel's military operations. The investigation has not been publicly announced; the State Department confirmed it in response to questions.

So is this a real inquiry or is it being done to try to make the US look a little better in the eyes of the rest of the world? According to the Times article, there was a six-year ban imposed on cluster bomb sales to Israel in 1982 after a Congressional investigation found that Israel had used the weapons against civilian areas in violation of the agreements.

Here is a map made by the UN that shows cluster bomb attacks in the South of Lebanon.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Aid and Hizbollah


Relief agencies in Southern Lebanon that receive American funding are finding themselves in a difficult situation. The US government says that they are not allowed to give out aid or money through Hizbollah. This means that they should bypass the organization completely, a difficulyt task in Southern Lebanon:

"Unicef has been here, and Mercy Corps and other groups," said Ahmad Zogby, 39, whose house was destroyed, along with that of his parents. "But everything coming in, Hezbollah puts an eye on it, makes sure it is all given out in the proper way. It is all in the hands of Hezbollah."

Though Hezbollah is only one of many groups providing social services in Lebanon, its reputation for delivering those services honestly is unmatched, making it that much harder to circumvent. In nearby Nabatiye, for instance, Mercy Corps has begun working through the Jabbar Foundation, a nonprofit group run by Yaseen Jabbar, a wealthy member of Parliament.

But the mayor of Nabatiye, Mustapha Badreddine, 55, says he considers the foundation ineffective. For his own part, Mr. Badreddine says he does not belong to Hezbollah, but that he works with it because it is trustworthy, far more so than any other group in the area.

...As an example of Hezbollah's hold on everyday life in southern Lebanon, Ali Bazzi, the mayor of Bint Jbail, outlined his big dreams for his half-demolished town as workmen raced past and tractors rumbled.

...Bint Jbail, the main Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon, saw some of the worst bombing and fighting during the monthlong war, in which Hezbollah, which is integrated with the general population, was Israel's target. But Mr. Bazzi intends to complete the reconstruction without using a single cent from the Lebanese government, much less the United States or the West.

Instead, Mr. Bazzi is counting on Construction Jihad [Hizbollah's building company]. Just a day after the fighting stopped, Construction Jihad enlisted the volunteer services of 1,700 engineers, electricians, plumbers, architects and geologists who have cleared streets, dug ditches and built temporary bridges.

While the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has just begun organizing committees to study the reconstruction of the country, Construction Jihad has all but completed surveys of southern Lebanese towns.

I've talked to people from other internaitonal NGOs, and this is a common problem in places like Lebanon. The US government stipulates that organizations cannot have anything to do with anyone who has anything to do with groups on the "terrorist list." This has caused NGOs to be fractured to the point where the American and other European branches have seperate offices in the same city.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Brahimi's plan for peace


Lakhdar Brahimi, former special adviser to the United Nations Secretary General, weighs in on the war in Lebanon with a five-point plan:

1. ensuring Lebanon's unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity and the full implementation of the 1989 Taif accord

2. encouraging Hizbollah to play a responsible role in the internal dynamics of Lebanon and expecting it to accept the Lebanese state?s exclusive right to possess armaments and use force

3. demanding that Syria and Iran, as well as all other states in the region and beyond, respect Lebanon's sovereignty and abstain from interfering in its internal affairs

4. telling Israel to withdraw its troops from all the territory it currently occupies, including the Shebaa Farms

5. focusing urgent and sustained attention on the problem that underlies the unrest in the Middle East: the Palestinian issue.

He also expresses his disgust at the the loss of life in this war, the destruction of Lebanon and the short-sighted analyses that seem so commonplace:

Wat a waste that it took more than 30 days to adopt a United Nations Security Council resolution for a cease-fire in Lebanon. Thirty days during which nothing positive was achieved and a great deal of pain, suffering and damage was inflicted on innocent people.

The loss of innocent civilian life is staggering and the destruction, particularly in Lebanon, is devastating. Human rights organizations and the United Nations have condemned the humanitarian crisis and violations of international humanitarian law.

Yet all the diplomatic clout of the United States was used to prevent a cease-fire, while more military hardware was rushed to the Israeli Army. It was argued that the war had to continue so that the root causes of the conflict could be addressed, but no one explained how destroying Lebanon would achieve that.

And what are these root causes? It is unbelievable that recent events are so regularly traced back only to the abduction of three Israeli soldiers. Few speak of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, or of its Lebanese prisoners, some of whom have been held for more than 20 years. And there is hardly any mention of military occupation and the injustice that has come with it.

What most people don't seem to understand is that the only way to disarm Hizbollah is to do so politically and diplomatically, and the only way to do this is to take away their raison d'être, which is Israeli occupation of Lebanese and Syrian land. I say Lebanese and Syrian, because the foreign policy of these two countries (at least insofar as Israel is concerned) is inextricably linked. Syria is willing to negotiate peace for land, but Israel doesn't seem interested. Ironically, the very land that Israel occupies for "security reasons" is making the country that much less secure.

Labor solidarity


The British Labor party is showing a little solidarity regarding the one word summary of Bush's handling of the Middle East:

Labour agrees: Bush is crap

Ian Davidson Glasgow South West MP

"I think that John Prescott is to be commended for the quality of his political analysis. His comment on American policy is brief and accurate. Britain has got to ensure that it is no longer seen as simply being the glove puppet of the United States."

Thursday, August 17, 2006

I love Beirut


The Lebanon Chronicle has been sending out stickers and posting photos of the stickers all over the world:



Los Angeles:



Berlin:



They've also been posting all of the many reasons why people love Beirut. It was only after they posted mine that I realized that "pretty girls" ended up on my list three times...

Lebanese death toll reaches 1,300


The death toll has reached 1,300 in Lebanon.

In Srifa, south of the Litani river, they found 26 bodies beneath ruins which I myself stood on just three days ago. At Ainata, there were eight more bodies of civilians. A corpse was discovered beneath a collapsed four-storey house north of Tyre and, near by, the remains of a 16-year old girl, along with three children and an adult. In Khiam in eastern Lebanon, besieged by the Israelis for more than a month, the elderly village "mukhtar" was found dead in the ruins of his home.

Not all the dead were civilians. At Kfar Shuba, dumper-truck drivers found the bodies of four Hizbollah members. At Roueiss, however, all 13 bodies found in the wreckage of eight 10-storey buildings were civilians. They included seven children and a pregnant woman. Ten more bodies were disentangled from the rubble of the southern suburbs of Beirut - where local people claimed they could still hear the screams of neighbours trapped far below the bomb-smashed apartment blocks.

...How many of these dead would have survived if George Bush and Tony Blair had demanded an immediate ceasefire weeks ago will never be known. But many would have had the chance of life had Western governments not regarded this dirty war as an "opportunity" to create a "new" Middle East by humbling Iran and Syria.

Is Hamas ready to deal?


When I was in Ramallah, a friend introduced me to his American/Palestinian cousin who works in the Palestinian Authority. She's young and intelligent, grew up abroad and feels more comfortable in English than in Arabic. She had to move back in with her family, because she hasn't been paid in months. She spoke to me about a plan to try to reshuffle the ministers, adding some members of Fatah, in order to appease the US so that their assets will be unfrozen. (The only people who changed with Hamas's success in the recent elections were the ministers, the other ministry workers, and in most cases even the deputy ministers, remained the same.)

A reasearcher from the CNRS in Paris asks whether this means that Hamas is ready to deal.

A bold gesture now by Israel would surprise its adversaries, convey strength, and even catch domestic political opposition off guard. And as strange as it may seem, were the United States able to help Israel help Hamas, it might turn the rising tide of global Muslim resentment.

Recent discussions I've had with Hamas leaders and their supporters around the globe indicate that Israel might just find a reasonable and influential bargaining partner.

Hamas's top elected official, Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, now accepts that to stop his people's suffering, his government must forsake its all-or-nothing call for Israel's destruction. "We have no problem with a sovereign Palestinian state over all our lands within the 1967 borders, living in calm," Mr. Haniya told me in his Gaza City office in late June, shortly before an Israeli missile destroyed it. "But we need the West as a partner to help us through."

Mr. Haniya's government had just agreed to a historic compromise with Fatah and its leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, forming a national coalition that implicitly accepts the coexistence alongside Israel. But this breakthrough was quickly overshadowed by Israel?s offensive into Gaza in retaliation for the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants, including members of Hamas?s military wing.

...Khaled Meshal, the Damascus-based head of the Hamas politburo, refused to release Corporal Shalit unless Israel freed hundreds of prisoners. While it is true that Israel has shown willingness to release hundreds of Palestinian detainees in return for a single Israeli in the past, Mr. Meshal's stand might have been part of a larger political game.

...Prime Minster Haniya and many of Hamas's other Sunni leaders are known to be uncomfortable with the loose coalition that Mr. Meshal has been forging with Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. Hasan Yusuf, a Hamas official held in Israel's Ketziot prison, doesn't think President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran's declaration that the main solution to the Middle East crisis is for the elimination of the "Zionist regime" is practical or wise. "The outcome in Lebanon doesn't change our view," Mr. Yusuf informed me last weekend. "We believe in two states living side by side."

He also said that "all Hamas factions have agreed to a unilateral cease-fire, including halting Qassam rockets; the movement is ready to go farther if it receives any encouraging responses from Israel and the West."

But even moderate Hamas figures feel that as long as Israel, the United States and Europe boycott the elected government in Gaza and the West Bank, there is little choice but to accept whatever help comes along.

This is doubly unfortunate. While Mr. Meshal says Islam allows only a long-term truce with Israel, Hamas officials closer to Prime Minister Haniya believe that a formal peace deal is possible, especially if negotiations can begin out of the spotlight and proceed by degrees.

"You can't expect us to take off all of our clothes at once," one Hamas leader told me, "or we'll be naked in the cold, like Arafat in his last years." This official said that if Hamas moved too fast, it would alienate its base, but if his government continued to be isolated, the base would radicalize. "Either way, you could wind up with a bunch of little Al Qaedas."

...Tangible results, like prisoner exchanges, are important. However, so are symbolic actions. Hamas officials have stressed the importance of Israel's recognizing their suffering from the original loss of Palestinian land. And survey research of Palestinian refugees and Hamas by my colleagues and I, supported by the National Science Foundation, reliably finds that violent opposition to peace decreases if the adversary is seen to compromise its own moral position, even if the compromise has no material value.

"Israel freeing some of our prisoners will help us to stop others from attacking it," said the Hamas government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad. "But Israel must apologize for our tragedy in 1948 before we can talk about negotiating over our right of return to historic Palestine."

Talking and negotiating with Hamas, and Hizbollah and Damascus for that matter, would take a bold move on Israel's part, which would most likely have to be preceded by a strong push from the US. Unfortunately, I think that what we can probably expect is more rhetoric about how one can't talk to terrorists and how poor Israel would love to settle this conflict once and for all but just can't find a partner in peace.

And if that's the case, we can look forward to things not only not getting better, but getting dramatically worse in the region, and consequently, all over the world.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Herr Grass's wartime career


And now for something completely different. It seems that Nobel laureate, Günter Grass, Germany's greatest living writer, had been lying about his past. It seems that when he was 17, he was in the Waffen SS.

Now the great advocate of facing unpalatable truths has lived up to his own standards, but a little late. The revelation came in an interview with Germany's respected conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), and while it is certain to boost interest in his forthcoming autobiography it has done immeasurable harm to the writer's squeaky-clean reputation.

...Grass's insistent, repetitive message to his fellow citizens was that they should never, ever forget. It seems that only now has he himself chosen to remember.

I'm not really sure what to think about this information. I suppose being in the SS when you were 17 is forgivable, particularly when the Nazis were drafting everyone; however, the fact that he's hidden it for so long really gives me a bad taste in my mouth.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The real war starts


Robert Fisk does not seem optimistic. In today's Independent, he predicts weeks of guerrilla warfare in the south, despite that fact that the roads to the south were already packed with Lebanese trying to get back to their homes and bury their dead:

The real war in Lebanon begins today. The world may believe - and Israel may believe - that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed. But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose.

...From this morning, Hizbollah's operations will be directed solely against the invasion force. And the Israelis cannot afford to lose 40 men a day. Unable to shoot down the Israeli F-16 aircraft that have laid waste to much of Lebanon, the Hizbollah have, for years, prayed and longed and waited for the moment when they could attack the Israeli army on the ground.

Now they are set to put their long-planned campaign into operation. Thousands of their members remain alive and armed in the ruined hill villages of southern Lebanon for just this moment and, only hours after their leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel on Saturday that his men were waiting for them on the banks of the Litani river, the Hizbollah sprang their trap, killing more than 20 Israeli soldiers in less than three hours.

...At this fatal juncture in Middle East history - and no one should underestimate this moment's importance in the region - the Israeli army appears as impotent to protect its country as the Hizbollah clearly is to protect Lebanon.

But if the ceasefire collapses, as seems certain, neither the Israelis nor the Americans appear to have any plans to escape the consequences. The US saw this war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but already it seems as if the tables have been turned. The Israeli military appears to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and apartment blocks - but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army they swore to liquidate.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Lebanon as a test run for Iran


Sy Hersh has a new piece on Lebanon in The New Yorker. He says that this conflict had been planned by Israel and approved by the US for several months. The idea was that Israel's attacks on Hizbollah and Lebanon's infrastructure would serve as a trial run for a future American attack on Iran.

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel?s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground. ...

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah -- and shared it with Bush Administration officials -- well before the July 12th kidnappings. "It's not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into," he said, "but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it."

The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, "The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy."

Of course this attack has not gone as smoothly as the Israelis would have liked it to. The results have so far been unclear, with both sides claiming victory. This war seems to have been sold to the US by Israel, but so far, notes Richard Armitage it has been less than convincing and should serve as a warning against attacking Iran:

"The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. "Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House "has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah." He added, "It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it." (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush's first term -- and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah "may be the A team of terrorists" -- Israel's campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. "If the most dominant military force in the region -- the Israel Defense Forces -- can't pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million," Armitage said. "The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis."

Cease-fire begins


After a last-minute push by Israeli troops and another 220 rockets fired by Hizbollah, the cease-fire has begun. It only took a month:

...since July 12, nearly 1,150 Lebanese are estimated to have died, most of them civilians, and about 150 Israelis, mostly soldiers. Israel says 500 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, a figure Hezbollah disputes. In Gaza, nearly 200 Palestinians have died, many of them militants.
We'll see what this actually means, since both sides seem to have reserved the right to respond to the other:

Eli Yishai, the Israeli trade minister, also issued a stark warning to Lebanon even if the ceasefire comes into force, saying, "If a single stone is thrown at Israel from whatever village that happens, it should be turned into a pile of stones."

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Saturday, "As long as there is Israeli military movement, Israeli field aggression and Israeli soldiers occupying our land ... it is our natural right to confront them, fight them and defend our land, our homes, and ourselves."

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Hizbollah's other war


Reading some of Michael Young's pieces in the Daily Star while I was in Beirut a few weeks ago sometimes made me sick to my stomach. However, his piece in the NY Times Magazine this week is definitely worth a read.

He goes into the dense jungle that is Lebanese politics, explaining the constantly changing alliances and feuds that are often difficult to follow for outsiders. He speaks of the gains that the Shia, who had been historically left out of Lebanese poltical life, have made through Hizbollah, and the tensions felt between the pro-Syrian parties and the March 14 group.

It's a long article, but very much worth a read.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

The London Review on Lebanon and Israel


The London Review has updated, and there are several articles about Lebanon and Israel, including Yitzhak Laor on the IDF and Charles Glass on Hizbollah. There is also a good article by Michael Byers on the limits of self-defence:

'I entirely understand the desire, and indeed need, for Israel to defend itself properly,' Tony Blair said on 14 July. 'As a sovereign nation, Israel has every right to defend itself,' George W. Bush said on 16 July. By the time these statements were made, the IDF had bombed Beirut?s international airport, destroyed roads, bridges, power stations and petrol stations, and imposed an air and sea blockade. The Israeli army chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, had promised to 'turn back the clock in Lebanon by twenty years'. All this in response, ostensibly, to the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others by Hizbullah militants on 12 July.

The right of self-defence identified by Blair and Bush is part of international law. Which makes two conclusions possible: either this area of international law is so elastic as to be inoperative; or it is being interpreted by Blair and Bush in an untenable way. ...


Then there is international humanitarian law, which both Hizbullah and Israel have violated. These rules are set out in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which Israel ratified in 1951. The direct targeting of civilians is categorically prohibited, and this includes acts or threats of violence intended to spread terror or impose collective punishment. Indiscriminate attacks are proscribed. Above all, individual targets may be selected only if the direct military advantage anticipated from the strike exceeds the expected harm to civilians or civilian objects. Hizbullah?s rocket attacks, which have been aimed in the general vicinity of Israeli cities and towns rather than at specific military targets, are illegal.

So too are many of Israel's attacks. More than seven hundred Lebanese civilians have been killed to date, most of them women and children. Some were struck by missiles as they fled for safety. Others were hit because blasted roads, bridges and petrol stations had made it impossible for them to flee. More died when Israel dropped bombs in densely populated neighbourhoods. Even more are dying now as hospitals, water filtration plants and sewage treatment facilities struggle with power shortages. In no circumstance may attacks on civilians or civilian infrastructure be justified by similar violations on the other side. The horrors of Qana, where dozens of Lebanese civilians died in a single precision air-strike, cannot be balanced by lost Israeli lives.

It has been suggested that Israel's actions are aimed at turning the Lebanese population against Hizbullah. A similar kind of thinking was popular during the Second World War, as evidenced by the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg and several cities in Japan. It re-emerged shortly before the 2003 Iraq war in the language of 'shock and awe'. But military action undertaken with such an intention was rejected during the negotiation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and remains illegal. It's also wrong-headed, since people who have been attacked are more likely to blame their attackers than anyone else.

International humanitarian law forbids methods of warfare that cause 'unnecessary suffering or superfluous injury'. For this reason, Hizbullah's use of rockets packed with ball-bearings is illegal, while Israel?s reliance on cluster bombs, fuel-air explosives, white phosphorus (as a weapon rather than for illumination) and depleted uranium is immoral and quite possibly also illegal.

Finally, there's the death of the four UN observers, struck by a precision-guided bomb in a highly visible, long-established post located on a barren hilltop ? after Israeli forces had been warned repeatedly that their projectiles were falling perilously close by. It's easy to suspect that the attack was deliberate, perhaps intended to force the UN to withdraw its other observers from the area, which it duly did. It may even have been designed to dissuade countries from offering troops for the international force being championed by Tony Blair ? a force that, if it's ever created, will take months to deploy. If the killing of the observers was deliberate, it would constitute a clear violation of international humanitarian law.

Violations of these various rules constitute war crimes, which are subject to universal jurisdiction in the sense that the perpetrators may be prosecuted in any country's domestic courts. This raises the possibility of trials if they are foolish enough to travel abroad and the local authorities brave enough to arrest them. The Israeli justice minister, Haim Ramon, will wish to be particularly careful. On 27 July, he said that civilians had been given ample warning and 'all those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hizbullah.' Unfortunately, there?s no possibility of prosecutions in the International Criminal Court, since neither Israel nor Lebanon has ratified the court's statute, and the United States would veto any attempt by the Security Council to use its power to send the matter there.

The absence of a reliable mechanism for prosecuting Hizbullah and Israeli leaders is less serious, however, than the support that Bush and Blair have given to clear violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions. The long-term viability of these rules depends on the willingness of politicians ? and the general public ? to speak out in defence of international law.

Friday, August 11, 2006

America at its worst


While I was in Jerusalem, I was sent a forwarded e-mail that asked whether or not a good Muslim can be a good American. The answer, of course, was no. I figured that this was just another case of racist drivel perpetuated by forwarded e-mails, but imagine my disappointment when I saw that it is a sentiment shared by many Americans according to this Gallup poll.

A new Gallup poll finds that many Americans -- what it calls "substantial minorities" -- harbor "negative feelings or prejudices against people of the Muslim faith" in this country. Nearly one in four Americans, 22%, say they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbor.

While Americans tend to disagree with the notion that Muslims living in the United States are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, a significant 34% believe they do back al-Qaeda. And fewer than half -- 49% -- believe U.S. Muslims are loyal to the United States.

Almost four in ten, 39%, advocate that Muslims here should carry special I.D. That same number admit that they do hold some "prejudice" against Muslims. Forty-four percent say their religious views are too "extreme."

In every case, Americans who actually know any Muslims are more sympathethic.

The poll was taken at the end of July and surveyed 1,007 adult Americans.
Special identification? Is the US going even more insane? Why don't we just make them little crescents to sew on their clothes?

Pictures from the holy land


Here are a bunch of different photos that I took while in the holy land:

This is the Wailing Wall, or the Western Wall, if you prefer:



This a picture of the young Israelis who shocked me with their guns in the middle of West Jerusalem's night life:



Here are pictures from the anti-war rally in Tel Aviv. The first is the protest, the second is a Palestinian protester being roughed up by the police while people yelled that he should be sent to Gaza to be killed, and the third is a pro-war protest across the street:








A poster from the rally:




The walls of Jerusalem's old city:




Inside the old city in the morning at one of the gate's leading to al-Aqsa or al-Harem as-sharif:



The Dome of the Rock:



The anti-war candle light vigil at Damascus Gate (Bab al-Amoud) in Jerusalem:



This is a view from Bethlehem. The walled off section is a settlement, which is 70% empty:



This is part of the seperation wall that has cut right by a Palestinian home, cutting the home off from the rest of its land:



Here is the wall up close in Bethlehem:



These pictures are from the Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Camp in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem:



Wednesday, August 09, 2006

A letter from Beirut...


I arrived in Amman from Jerusalem yesterday. I was worried about crossing back over, especially since I brought back a small olive tree for the Palestinian family who's been so kind as to take care of me while I'm here, but the Israelis don't seem to care about what goes out of the country.

George Galloway spoke out against the media bias while I was on my way home.

A friend also sent me a link to a video letter from Beirut...to who love us. You can download it here:

Now, listen well. We are besieged and the smell of gunpoweder is in the air. Gunpowder, and the world is watching.We are besieged because the world is watching. What matters is that we still have a bit of food and water. And pride. And dignity. And above all lots of love.

We are 4 million people; 4 million and one who was born today in a school under siege. We are here. Where are you?




The first clip is angry, because there is a lot to be angry about. The second clip is sad, because there is even more to be sad about.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Satellite images of Beirut, before and after


The Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten has sattelite images of Beirut (I think this is in the Dahiye, the southern suburb of the capital) from 12 July and 31 July:

Sunday, August 06, 2006


Beirut responds to the text of the proposed Security Council resolution:

Nouhad Mahmoud, a Lebanese foreign ministry official, said on Sunday that the government "would have liked to see our concerns more reflected in the text" of the draft resolution.

"Unfortunately, it lacked, for instance, a call for the withdrawal of Israeli forces which are now in Lebanon. That is a recipe for more confrontation."

He said the government was also unhappy that the resolution does not call for the Shebaa Farms area to be put under UN control, as Lebanon has asked, while its future status is figured out.

Protest in Tel Aviv and guns over Jerusalem


I went to Tel Aviv last night for a protest againt the war in Lebanon. There was a group of Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners protesting the war and a group of Israelis protesting the protest. The first group was holding signs in Hebrew, Arabic and English calling for an end to the war and to the occuptation. The others were holding signs with slogans like "Let the Army win" and "All terrorists are Muslim." Yael Dayan, the daughter of Moshe Dayen also spoke at the protest. She was initially applauded when she said that the war should stop, but was then booed when she said that the war had started out as a "just war."

The police were sometimes violent and at one point beat up a Palestinian guy. There were five policemen against a single guy, whose head they repeatedly smashed onto a car hood. Israeli spectators were screaming that he was just a dirty Arab and deserved to be "sent to Gaza to be killed."

I spoke to a young Israeli woman whose parents were from Kazakhstan. She was against the war but stayed at the edges of the protest, because she felt a little hypocritical. AS it turns out, she'll be starting her military service in a couple of months. As a woman, she won't be sent to Lebanon or Gaza, but she still feels guilty. When I reminded her that it was compulsory for all Israelis, she told me that as a woman, it's fairly easy to get out of, but for reasons that she was unsure of, she didn't.

After the protest, we had dinner in the area and then came back to Jerusalem and took a stroll in the western part of the city. I was shocked to see young Israeli men out for a night on the town with their friends or girlfriends carrying automatic weapons and spare ammunition. They were not soldiers and were not in any sort of uniform. They brought their weapons into the bars and restaurants, sometimes when the streets were especially crowded, you might have the muzzle of an M-16 bump your leg as you wade through the scantily clad human masses. I am used to seeing civilians with guns and soldiers and policemen, but I was taken aback at the amount of young Israelis armed to the teeth in the West Jerusalem equivalent of Times Square or the Bastille.

I asked a policewoman about it this morning in the old city, and she told me that they were probably soldiers, but when she left, I was called back to the shopfront by some Palestinians. They asked me if the armed youth were wearing big watches or if they were wearing yarmukles.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Israeli war crimes in Lebanon


From Human Rights Watch's press release about their report on Israeli war crimes.

Some Israeli Attacks Amount to War Crimes

(Beirut, August 3, 2006) ? Israeli forces have systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said in report released today. The pattern of attacks in more than 20 cases investigated by Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon indicates that the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes.

The 50-page report, "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon," analyzes almost two dozen cases of Israeli air and artillery attacks on civilian homes and vehicles. Of the 153 dead civilians named in the report, 63 are children. More than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli fire since fighting began on July 12, most of them civilians.

"The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military's disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Our research shows that Israel's claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel's indiscriminate warfare."

The report is based on extensive interviews with victims and witnesses of attacks, visits to some blast sites, and information obtained from hospitals, humanitarian groups, security forces and government agencies. Human Rights Watch also conducted research in Israel, assessing the weapons used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Human Rights Watch researchers found numerous cases in which the IDF launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military objectives but excessive civilian cost. In many cases, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians.
Read the rest of the press release and the report itself for specific instances of indiscriminate killing.

Talking to Syria


The US says that it is involved in diplomacy, but it's hard to call only meeting with the people who agree with you diplomatic. It is obvious that peace in Lebanon and Israel will have to involve Syria, but the US refuses to talk to Damascus.

This piece in the LA Times by Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States (often called the lonliest diplomat in Washington) is interesting:

The underlying idea behind demanding Syrian withdrawal [from Lebanon] was simple: It would precipitate the fall of the Syrian regime, and the U.S. would end up with a new government in Damascus that is both Israel-friendly and an ally of the U.S. Does that have any resemblance to the neoconservative justification for the war on Iraq?

To the dismay of U.S. policymakers, this belligerent attitude only rallied Syrians behind their own government.

Ultimately, the Bush administration has to realize that by trying to isolate Syria politically and diplomatically, the U.S. continues to lose ability to influence a major player in the Middle East. In the wake of the ongoing instability in Iraq and violence in Palestine and Lebanon, it begs the larger question: Has isolating Syria made the region more secure?

Currently, the White House doesn't talk to the democratically elected government of Palestine. It does not talk to Hezbollah, which has democratically elected members in the Lebanese parliament and is a member of the Lebanese coalition government. It does not talk to Iran, and it certainly does not talk to Syria.

Gone are the days when U.S. special envoys to the Middle East would spend hours, if not days, with Syrian officials brainstorming, discussing, negotiating and looking for creative solutions leading to a compromise or settlement. Instead, this administration follows the Bolton Doctrine: There is no need to talk to Syria, because Syria knows what it needs to do. End of the matter.

When the United States realizes that it is high time to reconsider its policies toward Syria, Syria will be more than willing to engage. However, the rules of the game should be clear. As President Bashar Assad has said, Syria is not a charity. If the U.S. wants something from Syria, then Syria requires something in return from the U.S.: Let us address the root cause of instability in the Middle East.

The current crisis in Lebanon needs an urgent solution because of the disastrous human toll. Moreover, the whole Middle East deserves a comprehensive deal that would put an end to occupation and allow all countries to equally prosper and live in dignity and peace.
Of course, as an ambassador, his points toe the Syrian line (a line that I generally don't believe as regards Lebanon), but he does have some interesting and valid points. It might seem obvious that diplomacy is not the same as dictating orders, but many don't see it that way in Washington.

Ramallah and a Palestinian government without paychecks


Ramallah was interesting. I met an American-Palestinian woman who works in one of the minstries there. She talked about a lot of things, but mostly about how she hasn't been paid for a while and how the financial squeeze has gotten so bad that employees who live outside Ramallah only come in three times a week, since they haven't been paid and cannot afford to pay for transportation to work and back every day.

Most business with foreign countries is being done through the office of the President, because no one wants to work with the new Hamas government. Interestingly enough though, in the ministries that Hamas controls now, only the ministers have been changed. Everyone, including the deputies, have stayed the same. So just liek most governments and large organizations, there is always a core of career bureaucrats that stays the same, regardless of who is in charge of the ministry.

The wall was again very present, impossible to miss. It cuts the landscape and lengthens commutes. It is often covered with graffiti, both domestic and foreign, in Arabic and English. To get back to Jerusalem, we had to go through two different checkpoints, just as we had to got through two on the way there. Without these checkpoints, the trip would only take about 30 minutes.

I went out last night in West Jerusalem with a couple from Europe who work in NGOs here in the West Bank and Jerusalem. On our way back to the old city, we ran into a couple of young and hip Israelis busily tearing down fliers for a protest against the war in Lebanon.

I'm increasingly worried about a probable escalation. Nasrallah said the night before last on television that if the center of Beirut was hit, then he would hit Tel Aviv. I beleive that this is a warning, not a bluff. Israel probably won't accept this as a deterrant and will probably hit Beirut, if only to assert its manliness and regain the IDF's "honor." Then since he said he would, Nasrallah will order an attack on Tel Aviv.

If only the belligerents in the Middle East were less worried about being "manly" and more interested in being humane, we'd all be a lot better off.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Images from the Dahiyeh


The Times has done a simple interactive graphic of the Southern suburb of Beirut, Haret Hreik, which is where Hizbollah has its offices and which has been the target of many of the Israeli attacks.

It's good that the Times has decided to put it next to a map of Manhatten (at the same scale). Maybe some people might better be able to imagine what it would be like if New York were being attacked instead of Beirut.

The London Review of Books has several pieces by people in Beirut now. This one reminds me the most of my Beirut, parfticularly the ambivalence about leaving Lebanon. It wouldn't surprise me if we went to the same café in Hamra:

I am a secular person and I?m democratically inclined. I have never supported Hizbullah, but I do not question its legitimacy as a political force in Lebanon. It would be folly to regard Hizbullah as just another radical Islamist terrorist organisation. It is a mature political organisation with an Islamist ideology. It has learned (very quickly) to coexist with other political agents in the country, as well as other sects. There have been exceptional moments when the country has united willingly and spontaneously (as during the Israeli attacks in 1993 and 1996), but other less spectacular moments have punctuated the lived postwar experience of every single Lebanese, in which sectarian prejudice was easily set aside. When Hariri was assassinated, the country seemed divided into two camps. There was, however, an overwhelming consensus that we would not go back to fighting one another. If Israel plans to annihilate Hizbullah, it will annihilate Lebanon. Hizbullah is an essential element of contemporary Lebanon.


Otherwise, I'm supposed to be going to Ramallah today, which should prove to be an interesting trip.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Death tolls


The death toll in Lebanon has topped 900 people now, with 3,000 people injured. Only about 100 of the dead were from Hizbollah. (Israel claims that 300 Hizbollah militants have been killed, but I believe the number is closer to the Lebanese security force's estimate, since Nasrallah is always forthright about Hizbollah deaths.)

Compare that to 37 dead Israeli soldiers and 19 civilians.

Bethlehem


I spent all day in Bethlehem, exploring several refugee camps and the Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Camp in the Aida Camp. The children were bright-eyed and friendly, and everyone else was welcoming and helpful.

I got up close to the seperation wall, which often came about 10 meters from Palestinian houses, cutting the family off from the rest of their land.

On the way back, I took a bus back to Jerusalem with my friend. When we were stopped at the checkpoint, everyone in the bus got out and showed their bags and identity cards to the young Israeli soldier, who only spoke to us in Hebrew. He was kurt and methodical. Sometimes, apparently, they won't make you get out of the bus, but we saw that they were making women and children get out and show their ID, so we knew that we would have to also. When we got back into the bus, I asked my friend how often these searches happened. "All the time," he told me.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Jerusalem - Al-Quds


I arrived in Jerusalem yesterday. I set out in a taxi from Amman to the Allenby Bridge crossing. Once I was on the Israeli side of the border, everything slowed to a crawl. I was expecting a modern border crossing that was orderly and efficient. I was wrong.

There were practically no signs, and the Israeli soldiers on duty were usually not at all helpful: one girl refused to even talk to me when I asked her a question. I was held for about 3 hours and interrogated by a young Ethiopian girl, who I assume was doing her military service. She told me to sit down, because it was going to be a long time before I went anywhere. I asked why, and she responded, "Because you was in Lebanon." She asked why I was there, and I told her that I was on vacation. "Vacation in Beirut?" she asked with suprise. "Yes, it's a wonderful city, hopefully, one day you'll be able to visit." She said that "they" would kill her, and I suggested that she should just speak in Amahric, since there are many Ethiopians in Beirut.

When I finally made it into Jerusalem, I was met by a Palestinian friend of the family who has put me up in Amman. He took me out for a very late lunch, showed me around the neighborhood (East Jerusalem, near the Damascus Gate), and we talked about mutual friends and politics. He introduced me to his friends and some of his family; everyone seems to know him in the neighborhood. After talking and eating with a group that got bigger and bigger, we went to a candle light vigil against the wars in Lebanon and Gaza. He told me about a protest in front of the American consulate in East Jerusalem (there's also one in West Jerusalem and an Embassy in Tel Aviv). Since they couldn't get a permit, the police came and broke it up with clubs and tear gas.

After the vigil, I went out with a Palestinian girl who is a citizen of Israel, who tried to explain to me why she refuses to be called an Israeli Arab, and an Israeli Jewish girl from Moldavia. They talked about the news here (the Palestinian girl speaks Hebrew as well as Arabic and English) and about how all but the most radical of the left supports the war in Lebanon.

The hotels are mostly full here, because many people have left the north because of Hizbollah's rocket attacks. Otherwise, my friends back in Lebanon tell me that the Israelis have gone farther and farther into southern Lebanon, and there is talk of going as far north as the Litani, which is eerily reminiscent of the 1982 invasion. I've been taking pictures, but I don't have my computer here, so I'll have to upload them when I get back to Amman in a few days.

Otherwise, Al Aqsa is closed to non-Muslim foreigners for "security reasons," but I am convinced to see al-Haram ah-Sherif before I leave. Tomorrow, my friend is going to take me to see Bethlehem and part of the separation wall.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

In case you've forgotten...


Darfur is still a disaster. One might be tempted to think that things have gotten better there since it hasn't been in the news. If anything, it's just getting worse:

So far, negotiations over a proposed United Nations force to shore up the shaky peace in Darfur have limped along with no sign of compromise. The opposing sides in the conflict now seem headed toward a large-scale military confrontation, bringing Darfur to the edge of a new abyss -- perhaps the deepest it has faced.

"Unfortunately, things seem to be headed in that direction," said Gen. Collins Ihekire, commander of the beleaguered 7,000-member African Union force that is enforcing a fragile peace agreement between the government and one rebel group.

Nearly four months after signing the agreement, the government is preparing a fresh assault against the rebel groups that refused to sign. Years of conflict have already killed hundreds of thousands of people here and sent 2.5 million fleeing their homes. But that may be a prelude of the death likely to come from further fighting, hunger and disease. In the past few months, killings of aid workers and hijackings of their vehicles, mostly by rebel groups, have forced aid groups to curtail programs to feed, clothe and shelter hundreds of thousands of people.

Add to that the fact that many people are cut off from humanitarian aid and the African Union's mandate is about to expire next month.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Last Refuge


Again from the Times magazine, an article by Hassan Daoud about last refuges, and how even they can be destroyed.

Israel and Hizbollah to negotiate prisoner swap


It seems that after the destruction of much of Lebanon, and the death of around 1,100 Lebanese (most of whom were civilians) and over 150 Israeli deaths (most of whom were soldiers), there will be an exchange in prisoners after all.

Interestingly enough, Hassan Nasrallah said last night that had he known that Israel was going to react so strongly, he would not have captured the two Israeli soldiers:

"We did not think, even one percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude," Hassan Nasrallah, the cleric who leads Hizbullah, told Lebanon's New TV channel. "You ask me, if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not." He said Italy would play a part in negotiating the soldiers' eventual release. "Contacts recently began for negotiations," he said. "It seems that Italy is trying to get into the subject." From the start, Mr Nasrallah has said he wanted to exchange the soldiers for Lebanese and Palestinians held in Israel.

Sergio de Gregorio, head of Italy's senate defence committee, said that Iran, Hizbullah's backer, wanted Italy involved. Mr de Gregorio told Reuters he expected talks to start this week. He said the two Israelis were "still alive, fortunately", but would not talk about how they were or what kind of deal might free them.

An Egyptian newspaper reported that German diplomats had helped negotiate a deal to have them freed in two or three weeks. A number of Lebanese held by Israel would be freed in return a day or two later, it said.

While it is true that Israel's reaction to the capture of one soldier by militants in Gaza should have been viewed as a bellwether for Israel's reaction in Lebanon, not many people expected such a violent reaction. After all, attacking Gaza is like shooting fish in a barrel for the IDF, whereas Hizbollah, as we have seen, is capable of not only withstanding an Israeli attack, but fighting back. So in the end, I'm inclined to believe Nasrallah, first because he's not prone to political bluster and usually says what he means and means what he says, and second, because I didn't see the war coming either.

This was obviously not a deterrent to Israel, but it might make Tel Aviv think twice about rushing into a large-scale military solution rather than continuing the status quo of small-scale tit for tat military action or, hopefully, initiating a broad diplomatic process that would help stabalize the region in the long run.

Disarming Hizbollah


In Sunday's Magazine in the Times, there was an article on disarming Hizbollah, in which parallels are made to the situations in the Ivory Coast, Kosovo, the Congo and Northern Ireland. The point is made that disarmament cannot realistically be done by force (unless one is prepared and able to destroy the force) and that there has to be a good political and diplomatic framework that offers the militants a reason to disarm themselves.

Israel launched its air, land and sea attack on Lebanon with the goal, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it, of "disarming this murderous organization"; in that regard, the campaign failed. How, then, could any lesser force succeed? Lebanon's defense minister, Elias Murr, has defended Hezbollah and flatly asserted that the Lebanese Army "is not going to the south to strip Hezbollah of its weapons and do the work that Israel did not." Neither will a U.N. peacekeeping force, however large. "You cannot impose peace on these people if they?re ready to fight you," as a D.D.R. [disarmament, demobilization and reintegration] expert in the U.N.'s peacekeeping department puts it. "You need to be able to annihilate them, because they?re not going to lay down their arms voluntarily." Even robust United Nations forces do not seek to annihilate their adversaries.

If Hezbollah cannot be forcibly disarmed, can some political arrangement induce the militia to disarm itself? This, of course, raises a question about Hezbollah?s aspirations: is it seeking to achieve through force a goal that can be attained through diplomacy, or through political activity? That this is in fact the case is the unspoken premise of United Nations Resolution 1559, passed in 2004, which sought to release Lebanon from the suffocating grip of Syria, and thus to begin a national dialogue that would ultimately lead to the incorporation of Hezbollah into Lebanese affairs.

I've said this before, but the only realistic way to get Hizbollah to disarm is politically and diplomatically. Israeli attacks on Lebanon only serve to strengthen Hizbollah's raison d'être, showing that they do need a strong paramilitary force to defend Lebanon from another Israeli invasion. That the invasion might not have occured if it weren't for the conflict is not really important: the conflict does exist. If Israel were really interested in getting rid of Hizbollah's militia forces, then Tel Aviv would have to start another round of "land for peace" negotiations. The problem is that since Lebanon's (and perhaps more importantly, Hizbollah's) policy toward Israel is inextricably linked with that of Syria, the process would have to be much wider. This means that it wouldn't be enough to just give back Lebanese territory; a peace initiative would have to include at least the Syrians if not the Palestinians in order to work.

This would be a lot of hard and complicated work; however, if Israel is really interested in peace, they're going to have to start sometime. And the sooner the better.

Friday, August 25, 2006

More French and Italian peacekeepers


France has agreed to send 2,000 peacekeepers to Southern Lebanon, and Italy is expected to confirm its offer of 3,000 troops. France was waiting for clarifications on the force's mandate, chain of command (which will be military and not civilian), and "freedom of movement and capacity for action."

It is still unclear exactly to what extent UN troops will be excpected to disarm Hizbollah and to what extent the latter will cooperate with the force. It seems clear to me that the only way to successfully disarm Hizbollah is politically and diplomatically, dealing with its grievances, such as the Shebaa Farms currently occupied by Israel and Lebanese prisoners being held in Israeli jails. The IDF's recent attacks have shown how difficult it is to disarm Hizbollah, and if French and Italian troops try to engage Hizbollah militarily with the aim of disarming them, they will certainly find themselves in a repeat of the 1980s when French and American troops were attacked and then withdrew from Lebanon.

US investigation into Israeli use of American munitions


The US State Department has decided to conduct an inquiry into Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs in Lebanon. The two countries have a secret agreement that such munitions are only to be used against military targets:

The investigation by the department?s Office of Defense Trade Controls began this week, after reports that three types of American cluster munitions, anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area, have been found in many areas of southern Lebanon and were responsible for civilian casualties.

...Several current and former officials said that they doubted the investigation would lead to sanctions against Israel but that the decision to proceed with it might be intended to help the Bush administration ease criticism from Arab governments and commentators over its support of Israel's military operations. The investigation has not been publicly announced; the State Department confirmed it in response to questions.

So is this a real inquiry or is it being done to try to make the US look a little better in the eyes of the rest of the world? According to the Times article, there was a six-year ban imposed on cluster bomb sales to Israel in 1982 after a Congressional investigation found that Israel had used the weapons against civilian areas in violation of the agreements.

Here is a map made by the UN that shows cluster bomb attacks in the South of Lebanon.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Aid and Hizbollah


Relief agencies in Southern Lebanon that receive American funding are finding themselves in a difficult situation. The US government says that they are not allowed to give out aid or money through Hizbollah. This means that they should bypass the organization completely, a difficulyt task in Southern Lebanon:

"Unicef has been here, and Mercy Corps and other groups," said Ahmad Zogby, 39, whose house was destroyed, along with that of his parents. "But everything coming in, Hezbollah puts an eye on it, makes sure it is all given out in the proper way. It is all in the hands of Hezbollah."

Though Hezbollah is only one of many groups providing social services in Lebanon, its reputation for delivering those services honestly is unmatched, making it that much harder to circumvent. In nearby Nabatiye, for instance, Mercy Corps has begun working through the Jabbar Foundation, a nonprofit group run by Yaseen Jabbar, a wealthy member of Parliament.

But the mayor of Nabatiye, Mustapha Badreddine, 55, says he considers the foundation ineffective. For his own part, Mr. Badreddine says he does not belong to Hezbollah, but that he works with it because it is trustworthy, far more so than any other group in the area.

...As an example of Hezbollah's hold on everyday life in southern Lebanon, Ali Bazzi, the mayor of Bint Jbail, outlined his big dreams for his half-demolished town as workmen raced past and tractors rumbled.

...Bint Jbail, the main Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon, saw some of the worst bombing and fighting during the monthlong war, in which Hezbollah, which is integrated with the general population, was Israel's target. But Mr. Bazzi intends to complete the reconstruction without using a single cent from the Lebanese government, much less the United States or the West.

Instead, Mr. Bazzi is counting on Construction Jihad [Hizbollah's building company]. Just a day after the fighting stopped, Construction Jihad enlisted the volunteer services of 1,700 engineers, electricians, plumbers, architects and geologists who have cleared streets, dug ditches and built temporary bridges.

While the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has just begun organizing committees to study the reconstruction of the country, Construction Jihad has all but completed surveys of southern Lebanese towns.

I've talked to people from other internaitonal NGOs, and this is a common problem in places like Lebanon. The US government stipulates that organizations cannot have anything to do with anyone who has anything to do with groups on the "terrorist list." This has caused NGOs to be fractured to the point where the American and other European branches have seperate offices in the same city.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Brahimi's plan for peace


Lakhdar Brahimi, former special adviser to the United Nations Secretary General, weighs in on the war in Lebanon with a five-point plan:

1. ensuring Lebanon's unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity and the full implementation of the 1989 Taif accord

2. encouraging Hizbollah to play a responsible role in the internal dynamics of Lebanon and expecting it to accept the Lebanese state?s exclusive right to possess armaments and use force

3. demanding that Syria and Iran, as well as all other states in the region and beyond, respect Lebanon's sovereignty and abstain from interfering in its internal affairs

4. telling Israel to withdraw its troops from all the territory it currently occupies, including the Shebaa Farms

5. focusing urgent and sustained attention on the problem that underlies the unrest in the Middle East: the Palestinian issue.

He also expresses his disgust at the the loss of life in this war, the destruction of Lebanon and the short-sighted analyses that seem so commonplace:

Wat a waste that it took more than 30 days to adopt a United Nations Security Council resolution for a cease-fire in Lebanon. Thirty days during which nothing positive was achieved and a great deal of pain, suffering and damage was inflicted on innocent people.

The loss of innocent civilian life is staggering and the destruction, particularly in Lebanon, is devastating. Human rights organizations and the United Nations have condemned the humanitarian crisis and violations of international humanitarian law.

Yet all the diplomatic clout of the United States was used to prevent a cease-fire, while more military hardware was rushed to the Israeli Army. It was argued that the war had to continue so that the root causes of the conflict could be addressed, but no one explained how destroying Lebanon would achieve that.

And what are these root causes? It is unbelievable that recent events are so regularly traced back only to the abduction of three Israeli soldiers. Few speak of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, or of its Lebanese prisoners, some of whom have been held for more than 20 years. And there is hardly any mention of military occupation and the injustice that has come with it.

What most people don't seem to understand is that the only way to disarm Hizbollah is to do so politically and diplomatically, and the only way to do this is to take away their raison d'être, which is Israeli occupation of Lebanese and Syrian land. I say Lebanese and Syrian, because the foreign policy of these two countries (at least insofar as Israel is concerned) is inextricably linked. Syria is willing to negotiate peace for land, but Israel doesn't seem interested. Ironically, the very land that Israel occupies for "security reasons" is making the country that much less secure.

Labor solidarity


The British Labor party is showing a little solidarity regarding the one word summary of Bush's handling of the Middle East:

Labour agrees: Bush is crap

Ian Davidson Glasgow South West MP

"I think that John Prescott is to be commended for the quality of his political analysis. His comment on American policy is brief and accurate. Britain has got to ensure that it is no longer seen as simply being the glove puppet of the United States."

Thursday, August 17, 2006

I love Beirut


The Lebanon Chronicle has been sending out stickers and posting photos of the stickers all over the world:



Los Angeles:



Berlin:



They've also been posting all of the many reasons why people love Beirut. It was only after they posted mine that I realized that "pretty girls" ended up on my list three times...

Lebanese death toll reaches 1,300


The death toll has reached 1,300 in Lebanon.

In Srifa, south of the Litani river, they found 26 bodies beneath ruins which I myself stood on just three days ago. At Ainata, there were eight more bodies of civilians. A corpse was discovered beneath a collapsed four-storey house north of Tyre and, near by, the remains of a 16-year old girl, along with three children and an adult. In Khiam in eastern Lebanon, besieged by the Israelis for more than a month, the elderly village "mukhtar" was found dead in the ruins of his home.

Not all the dead were civilians. At Kfar Shuba, dumper-truck drivers found the bodies of four Hizbollah members. At Roueiss, however, all 13 bodies found in the wreckage of eight 10-storey buildings were civilians. They included seven children and a pregnant woman. Ten more bodies were disentangled from the rubble of the southern suburbs of Beirut - where local people claimed they could still hear the screams of neighbours trapped far below the bomb-smashed apartment blocks.

...How many of these dead would have survived if George Bush and Tony Blair had demanded an immediate ceasefire weeks ago will never be known. But many would have had the chance of life had Western governments not regarded this dirty war as an "opportunity" to create a "new" Middle East by humbling Iran and Syria.

Is Hamas ready to deal?


When I was in Ramallah, a friend introduced me to his American/Palestinian cousin who works in the Palestinian Authority. She's young and intelligent, grew up abroad and feels more comfortable in English than in Arabic. She had to move back in with her family, because she hasn't been paid in months. She spoke to me about a plan to try to reshuffle the ministers, adding some members of Fatah, in order to appease the US so that their assets will be unfrozen. (The only people who changed with Hamas's success in the recent elections were the ministers, the other ministry workers, and in most cases even the deputy ministers, remained the same.)

A reasearcher from the CNRS in Paris asks whether this means that Hamas is ready to deal.

A bold gesture now by Israel would surprise its adversaries, convey strength, and even catch domestic political opposition off guard. And as strange as it may seem, were the United States able to help Israel help Hamas, it might turn the rising tide of global Muslim resentment.

Recent discussions I've had with Hamas leaders and their supporters around the globe indicate that Israel might just find a reasonable and influential bargaining partner.

Hamas's top elected official, Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, now accepts that to stop his people's suffering, his government must forsake its all-or-nothing call for Israel's destruction. "We have no problem with a sovereign Palestinian state over all our lands within the 1967 borders, living in calm," Mr. Haniya told me in his Gaza City office in late June, shortly before an Israeli missile destroyed it. "But we need the West as a partner to help us through."

Mr. Haniya's government had just agreed to a historic compromise with Fatah and its leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, forming a national coalition that implicitly accepts the coexistence alongside Israel. But this breakthrough was quickly overshadowed by Israel?s offensive into Gaza in retaliation for the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants, including members of Hamas?s military wing.

...Khaled Meshal, the Damascus-based head of the Hamas politburo, refused to release Corporal Shalit unless Israel freed hundreds of prisoners. While it is true that Israel has shown willingness to release hundreds of Palestinian detainees in return for a single Israeli in the past, Mr. Meshal's stand might have been part of a larger political game.

...Prime Minster Haniya and many of Hamas's other Sunni leaders are known to be uncomfortable with the loose coalition that Mr. Meshal has been forging with Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. Hasan Yusuf, a Hamas official held in Israel's Ketziot prison, doesn't think President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran's declaration that the main solution to the Middle East crisis is for the elimination of the "Zionist regime" is practical or wise. "The outcome in Lebanon doesn't change our view," Mr. Yusuf informed me last weekend. "We believe in two states living side by side."

He also said that "all Hamas factions have agreed to a unilateral cease-fire, including halting Qassam rockets; the movement is ready to go farther if it receives any encouraging responses from Israel and the West."

But even moderate Hamas figures feel that as long as Israel, the United States and Europe boycott the elected government in Gaza and the West Bank, there is little choice but to accept whatever help comes along.

This is doubly unfortunate. While Mr. Meshal says Islam allows only a long-term truce with Israel, Hamas officials closer to Prime Minister Haniya believe that a formal peace deal is possible, especially if negotiations can begin out of the spotlight and proceed by degrees.

"You can't expect us to take off all of our clothes at once," one Hamas leader told me, "or we'll be naked in the cold, like Arafat in his last years." This official said that if Hamas moved too fast, it would alienate its base, but if his government continued to be isolated, the base would radicalize. "Either way, you could wind up with a bunch of little Al Qaedas."

...Tangible results, like prisoner exchanges, are important. However, so are symbolic actions. Hamas officials have stressed the importance of Israel's recognizing their suffering from the original loss of Palestinian land. And survey research of Palestinian refugees and Hamas by my colleagues and I, supported by the National Science Foundation, reliably finds that violent opposition to peace decreases if the adversary is seen to compromise its own moral position, even if the compromise has no material value.

"Israel freeing some of our prisoners will help us to stop others from attacking it," said the Hamas government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad. "But Israel must apologize for our tragedy in 1948 before we can talk about negotiating over our right of return to historic Palestine."

Talking and negotiating with Hamas, and Hizbollah and Damascus for that matter, would take a bold move on Israel's part, which would most likely have to be preceded by a strong push from the US. Unfortunately, I think that what we can probably expect is more rhetoric about how one can't talk to terrorists and how poor Israel would love to settle this conflict once and for all but just can't find a partner in peace.

And if that's the case, we can look forward to things not only not getting better, but getting dramatically worse in the region, and consequently, all over the world.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Herr Grass's wartime career


And now for something completely different. It seems that Nobel laureate, Günter Grass, Germany's greatest living writer, had been lying about his past. It seems that when he was 17, he was in the Waffen SS.

Now the great advocate of facing unpalatable truths has lived up to his own standards, but a little late. The revelation came in an interview with Germany's respected conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), and while it is certain to boost interest in his forthcoming autobiography it has done immeasurable harm to the writer's squeaky-clean reputation.

...Grass's insistent, repetitive message to his fellow citizens was that they should never, ever forget. It seems that only now has he himself chosen to remember.

I'm not really sure what to think about this information. I suppose being in the SS when you were 17 is forgivable, particularly when the Nazis were drafting everyone; however, the fact that he's hidden it for so long really gives me a bad taste in my mouth.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The real war starts


Robert Fisk does not seem optimistic. In today's Independent, he predicts weeks of guerrilla warfare in the south, despite that fact that the roads to the south were already packed with Lebanese trying to get back to their homes and bury their dead:

The real war in Lebanon begins today. The world may believe - and Israel may believe - that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed. But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose.

...From this morning, Hizbollah's operations will be directed solely against the invasion force. And the Israelis cannot afford to lose 40 men a day. Unable to shoot down the Israeli F-16 aircraft that have laid waste to much of Lebanon, the Hizbollah have, for years, prayed and longed and waited for the moment when they could attack the Israeli army on the ground.

Now they are set to put their long-planned campaign into operation. Thousands of their members remain alive and armed in the ruined hill villages of southern Lebanon for just this moment and, only hours after their leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel on Saturday that his men were waiting for them on the banks of the Litani river, the Hizbollah sprang their trap, killing more than 20 Israeli soldiers in less than three hours.

...At this fatal juncture in Middle East history - and no one should underestimate this moment's importance in the region - the Israeli army appears as impotent to protect its country as the Hizbollah clearly is to protect Lebanon.

But if the ceasefire collapses, as seems certain, neither the Israelis nor the Americans appear to have any plans to escape the consequences. The US saw this war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but already it seems as if the tables have been turned. The Israeli military appears to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and apartment blocks - but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army they swore to liquidate.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Lebanon as a test run for Iran


Sy Hersh has a new piece on Lebanon in The New Yorker. He says that this conflict had been planned by Israel and approved by the US for several months. The idea was that Israel's attacks on Hizbollah and Lebanon's infrastructure would serve as a trial run for a future American attack on Iran.

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel?s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground. ...

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah -- and shared it with Bush Administration officials -- well before the July 12th kidnappings. "It's not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into," he said, "but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it."

The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, "The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy."

Of course this attack has not gone as smoothly as the Israelis would have liked it to. The results have so far been unclear, with both sides claiming victory. This war seems to have been sold to the US by Israel, but so far, notes Richard Armitage it has been less than convincing and should serve as a warning against attacking Iran:

"The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. "Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House "has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah." He added, "It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it." (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush's first term -- and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah "may be the A team of terrorists" -- Israel's campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. "If the most dominant military force in the region -- the Israel Defense Forces -- can't pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million," Armitage said. "The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis."

Cease-fire begins


After a last-minute push by Israeli troops and another 220 rockets fired by Hizbollah, the cease-fire has begun. It only took a month:

...since July 12, nearly 1,150 Lebanese are estimated to have died, most of them civilians, and about 150 Israelis, mostly soldiers. Israel says 500 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, a figure Hezbollah disputes. In Gaza, nearly 200 Palestinians have died, many of them militants.
We'll see what this actually means, since both sides seem to have reserved the right to respond to the other:

Eli Yishai, the Israeli trade minister, also issued a stark warning to Lebanon even if the ceasefire comes into force, saying, "If a single stone is thrown at Israel from whatever village that happens, it should be turned into a pile of stones."

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Saturday, "As long as there is Israeli military movement, Israeli field aggression and Israeli soldiers occupying our land ... it is our natural right to confront them, fight them and defend our land, our homes, and ourselves."

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Hizbollah's other war


Reading some of Michael Young's pieces in the Daily Star while I was in Beirut a few weeks ago sometimes made me sick to my stomach. However, his piece in the NY Times Magazine this week is definitely worth a read.

He goes into the dense jungle that is Lebanese politics, explaining the constantly changing alliances and feuds that are often difficult to follow for outsiders. He speaks of the gains that the Shia, who had been historically left out of Lebanese poltical life, have made through Hizbollah, and the tensions felt between the pro-Syrian parties and the March 14 group.

It's a long article, but very much worth a read.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

The London Review on Lebanon and Israel


The London Review has updated, and there are several articles about Lebanon and Israel, including Yitzhak Laor on the IDF and Charles Glass on Hizbollah. There is also a good article by Michael Byers on the limits of self-defence:

'I entirely understand the desire, and indeed need, for Israel to defend itself properly,' Tony Blair said on 14 July. 'As a sovereign nation, Israel has every right to defend itself,' George W. Bush said on 16 July. By the time these statements were made, the IDF had bombed Beirut?s international airport, destroyed roads, bridges, power stations and petrol stations, and imposed an air and sea blockade. The Israeli army chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, had promised to 'turn back the clock in Lebanon by twenty years'. All this in response, ostensibly, to the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others by Hizbullah militants on 12 July.

The right of self-defence identified by Blair and Bush is part of international law. Which makes two conclusions possible: either this area of international law is so elastic as to be inoperative; or it is being interpreted by Blair and Bush in an untenable way. ...


Then there is international humanitarian law, which both Hizbullah and Israel have violated. These rules are set out in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which Israel ratified in 1951. The direct targeting of civilians is categorically prohibited, and this includes acts or threats of violence intended to spread terror or impose collective punishment. Indiscriminate attacks are proscribed. Above all, individual targets may be selected only if the direct military advantage anticipated from the strike exceeds the expected harm to civilians or civilian objects. Hizbullah?s rocket attacks, which have been aimed in the general vicinity of Israeli cities and towns rather than at specific military targets, are illegal.

So too are many of Israel's attacks. More than seven hundred Lebanese civilians have been killed to date, most of them women and children. Some were struck by missiles as they fled for safety. Others were hit because blasted roads, bridges and petrol stations had made it impossible for them to flee. More died when Israel dropped bombs in densely populated neighbourhoods. Even more are dying now as hospitals, water filtration plants and sewage treatment facilities struggle with power shortages. In no circumstance may attacks on civilians or civilian infrastructure be justified by similar violations on the other side. The horrors of Qana, where dozens of Lebanese civilians died in a single precision air-strike, cannot be balanced by lost Israeli lives.

It has been suggested that Israel's actions are aimed at turning the Lebanese population against Hizbullah. A similar kind of thinking was popular during the Second World War, as evidenced by the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg and several cities in Japan. It re-emerged shortly before the 2003 Iraq war in the language of 'shock and awe'. But military action undertaken with such an intention was rejected during the negotiation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and remains illegal. It's also wrong-headed, since people who have been attacked are more likely to blame their attackers than anyone else.

International humanitarian law forbids methods of warfare that cause 'unnecessary suffering or superfluous injury'. For this reason, Hizbullah's use of rockets packed with ball-bearings is illegal, while Israel?s reliance on cluster bombs, fuel-air explosives, white phosphorus (as a weapon rather than for illumination) and depleted uranium is immoral and quite possibly also illegal.

Finally, there's the death of the four UN observers, struck by a precision-guided bomb in a highly visible, long-established post located on a barren hilltop ? after Israeli forces had been warned repeatedly that their projectiles were falling perilously close by. It's easy to suspect that the attack was deliberate, perhaps intended to force the UN to withdraw its other observers from the area, which it duly did. It may even have been designed to dissuade countries from offering troops for the international force being championed by Tony Blair ? a force that, if it's ever created, will take months to deploy. If the killing of the observers was deliberate, it would constitute a clear violation of international humanitarian law.

Violations of these various rules constitute war crimes, which are subject to universal jurisdiction in the sense that the perpetrators may be prosecuted in any country's domestic courts. This raises the possibility of trials if they are foolish enough to travel abroad and the local authorities brave enough to arrest them. The Israeli justice minister, Haim Ramon, will wish to be particularly careful. On 27 July, he said that civilians had been given ample warning and 'all those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hizbullah.' Unfortunately, there?s no possibility of prosecutions in the International Criminal Court, since neither Israel nor Lebanon has ratified the court's statute, and the United States would veto any attempt by the Security Council to use its power to send the matter there.

The absence of a reliable mechanism for prosecuting Hizbullah and Israeli leaders is less serious, however, than the support that Bush and Blair have given to clear violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions. The long-term viability of these rules depends on the willingness of politicians ? and the general public ? to speak out in defence of international law.

Friday, August 11, 2006

America at its worst


While I was in Jerusalem, I was sent a forwarded e-mail that asked whether or not a good Muslim can be a good American. The answer, of course, was no. I figured that this was just another case of racist drivel perpetuated by forwarded e-mails, but imagine my disappointment when I saw that it is a sentiment shared by many Americans according to this Gallup poll.

A new Gallup poll finds that many Americans -- what it calls "substantial minorities" -- harbor "negative feelings or prejudices against people of the Muslim faith" in this country. Nearly one in four Americans, 22%, say they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbor.

While Americans tend to disagree with the notion that Muslims living in the United States are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, a significant 34% believe they do back al-Qaeda. And fewer than half -- 49% -- believe U.S. Muslims are loyal to the United States.

Almost four in ten, 39%, advocate that Muslims here should carry special I.D. That same number admit that they do hold some "prejudice" against Muslims. Forty-four percent say their religious views are too "extreme."

In every case, Americans who actually know any Muslims are more sympathethic.

The poll was taken at the end of July and surveyed 1,007 adult Americans.
Special identification? Is the US going even more insane? Why don't we just make them little crescents to sew on their clothes?

Pictures from the holy land


Here are a bunch of different photos that I took while in the holy land:

This is the Wailing Wall, or the Western Wall, if you prefer:



This a picture of the young Israelis who shocked me with their guns in the middle of West Jerusalem's night life:



Here are pictures from the anti-war rally in Tel Aviv. The first is the protest, the second is a Palestinian protester being roughed up by the police while people yelled that he should be sent to Gaza to be killed, and the third is a pro-war protest across the street:








A poster from the rally:




The walls of Jerusalem's old city:




Inside the old city in the morning at one of the gate's leading to al-Aqsa or al-Harem as-sharif:



The Dome of the Rock:



The anti-war candle light vigil at Damascus Gate (Bab al-Amoud) in Jerusalem:



This is a view from Bethlehem. The walled off section is a settlement, which is 70% empty:



This is part of the seperation wall that has cut right by a Palestinian home, cutting the home off from the rest of its land:



Here is the wall up close in Bethlehem:



These pictures are from the Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Camp in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem:



Wednesday, August 09, 2006

A letter from Beirut...


I arrived in Amman from Jerusalem yesterday. I was worried about crossing back over, especially since I brought back a small olive tree for the Palestinian family who's been so kind as to take care of me while I'm here, but the Israelis don't seem to care about what goes out of the country.

George Galloway spoke out against the media bias while I was on my way home.

A friend also sent me a link to a video letter from Beirut...to who love us. You can download it here:

Now, listen well. We are besieged and the smell of gunpoweder is in the air. Gunpowder, and the world is watching.We are besieged because the world is watching. What matters is that we still have a bit of food and water. And pride. And dignity. And above all lots of love.

We are 4 million people; 4 million and one who was born today in a school under siege. We are here. Where are you?




The first clip is angry, because there is a lot to be angry about. The second clip is sad, because there is even more to be sad about.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Satellite images of Beirut, before and after


The Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten has sattelite images of Beirut (I think this is in the Dahiye, the southern suburb of the capital) from 12 July and 31 July:

Sunday, August 06, 2006


Beirut responds to the text of the proposed Security Council resolution:

Nouhad Mahmoud, a Lebanese foreign ministry official, said on Sunday that the government "would have liked to see our concerns more reflected in the text" of the draft resolution.

"Unfortunately, it lacked, for instance, a call for the withdrawal of Israeli forces which are now in Lebanon. That is a recipe for more confrontation."

He said the government was also unhappy that the resolution does not call for the Shebaa Farms area to be put under UN control, as Lebanon has asked, while its future status is figured out.

Protest in Tel Aviv and guns over Jerusalem


I went to Tel Aviv last night for a protest againt the war in Lebanon. There was a group of Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners protesting the war and a group of Israelis protesting the protest. The first group was holding signs in Hebrew, Arabic and English calling for an end to the war and to the occuptation. The others were holding signs with slogans like "Let the Army win" and "All terrorists are Muslim." Yael Dayan, the daughter of Moshe Dayen also spoke at the protest. She was initially applauded when she said that the war should stop, but was then booed when she said that the war had started out as a "just war."

The police were sometimes violent and at one point beat up a Palestinian guy. There were five policemen against a single guy, whose head they repeatedly smashed onto a car hood. Israeli spectators were screaming that he was just a dirty Arab and deserved to be "sent to Gaza to be killed."

I spoke to a young Israeli woman whose parents were from Kazakhstan. She was against the war but stayed at the edges of the protest, because she felt a little hypocritical. AS it turns out, she'll be starting her military service in a couple of months. As a woman, she won't be sent to Lebanon or Gaza, but she still feels guilty. When I reminded her that it was compulsory for all Israelis, she told me that as a woman, it's fairly easy to get out of, but for reasons that she was unsure of, she didn't.

After the protest, we had dinner in the area and then came back to Jerusalem and took a stroll in the western part of the city. I was shocked to see young Israeli men out for a night on the town with their friends or girlfriends carrying automatic weapons and spare ammunition. They were not soldiers and were not in any sort of uniform. They brought their weapons into the bars and restaurants, sometimes when the streets were especially crowded, you might have the muzzle of an M-16 bump your leg as you wade through the scantily clad human masses. I am used to seeing civilians with guns and soldiers and policemen, but I was taken aback at the amount of young Israelis armed to the teeth in the West Jerusalem equivalent of Times Square or the Bastille.

I asked a policewoman about it this morning in the old city, and she told me that they were probably soldiers, but when she left, I was called back to the shopfront by some Palestinians. They asked me if the armed youth were wearing big watches or if they were wearing yarmukles.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Israeli war crimes in Lebanon


From Human Rights Watch's press release about their report on Israeli war crimes.

Some Israeli Attacks Amount to War Crimes

(Beirut, August 3, 2006) ? Israeli forces have systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said in report released today. The pattern of attacks in more than 20 cases investigated by Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon indicates that the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes.

The 50-page report, "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon," analyzes almost two dozen cases of Israeli air and artillery attacks on civilian homes and vehicles. Of the 153 dead civilians named in the report, 63 are children. More than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli fire since fighting began on July 12, most of them civilians.

"The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military's disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Our research shows that Israel's claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel's indiscriminate warfare."

The report is based on extensive interviews with victims and witnesses of attacks, visits to some blast sites, and information obtained from hospitals, humanitarian groups, security forces and government agencies. Human Rights Watch also conducted research in Israel, assessing the weapons used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Human Rights Watch researchers found numerous cases in which the IDF launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military objectives but excessive civilian cost. In many cases, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians.
Read the rest of the press release and the report itself for specific instances of indiscriminate killing.

Talking to Syria


The US says that it is involved in diplomacy, but it's hard to call only meeting with the people who agree with you diplomatic. It is obvious that peace in Lebanon and Israel will have to involve Syria, but the US refuses to talk to Damascus.

This piece in the LA Times by Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States (often called the lonliest diplomat in Washington) is interesting:

The underlying idea behind demanding Syrian withdrawal [from Lebanon] was simple: It would precipitate the fall of the Syrian regime, and the U.S. would end up with a new government in Damascus that is both Israel-friendly and an ally of the U.S. Does that have any resemblance to the neoconservative justification for the war on Iraq?

To the dismay of U.S. policymakers, this belligerent attitude only rallied Syrians behind their own government.

Ultimately, the Bush administration has to realize that by trying to isolate Syria politically and diplomatically, the U.S. continues to lose ability to influence a major player in the Middle East. In the wake of the ongoing instability in Iraq and violence in Palestine and Lebanon, it begs the larger question: Has isolating Syria made the region more secure?

Currently, the White House doesn't talk to the democratically elected government of Palestine. It does not talk to Hezbollah, which has democratically elected members in the Lebanese parliament and is a member of the Lebanese coalition government. It does not talk to Iran, and it certainly does not talk to Syria.

Gone are the days when U.S. special envoys to the Middle East would spend hours, if not days, with Syrian officials brainstorming, discussing, negotiating and looking for creative solutions leading to a compromise or settlement. Instead, this administration follows the Bolton Doctrine: There is no need to talk to Syria, because Syria knows what it needs to do. End of the matter.

When the United States realizes that it is high time to reconsider its policies toward Syria, Syria will be more than willing to engage. However, the rules of the game should be clear. As President Bashar Assad has said, Syria is not a charity. If the U.S. wants something from Syria, then Syria requires something in return from the U.S.: Let us address the root cause of instability in the Middle East.

The current crisis in Lebanon needs an urgent solution because of the disastrous human toll. Moreover, the whole Middle East deserves a comprehensive deal that would put an end to occupation and allow all countries to equally prosper and live in dignity and peace.
Of course, as an ambassador, his points toe the Syrian line (a line that I generally don't believe as regards Lebanon), but he does have some interesting and valid points. It might seem obvious that diplomacy is not the same as dictating orders, but many don't see it that way in Washington.

Ramallah and a Palestinian government without paychecks


Ramallah was interesting. I met an American-Palestinian woman who works in one of the minstries there. She talked about a lot of things, but mostly about how she hasn't been paid for a while and how the financial squeeze has gotten so bad that employees who live outside Ramallah only come in three times a week, since they haven't been paid and cannot afford to pay for transportation to work and back every day.

Most business with foreign countries is being done through the office of the President, because no one wants to work with the new Hamas government. Interestingly enough though, in the ministries that Hamas controls now, only the ministers have been changed. Everyone, including the deputies, have stayed the same. So just liek most governments and large organizations, there is always a core of career bureaucrats that stays the same, regardless of who is in charge of the ministry.

The wall was again very present, impossible to miss. It cuts the landscape and lengthens commutes. It is often covered with graffiti, both domestic and foreign, in Arabic and English. To get back to Jerusalem, we had to go through two different checkpoints, just as we had to got through two on the way there. Without these checkpoints, the trip would only take about 30 minutes.

I went out last night in West Jerusalem with a couple from Europe who work in NGOs here in the West Bank and Jerusalem. On our way back to the old city, we ran into a couple of young and hip Israelis busily tearing down fliers for a protest against the war in Lebanon.

I'm increasingly worried about a probable escalation. Nasrallah said the night before last on television that if the center of Beirut was hit, then he would hit Tel Aviv. I beleive that this is a warning, not a bluff. Israel probably won't accept this as a deterrant and will probably hit Beirut, if only to assert its manliness and regain the IDF's "honor." Then since he said he would, Nasrallah will order an attack on Tel Aviv.

If only the belligerents in the Middle East were less worried about being "manly" and more interested in being humane, we'd all be a lot better off.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Images from the Dahiyeh


The Times has done a simple interactive graphic of the Southern suburb of Beirut, Haret Hreik, which is where Hizbollah has its offices and which has been the target of many of the Israeli attacks.

It's good that the Times has decided to put it next to a map of Manhatten (at the same scale). Maybe some people might better be able to imagine what it would be like if New York were being attacked instead of Beirut.

The London Review of Books has several pieces by people in Beirut now. This one reminds me the most of my Beirut, parfticularly the ambivalence about leaving Lebanon. It wouldn't surprise me if we went to the same café in Hamra:

I am a secular person and I?m democratically inclined. I have never supported Hizbullah, but I do not question its legitimacy as a political force in Lebanon. It would be folly to regard Hizbullah as just another radical Islamist terrorist organisation. It is a mature political organisation with an Islamist ideology. It has learned (very quickly) to coexist with other political agents in the country, as well as other sects. There have been exceptional moments when the country has united willingly and spontaneously (as during the Israeli attacks in 1993 and 1996), but other less spectacular moments have punctuated the lived postwar experience of every single Lebanese, in which sectarian prejudice was easily set aside. When Hariri was assassinated, the country seemed divided into two camps. There was, however, an overwhelming consensus that we would not go back to fighting one another. If Israel plans to annihilate Hizbullah, it will annihilate Lebanon. Hizbullah is an essential element of contemporary Lebanon.


Otherwise, I'm supposed to be going to Ramallah today, which should prove to be an interesting trip.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Death tolls


The death toll in Lebanon has topped 900 people now, with 3,000 people injured. Only about 100 of the dead were from Hizbollah. (Israel claims that 300 Hizbollah militants have been killed, but I believe the number is closer to the Lebanese security force's estimate, since Nasrallah is always forthright about Hizbollah deaths.)

Compare that to 37 dead Israeli soldiers and 19 civilians.

Bethlehem


I spent all day in Bethlehem, exploring several refugee camps and the Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Camp in the Aida Camp. The children were bright-eyed and friendly, and everyone else was welcoming and helpful.

I got up close to the seperation wall, which often came about 10 meters from Palestinian houses, cutting the family off from the rest of their land.

On the way back, I took a bus back to Jerusalem with my friend. When we were stopped at the checkpoint, everyone in the bus got out and showed their bags and identity cards to the young Israeli soldier, who only spoke to us in Hebrew. He was kurt and methodical. Sometimes, apparently, they won't make you get out of the bus, but we saw that they were making women and children get out and show their ID, so we knew that we would have to also. When we got back into the bus, I asked my friend how often these searches happened. "All the time," he told me.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Jerusalem - Al-Quds


I arrived in Jerusalem yesterday. I set out in a taxi from Amman to the Allenby Bridge crossing. Once I was on the Israeli side of the border, everything slowed to a crawl. I was expecting a modern border crossing that was orderly and efficient. I was wrong.

There were practically no signs, and the Israeli soldiers on duty were usually not at all helpful: one girl refused to even talk to me when I asked her a question. I was held for about 3 hours and interrogated by a young Ethiopian girl, who I assume was doing her military service. She told me to sit down, because it was going to be a long time before I went anywhere. I asked why, and she responded, "Because you was in Lebanon." She asked why I was there, and I told her that I was on vacation. "Vacation in Beirut?" she asked with suprise. "Yes, it's a wonderful city, hopefully, one day you'll be able to visit." She said that "they" would kill her, and I suggested that she should just speak in Amahric, since there are many Ethiopians in Beirut.

When I finally made it into Jerusalem, I was met by a Palestinian friend of the family who has put me up in Amman. He took me out for a very late lunch, showed me around the neighborhood (East Jerusalem, near the Damascus Gate), and we talked about mutual friends and politics. He introduced me to his friends and some of his family; everyone seems to know him in the neighborhood. After talking and eating with a group that got bigger and bigger, we went to a candle light vigil against the wars in Lebanon and Gaza. He told me about a protest in front of the American consulate in East Jerusalem (there's also one in West Jerusalem and an Embassy in Tel Aviv). Since they couldn't get a permit, the police came and broke it up with clubs and tear gas.

After the vigil, I went out with a Palestinian girl who is a citizen of Israel, who tried to explain to me why she refuses to be called an Israeli Arab, and an Israeli Jewish girl from Moldavia. They talked about the news here (the Palestinian girl speaks Hebrew as well as Arabic and English) and about how all but the most radical of the left supports the war in Lebanon.

The hotels are mostly full here, because many people have left the north because of Hizbollah's rocket attacks. Otherwise, my friends back in Lebanon tell me that the Israelis have gone farther and farther into southern Lebanon, and there is talk of going as far north as the Litani, which is eerily reminiscent of the 1982 invasion. I've been taking pictures, but I don't have my computer here, so I'll have to upload them when I get back to Amman in a few days.

Otherwise, Al Aqsa is closed to non-Muslim foreigners for "security reasons," but I am convinced to see al-Haram ah-Sherif before I leave. Tomorrow, my friend is going to take me to see Bethlehem and part of the separation wall.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

In case you've forgotten...


Darfur is still a disaster. One might be tempted to think that things have gotten better there since it hasn't been in the news. If anything, it's just getting worse:

So far, negotiations over a proposed United Nations force to shore up the shaky peace in Darfur have limped along with no sign of compromise. The opposing sides in the conflict now seem headed toward a large-scale military confrontation, bringing Darfur to the edge of a new abyss -- perhaps the deepest it has faced.

"Unfortunately, things seem to be headed in that direction," said Gen. Collins Ihekire, commander of the beleaguered 7,000-member African Union force that is enforcing a fragile peace agreement between the government and one rebel group.

Nearly four months after signing the agreement, the government is preparing a fresh assault against the rebel groups that refused to sign. Years of conflict have already killed hundreds of thousands of people here and sent 2.5 million fleeing their homes. But that may be a prelude of the death likely to come from further fighting, hunger and disease. In the past few months, killings of aid workers and hijackings of their vehicles, mostly by rebel groups, have forced aid groups to curtail programs to feed, clothe and shelter hundreds of thousands of people.

Add to that the fact that many people are cut off from humanitarian aid and the African Union's mandate is about to expire next month.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Last Refuge


Again from the Times magazine, an article by Hassan Daoud about last refuges, and how even they can be destroyed.

Israel and Hizbollah to negotiate prisoner swap


It seems that after the destruction of much of Lebanon, and the death of around 1,100 Lebanese (most of whom were civilians) and over 150 Israeli deaths (most of whom were soldiers), there will be an exchange in prisoners after all.

Interestingly enough, Hassan Nasrallah said last night that had he known that Israel was going to react so strongly, he would not have captured the two Israeli soldiers:

"We did not think, even one percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude," Hassan Nasrallah, the cleric who leads Hizbullah, told Lebanon's New TV channel. "You ask me, if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not." He said Italy would play a part in negotiating the soldiers' eventual release. "Contacts recently began for negotiations," he said. "It seems that Italy is trying to get into the subject." From the start, Mr Nasrallah has said he wanted to exchange the soldiers for Lebanese and Palestinians held in Israel.

Sergio de Gregorio, head of Italy's senate defence committee, said that Iran, Hizbullah's backer, wanted Italy involved. Mr de Gregorio told Reuters he expected talks to start this week. He said the two Israelis were "still alive, fortunately", but would not talk about how they were or what kind of deal might free them.

An Egyptian newspaper reported that German diplomats had helped negotiate a deal to have them freed in two or three weeks. A number of Lebanese held by Israel would be freed in return a day or two later, it said.

While it is true that Israel's reaction to the capture of one soldier by militants in Gaza should have been viewed as a bellwether for Israel's reaction in Lebanon, not many people expected such a violent reaction. After all, attacking Gaza is like shooting fish in a barrel for the IDF, whereas Hizbollah, as we have seen, is capable of not only withstanding an Israeli attack, but fighting back. So in the end, I'm inclined to believe Nasrallah, first because he's not prone to political bluster and usually says what he means and means what he says, and second, because I didn't see the war coming either.

This was obviously not a deterrent to Israel, but it might make Tel Aviv think twice about rushing into a large-scale military solution rather than continuing the status quo of small-scale tit for tat military action or, hopefully, initiating a broad diplomatic process that would help stabalize the region in the long run.

Disarming Hizbollah


In Sunday's Magazine in the Times, there was an article on disarming Hizbollah, in which parallels are made to the situations in the Ivory Coast, Kosovo, the Congo and Northern Ireland. The point is made that disarmament cannot realistically be done by force (unless one is prepared and able to destroy the force) and that there has to be a good political and diplomatic framework that offers the militants a reason to disarm themselves.

Israel launched its air, land and sea attack on Lebanon with the goal, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it, of "disarming this murderous organization"; in that regard, the campaign failed. How, then, could any lesser force succeed? Lebanon's defense minister, Elias Murr, has defended Hezbollah and flatly asserted that the Lebanese Army "is not going to the south to strip Hezbollah of its weapons and do the work that Israel did not." Neither will a U.N. peacekeeping force, however large. "You cannot impose peace on these people if they?re ready to fight you," as a D.D.R. [disarmament, demobilization and reintegration] expert in the U.N.'s peacekeeping department puts it. "You need to be able to annihilate them, because they?re not going to lay down their arms voluntarily." Even robust United Nations forces do not seek to annihilate their adversaries.

If Hezbollah cannot be forcibly disarmed, can some political arrangement induce the militia to disarm itself? This, of course, raises a question about Hezbollah?s aspirations: is it seeking to achieve through force a goal that can be attained through diplomacy, or through political activity? That this is in fact the case is the unspoken premise of United Nations Resolution 1559, passed in 2004, which sought to release Lebanon from the suffocating grip of Syria, and thus to begin a national dialogue that would ultimately lead to the incorporation of Hezbollah into Lebanese affairs.

I've said this before, but the only realistic way to get Hizbollah to disarm is politically and diplomatically. Israeli attacks on Lebanon only serve to strengthen Hizbollah's raison d'être, showing that they do need a strong paramilitary force to defend Lebanon from another Israeli invasion. That the invasion might not have occured if it weren't for the conflict is not really important: the conflict does exist. If Israel were really interested in getting rid of Hizbollah's militia forces, then Tel Aviv would have to start another round of "land for peace" negotiations. The problem is that since Lebanon's (and perhaps more importantly, Hizbollah's) policy toward Israel is inextricably linked with that of Syria, the process would have to be much wider. This means that it wouldn't be enough to just give back Lebanese territory; a peace initiative would have to include at least the Syrians if not the Palestinians in order to work.

This would be a lot of hard and complicated work; however, if Israel is really interested in peace, they're going to have to start sometime. And the sooner the better.

Friday, August 25, 2006

More French and Italian peacekeepers


France has agreed to send 2,000 peacekeepers to Southern Lebanon, and Italy is expected to confirm its offer of 3,000 troops. France was waiting for clarifications on the force's mandate, chain of command (which will be military and not civilian), and "freedom of movement and capacity for action."

It is still unclear exactly to what extent UN troops will be excpected to disarm Hizbollah and to what extent the latter will cooperate with the force. It seems clear to me that the only way to successfully disarm Hizbollah is politically and diplomatically, dealing with its grievances, such as the Shebaa Farms currently occupied by Israel and Lebanese prisoners being held in Israeli jails. The IDF's recent attacks have shown how difficult it is to disarm Hizbollah, and if French and Italian troops try to engage Hizbollah militarily with the aim of disarming them, they will certainly find themselves in a repeat of the 1980s when French and American troops were attacked and then withdrew from Lebanon.

US investigation into Israeli use of American munitions


The US State Department has decided to conduct an inquiry into Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs in Lebanon. The two countries have a secret agreement that such munitions are only to be used against military targets:

The investigation by the department?s Office of Defense Trade Controls began this week, after reports that three types of American cluster munitions, anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area, have been found in many areas of southern Lebanon and were responsible for civilian casualties.

...Several current and former officials said that they doubted the investigation would lead to sanctions against Israel but that the decision to proceed with it might be intended to help the Bush administration ease criticism from Arab governments and commentators over its support of Israel's military operations. The investigation has not been publicly announced; the State Department confirmed it in response to questions.

So is this a real inquiry or is it being done to try to make the US look a little better in the eyes of the rest of the world? According to the Times article, there was a six-year ban imposed on cluster bomb sales to Israel in 1982 after a Congressional investigation found that Israel had used the weapons against civilian areas in violation of the agreements.

Here is a map made by the UN that shows cluster bomb attacks in the South of Lebanon.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Aid and Hizbollah


Relief agencies in Southern Lebanon that receive American funding are finding themselves in a difficult situation. The US government says that they are not allowed to give out aid or money through Hizbollah. This means that they should bypass the organization completely, a difficulyt task in Southern Lebanon:

"Unicef has been here, and Mercy Corps and other groups," said Ahmad Zogby, 39, whose house was destroyed, along with that of his parents. "But everything coming in, Hezbollah puts an eye on it, makes sure it is all given out in the proper way. It is all in the hands of Hezbollah."

Though Hezbollah is only one of many groups providing social services in Lebanon, its reputation for delivering those services honestly is unmatched, making it that much harder to circumvent. In nearby Nabatiye, for instance, Mercy Corps has begun working through the Jabbar Foundation, a nonprofit group run by Yaseen Jabbar, a wealthy member of Parliament.

But the mayor of Nabatiye, Mustapha Badreddine, 55, says he considers the foundation ineffective. For his own part, Mr. Badreddine says he does not belong to Hezbollah, but that he works with it because it is trustworthy, far more so than any other group in the area.

...As an example of Hezbollah's hold on everyday life in southern Lebanon, Ali Bazzi, the mayor of Bint Jbail, outlined his big dreams for his half-demolished town as workmen raced past and tractors rumbled.

...Bint Jbail, the main Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon, saw some of the worst bombing and fighting during the monthlong war, in which Hezbollah, which is integrated with the general population, was Israel's target. But Mr. Bazzi intends to complete the reconstruction without using a single cent from the Lebanese government, much less the United States or the West.

Instead, Mr. Bazzi is counting on Construction Jihad [Hizbollah's building company]. Just a day after the fighting stopped, Construction Jihad enlisted the volunteer services of 1,700 engineers, electricians, plumbers, architects and geologists who have cleared streets, dug ditches and built temporary bridges.

While the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has just begun organizing committees to study the reconstruction of the country, Construction Jihad has all but completed surveys of southern Lebanese towns.

I've talked to people from other internaitonal NGOs, and this is a common problem in places like Lebanon. The US government stipulates that organizations cannot have anything to do with anyone who has anything to do with groups on the "terrorist list." This has caused NGOs to be fractured to the point where the American and other European branches have seperate offices in the same city.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Brahimi's plan for peace


Lakhdar Brahimi, former special adviser to the United Nations Secretary General, weighs in on the war in Lebanon with a five-point plan:

1. ensuring Lebanon's unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity and the full implementation of the 1989 Taif accord

2. encouraging Hizbollah to play a responsible role in the internal dynamics of Lebanon and expecting it to accept the Lebanese state?s exclusive right to possess armaments and use force

3. demanding that Syria and Iran, as well as all other states in the region and beyond, respect Lebanon's sovereignty and abstain from interfering in its internal affairs

4. telling Israel to withdraw its troops from all the territory it currently occupies, including the Shebaa Farms

5. focusing urgent and sustained attention on the problem that underlies the unrest in the Middle East: the Palestinian issue.

He also expresses his disgust at the the loss of life in this war, the destruction of Lebanon and the short-sighted analyses that seem so commonplace:

Wat a waste that it took more than 30 days to adopt a United Nations Security Council resolution for a cease-fire in Lebanon. Thirty days during which nothing positive was achieved and a great deal of pain, suffering and damage was inflicted on innocent people.

The loss of innocent civilian life is staggering and the destruction, particularly in Lebanon, is devastating. Human rights organizations and the United Nations have condemned the humanitarian crisis and violations of international humanitarian law.

Yet all the diplomatic clout of the United States was used to prevent a cease-fire, while more military hardware was rushed to the Israeli Army. It was argued that the war had to continue so that the root causes of the conflict could be addressed, but no one explained how destroying Lebanon would achieve that.

And what are these root causes? It is unbelievable that recent events are so regularly traced back only to the abduction of three Israeli soldiers. Few speak of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, or of its Lebanese prisoners, some of whom have been held for more than 20 years. And there is hardly any mention of military occupation and the injustice that has come with it.

What most people don't seem to understand is that the only way to disarm Hizbollah is to do so politically and diplomatically, and the only way to do this is to take away their raison d'être, which is Israeli occupation of Lebanese and Syrian land. I say Lebanese and Syrian, because the foreign policy of these two countries (at least insofar as Israel is concerned) is inextricably linked. Syria is willing to negotiate peace for land, but Israel doesn't seem interested. Ironically, the very land that Israel occupies for "security reasons" is making the country that much less secure.

Labor solidarity


The British Labor party is showing a little solidarity regarding the one word summary of Bush's handling of the Middle East:

Labour agrees: Bush is crap

Ian Davidson Glasgow South West MP

"I think that John Prescott is to be commended for the quality of his political analysis. His comment on American policy is brief and accurate. Britain has got to ensure that it is no longer seen as simply being the glove puppet of the United States."

Thursday, August 17, 2006

I love Beirut


The Lebanon Chronicle has been sending out stickers and posting photos of the stickers all over the world:



Los Angeles:



Berlin:



They've also been posting all of the many reasons why people love Beirut. It was only after they posted mine that I realized that "pretty girls" ended up on my list three times...

Lebanese death toll reaches 1,300


The death toll has reached 1,300 in Lebanon.

In Srifa, south of the Litani river, they found 26 bodies beneath ruins which I myself stood on just three days ago. At Ainata, there were eight more bodies of civilians. A corpse was discovered beneath a collapsed four-storey house north of Tyre and, near by, the remains of a 16-year old girl, along with three children and an adult. In Khiam in eastern Lebanon, besieged by the Israelis for more than a month, the elderly village "mukhtar" was found dead in the ruins of his home.

Not all the dead were civilians. At Kfar Shuba, dumper-truck drivers found the bodies of four Hizbollah members. At Roueiss, however, all 13 bodies found in the wreckage of eight 10-storey buildings were civilians. They included seven children and a pregnant woman. Ten more bodies were disentangled from the rubble of the southern suburbs of Beirut - where local people claimed they could still hear the screams of neighbours trapped far below the bomb-smashed apartment blocks.

...How many of these dead would have survived if George Bush and Tony Blair had demanded an immediate ceasefire weeks ago will never be known. But many would have had the chance of life had Western governments not regarded this dirty war as an "opportunity" to create a "new" Middle East by humbling Iran and Syria.

Is Hamas ready to deal?


When I was in Ramallah, a friend introduced me to his American/Palestinian cousin who works in the Palestinian Authority. She's young and intelligent, grew up abroad and feels more comfortable in English than in Arabic. She had to move back in with her family, because she hasn't been paid in months. She spoke to me about a plan to try to reshuffle the ministers, adding some members of Fatah, in order to appease the US so that their assets will be unfrozen. (The only people who changed with Hamas's success in the recent elections were the ministers, the other ministry workers, and in most cases even the deputy ministers, remained the same.)

A reasearcher from the CNRS in Paris asks whether this means that Hamas is ready to deal.

A bold gesture now by Israel would surprise its adversaries, convey strength, and even catch domestic political opposition off guard. And as strange as it may seem, were the United States able to help Israel help Hamas, it might turn the rising tide of global Muslim resentment.

Recent discussions I've had with Hamas leaders and their supporters around the globe indicate that Israel might just find a reasonable and influential bargaining partner.

Hamas's top elected official, Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, now accepts that to stop his people's suffering, his government must forsake its all-or-nothing call for Israel's destruction. "We have no problem with a sovereign Palestinian state over all our lands within the 1967 borders, living in calm," Mr. Haniya told me in his Gaza City office in late June, shortly before an Israeli missile destroyed it. "But we need the West as a partner to help us through."

Mr. Haniya's government had just agreed to a historic compromise with Fatah and its leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, forming a national coalition that implicitly accepts the coexistence alongside Israel. But this breakthrough was quickly overshadowed by Israel?s offensive into Gaza in retaliation for the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants, including members of Hamas?s military wing.

...Khaled Meshal, the Damascus-based head of the Hamas politburo, refused to release Corporal Shalit unless Israel freed hundreds of prisoners. While it is true that Israel has shown willingness to release hundreds of Palestinian detainees in return for a single Israeli in the past, Mr. Meshal's stand might have been part of a larger political game.

...Prime Minster Haniya and many of Hamas's other Sunni leaders are known to be uncomfortable with the loose coalition that Mr. Meshal has been forging with Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. Hasan Yusuf, a Hamas official held in Israel's Ketziot prison, doesn't think President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran's declaration that the main solution to the Middle East crisis is for the elimination of the "Zionist regime" is practical or wise. "The outcome in Lebanon doesn't change our view," Mr. Yusuf informed me last weekend. "We believe in two states living side by side."

He also said that "all Hamas factions have agreed to a unilateral cease-fire, including halting Qassam rockets; the movement is ready to go farther if it receives any encouraging responses from Israel and the West."

But even moderate Hamas figures feel that as long as Israel, the United States and Europe boycott the elected government in Gaza and the West Bank, there is little choice but to accept whatever help comes along.

This is doubly unfortunate. While Mr. Meshal says Islam allows only a long-term truce with Israel, Hamas officials closer to Prime Minister Haniya believe that a formal peace deal is possible, especially if negotiations can begin out of the spotlight and proceed by degrees.

"You can't expect us to take off all of our clothes at once," one Hamas leader told me, "or we'll be naked in the cold, like Arafat in his last years." This official said that if Hamas moved too fast, it would alienate its base, but if his government continued to be isolated, the base would radicalize. "Either way, you could wind up with a bunch of little Al Qaedas."

...Tangible results, like prisoner exchanges, are important. However, so are symbolic actions. Hamas officials have stressed the importance of Israel's recognizing their suffering from the original loss of Palestinian land. And survey research of Palestinian refugees and Hamas by my colleagues and I, supported by the National Science Foundation, reliably finds that violent opposition to peace decreases if the adversary is seen to compromise its own moral position, even if the compromise has no material value.

"Israel freeing some of our prisoners will help us to stop others from attacking it," said the Hamas government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad. "But Israel must apologize for our tragedy in 1948 before we can talk about negotiating over our right of return to historic Palestine."

Talking and negotiating with Hamas, and Hizbollah and Damascus for that matter, would take a bold move on Israel's part, which would most likely have to be preceded by a strong push from the US. Unfortunately, I think that what we can probably expect is more rhetoric about how one can't talk to terrorists and how poor Israel would love to settle this conflict once and for all but just can't find a partner in peace.

And if that's the case, we can look forward to things not only not getting better, but getting dramatically worse in the region, and consequently, all over the world.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Herr Grass's wartime career


And now for something completely different. It seems that Nobel laureate, Günter Grass, Germany's greatest living writer, had been lying about his past. It seems that when he was 17, he was in the Waffen SS.

Now the great advocate of facing unpalatable truths has lived up to his own standards, but a little late. The revelation came in an interview with Germany's respected conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), and while it is certain to boost interest in his forthcoming autobiography it has done immeasurable harm to the writer's squeaky-clean reputation.

...Grass's insistent, repetitive message to his fellow citizens was that they should never, ever forget. It seems that only now has he himself chosen to remember.

I'm not really sure what to think about this information. I suppose being in the SS when you were 17 is forgivable, particularly when the Nazis were drafting everyone; however, the fact that he's hidden it for so long really gives me a bad taste in my mouth.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The real war starts


Robert Fisk does not seem optimistic. In today's Independent, he predicts weeks of guerrilla warfare in the south, despite that fact that the roads to the south were already packed with Lebanese trying to get back to their homes and bury their dead:

The real war in Lebanon begins today. The world may believe - and Israel may believe - that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed. But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose.

...From this morning, Hizbollah's operations will be directed solely against the invasion force. And the Israelis cannot afford to lose 40 men a day. Unable to shoot down the Israeli F-16 aircraft that have laid waste to much of Lebanon, the Hizbollah have, for years, prayed and longed and waited for the moment when they could attack the Israeli army on the ground.

Now they are set to put their long-planned campaign into operation. Thousands of their members remain alive and armed in the ruined hill villages of southern Lebanon for just this moment and, only hours after their leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel on Saturday that his men were waiting for them on the banks of the Litani river, the Hizbollah sprang their trap, killing more than 20 Israeli soldiers in less than three hours.

...At this fatal juncture in Middle East history - and no one should underestimate this moment's importance in the region - the Israeli army appears as impotent to protect its country as the Hizbollah clearly is to protect Lebanon.

But if the ceasefire collapses, as seems certain, neither the Israelis nor the Americans appear to have any plans to escape the consequences. The US saw this war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but already it seems as if the tables have been turned. The Israeli military appears to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and apartment blocks - but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army they swore to liquidate.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Lebanon as a test run for Iran


Sy Hersh has a new piece on Lebanon in The New Yorker. He says that this conflict had been planned by Israel and approved by the US for several months. The idea was that Israel's attacks on Hizbollah and Lebanon's infrastructure would serve as a trial run for a future American attack on Iran.

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel?s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground. ...

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah -- and shared it with Bush Administration officials -- well before the July 12th kidnappings. "It's not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into," he said, "but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it."

The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, "The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy."

Of course this attack has not gone as smoothly as the Israelis would have liked it to. The results have so far been unclear, with both sides claiming victory. This war seems to have been sold to the US by Israel, but so far, notes Richard Armitage it has been less than convincing and should serve as a warning against attacking Iran:

"The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. "Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House "has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah." He added, "It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it." (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush's first term -- and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah "may be the A team of terrorists" -- Israel's campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. "If the most dominant military force in the region -- the Israel Defense Forces -- can't pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million," Armitage said. "The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis."

Cease-fire begins


After a last-minute push by Israeli troops and another 220 rockets fired by Hizbollah, the cease-fire has begun. It only took a month:

...since July 12, nearly 1,150 Lebanese are estimated to have died, most of them civilians, and about 150 Israelis, mostly soldiers. Israel says 500 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, a figure Hezbollah disputes. In Gaza, nearly 200 Palestinians have died, many of them militants.
We'll see what this actually means, since both sides seem to have reserved the right to respond to the other:

Eli Yishai, the Israeli trade minister, also issued a stark warning to Lebanon even if the ceasefire comes into force, saying, "If a single stone is thrown at Israel from whatever village that happens, it should be turned into a pile of stones."

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Saturday, "As long as there is Israeli military movement, Israeli field aggression and Israeli soldiers occupying our land ... it is our natural right to confront them, fight them and defend our land, our homes, and ourselves."

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Hizbollah's other war


Reading some of Michael Young's pieces in the Daily Star while I was in Beirut a few weeks ago sometimes made me sick to my stomach. However, his piece in the NY Times Magazine this week is definitely worth a read.

He goes into the dense jungle that is Lebanese politics, explaining the constantly changing alliances and feuds that are often difficult to follow for outsiders. He speaks of the gains that the Shia, who had been historically left out of Lebanese poltical life, have made through Hizbollah, and the tensions felt between the pro-Syrian parties and the March 14 group.

It's a long article, but very much worth a read.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

The London Review on Lebanon and Israel


The London Review has updated, and there are several articles about Lebanon and Israel, including Yitzhak Laor on the IDF and Charles Glass on Hizbollah. There is also a good article by Michael Byers on the limits of self-defence:

'I entirely understand the desire, and indeed need, for Israel to defend itself properly,' Tony Blair said on 14 July. 'As a sovereign nation, Israel has every right to defend itself,' George W. Bush said on 16 July. By the time these statements were made, the IDF had bombed Beirut?s international airport, destroyed roads, bridges, power stations and petrol stations, and imposed an air and sea blockade. The Israeli army chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, had promised to 'turn back the clock in Lebanon by twenty years'. All this in response, ostensibly, to the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others by Hizbullah militants on 12 July.

The right of self-defence identified by Blair and Bush is part of international law. Which makes two conclusions possible: either this area of international law is so elastic as to be inoperative; or it is being interpreted by Blair and Bush in an untenable way. ...


Then there is international humanitarian law, which both Hizbullah and Israel have violated. These rules are set out in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which Israel ratified in 1951. The direct targeting of civilians is categorically prohibited, and this includes acts or threats of violence intended to spread terror or impose collective punishment. Indiscriminate attacks are proscribed. Above all, individual targets may be selected only if the direct military advantage anticipated from the strike exceeds the expected harm to civilians or civilian objects. Hizbullah?s rocket attacks, which have been aimed in the general vicinity of Israeli cities and towns rather than at specific military targets, are illegal.

So too are many of Israel's attacks. More than seven hundred Lebanese civilians have been killed to date, most of them women and children. Some were struck by missiles as they fled for safety. Others were hit because blasted roads, bridges and petrol stations had made it impossible for them to flee. More died when Israel dropped bombs in densely populated neighbourhoods. Even more are dying now as hospitals, water filtration plants and sewage treatment facilities struggle with power shortages. In no circumstance may attacks on civilians or civilian infrastructure be justified by similar violations on the other side. The horrors of Qana, where dozens of Lebanese civilians died in a single precision air-strike, cannot be balanced by lost Israeli lives.

It has been suggested that Israel's actions are aimed at turning the Lebanese population against Hizbullah. A similar kind of thinking was popular during the Second World War, as evidenced by the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg and several cities in Japan. It re-emerged shortly before the 2003 Iraq war in the language of 'shock and awe'. But military action undertaken with such an intention was rejected during the negotiation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and remains illegal. It's also wrong-headed, since people who have been attacked are more likely to blame their attackers than anyone else.

International humanitarian law forbids methods of warfare that cause 'unnecessary suffering or superfluous injury'. For this reason, Hizbullah's use of rockets packed with ball-bearings is illegal, while Israel?s reliance on cluster bombs, fuel-air explosives, white phosphorus (as a weapon rather than for illumination) and depleted uranium is immoral and quite possibly also illegal.

Finally, there's the death of the four UN observers, struck by a precision-guided bomb in a highly visible, long-established post located on a barren hilltop ? after Israeli forces had been warned repeatedly that their projectiles were falling perilously close by. It's easy to suspect that the attack was deliberate, perhaps intended to force the UN to withdraw its other observers from the area, which it duly did. It may even have been designed to dissuade countries from offering troops for the international force being championed by Tony Blair ? a force that, if it's ever created, will take months to deploy. If the killing of the observers was deliberate, it would constitute a clear violation of international humanitarian law.

Violations of these various rules constitute war crimes, which are subject to universal jurisdiction in the sense that the perpetrators may be prosecuted in any country's domestic courts. This raises the possibility of trials if they are foolish enough to travel abroad and the local authorities brave enough to arrest them. The Israeli justice minister, Haim Ramon, will wish to be particularly careful. On 27 July, he said that civilians had been given ample warning and 'all those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hizbullah.' Unfortunately, there?s no possibility of prosecutions in the International Criminal Court, since neither Israel nor Lebanon has ratified the court's statute, and the United States would veto any attempt by the Security Council to use its power to send the matter there.

The absence of a reliable mechanism for prosecuting Hizbullah and Israeli leaders is less serious, however, than the support that Bush and Blair have given to clear violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions. The long-term viability of these rules depends on the willingness of politicians ? and the general public ? to speak out in defence of international law.

Friday, August 11, 2006

America at its worst


While I was in Jerusalem, I was sent a forwarded e-mail that asked whether or not a good Muslim can be a good American. The answer, of course, was no. I figured that this was just another case of racist drivel perpetuated by forwarded e-mails, but imagine my disappointment when I saw that it is a sentiment shared by many Americans according to this Gallup poll.

A new Gallup poll finds that many Americans -- what it calls "substantial minorities" -- harbor "negative feelings or prejudices against people of the Muslim faith" in this country. Nearly one in four Americans, 22%, say they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbor.

While Americans tend to disagree with the notion that Muslims living in the United States are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, a significant 34% believe they do back al-Qaeda. And fewer than half -- 49% -- believe U.S. Muslims are loyal to the United States.

Almost four in ten, 39%, advocate that Muslims here should carry special I.D. That same number admit that they do hold some "prejudice" against Muslims. Forty-four percent say their religious views are too "extreme."

In every case, Americans who actually know any Muslims are more sympathethic.

The poll was taken at the end of July and surveyed 1,007 adult Americans.
Special identification? Is the US going even more insane? Why don't we just make them little crescents to sew on their clothes?

Pictures from the holy land


Here are a bunch of different photos that I took while in the holy land:

This is the Wailing Wall, or the Western Wall, if you prefer:



This a picture of the young Israelis who shocked me with their guns in the middle of West Jerusalem's night life:



Here are pictures from the anti-war rally in Tel Aviv. The first is the protest, the second is a Palestinian protester being roughed up by the police while people yelled that he should be sent to Gaza to be killed, and the third is a pro-war protest across the street:








A poster from the rally:




The walls of Jerusalem's old city:




Inside the old city in the morning at one of the gate's leading to al-Aqsa or al-Harem as-sharif:



The Dome of the Rock:



The anti-war candle light vigil at Damascus Gate (Bab al-Amoud) in Jerusalem:



This is a view from Bethlehem. The walled off section is a settlement, which is 70% empty:



This is part of the seperation wall that has cut right by a Palestinian home, cutting the home off from the rest of its land:



Here is the wall up close in Bethlehem:



These pictures are from the Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Camp in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem:



Wednesday, August 09, 2006

A letter from Beirut...


I arrived in Amman from Jerusalem yesterday. I was worried about crossing back over, especially since I brought back a small olive tree for the Palestinian family who's been so kind as to take care of me while I'm here, but the Israelis don't seem to care about what goes out of the country.

George Galloway spoke out against the media bias while I was on my way home.

A friend also sent me a link to a video letter from Beirut...to who love us. You can download it here:

Now, listen well. We are besieged and the smell of gunpoweder is in the air. Gunpowder, and the world is watching.We are besieged because the world is watching. What matters is that we still have a bit of food and water. And pride. And dignity. And above all lots of love.

We are 4 million people; 4 million and one who was born today in a school under siege. We are here. Where are you?




The first clip is angry, because there is a lot to be angry about. The second clip is sad, because there is even more to be sad about.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Satellite images of Beirut, before and after


The Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten has sattelite images of Beirut (I think this is in the Dahiye, the southern suburb of the capital) from 12 July and 31 July:

Sunday, August 06, 2006


Beirut responds to the text of the proposed Security Council resolution:

Nouhad Mahmoud, a Lebanese foreign ministry official, said on Sunday that the government "would have liked to see our concerns more reflected in the text" of the draft resolution.

"Unfortunately, it lacked, for instance, a call for the withdrawal of Israeli forces which are now in Lebanon. That is a recipe for more confrontation."

He said the government was also unhappy that the resolution does not call for the Shebaa Farms area to be put under UN control, as Lebanon has asked, while its future status is figured out.

Protest in Tel Aviv and guns over Jerusalem


I went to Tel Aviv last night for a protest againt the war in Lebanon. There was a group of Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners protesting the war and a group of Israelis protesting the protest. The first group was holding signs in Hebrew, Arabic and English calling for an end to the war and to the occuptation. The others were holding signs with slogans like "Let the Army win" and "All terrorists are Muslim." Yael Dayan, the daughter of Moshe Dayen also spoke at the protest. She was initially applauded when she said that the war should stop, but was then booed when she said that the war had started out as a "just war."

The police were sometimes violent and at one point beat up a Palestinian guy. There were five policemen against a single guy, whose head they repeatedly smashed onto a car hood. Israeli spectators were screaming that he was just a dirty Arab and deserved to be "sent to Gaza to be killed."

I spoke to a young Israeli woman whose parents were from Kazakhstan. She was against the war but stayed at the edges of the protest, because she felt a little hypocritical. AS it turns out, she'll be starting her military service in a couple of months. As a woman, she won't be sent to Lebanon or Gaza, but she still feels guilty. When I reminded her that it was compulsory for all Israelis, she told me that as a woman, it's fairly easy to get out of, but for reasons that she was unsure of, she didn't.

After the protest, we had dinner in the area and then came back to Jerusalem and took a stroll in the western part of the city. I was shocked to see young Israeli men out for a night on the town with their friends or girlfriends carrying automatic weapons and spare ammunition. They were not soldiers and were not in any sort of uniform. They brought their weapons into the bars and restaurants, sometimes when the streets were especially crowded, you might have the muzzle of an M-16 bump your leg as you wade through the scantily clad human masses. I am used to seeing civilians with guns and soldiers and policemen, but I was taken aback at the amount of young Israelis armed to the teeth in the West Jerusalem equivalent of Times Square or the Bastille.

I asked a policewoman about it this morning in the old city, and she told me that they were probably soldiers, but when she left, I was called back to the shopfront by some Palestinians. They asked me if the armed youth were wearing big watches or if they were wearing yarmukles.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Israeli war crimes in Lebanon


From Human Rights Watch's press release about their report on Israeli war crimes.

Some Israeli Attacks Amount to War Crimes

(Beirut, August 3, 2006) ? Israeli forces have systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said in report released today. The pattern of attacks in more than 20 cases investigated by Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon indicates that the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes.

The 50-page report, "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon," analyzes almost two dozen cases of Israeli air and artillery attacks on civilian homes and vehicles. Of the 153 dead civilians named in the report, 63 are children. More than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli fire since fighting began on July 12, most of them civilians.

"The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military's disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Our research shows that Israel's claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel's indiscriminate warfare."

The report is based on extensive interviews with victims and witnesses of attacks, visits to some blast sites, and information obtained from hospitals, humanitarian groups, security forces and government agencies. Human Rights Watch also conducted research in Israel, assessing the weapons used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Human Rights Watch researchers found numerous cases in which the IDF launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military objectives but excessive civilian cost. In many cases, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians.
Read the rest of the press release and the report itself for specific instances of indiscriminate killing.

Talking to Syria


The US says that it is involved in diplomacy, but it's hard to call only meeting with the people who agree with you diplomatic. It is obvious that peace in Lebanon and Israel will have to involve Syria, but the US refuses to talk to Damascus.

This piece in the LA Times by Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States (often called the lonliest diplomat in Washington) is interesting:

The underlying idea behind demanding Syrian withdrawal [from Lebanon] was simple: It would precipitate the fall of the Syrian regime, and the U.S. would end up with a new government in Damascus that is both Israel-friendly and an ally of the U.S. Does that have any resemblance to the neoconservative justification for the war on Iraq?

To the dismay of U.S. policymakers, this belligerent attitude only rallied Syrians behind their own government.

Ultimately, the Bush administration has to realize that by trying to isolate Syria politically and diplomatically, the U.S. continues to lose ability to influence a major player in the Middle East. In the wake of the ongoing instability in Iraq and violence in Palestine and Lebanon, it begs the larger question: Has isolating Syria made the region more secure?

Currently, the White House doesn't talk to the democratically elected government of Palestine. It does not talk to Hezbollah, which has democratically elected members in the Lebanese parliament and is a member of the Lebanese coalition government. It does not talk to Iran, and it certainly does not talk to Syria.

Gone are the days when U.S. special envoys to the Middle East would spend hours, if not days, with Syrian officials brainstorming, discussing, negotiating and looking for creative solutions leading to a compromise or settlement. Instead, this administration follows the Bolton Doctrine: There is no need to talk to Syria, because Syria knows what it needs to do. End of the matter.

When the United States realizes that it is high time to reconsider its policies toward Syria, Syria will be more than willing to engage. However, the rules of the game should be clear. As President Bashar Assad has said, Syria is not a charity. If the U.S. wants something from Syria, then Syria requires something in return from the U.S.: Let us address the root cause of instability in the Middle East.

The current crisis in Lebanon needs an urgent solution because of the disastrous human toll. Moreover, the whole Middle East deserves a comprehensive deal that would put an end to occupation and allow all countries to equally prosper and live in dignity and peace.
Of course, as an ambassador, his points toe the Syrian line (a line that I generally don't believe as regards Lebanon), but he does have some interesting and valid points. It might seem obvious that diplomacy is not the same as dictating orders, but many don't see it that way in Washington.

Ramallah and a Palestinian government without paychecks


Ramallah was interesting. I met an American-Palestinian woman who works in one of the minstries there. She talked about a lot of things, but mostly about how she hasn't been paid for a while and how the financial squeeze has gotten so bad that employees who live outside Ramallah only come in three times a week, since they haven't been paid and cannot afford to pay for transportation to work and back every day.

Most business with foreign countries is being done through the office of the President, because no one wants to work with the new Hamas government. Interestingly enough though, in the ministries that Hamas controls now, only the ministers have been changed. Everyone, including the deputies, have stayed the same. So just liek most governments and large organizations, there is always a core of career bureaucrats that stays the same, regardless of who is in charge of the ministry.

The wall was again very present, impossible to miss. It cuts the landscape and lengthens commutes. It is often covered with graffiti, both domestic and foreign, in Arabic and English. To get back to Jerusalem, we had to go through two different checkpoints, just as we had to got through two on the way there. Without these checkpoints, the trip would only take about 30 minutes.

I went out last night in West Jerusalem with a couple from Europe who work in NGOs here in the West Bank and Jerusalem. On our way back to the old city, we ran into a couple of young and hip Israelis busily tearing down fliers for a protest against the war in Lebanon.

I'm increasingly worried about a probable escalation. Nasrallah said the night before last on television that if the center of Beirut was hit, then he would hit Tel Aviv. I beleive that this is a warning, not a bluff. Israel probably won't accept this as a deterrant and will probably hit Beirut, if only to assert its manliness and regain the IDF's "honor." Then since he said he would, Nasrallah will order an attack on Tel Aviv.

If only the belligerents in the Middle East were less worried about being "manly" and more interested in being humane, we'd all be a lot better off.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Images from the Dahiyeh


The Times has done a simple interactive graphic of the Southern suburb of Beirut, Haret Hreik, which is where Hizbollah has its offices and which has been the target of many of the Israeli attacks.

It's good that the Times has decided to put it next to a map of Manhatten (at the same scale). Maybe some people might better be able to imagine what it would be like if New York were being attacked instead of Beirut.

The London Review of Books has several pieces by people in Beirut now. This one reminds me the most of my Beirut, parfticularly the ambivalence about leaving Lebanon. It wouldn't surprise me if we went to the same café in Hamra:

I am a secular person and I?m democratically inclined. I have never supported Hizbullah, but I do not question its legitimacy as a political force in Lebanon. It would be folly to regard Hizbullah as just another radical Islamist terrorist organisation. It is a mature political organisation with an Islamist ideology. It has learned (very quickly) to coexist with other political agents in the country, as well as other sects. There have been exceptional moments when the country has united willingly and spontaneously (as during the Israeli attacks in 1993 and 1996), but other less spectacular moments have punctuated the lived postwar experience of every single Lebanese, in which sectarian prejudice was easily set aside. When Hariri was assassinated, the country seemed divided into two camps. There was, however, an overwhelming consensus that we would not go back to fighting one another. If Israel plans to annihilate Hizbullah, it will annihilate Lebanon. Hizbullah is an essential element of contemporary Lebanon.


Otherwise, I'm supposed to be going to Ramallah today, which should prove to be an interesting trip.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Death tolls


The death toll in Lebanon has topped 900 people now, with 3,000 people injured. Only about 100 of the dead were from Hizbollah. (Israel claims that 300 Hizbollah militants have been killed, but I believe the number is closer to the Lebanese security force's estimate, since Nasrallah is always forthright about Hizbollah deaths.)

Compare that to 37 dead Israeli soldiers and 19 civilians.

Bethlehem


I spent all day in Bethlehem, exploring several refugee camps and the Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Camp in the Aida Camp. The children were bright-eyed and friendly, and everyone else was welcoming and helpful.

I got up close to the seperation wall, which often came about 10 meters from Palestinian houses, cutting the family off from the rest of their land.

On the way back, I took a bus back to Jerusalem with my friend. When we were stopped at the checkpoint, everyone in the bus got out and showed their bags and identity cards to the young Israeli soldier, who only spoke to us in Hebrew. He was kurt and methodical. Sometimes, apparently, they won't make you get out of the bus, but we saw that they were making women and children get out and show their ID, so we knew that we would have to also. When we got back into the bus, I asked my friend how often these searches happened. "All the time," he told me.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Jerusalem - Al-Quds


I arrived in Jerusalem yesterday. I set out in a taxi from Amman to the Allenby Bridge crossing. Once I was on the Israeli side of the border, everything slowed to a crawl. I was expecting a modern border crossing that was orderly and efficient. I was wrong.

There were practically no signs, and the Israeli soldiers on duty were usually not at all helpful: one girl refused to even talk to me when I asked her a question. I was held for about 3 hours and interrogated by a young Ethiopian girl, who I assume was doing her military service. She told me to sit down, because it was going to be a long time before I went anywhere. I asked why, and she responded, "Because you was in Lebanon." She asked why I was there, and I told her that I was on vacation. "Vacation in Beirut?" she asked with suprise. "Yes, it's a wonderful city, hopefully, one day you'll be able to visit." She said that "they" would kill her, and I suggested that she should just speak in Amahric, since there are many Ethiopians in Beirut.

When I finally made it into Jerusalem, I was met by a Palestinian friend of the family who has put me up in Amman. He took me out for a very late lunch, showed me around the neighborhood (East Jerusalem, near the Damascus Gate), and we talked about mutual friends and politics. He introduced me to his friends and some of his family; everyone seems to know him in the neighborhood. After talking and eating with a group that got bigger and bigger, we went to a candle light vigil against the wars in Lebanon and Gaza. He told me about a protest in front of the American consulate in East Jerusalem (there's also one in West Jerusalem and an Embassy in Tel Aviv). Since they couldn't get a permit, the police came and broke it up with clubs and tear gas.

After the vigil, I went out with a Palestinian girl who is a citizen of Israel, who tried to explain to me why she refuses to be called an Israeli Arab, and an Israeli Jewish girl from Moldavia. They talked about the news here (the Palestinian girl speaks Hebrew as well as Arabic and English) and about how all but the most radical of the left supports the war in Lebanon.

The hotels are mostly full here, because many people have left the north because of Hizbollah's rocket attacks. Otherwise, my friends back in Lebanon tell me that the Israelis have gone farther and farther into southern Lebanon, and there is talk of going as far north as the Litani, which is eerily reminiscent of the 1982 invasion. I've been taking pictures, but I don't have my computer here, so I'll have to upload them when I get back to Amman in a few days.

Otherwise, Al Aqsa is closed to non-Muslim foreigners for "security reasons," but I am convinced to see al-Haram ah-Sherif before I leave. Tomorrow, my friend is going to take me to see Bethlehem and part of the separation wall.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

In case you've forgotten...


Darfur is still a disaster. One might be tempted to think that things have gotten better there since it hasn't been in the news. If anything, it's just getting worse:

So far, negotiations over a proposed United Nations force to shore up the shaky peace in Darfur have limped along with no sign of compromise. The opposing sides in the conflict now seem headed toward a large-scale military confrontation, bringing Darfur to the edge of a new abyss -- perhaps the deepest it has faced.

"Unfortunately, things seem to be headed in that direction," said Gen. Collins Ihekire, commander of the beleaguered 7,000-member African Union force that is enforcing a fragile peace agreement between the government and one rebel group.

Nearly four months after signing the agreement, the government is preparing a fresh assault against the rebel groups that refused to sign. Years of conflict have already killed hundreds of thousands of people here and sent 2.5 million fleeing their homes. But that may be a prelude of the death likely to come from further fighting, hunger and disease. In the past few months, killings of aid workers and hijackings of their vehicles, mostly by rebel groups, have forced aid groups to curtail programs to feed, clothe and shelter hundreds of thousands of people.

Add to that the fact that many people are cut off from humanitarian aid and the African Union's mandate is about to expire next month.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Last Refuge


Again from the Times magazine, an article by Hassan Daoud about last refuges, and how even they can be destroyed.

Israel and Hizbollah to negotiate prisoner swap


It seems that after the destruction of much of Lebanon, and the death of around 1,100 Lebanese (most of whom were civilians) and over 150 Israeli deaths (most of whom were soldiers), there will be an exchange in prisoners after all.

Interestingly enough, Hassan Nasrallah said last night that had he known that Israel was going to react so strongly, he would not have captured the two Israeli soldiers:

"We did not think, even one percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude," Hassan Nasrallah, the cleric who leads Hizbullah, told Lebanon's New TV channel. "You ask me, if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not." He said Italy would play a part in negotiating the soldiers' eventual release. "Contacts recently began for negotiations," he said. "It seems that Italy is trying to get into the subject." From the start, Mr Nasrallah has said he wanted to exchange the soldiers for Lebanese and Palestinians held in Israel.

Sergio de Gregorio, head of Italy's senate defence committee, said that Iran, Hizbullah's backer, wanted Italy involved. Mr de Gregorio told Reuters he expected talks to start this week. He said the two Israelis were "still alive, fortunately", but would not talk about how they were or what kind of deal might free them.

An Egyptian newspaper reported that German diplomats had helped negotiate a deal to have them freed in two or three weeks. A number of Lebanese held by Israel would be freed in return a day or two later, it said.

While it is true that Israel's reaction to the capture of one soldier by militants in Gaza should have been viewed as a bellwether for Israel's reaction in Lebanon, not many people expected such a violent reaction. After all, attacking Gaza is like shooting fish in a barrel for the IDF, whereas Hizbollah, as we have seen, is capable of not only withstanding an Israeli attack, but fighting back. So in the end, I'm inclined to believe Nasrallah, first because he's not prone to political bluster and usually says what he means and means what he says, and second, because I didn't see the war coming either.

This was obviously not a deterrent to Israel, but it might make Tel Aviv think twice about rushing into a large-scale military solution rather than continuing the status quo of small-scale tit for tat military action or, hopefully, initiating a broad diplomatic process that would help stabalize the region in the long run.

Disarming Hizbollah


In Sunday's Magazine in the Times, there was an article on disarming Hizbollah, in which parallels are made to the situations in the Ivory Coast, Kosovo, the Congo and Northern Ireland. The point is made that disarmament cannot realistically be done by force (unless one is prepared and able to destroy the force) and that there has to be a good political and diplomatic framework that offers the militants a reason to disarm themselves.

Israel launched its air, land and sea attack on Lebanon with the goal, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it, of "disarming this murderous organization"; in that regard, the campaign failed. How, then, could any lesser force succeed? Lebanon's defense minister, Elias Murr, has defended Hezbollah and flatly asserted that the Lebanese Army "is not going to the south to strip Hezbollah of its weapons and do the work that Israel did not." Neither will a U.N. peacekeeping force, however large. "You cannot impose peace on these people if they?re ready to fight you," as a D.D.R. [disarmament, demobilization and reintegration] expert in the U.N.'s peacekeeping department puts it. "You need to be able to annihilate them, because they?re not going to lay down their arms voluntarily." Even robust United Nations forces do not seek to annihilate their adversaries.

If Hezbollah cannot be forcibly disarmed, can some political arrangement induce the militia to disarm itself? This, of course, raises a question about Hezbollah?s aspirations: is it seeking to achieve through force a goal that can be attained through diplomacy, or through political activity? That this is in fact the case is the unspoken premise of United Nations Resolution 1559, passed in 2004, which sought to release Lebanon from the suffocating grip of Syria, and thus to begin a national dialogue that would ultimately lead to the incorporation of Hezbollah into Lebanese affairs.

I've said this before, but the only realistic way to get Hizbollah to disarm is politically and diplomatically. Israeli attacks on Lebanon only serve to strengthen Hizbollah's raison d'être, showing that they do need a strong paramilitary force to defend Lebanon from another Israeli invasion. That the invasion might not have occured if it weren't for the conflict is not really important: the conflict does exist. If Israel were really interested in getting rid of Hizbollah's militia forces, then Tel Aviv would have to start another round of "land for peace" negotiations. The problem is that since Lebanon's (and perhaps more importantly, Hizbollah's) policy toward Israel is inextricably linked with that of Syria, the process would have to be much wider. This means that it wouldn't be enough to just give back Lebanese territory; a peace initiative would have to include at least the Syrians if not the Palestinians in order to work.

This would be a lot of hard and complicated work; however, if Israel is really interested in peace, they're going to have to start sometime. And the sooner the better.

Friday, August 25, 2006

More French and Italian peacekeepers


France has agreed to send 2,000 peacekeepers to Southern Lebanon, and Italy is expected to confirm its offer of 3,000 troops. France was waiting for clarifications on the force's mandate, chain of command (which will be military and not civilian), and "freedom of movement and capacity for action."

It is still unclear exactly to what extent UN troops will be excpected to disarm Hizbollah and to what extent the latter will cooperate with the force. It seems clear to me that the only way to successfully disarm Hizbollah is politically and diplomatically, dealing with its grievances, such as the Shebaa Farms currently occupied by Israel and Lebanese prisoners being held in Israeli jails. The IDF's recent attacks have shown how difficult it is to disarm Hizbollah, and if French and Italian troops try to engage Hizbollah militarily with the aim of disarming them, they will certainly find themselves in a repeat of the 1980s when French and American troops were attacked and then withdrew from Lebanon.

US investigation into Israeli use of American munitions


The US State Department has decided to conduct an inquiry into Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs in Lebanon. The two countries have a secret agreement that such munitions are only to be used against military targets:

The investigation by the department?s Office of Defense Trade Controls began this week, after reports that three types of American cluster munitions, anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area, have been found in many areas of southern Lebanon and were responsible for civilian casualties.

...Several current and former officials said that they doubted the investigation would lead to sanctions against Israel but that the decision to proceed with it might be intended to help the Bush administration ease criticism from Arab governments and commentators over its support of Israel's military operations. The investigation has not been publicly announced; the State Department confirmed it in response to questions.

So is this a real inquiry or is it being done to try to make the US look a little better in the eyes of the rest of the world? According to the Times article, there was a six-year ban imposed on cluster bomb sales to Israel in 1982 after a Congressional investigation found that Israel had used the weapons against civilian areas in violation of the agreements.

Here is a map made by the UN that shows cluster bomb attacks in the South of Lebanon.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Aid and Hizbollah


Relief agencies in Southern Lebanon that receive American funding are finding themselves in a difficult situation. The US government says that they are not allowed to give out aid or money through Hizbollah. This means that they should bypass the organization completely, a difficulyt task in Southern Lebanon:

"Unicef has been here, and Mercy Corps and other groups," said Ahmad Zogby, 39, whose house was destroyed, along with that of his parents. "But everything coming in, Hezbollah puts an eye on it, makes sure it is all given out in the proper way. It is all in the hands of Hezbollah."

Though Hezbollah is only one of many groups providing social services in Lebanon, its reputation for delivering those services honestly is unmatched, making it that much harder to circumvent. In nearby Nabatiye, for instance, Mercy Corps has begun working through the Jabbar Foundation, a nonprofit group run by Yaseen Jabbar, a wealthy member of Parliament.

But the mayor of Nabatiye, Mustapha Badreddine, 55, says he considers the foundation ineffective. For his own part, Mr. Badreddine says he does not belong to Hezbollah, but that he works with it because it is trustworthy, far more so than any other group in the area.

...As an example of Hezbollah's hold on everyday life in southern Lebanon, Ali Bazzi, the mayor of Bint Jbail, outlined his big dreams for his half-demolished town as workmen raced past and tractors rumbled.

...Bint Jbail, the main Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon, saw some of the worst bombing and fighting during the monthlong war, in which Hezbollah, which is integrated with the general population, was Israel's target. But Mr. Bazzi intends to complete the reconstruction without using a single cent from the Lebanese government, much less the United States or the West.

Instead, Mr. Bazzi is counting on Construction Jihad [Hizbollah's building company]. Just a day after the fighting stopped, Construction Jihad enlisted the volunteer services of 1,700 engineers, electricians, plumbers, architects and geologists who have cleared streets, dug ditches and built temporary bridges.

While the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has just begun organizing committees to study the reconstruction of the country, Construction Jihad has all but completed surveys of southern Lebanese towns.

I've talked to people from other internaitonal NGOs, and this is a common problem in places like Lebanon. The US government stipulates that organizations cannot have anything to do with anyone who has anything to do with groups on the "terrorist list." This has caused NGOs to be fractured to the point where the American and other European branches have seperate offices in the same city.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Brahimi's plan for peace


Lakhdar Brahimi, former special adviser to the United Nations Secretary General, weighs in on the war in Lebanon with a five-point plan:

1. ensuring Lebanon's unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity and the full implementation of the 1989 Taif accord

2. encouraging Hizbollah to play a responsible role in the internal dynamics of Lebanon and expecting it to accept the Lebanese state?s exclusive right to possess armaments and use force

3. demanding that Syria and Iran, as well as all other states in the region and beyond, respect Lebanon's sovereignty and abstain from interfering in its internal affairs

4. telling Israel to withdraw its troops from all the territory it currently occupies, including the Shebaa Farms

5. focusing urgent and sustained attention on the problem that underlies the unrest in the Middle East: the Palestinian issue.

He also expresses his disgust at the the loss of life in this war, the destruction of Lebanon and the short-sighted analyses that seem so commonplace:

Wat a waste that it took more than 30 days to adopt a United Nations Security Council resolution for a cease-fire in Lebanon. Thirty days during which nothing positive was achieved and a great deal of pain, suffering and damage was inflicted on innocent people.

The loss of innocent civilian life is staggering and the destruction, particularly in Lebanon, is devastating. Human rights organizations and the United Nations have condemned the humanitarian crisis and violations of international humanitarian law.

Yet all the diplomatic clout of the United States was used to prevent a cease-fire, while more military hardware was rushed to the Israeli Army. It was argued that the war had to continue so that the root causes of the conflict could be addressed, but no one explained how destroying Lebanon would achieve that.

And what are these root causes? It is unbelievable that recent events are so regularly traced back only to the abduction of three Israeli soldiers. Few speak of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, or of its Lebanese prisoners, some of whom have been held for more than 20 years. And there is hardly any mention of military occupation and the injustice that has come with it.

What most people don't seem to understand is that the only way to disarm Hizbollah is to do so politically and diplomatically, and the only way to do this is to take away their raison d'être, which is Israeli occupation of Lebanese and Syrian land. I say Lebanese and Syrian, because the foreign policy of these two countries (at least insofar as Israel is concerned) is inextricably linked. Syria is willing to negotiate peace for land, but Israel doesn't seem interested. Ironically, the very land that Israel occupies for "security reasons" is making the country that much less secure.

Labor solidarity


The British Labor party is showing a little solidarity regarding the one word summary of Bush's handling of the Middle East:

Labour agrees: Bush is crap

Ian Davidson Glasgow South West MP

"I think that John Prescott is to be commended for the quality of his political analysis. His comment on American policy is brief and accurate. Britain has got to ensure that it is no longer seen as simply being the glove puppet of the United States."

Thursday, August 17, 2006

I love Beirut


The Lebanon Chronicle has been sending out stickers and posting photos of the stickers all over the world:



Los Angeles:



Berlin:



They've also been posting all of the many reasons why people love Beirut. It was only after they posted mine that I realized that "pretty girls" ended up on my list three times...

Lebanese death toll reaches 1,300


The death toll has reached 1,300 in Lebanon.

In Srifa, south of the Litani river, they found 26 bodies beneath ruins which I myself stood on just three days ago. At Ainata, there were eight more bodies of civilians. A corpse was discovered beneath a collapsed four-storey house north of Tyre and, near by, the remains of a 16-year old girl, along with three children and an adult. In Khiam in eastern Lebanon, besieged by the Israelis for more than a month, the elderly village "mukhtar" was found dead in the ruins of his home.

Not all the dead were civilians. At Kfar Shuba, dumper-truck drivers found the bodies of four Hizbollah members. At Roueiss, however, all 13 bodies found in the wreckage of eight 10-storey buildings were civilians. They included seven children and a pregnant woman. Ten more bodies were disentangled from the rubble of the southern suburbs of Beirut - where local people claimed they could still hear the screams of neighbours trapped far below the bomb-smashed apartment blocks.

...How many of these dead would have survived if George Bush and Tony Blair had demanded an immediate ceasefire weeks ago will never be known. But many would have had the chance of life had Western governments not regarded this dirty war as an "opportunity" to create a "new" Middle East by humbling Iran and Syria.

Is Hamas ready to deal?


When I was in Ramallah, a friend introduced me to his American/Palestinian cousin who works in the Palestinian Authority. She's young and intelligent, grew up abroad and feels more comfortable in English than in Arabic. She had to move back in with her family, because she hasn't been paid in months. She spoke to me about a plan to try to reshuffle the ministers, adding some members of Fatah, in order to appease the US so that their assets will be unfrozen. (The only people who changed with Hamas's success in the recent elections were the ministers, the other ministry workers, and in most cases even the deputy ministers, remained the same.)

A reasearcher from the CNRS in Paris asks whether this means that Hamas is ready to deal.

A bold gesture now by Israel would surprise its adversaries, convey strength, and even catch domestic political opposition off guard. And as strange as it may seem, were the United States able to help Israel help Hamas, it might turn the rising tide of global Muslim resentment.

Recent discussions I've had with Hamas leaders and their supporters around the globe indicate that Israel might just find a reasonable and influential bargaining partner.

Hamas's top elected official, Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, now accepts that to stop his people's suffering, his government must forsake its all-or-nothing call for Israel's destruction. "We have no problem with a sovereign Palestinian state over all our lands within the 1967 borders, living in calm," Mr. Haniya told me in his Gaza City office in late June, shortly before an Israeli missile destroyed it. "But we need the West as a partner to help us through."

Mr. Haniya's government had just agreed to a historic compromise with Fatah and its leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, forming a national coalition that implicitly accepts the coexistence alongside Israel. But this breakthrough was quickly overshadowed by Israel?s offensive into Gaza in retaliation for the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants, including members of Hamas?s military wing.

...Khaled Meshal, the Damascus-based head of the Hamas politburo, refused to release Corporal Shalit unless Israel freed hundreds of prisoners. While it is true that Israel has shown willingness to release hundreds of Palestinian detainees in return for a single Israeli in the past, Mr. Meshal's stand might have been part of a larger political game.

...Prime Minster Haniya and many of Hamas's other Sunni leaders are known to be uncomfortable with the loose coalition that Mr. Meshal has been forging with Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. Hasan Yusuf, a Hamas official held in Israel's Ketziot prison, doesn't think President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran's declaration that the main solution to the Middle East crisis is for the elimination of the "Zionist regime" is practical or wise. "The outcome in Lebanon doesn't change our view," Mr. Yusuf informed me last weekend. "We believe in two states living side by side."

He also said that "all Hamas factions have agreed to a unilateral cease-fire, including halting Qassam rockets; the movement is ready to go farther if it receives any encouraging responses from Israel and the West."

But even moderate Hamas figures feel that as long as Israel, the United States and Europe boycott the elected government in Gaza and the West Bank, there is little choice but to accept whatever help comes along.

This is doubly unfortunate. While Mr. Meshal says Islam allows only a long-term truce with Israel, Hamas officials closer to Prime Minister Haniya believe that a formal peace deal is possible, especially if negotiations can begin out of the spotlight and proceed by degrees.

"You can't expect us to take off all of our clothes at once," one Hamas leader told me, "or we'll be naked in the cold, like Arafat in his last years." This official said that if Hamas moved too fast, it would alienate its base, but if his government continued to be isolated, the base would radicalize. "Either way, you could wind up with a bunch of little Al Qaedas."

...Tangible results, like prisoner exchanges, are important. However, so are symbolic actions. Hamas officials have stressed the importance of Israel's recognizing their suffering from the original loss of Palestinian land. And survey research of Palestinian refugees and Hamas by my colleagues and I, supported by the National Science Foundation, reliably finds that violent opposition to peace decreases if the adversary is seen to compromise its own moral position, even if the compromise has no material value.

"Israel freeing some of our prisoners will help us to stop others from attacking it," said the Hamas government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad. "But Israel must apologize for our tragedy in 1948 before we can talk about negotiating over our right of return to historic Palestine."

Talking and negotiating with Hamas, and Hizbollah and Damascus for that matter, would take a bold move on Israel's part, which would most likely have to be preceded by a strong push from the US. Unfortunately, I think that what we can probably expect is more rhetoric about how one can't talk to terrorists and how poor Israel would love to settle this conflict once and for all but just can't find a partner in peace.

And if that's the case, we can look forward to things not only not getting better, but getting dramatically worse in the region, and consequently, all over the world.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Herr Grass's wartime career


And now for something completely different. It seems that Nobel laureate, Günter Grass, Germany's greatest living writer, had been lying about his past. It seems that when he was 17, he was in the Waffen SS.

Now the great advocate of facing unpalatable truths has lived up to his own standards, but a little late. The revelation came in an interview with Germany's respected conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), and while it is certain to boost interest in his forthcoming autobiography it has done immeasurable harm to the writer's squeaky-clean reputation.

...Grass's insistent, repetitive message to his fellow citizens was that they should never, ever forget. It seems that only now has he himself chosen to remember.

I'm not really sure what to think about this information. I suppose being in the SS when you were 17 is forgivable, particularly when the Nazis were drafting everyone; however, the fact that he's hidden it for so long really gives me a bad taste in my mouth.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The real war starts


Robert Fisk does not seem optimistic. In today's Independent, he predicts weeks of guerrilla warfare in the south, despite that fact that the roads to the south were already packed with Lebanese trying to get back to their homes and bury their dead:

The real war in Lebanon begins today. The world may believe - and Israel may believe - that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed. But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose.

...From this morning, Hizbollah's operations will be directed solely against the invasion force. And the Israelis cannot afford to lose 40 men a day. Unable to shoot down the Israeli F-16 aircraft that have laid waste to much of Lebanon, the Hizbollah have, for years, prayed and longed and waited for the moment when they could attack the Israeli army on the ground.

Now they are set to put their long-planned campaign into operation. Thousands of their members remain alive and armed in the ruined hill villages of southern Lebanon for just this moment and, only hours after their leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel on Saturday that his men were waiting for them on the banks of the Litani river, the Hizbollah sprang their trap, killing more than 20 Israeli soldiers in less than three hours.

...At this fatal juncture in Middle East history - and no one should underestimate this moment's importance in the region - the Israeli army appears as impotent to protect its country as the Hizbollah clearly is to protect Lebanon.

But if the ceasefire collapses, as seems certain, neither the Israelis nor the Americans appear to have any plans to escape the consequences. The US saw this war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but already it seems as if the tables have been turned. The Israeli military appears to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and apartment blocks - but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army they swore to liquidate.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Lebanon as a test run for Iran


Sy Hersh has a new piece on Lebanon in The New Yorker. He says that this conflict had been planned by Israel and approved by the US for several months. The idea was that Israel's attacks on Hizbollah and Lebanon's infrastructure would serve as a trial run for a future American attack on Iran.

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel?s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground. ...

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah -- and shared it with Bush Administration officials -- well before the July 12th kidnappings. "It's not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into," he said, "but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it."

The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, "The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy."

Of course this attack has not gone as smoothly as the Israelis would have liked it to. The results have so far been unclear, with both sides claiming victory. This war seems to have been sold to the US by Israel, but so far, notes Richard Armitage it has been less than convincing and should serve as a warning against attacking Iran:

"The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. "Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House "has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah." He added, "It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it." (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush's first term -- and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah "may be the A team of terrorists" -- Israel's campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. "If the most dominant military force in the region -- the Israel Defense Forces -- can't pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million," Armitage said. "The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis."

Cease-fire begins


After a last-minute push by Israeli troops and another 220 rockets fired by Hizbollah, the cease-fire has begun. It only took a month:

...since July 12, nearly 1,150 Lebanese are estimated to have died, most of them civilians, and about 150 Israelis, mostly soldiers. Israel says 500 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, a figure Hezbollah disputes. In Gaza, nearly 200 Palestinians have died, many of them militants.
We'll see what this actually means, since both sides seem to have reserved the right to respond to the other:

Eli Yishai, the Israeli trade minister, also issued a stark warning to Lebanon even if the ceasefire comes into force, saying, "If a single stone is thrown at Israel from whatever village that happens, it should be turned into a pile of stones."

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Saturday, "As long as there is Israeli military movement, Israeli field aggression and Israeli soldiers occupying our land ... it is our natural right to confront them, fight them and defend our land, our homes, and ourselves."

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Hizbollah's other war


Reading some of Michael Young's pieces in the Daily Star while I was in Beirut a few weeks ago sometimes made me sick to my stomach. However, his piece in the NY Times Magazine this week is definitely worth a read.

He goes into the dense jungle that is Lebanese politics, explaining the constantly changing alliances and feuds that are often difficult to follow for outsiders. He speaks of the gains that the Shia, who had been historically left out of Lebanese poltical life, have made through Hizbollah, and the tensions felt between the pro-Syrian parties and the March 14 group.

It's a long article, but very much worth a read.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

The London Review on Lebanon and Israel


The London Review has updated, and there are several articles about Lebanon and Israel, including Yitzhak Laor on the IDF and Charles Glass on Hizbollah. There is also a good article by Michael Byers on the limits of self-defence:

'I entirely understand the desire, and indeed need, for Israel to defend itself properly,' Tony Blair said on 14 July. 'As a sovereign nation, Israel has every right to defend itself,' George W. Bush said on 16 July. By the time these statements were made, the IDF had bombed Beirut?s international airport, destroyed roads, bridges, power stations and petrol stations, and imposed an air and sea blockade. The Israeli army chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, had promised to 'turn back the clock in Lebanon by twenty years'. All this in response, ostensibly, to the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others by Hizbullah militants on 12 July.

The right of self-defence identified by Blair and Bush is part of international law. Which makes two conclusions possible: either this area of international law is so elastic as to be inoperative; or it is being interpreted by Blair and Bush in an untenable way. ...


Then there is international humanitarian law, which both Hizbullah and Israel have violated. These rules are set out in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which Israel ratified in 1951. The direct targeting of civilians is categorically prohibited, and this includes acts or threats of violence intended to spread terror or impose collective punishment. Indiscriminate attacks are proscribed. Above all, individual targets may be selected only if the direct military advantage anticipated from the strike exceeds the expected harm to civilians or civilian objects. Hizbullah?s rocket attacks, which have been aimed in the general vicinity of Israeli cities and towns rather than at specific military targets, are illegal.

So too are many of Israel's attacks. More than seven hundred Lebanese civilians have been killed to date, most of them women and children. Some were struck by missiles as they fled for safety. Others were hit because blasted roads, bridges and petrol stations had made it impossible for them to flee. More died when Israel dropped bombs in densely populated neighbourhoods. Even more are dying now as hospitals, water filtration plants and sewage treatment facilities struggle with power shortages. In no circumstance may attacks on civilians or civilian infrastructure be justified by similar violations on the other side. The horrors of Qana, where dozens of Lebanese civilians died in a single precision air-strike, cannot be balanced by lost Israeli lives.

It has been suggested that Israel's actions are aimed at turning the Lebanese population against Hizbullah. A similar kind of thinking was popular during the Second World War, as evidenced by the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg and several cities in Japan. It re-emerged shortly before the 2003 Iraq war in the language of 'shock and awe'. But military action undertaken with such an intention was rejected during the negotiation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and remains illegal. It's also wrong-headed, since people who have been attacked are more likely to blame their attackers than anyone else.

International humanitarian law forbids methods of warfare that cause 'unnecessary suffering or superfluous injury'. For this reason, Hizbullah's use of rockets packed with ball-bearings is illegal, while Israel?s reliance on cluster bombs, fuel-air explosives, white phosphorus (as a weapon rather than for illumination) and depleted uranium is immoral and quite possibly also illegal.

Finally, there's the death of the four UN observers, struck by a precision-guided bomb in a highly visible, long-established post located on a barren hilltop ? after Israeli forces had been warned repeatedly that their projectiles were falling perilously close by. It's easy to suspect that the attack was deliberate, perhaps intended to force the UN to withdraw its other observers from the area, which it duly did. It may even have been designed to dissuade countries from offering troops for the international force being championed by Tony Blair ? a force that, if it's ever created, will take months to deploy. If the killing of the observers was deliberate, it would constitute a clear violation of international humanitarian law.

Violations of these various rules constitute war crimes, which are subject to universal jurisdiction in the sense that the perpetrators may be prosecuted in any country's domestic courts. This raises the possibility of trials if they are foolish enough to travel abroad and the local authorities brave enough to arrest them. The Israeli justice minister, Haim Ramon, will wish to be particularly careful. On 27 July, he said that civilians had been given ample warning and 'all those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hizbullah.' Unfortunately, there?s no possibility of prosecutions in the International Criminal Court, since neither Israel nor Lebanon has ratified the court's statute, and the United States would veto any attempt by the Security Council to use its power to send the matter there.

The absence of a reliable mechanism for prosecuting Hizbullah and Israeli leaders is less serious, however, than the support that Bush and Blair have given to clear violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions. The long-term viability of these rules depends on the willingness of politicians ? and the general public ? to speak out in defence of international law.

Friday, August 11, 2006

America at its worst


While I was in Jerusalem, I was sent a forwarded e-mail that asked whether or not a good Muslim can be a good American. The answer, of course, was no. I figured that this was just another case of racist drivel perpetuated by forwarded e-mails, but imagine my disappointment when I saw that it is a sentiment shared by many Americans according to this Gallup poll.

A new Gallup poll finds that many Americans -- what it calls "substantial minorities" -- harbor "negative feelings or prejudices against people of the Muslim faith" in this country. Nearly one in four Americans, 22%, say they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbor.

While Americans tend to disagree with the notion that Muslims living in the United States are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, a significant 34% believe they do back al-Qaeda. And fewer than half -- 49% -- believe U.S. Muslims are loyal to the United States.

Almost four in ten, 39%, advocate that Muslims here should carry special I.D. That same number admit that they do hold some "prejudice" against Muslims. Forty-four percent say their religious views are too "extreme."

In every case, Americans who actually know any Muslims are more sympathethic.

The poll was taken at the end of July and surveyed 1,007 adult Americans.
Special identification? Is the US going even more insane? Why don't we just make them little crescents to sew on their clothes?

Pictures from the holy land


Here are a bunch of different photos that I took while in the holy land:

This is the Wailing Wall, or the Western Wall, if you prefer:



This a picture of the young Israelis who shocked me with their guns in the middle of West Jerusalem's night life:



Here are pictures from the anti-war rally in Tel Aviv. The first is the protest, the second is a Palestinian protester being roughed up by the police while people yelled that he should be sent to Gaza to be killed, and the third is a pro-war protest across the street:








A poster from the rally:




The walls of Jerusalem's old city:




Inside the old city in the morning at one of the gate's leading to al-Aqsa or al-Harem as-sharif:



The Dome of the Rock:



The anti-war candle light vigil at Damascus Gate (Bab al-Amoud) in Jerusalem:



This is a view from Bethlehem. The walled off section is a settlement, which is 70% empty:



This is part of the seperation wall that has cut right by a Palestinian home, cutting the home off from the rest of its land:



Here is the wall up close in Bethlehem:



These pictures are from the Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Camp in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem:



Wednesday, August 09, 2006

A letter from Beirut...


I arrived in Amman from Jerusalem yesterday. I was worried about crossing back over, especially since I brought back a small olive tree for the Palestinian family who's been so kind as to take care of me while I'm here, but the Israelis don't seem to care about what goes out of the country.

George Galloway spoke out against the media bias while I was on my way home.

A friend also sent me a link to a video letter from Beirut...to who love us. You can download it here:

Now, listen well. We are besieged and the smell of gunpoweder is in the air. Gunpowder, and the world is watching.We are besieged because the world is watching. What matters is that we still have a bit of food and water. And pride. And dignity. And above all lots of love.

We are 4 million people; 4 million and one who was born today in a school under siege. We are here. Where are you?




The first clip is angry, because there is a lot to be angry about. The second clip is sad, because there is even more to be sad about.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Satellite images of Beirut, before and after


The Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten has sattelite images of Beirut (I think this is in the Dahiye, the southern suburb of the capital) from 12 July and 31 July:

Sunday, August 06, 2006


Beirut responds to the text of the proposed Security Council resolution:

Nouhad Mahmoud, a Lebanese foreign ministry official, said on Sunday that the government "would have liked to see our concerns more reflected in the text" of the draft resolution.

"Unfortunately, it lacked, for instance, a call for the withdrawal of Israeli forces which are now in Lebanon. That is a recipe for more confrontation."

He said the government was also unhappy that the resolution does not call for the Shebaa Farms area to be put under UN control, as Lebanon has asked, while its future status is figured out.

Protest in Tel Aviv and guns over Jerusalem


I went to Tel Aviv last night for a protest againt the war in Lebanon. There was a group of Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners protesting the war and a group of Israelis protesting the protest. The first group was holding signs in Hebrew, Arabic and English calling for an end to the war and to the occuptation. The others were holding signs with slogans like "Let the Army win" and "All terrorists are Muslim." Yael Dayan, the daughter of Moshe Dayen also spoke at the protest. She was initially applauded when she said that the war should stop, but was then booed when she said that the war had started out as a "just war."

The police were sometimes violent and at one point beat up a Palestinian guy. There were five policemen against a single guy, whose head they repeatedly smashed onto a car hood. Israeli spectators were screaming that he was just a dirty Arab and deserved to be "sent to Gaza to be killed."

I spoke to a young Israeli woman whose parents were from Kazakhstan. She was against the war but stayed at the edges of the protest, because she felt a little hypocritical. AS it turns out, she'll be starting her military service in a couple of months. As a woman, she won't be sent to Lebanon or Gaza, but she still feels guilty. When I reminded her that it was compulsory for all Israelis, she told me that as a woman, it's fairly easy to get out of, but for reasons that she was unsure of, she didn't.

After the protest, we had dinner in the area and then came back to Jerusalem and took a stroll in the western part of the city. I was shocked to see young Israeli men out for a night on the town with their friends or girlfriends carrying automatic weapons and spare ammunition. They were not soldiers and were not in any sort of uniform. They brought their weapons into the bars and restaurants, sometimes when the streets were especially crowded, you might have the muzzle of an M-16 bump your leg as you wade through the scantily clad human masses. I am used to seeing civilians with guns and soldiers and policemen, but I was taken aback at the amount of young Israelis armed to the teeth in the West Jerusalem equivalent of Times Square or the Bastille.

I asked a policewoman about it this morning in the old city, and she told me that they were probably soldiers, but when she left, I was called back to the shopfront by some Palestinians. They asked me if the armed youth were wearing big watches or if they were wearing yarmukles.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Israeli war crimes in Lebanon


From Human Rights Watch's press release about their report on Israeli war crimes.

Some Israeli Attacks Amount to War Crimes

(Beirut, August 3, 2006) ? Israeli forces have systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said in report released today. The pattern of attacks in more than 20 cases investigated by Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon indicates that the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes.

The 50-page report, "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon," analyzes almost two dozen cases of Israeli air and artillery attacks on civilian homes and vehicles. Of the 153 dead civilians named in the report, 63 are children. More than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli fire since fighting began on July 12, most of them civilians.

"The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military's disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Our research shows that Israel's claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel's indiscriminate warfare."

The report is based on extensive interviews with victims and witnesses of attacks, visits to some blast sites, and information obtained from hospitals, humanitarian groups, security forces and government agencies. Human Rights Watch also conducted research in Israel, assessing the weapons used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Human Rights Watch researchers found numerous cases in which the IDF launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military objectives but excessive civilian cost. In many cases, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians.
Read the rest of the press release and the report itself for specific instances of indiscriminate killing.

Talking to Syria


The US says that it is involved in diplomacy, but it's hard to call only meeting with the people who agree with you diplomatic. It is obvious that peace in Lebanon and Israel will have to involve Syria, but the US refuses to talk to Damascus.

This piece in the LA Times by Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States (often called the lonliest diplomat in Washington) is interesting:

The underlying idea behind demanding Syrian withdrawal [from Lebanon] was simple: It would precipitate the fall of the Syrian regime, and the U.S. would end up with a new government in Damascus that is both Israel-friendly and an ally of the U.S. Does that have any resemblance to the neoconservative justification for the war on Iraq?

To the dismay of U.S. policymakers, this belligerent attitude only rallied Syrians behind their own government.

Ultimately, the Bush administration has to realize that by trying to isolate Syria politically and diplomatically, the U.S. continues to lose ability to influence a major player in the Middle East. In the wake of the ongoing instability in Iraq and violence in Palestine and Lebanon, it begs the larger question: Has isolating Syria made the region more secure?

Currently, the White House doesn't talk to the democratically elected government of Palestine. It does not talk to Hezbollah, which has democratically elected members in the Lebanese parliament and is a member of the Lebanese coalition government. It does not talk to Iran, and it certainly does not talk to Syria.

Gone are the days when U.S. special envoys to the Middle East would spend hours, if not days, with Syrian officials brainstorming, discussing, negotiating and looking for creative solutions leading to a compromise or settlement. Instead, this administration follows the Bolton Doctrine: There is no need to talk to Syria, because Syria knows what it needs to do. End of the matter.

When the United States realizes that it is high time to reconsider its policies toward Syria, Syria will be more than willing to engage. However, the rules of the game should be clear. As President Bashar Assad has said, Syria is not a charity. If the U.S. wants something from Syria, then Syria requires something in return from the U.S.: Let us address the root cause of instability in the Middle East.

The current crisis in Lebanon needs an urgent solution because of the disastrous human toll. Moreover, the whole Middle East deserves a comprehensive deal that would put an end to occupation and allow all countries to equally prosper and live in dignity and peace.
Of course, as an ambassador, his points toe the Syrian line (a line that I generally don't believe as regards Lebanon), but he does have some interesting and valid points. It might seem obvious that diplomacy is not the same as dictating orders, but many don't see it that way in Washington.

Ramallah and a Palestinian government without paychecks


Ramallah was interesting. I met an American-Palestinian woman who works in one of the minstries there. She talked about a lot of things, but mostly about how she hasn't been paid for a while and how the financial squeeze has gotten so bad that employees who live outside Ramallah only come in three times a week, since they haven't been paid and cannot afford to pay for transportation to work and back every day.

Most business with foreign countries is being done through the office of the President, because no one wants to work with the new Hamas government. Interestingly enough though, in the ministries that Hamas controls now, only the ministers have been changed. Everyone, including the deputies, have stayed the same. So just liek most governments and large organizations, there is always a core of career bureaucrats that stays the same, regardless of who is in charge of the ministry.

The wall was again very present, impossible to miss. It cuts the landscape and lengthens commutes. It is often covered with graffiti, both domestic and foreign, in Arabic and English. To get back to Jerusalem, we had to go through two different checkpoints, just as we had to got through two on the way there. Without these checkpoints, the trip would only take about 30 minutes.

I went out last night in West Jerusalem with a couple from Europe who work in NGOs here in the West Bank and Jerusalem. On our way back to the old city, we ran into a couple of young and hip Israelis busily tearing down fliers for a protest against the war in Lebanon.

I'm increasingly worried about a probable escalation. Nasrallah said the night before last on television that if the center of Beirut was hit, then he would hit Tel Aviv. I beleive that this is a warning, not a bluff. Israel probably won't accept this as a deterrant and will probably hit Beirut, if only to assert its manliness and regain the IDF's "honor." Then since he said he would, Nasrallah will order an attack on Tel Aviv.

If only the belligerents in the Middle East were less worried about being "manly" and more interested in being humane, we'd all be a lot better off.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Images from the Dahiyeh


The Times has done a simple interactive graphic of the Southern suburb of Beirut, Haret Hreik, which is where Hizbollah has its offices and which has been the target of many of the Israeli attacks.

It's good that the Times has decided to put it next to a map of Manhatten (at the same scale). Maybe some people might better be able to imagine what it would be like if New York were being attacked instead of Beirut.

The London Review of Books has several pieces by people in Beirut now. This one reminds me the most of my Beirut, parfticularly the ambivalence about leaving Lebanon. It wouldn't surprise me if we went to the same café in Hamra:

I am a secular person and I?m democratically inclined. I have never supported Hizbullah, but I do not question its legitimacy as a political force in Lebanon. It would be folly to regard Hizbullah as just another radical Islamist terrorist organisation. It is a mature political organisation with an Islamist ideology. It has learned (very quickly) to coexist with other political agents in the country, as well as other sects. There have been exceptional moments when the country has united willingly and spontaneously (as during the Israeli attacks in 1993 and 1996), but other less spectacular moments have punctuated the lived postwar experience of every single Lebanese, in which sectarian prejudice was easily set aside. When Hariri was assassinated, the country seemed divided into two camps. There was, however, an overwhelming consensus that we would not go back to fighting one another. If Israel plans to annihilate Hizbullah, it will annihilate Lebanon. Hizbullah is an essential element of contemporary Lebanon.


Otherwise, I'm supposed to be going to Ramallah today, which should prove to be an interesting trip.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Death tolls


The death toll in Lebanon has topped 900 people now, with 3,000 people injured. Only about 100 of the dead were from Hizbollah. (Israel claims that 300 Hizbollah militants have been killed, but I believe the number is closer to the Lebanese security force's estimate, since Nasrallah is always forthright about Hizbollah deaths.)

Compare that to 37 dead Israeli soldiers and 19 civilians.

Bethlehem


I spent all day in Bethlehem, exploring several refugee camps and the Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Camp in the Aida Camp. The children were bright-eyed and friendly, and everyone else was welcoming and helpful.

I got up close to the seperation wall, which often came about 10 meters from Palestinian houses, cutting the family off from the rest of their land.

On the way back, I took a bus back to Jerusalem with my friend. When we were stopped at the checkpoint, everyone in the bus got out and showed their bags and identity cards to the young Israeli soldier, who only spoke to us in Hebrew. He was kurt and methodical. Sometimes, apparently, they won't make you get out of the bus, but we saw that they were making women and children get out and show their ID, so we knew that we would have to also. When we got back into the bus, I asked my friend how often these searches happened. "All the time," he told me.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Jerusalem - Al-Quds


I arrived in Jerusalem yesterday. I set out in a taxi from Amman to the Allenby Bridge crossing. Once I was on the Israeli side of the border, everything slowed to a crawl. I was expecting a modern border crossing that was orderly and efficient. I was wrong.

There were practically no signs, and the Israeli soldiers on duty were usually not at all helpful: one girl refused to even talk to me when I asked her a question. I was held for about 3 hours and interrogated by a young Ethiopian girl, who I assume was doing her military service. She told me to sit down, because it was going to be a long time before I went anywhere. I asked why, and she responded, "Because you was in Lebanon." She asked why I was there, and I told her that I was on vacation. "Vacation in Beirut?" she asked with suprise. "Yes, it's a wonderful city, hopefully, one day you'll be able to visit." She said that "they" would kill her, and I suggested that she should just speak in Amahric, since there are many Ethiopians in Beirut.

When I finally made it into Jerusalem, I was met by a Palestinian friend of the family who has put me up in Amman. He took me out for a very late lunch, showed me around the neighborhood (East Jerusalem, near the Damascus Gate), and we talked about mutual friends and politics. He introduced me to his friends and some of his family; everyone seems to know him in the neighborhood. After talking and eating with a group that got bigger and bigger, we went to a candle light vigil against the wars in Lebanon and Gaza. He told me about a protest in front of the American consulate in East Jerusalem (there's also one in West Jerusalem and an Embassy in Tel Aviv). Since they couldn't get a permit, the police came and broke it up with clubs and tear gas.

After the vigil, I went out with a Palestinian girl who is a citizen of Israel, who tried to explain to me why she refuses to be called an Israeli Arab, and an Israeli Jewish girl from Moldavia. They talked about the news here (the Palestinian girl speaks Hebrew as well as Arabic and English) and about how all but the most radical of the left supports the war in Lebanon.

The hotels are mostly full here, because many people have left the north because of Hizbollah's rocket attacks. Otherwise, my friends back in Lebanon tell me that the Israelis have gone farther and farther into southern Lebanon, and there is talk of going as far north as the Litani, which is eerily reminiscent of the 1982 invasion. I've been taking pictures, but I don't have my computer here, so I'll have to upload them when I get back to Amman in a few days.

Otherwise, Al Aqsa is closed to non-Muslim foreigners for "security reasons," but I am convinced to see al-Haram ah-Sherif before I leave. Tomorrow, my friend is going to take me to see Bethlehem and part of the separation wall.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

In case you've forgotten...


Darfur is still a disaster. One might be tempted to think that things have gotten better there since it hasn't been in the news. If anything, it's just getting worse:

So far, negotiations over a proposed United Nations force to shore up the shaky peace in Darfur have limped along with no sign of compromise. The opposing sides in the conflict now seem headed toward a large-scale military confrontation, bringing Darfur to the edge of a new abyss -- perhaps the deepest it has faced.

"Unfortunately, things seem to be headed in that direction," said Gen. Collins Ihekire, commander of the beleaguered 7,000-member African Union force that is enforcing a fragile peace agreement between the government and one rebel group.

Nearly four months after signing the agreement, the government is preparing a fresh assault against the rebel groups that refused to sign. Years of conflict have already killed hundreds of thousands of people here and sent 2.5 million fleeing their homes. But that may be a prelude of the death likely to come from further fighting, hunger and disease. In the past few months, killings of aid workers and hijackings of their vehicles, mostly by rebel groups, have forced aid groups to curtail programs to feed, clothe and shelter hundreds of thousands of people.

Add to that the fact that many people are cut off from humanitarian aid and the African Union's mandate is about to expire next month.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Last Refuge


Again from the Times magazine, an article by Hassan Daoud about last refuges, and how even they can be destroyed.

Israel and Hizbollah to negotiate prisoner swap


It seems that after the destruction of much of Lebanon, and the death of around 1,100 Lebanese (most of whom were civilians) and over 150 Israeli deaths (most of whom were soldiers), there will be an exchange in prisoners after all.

Interestingly enough, Hassan Nasrallah said last night that had he known that Israel was going to react so strongly, he would not have captured the two Israeli soldiers:

"We did not think, even one percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude," Hassan Nasrallah, the cleric who leads Hizbullah, told Lebanon's New TV channel. "You ask me, if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not." He said Italy would play a part in negotiating the soldiers' eventual release. "Contacts recently began for negotiations," he said. "It seems that Italy is trying to get into the subject." From the start, Mr Nasrallah has said he wanted to exchange the soldiers for Lebanese and Palestinians held in Israel.

Sergio de Gregorio, head of Italy's senate defence committee, said that Iran, Hizbullah's backer, wanted Italy involved. Mr de Gregorio told Reuters he expected talks to start this week. He said the two Israelis were "still alive, fortunately", but would not talk about how they were or what kind of deal might free them.

An Egyptian newspaper reported that German diplomats had helped negotiate a deal to have them freed in two or three weeks. A number of Lebanese held by Israel would be freed in return a day or two later, it said.

While it is true that Israel's reaction to the capture of one soldier by militants in Gaza should have been viewed as a bellwether for Israel's reaction in Lebanon, not many people expected such a violent reaction. After all, attacking Gaza is like shooting fish in a barrel for the IDF, whereas Hizbollah, as we have seen, is capable of not only withstanding an Israeli attack, but fighting back. So in the end, I'm inclined to believe Nasrallah, first because he's not prone to political bluster and usually says what he means and means what he says, and second, because I didn't see the war coming either.

This was obviously not a deterrent to Israel, but it might make Tel Aviv think twice about rushing into a large-scale military solution rather than continuing the status quo of small-scale tit for tat military action or, hopefully, initiating a broad diplomatic process that would help stabalize the region in the long run.

Disarming Hizbollah


In Sunday's Magazine in the Times, there was an article on disarming Hizbollah, in which parallels are made to the situations in the Ivory Coast, Kosovo, the Congo and Northern Ireland. The point is made that disarmament cannot realistically be done by force (unless one is prepared and able to destroy the force) and that there has to be a good political and diplomatic framework that offers the militants a reason to disarm themselves.

Israel launched its air, land and sea attack on Lebanon with the goal, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it, of "disarming this murderous organization"; in that regard, the campaign failed. How, then, could any lesser force succeed? Lebanon's defense minister, Elias Murr, has defended Hezbollah and flatly asserted that the Lebanese Army "is not going to the south to strip Hezbollah of its weapons and do the work that Israel did not." Neither will a U.N. peacekeeping force, however large. "You cannot impose peace on these people if they?re ready to fight you," as a D.D.R. [disarmament, demobilization and reintegration] expert in the U.N.'s peacekeeping department puts it. "You need to be able to annihilate them, because they?re not going to lay down their arms voluntarily." Even robust United Nations forces do not seek to annihilate their adversaries.

If Hezbollah cannot be forcibly disarmed, can some political arrangement induce the militia to disarm itself? This, of course, raises a question about Hezbollah?s aspirations: is it seeking to achieve through force a goal that can be attained through diplomacy, or through political activity? That this is in fact the case is the unspoken premise of United Nations Resolution 1559, passed in 2004, which sought to release Lebanon from the suffocating grip of Syria, and thus to begin a national dialogue that would ultimately lead to the incorporation of Hezbollah into Lebanese affairs.

I've said this before, but the only realistic way to get Hizbollah to disarm is politically and diplomatically. Israeli attacks on Lebanon only serve to strengthen Hizbollah's raison d'être, showing that they do need a strong paramilitary force to defend Lebanon from another Israeli invasion. That the invasion might not have occured if it weren't for the conflict is not really important: the conflict does exist. If Israel were really interested in getting rid of Hizbollah's militia forces, then Tel Aviv would have to start another round of "land for peace" negotiations. The problem is that since Lebanon's (and perhaps more importantly, Hizbollah's) policy toward Israel is inextricably linked with that of Syria, the process would have to be much wider. This means that it wouldn't be enough to just give back Lebanese territory; a peace initiative would have to include at least the Syrians if not the Palestinians in order to work.

This would be a lot of hard and complicated work; however, if Israel is really interested in peace, they're going to have to start sometime. And the sooner the better.

Friday, August 25, 2006

More French and Italian peacekeepers


France has agreed to send 2,000 peacekeepers to Southern Lebanon, and Italy is expected to confirm its offer of 3,000 troops. France was waiting for clarifications on the force's mandate, chain of command (which will be military and not civilian), and "freedom of movement and capacity for action."

It is still unclear exactly to what extent UN troops will be excpected to disarm Hizbollah and to what extent the latter will cooperate with the force. It seems clear to me that the only way to successfully disarm Hizbollah is politically and diplomatically, dealing with its grievances, such as the Shebaa Farms currently occupied by Israel and Lebanese prisoners being held in Israeli jails. The IDF's recent attacks have shown how difficult it is to disarm Hizbollah, and if French and Italian troops try to engage Hizbollah militarily with the aim of disarming them, they will certainly find themselves in a repeat of the 1980s when French and American troops were attacked and then withdrew from Lebanon.

US investigation into Israeli use of American munitions


The US State Department has decided to conduct an inquiry into Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs in Lebanon. The two countries have a secret agreement that such munitions are only to be used against military targets:

The investigation by the department?s Office of Defense Trade Controls began this week, after reports that three types of American cluster munitions, anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area, have been found in many areas of southern Lebanon and were responsible for civilian casualties.

...Several current and former officials said that they doubted the investigation would lead to sanctions against Israel but that the decision to proceed with it might be intended to help the Bush administration ease criticism from Arab governments and commentators over its support of Israel's military operations. The investigation has not been publicly announced; the State Department confirmed it in response to questions.

So is this a real inquiry or is it being done to try to make the US look a little better in the eyes of the rest of the world? According to the Times article, there was a six-year ban imposed on cluster bomb sales to Israel in 1982 after a Congressional investigation found that Israel had used the weapons against civilian areas in violation of the agreements.

Here is a map made by the UN that shows cluster bomb attacks in the South of Lebanon.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Aid and Hizbollah


Relief agencies in Southern Lebanon that receive American funding are finding themselves in a difficult situation. The US government says that they are not allowed to give out aid or money through Hizbollah. This means that they should bypass the organization completely, a difficulyt task in Southern Lebanon:

"Unicef has been here, and Mercy Corps and other groups," said Ahmad Zogby, 39, whose house was destroyed, along with that of his parents. "But everything coming in, Hezbollah puts an eye on it, makes sure it is all given out in the proper way. It is all in the hands of Hezbollah."

Though Hezbollah is only one of many groups providing social services in Lebanon, its reputation for delivering those services honestly is unmatched, making it that much harder to circumvent. In nearby Nabatiye, for instance, Mercy Corps has begun working through the Jabbar Foundation, a nonprofit group run by Yaseen Jabbar, a wealthy member of Parliament.

But the mayor of Nabatiye, Mustapha Badreddine, 55, says he considers the foundation ineffective. For his own part, Mr. Badreddine says he does not belong to Hezbollah, but that he works with it because it is trustworthy, far more so than any other group in the area.

...As an example of Hezbollah's hold on everyday life in southern Lebanon, Ali Bazzi, the mayor of Bint Jbail, outlined his big dreams for his half-demolished town as workmen raced past and tractors rumbled.

...Bint Jbail, the main Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon, saw some of the worst bombing and fighting during the monthlong war, in which Hezbollah, which is integrated with the general population, was Israel's target. But Mr. Bazzi intends to complete the reconstruction without using a single cent from the Lebanese government, much less the United States or the West.

Instead, Mr. Bazzi is counting on Construction Jihad [Hizbollah's building company]. Just a day after the fighting stopped, Construction Jihad enlisted the volunteer services of 1,700 engineers, electricians, plumbers, architects and geologists who have cleared streets, dug ditches and built temporary bridges.

While the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has just begun organizing committees to study the reconstruction of the country, Construction Jihad has all but completed surveys of southern Lebanese towns.

I've talked to people from other internaitonal NGOs, and this is a common problem in places like Lebanon. The US government stipulates that organizations cannot have anything to do with anyone who has anything to do with groups on the "terrorist list." This has caused NGOs to be fractured to the point where the American and other European branches have seperate offices in the same city.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Brahimi's plan for peace


Lakhdar Brahimi, former special adviser to the United Nations Secretary General, weighs in on the war in Lebanon with a five-point plan:

1. ensuring Lebanon's unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity and the full implementation of the 1989 Taif accord

2. encouraging Hizbollah to play a responsible role in the internal dynamics of Lebanon and expecting it to accept the Lebanese state?s exclusive right to possess armaments and use force

3. demanding that Syria and Iran, as well as all other states in the region and beyond, respect Lebanon's sovereignty and abstain from interfering in its internal affairs

4. telling Israel to withdraw its troops from all the territory it currently occupies, including the Shebaa Farms

5. focusing urgent and sustained attention on the problem that underlies the unrest in the Middle East: the Palestinian issue.

He also expresses his disgust at the the loss of life in this war, the destruction of Lebanon and the short-sighted analyses that seem so commonplace:

Wat a waste that it took more than 30 days to adopt a United Nations Security Council resolution for a cease-fire in Lebanon. Thirty days during which nothing positive was achieved and a great deal of pain, suffering and damage was inflicted on innocent people.

The loss of innocent civilian life is staggering and the destruction, particularly in Lebanon, is devastating. Human rights organizations and the United Nations have condemned the humanitarian crisis and violations of international humanitarian law.

Yet all the diplomatic clout of the United States was used to prevent a cease-fire, while more military hardware was rushed to the Israeli Army. It was argued that the war had to continue so that the root causes of the conflict could be addressed, but no one explained how destroying Lebanon would achieve that.

And what are these root causes? It is unbelievable that recent events are so regularly traced back only to the abduction of three Israeli soldiers. Few speak of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, or of its Lebanese prisoners, some of whom have been held for more than 20 years. And there is hardly any mention of military occupation and the injustice that has come with it.

What most people don't seem to understand is that the only way to disarm Hizbollah is to do so politically and diplomatically, and the only way to do this is to take away their raison d'être, which is Israeli occupation of Lebanese and Syrian land. I say Lebanese and Syrian, because the foreign policy of these two countries (at least insofar as Israel is concerned) is inextricably linked. Syria is willing to negotiate peace for land, but Israel doesn't seem interested. Ironically, the very land that Israel occupies for "security reasons" is making the country that much less secure.

Labor solidarity


The British Labor party is showing a little solidarity regarding the one word summary of Bush's handling of the Middle East:

Labour agrees: Bush is crap

Ian Davidson Glasgow South West MP

"I think that John Prescott is to be commended for the quality of his political analysis. His comment on American policy is brief and accurate. Britain has got to ensure that it is no longer seen as simply being the glove puppet of the United States."

Thursday, August 17, 2006

I love Beirut


The Lebanon Chronicle has been sending out stickers and posting photos of the stickers all over the world:



Los Angeles:



Berlin:



They've also been posting all of the many reasons why people love Beirut. It was only after they posted mine that I realized that "pretty girls" ended up on my list three times...

Lebanese death toll reaches 1,300


The death toll has reached 1,300 in Lebanon.

In Srifa, south of the Litani river, they found 26 bodies beneath ruins which I myself stood on just three days ago. At Ainata, there were eight more bodies of civilians. A corpse was discovered beneath a collapsed four-storey house north of Tyre and, near by, the remains of a 16-year old girl, along with three children and an adult. In Khiam in eastern Lebanon, besieged by the Israelis for more than a month, the elderly village "mukhtar" was found dead in the ruins of his home.

Not all the dead were civilians. At Kfar Shuba, dumper-truck drivers found the bodies of four Hizbollah members. At Roueiss, however, all 13 bodies found in the wreckage of eight 10-storey buildings were civilians. They included seven children and a pregnant woman. Ten more bodies were disentangled from the rubble of the southern suburbs of Beirut - where local people claimed they could still hear the screams of neighbours trapped far below the bomb-smashed apartment blocks.

...How many of these dead would have survived if George Bush and Tony Blair had demanded an immediate ceasefire weeks ago will never be known. But many would have had the chance of life had Western governments not regarded this dirty war as an "opportunity" to create a "new" Middle East by humbling Iran and Syria.

Is Hamas ready to deal?


When I was in Ramallah, a friend introduced me to his American/Palestinian cousin who works in the Palestinian Authority. She's young and intelligent, grew up abroad and feels more comfortable in English than in Arabic. She had to move back in with her family, because she hasn't been paid in months. She spoke to me about a plan to try to reshuffle the ministers, adding some members of Fatah, in order to appease the US so that their assets will be unfrozen. (The only people who changed with Hamas's success in the recent elections were the ministers, the other ministry workers, and in most cases even the deputy ministers, remained the same.)

A reasearcher from the CNRS in Paris asks whether this means that Hamas is ready to deal.

A bold gesture now by Israel would surprise its adversaries, convey strength, and even catch domestic political opposition off guard. And as strange as it may seem, were the United States able to help Israel help Hamas, it might turn the rising tide of global Muslim resentment.

Recent discussions I've had with Hamas leaders and their supporters around the globe indicate that Israel might just find a reasonable and influential bargaining partner.

Hamas's top elected official, Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, now accepts that to stop his people's suffering, his government must forsake its all-or-nothing call for Israel's destruction. "We have no problem with a sovereign Palestinian state over all our lands within the 1967 borders, living in calm," Mr. Haniya told me in his Gaza City office in late June, shortly before an Israeli missile destroyed it. "But we need the West as a partner to help us through."

Mr. Haniya's government had just agreed to a historic compromise with Fatah and its leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, forming a national coalition that implicitly accepts the coexistence alongside Israel. But this breakthrough was quickly overshadowed by Israel?s offensive into Gaza in retaliation for the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants, including members of Hamas?s military wing.

...Khaled Meshal, the Damascus-based head of the Hamas politburo, refused to release Corporal Shalit unless Israel freed hundreds of prisoners. While it is true that Israel has shown willingness to release hundreds of Palestinian detainees in return for a single Israeli in the past, Mr. Meshal's stand might have been part of a larger political game.

...Prime Minster Haniya and many of Hamas's other Sunni leaders are known to be uncomfortable with the loose coalition that Mr. Meshal has been forging with Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. Hasan Yusuf, a Hamas official held in Israel's Ketziot prison, doesn't think President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran's declaration that the main solution to the Middle East crisis is for the elimination of the "Zionist regime" is practical or wise. "The outcome in Lebanon doesn't change our view," Mr. Yusuf informed me last weekend. "We believe in two states living side by side."

He also said that "all Hamas factions have agreed to a unilateral cease-fire, including halting Qassam rockets; the movement is ready to go farther if it receives any encouraging responses from Israel and the West."

But even moderate Hamas figures feel that as long as Israel, the United States and Europe boycott the elected government in Gaza and the West Bank, there is little choice but to accept whatever help comes along.

This is doubly unfortunate. While Mr. Meshal says Islam allows only a long-term truce with Israel, Hamas officials closer to Prime Minister Haniya believe that a formal peace deal is possible, especially if negotiations can begin out of the spotlight and proceed by degrees.

"You can't expect us to take off all of our clothes at once," one Hamas leader told me, "or we'll be naked in the cold, like Arafat in his last years." This official said that if Hamas moved too fast, it would alienate its base, but if his government continued to be isolated, the base would radicalize. "Either way, you could wind up with a bunch of little Al Qaedas."

...Tangible results, like prisoner exchanges, are important. However, so are symbolic actions. Hamas officials have stressed the importance of Israel's recognizing their suffering from the original loss of Palestinian land. And survey research of Palestinian refugees and Hamas by my colleagues and I, supported by the National Science Foundation, reliably finds that violent opposition to peace decreases if the adversary is seen to compromise its own moral position, even if the compromise has no material value.

"Israel freeing some of our prisoners will help us to stop others from attacking it," said the Hamas government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad. "But Israel must apologize for our tragedy in 1948 before we can talk about negotiating over our right of return to historic Palestine."

Talking and negotiating with Hamas, and Hizbollah and Damascus for that matter, would take a bold move on Israel's part, which would most likely have to be preceded by a strong push from the US. Unfortunately, I think that what we can probably expect is more rhetoric about how one can't talk to terrorists and how poor Israel would love to settle this conflict once and for all but just can't find a partner in peace.

And if that's the case, we can look forward to things not only not getting better, but getting dramatically worse in the region, and consequently, all over the world.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Herr Grass's wartime career


And now for something completely different. It seems that Nobel laureate, Günter Grass, Germany's greatest living writer, had been lying about his past. It seems that when he was 17, he was in the Waffen SS.

Now the great advocate of facing unpalatable truths has lived up to his own standards, but a little late. The revelation came in an interview with Germany's respected conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), and while it is certain to boost interest in his forthcoming autobiography it has done immeasurable harm to the writer's squeaky-clean reputation.

...Grass's insistent, repetitive message to his fellow citizens was that they should never, ever forget. It seems that only now has he himself chosen to remember.

I'm not really sure what to think about this information. I suppose being in the SS when you were 17 is forgivable, particularly when the Nazis were drafting everyone; however, the fact that he's hidden it for so long really gives me a bad taste in my mouth.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The real war starts


Robert Fisk does not seem optimistic. In today's Independent, he predicts weeks of guerrilla warfare in the south, despite that fact that the roads to the south were already packed with Lebanese trying to get back to their homes and bury their dead:

The real war in Lebanon begins today. The world may believe - and Israel may believe - that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed. But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose.

...From this morning, Hizbollah's operations will be directed solely against the invasion force. And the Israelis cannot afford to lose 40 men a day. Unable to shoot down the Israeli F-16 aircraft that have laid waste to much of Lebanon, the Hizbollah have, for years, prayed and longed and waited for the moment when they could attack the Israeli army on the ground.

Now they are set to put their long-planned campaign into operation. Thousands of their members remain alive and armed in the ruined hill villages of southern Lebanon for just this moment and, only hours after their leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel on Saturday that his men were waiting for them on the banks of the Litani river, the Hizbollah sprang their trap, killing more than 20 Israeli soldiers in less than three hours.

...At this fatal juncture in Middle East history - and no one should underestimate this moment's importance in the region - the Israeli army appears as impotent to protect its country as the Hizbollah clearly is to protect Lebanon.

But if the ceasefire collapses, as seems certain, neither the Israelis nor the Americans appear to have any plans to escape the consequences. The US saw this war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but already it seems as if the tables have been turned. The Israeli military appears to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and apartment blocks - but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army they swore to liquidate.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Lebanon as a test run for Iran


Sy Hersh has a new piece on Lebanon in The New Yorker. He says that this conflict had been planned by Israel and approved by the US for several months. The idea was that Israel's attacks on Hizbollah and Lebanon's infrastructure would serve as a trial run for a future American attack on Iran.

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel?s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground. ...

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah -- and shared it with Bush Administration officials -- well before the July 12th kidnappings. "It's not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into," he said, "but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it."

The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, "The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy."

Of course this attack has not gone as smoothly as the Israelis would have liked it to. The results have so far been unclear, with both sides claiming victory. This war seems to have been sold to the US by Israel, but so far, notes Richard Armitage it has been less than convincing and should serve as a warning against attacking Iran:

"The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. "Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House "has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah." He added, "It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it." (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush's first term -- and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah "may be the A team of terrorists" -- Israel's campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. "If the most dominant military force in the region -- the Israel Defense Forces -- can't pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million," Armitage said. "The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis."

Cease-fire begins


After a last-minute push by Israeli troops and another 220 rockets fired by Hizbollah, the cease-fire has begun. It only took a month:

...since July 12, nearly 1,150 Lebanese are estimated to have died, most of them civilians, and about 150 Israelis, mostly soldiers. Israel says 500 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, a figure Hezbollah disputes. In Gaza, nearly 200 Palestinians have died, many of them militants.
We'll see what this actually means, since both sides seem to have reserved the right to respond to the other:

Eli Yishai, the Israeli trade minister, also issued a stark warning to Lebanon even if the ceasefire comes into force, saying, "If a single stone is thrown at Israel from whatever village that happens, it should be turned into a pile of stones."

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Saturday, "As long as there is Israeli military movement, Israeli field aggression and Israeli soldiers occupying our land ... it is our natural right to confront them, fight them and defend our land, our homes, and ourselves."

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Hizbollah's other war


Reading some of Michael Young's pieces in the Daily Star while I was in Beirut a few weeks ago sometimes made me sick to my stomach. However, his piece in the NY Times Magazine this week is definitely worth a read.

He goes into the dense jungle that is Lebanese politics, explaining the constantly changing alliances and feuds that are often difficult to follow for outsiders. He speaks of the gains that the Shia, who had been historically left out of Lebanese poltical life, have made through Hizbollah, and the tensions felt between the pro-Syrian parties and the March 14 group.

It's a long article, but very much worth a read.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

The London Review on Lebanon and Israel


The London Review has updated, and there are several articles about Lebanon and Israel, including Yitzhak Laor on the IDF and Charles Glass on Hizbollah. There is also a good article by Michael Byers on the limits of self-defence:

'I entirely understand the desire, and indeed need, for Israel to defend itself properly,' Tony Blair said on 14 July. 'As a sovereign nation, Israel has every right to defend itself,' George W. Bush said on 16 July. By the time these statements were made, the IDF had bombed Beirut?s international airport, destroyed roads, bridges, power stations and petrol stations, and imposed an air and sea blockade. The Israeli army chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, had promised to 'turn back the clock in Lebanon by twenty years'. All this in response, ostensibly, to the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others by Hizbullah militants on 12 July.

The right of self-defence identified by Blair and Bush is part of international law. Which makes two conclusions possible: either this area of international law is so elastic as to be inoperative; or it is being interpreted by Blair and Bush in an untenable way. ...


Then there is international humanitarian law, which both Hizbullah and Israel have violated. These rules are set out in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which Israel ratified in 1951. The direct targeting of civilians is categorically prohibited, and this includes acts or threats of violence intended to spread terror or impose collective punishment. Indiscriminate attacks are proscribed. Above all, individual targets may be selected only if the direct military advantage anticipated from the strike exceeds the expected harm to civilians or civilian objects. Hizbullah?s rocket attacks, which have been aimed in the general vicinity of Israeli cities and towns rather than at specific military targets, are illegal.

So too are many of Israel's attacks. More than seven hundred Lebanese civilians have been killed to date, most of them women and children. Some were struck by missiles as they fled for safety. Others were hit because blasted roads, bridges and petrol stations had made it impossible for them to flee. More died when Israel dropped bombs in densely populated neighbourhoods. Even more are dying now as hospitals, water filtration plants and sewage treatment facilities struggle with power shortages. In no circumstance may attacks on civilians or civilian infrastructure be justified by similar violations on the other side. The horrors of Qana, where dozens of Lebanese civilians died in a single precision air-strike, cannot be balanced by lost Israeli lives.

It has been suggested that Israel's actions are aimed at turning the Lebanese population against Hizbullah. A similar kind of thinking was popular during the Second World War, as evidenced by the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg and several cities in Japan. It re-emerged shortly before the 2003 Iraq war in the language of 'shock and awe'. But military action undertaken with such an intention was rejected during the negotiation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and remains illegal. It's also wrong-headed, since people who have been attacked are more likely to blame their attackers than anyone else.

International humanitarian law forbids methods of warfare that cause 'unnecessary suffering or superfluous injury'. For this reason, Hizbullah's use of rockets packed with ball-bearings is illegal, while Israel?s reliance on cluster bombs, fuel-air explosives, white phosphorus (as a weapon rather than for illumination) and depleted uranium is immoral and quite possibly also illegal.

Finally, there's the death of the four UN observers, struck by a precision-guided bomb in a highly visible, long-established post located on a barren hilltop ? after Israeli forces had been warned repeatedly that their projectiles were falling perilously close by. It's easy to suspect that the attack was deliberate, perhaps intended to force the UN to withdraw its other observers from the area, which it duly did. It may even have been designed to dissuade countries from offering troops for the international force being championed by Tony Blair ? a force that, if it's ever created, will take months to deploy. If the killing of the observers was deliberate, it would constitute a clear violation of international humanitarian law.

Violations of these various rules constitute war crimes, which are subject to universal jurisdiction in the sense that the perpetrators may be prosecuted in any country's domestic courts. This raises the possibility of trials if they are foolish enough to travel abroad and the local authorities brave enough to arrest them. The Israeli justice minister, Haim Ramon, will wish to be particularly careful. On 27 July, he said that civilians had been given ample warning and 'all those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hizbullah.' Unfortunately, there?s no possibility of prosecutions in the International Criminal Court, since neither Israel nor Lebanon has ratified the court's statute, and the United States would veto any attempt by the Security Council to use its power to send the matter there.

The absence of a reliable mechanism for prosecuting Hizbullah and Israeli leaders is less serious, however, than the support that Bush and Blair have given to clear violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions. The long-term viability of these rules depends on the willingness of politicians ? and the general public ? to speak out in defence of international law.

Friday, August 11, 2006

America at its worst


While I was in Jerusalem, I was sent a forwarded e-mail that asked whether or not a good Muslim can be a good American. The answer, of course, was no. I figured that this was just another case of racist drivel perpetuated by forwarded e-mails, but imagine my disappointment when I saw that it is a sentiment shared by many Americans according to this Gallup poll.

A new Gallup poll finds that many Americans -- what it calls "substantial minorities" -- harbor "negative feelings or prejudices against people of the Muslim faith" in this country. Nearly one in four Americans, 22%, say they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbor.

While Americans tend to disagree with the notion that Muslims living in the United States are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, a significant 34% believe they do back al-Qaeda. And fewer than half -- 49% -- believe U.S. Muslims are loyal to the United States.

Almost four in ten, 39%, advocate that Muslims here should carry special I.D. That same number admit that they do hold some "prejudice" against Muslims. Forty-four percent say their religious views are too "extreme."

In every case, Americans who actually know any Muslims are more sympathethic.

The poll was taken at the end of July and surveyed 1,007 adult Americans.
Special identification? Is the US going even more insane? Why don't we just make them little crescents to sew on their clothes?

Pictures from the holy land


Here are a bunch of different photos that I took while in the holy land:

This is the Wailing Wall, or the Western Wall, if you prefer:



This a picture of the young Israelis who shocked me with their guns in the middle of West Jerusalem's night life:



Here are pictures from the anti-war rally in Tel Aviv. The first is the protest, the second is a Palestinian protester being roughed up by the police while people yelled that he should be sent to Gaza to be killed, and the third is a pro-war protest across the street:








A poster from the rally:




The walls of Jerusalem's old city:




Inside the old city in the morning at one of the gate's leading to al-Aqsa or al-Harem as-sharif:



The Dome of the Rock:



The anti-war candle light vigil at Damascus Gate (Bab al-Amoud) in Jerusalem:



This is a view from Bethlehem. The walled off section is a settlement, which is 70% empty:



This is part of the seperation wall that has cut right by a Palestinian home, cutting the home off from the rest of its land:



Here is the wall up close in Bethlehem:



These pictures are from the Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Camp in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem:



Wednesday, August 09, 2006

A letter from Beirut...


I arrived in Amman from Jerusalem yesterday. I was worried about crossing back over, especially since I brought back a small olive tree for the Palestinian family who's been so kind as to take care of me while I'm here, but the Israelis don't seem to care about what goes out of the country.

George Galloway spoke out against the media bias while I was on my way home.

A friend also sent me a link to a video letter from Beirut...to who love us. You can download it here:

Now, listen well. We are besieged and the smell of gunpoweder is in the air. Gunpowder, and the world is watching.We are besieged because the world is watching. What matters is that we still have a bit of food and water. And pride. And dignity. And above all lots of love.

We are 4 million people; 4 million and one who was born today in a school under siege. We are here. Where are you?




The first clip is angry, because there is a lot to be angry about. The second clip is sad, because there is even more to be sad about.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Satellite images of Beirut, before and after


The Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten has sattelite images of Beirut (I think this is in the Dahiye, the southern suburb of the capital) from 12 July and 31 July:

Sunday, August 06, 2006


Beirut responds to the text of the proposed Security Council resolution:

Nouhad Mahmoud, a Lebanese foreign ministry official, said on Sunday that the government "would have liked to see our concerns more reflected in the text" of the draft resolution.

"Unfortunately, it lacked, for instance, a call for the withdrawal of Israeli forces which are now in Lebanon. That is a recipe for more confrontation."

He said the government was also unhappy that the resolution does not call for the Shebaa Farms area to be put under UN control, as Lebanon has asked, while its future status is figured out.

Protest in Tel Aviv and guns over Jerusalem


I went to Tel Aviv last night for a protest againt the war in Lebanon. There was a group of Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners protesting the war and a group of Israelis protesting the protest. The first group was holding signs in Hebrew, Arabic and English calling for an end to the war and to the occuptation. The others were holding signs with slogans like "Let the Army win" and "All terrorists are Muslim." Yael Dayan, the daughter of Moshe Dayen also spoke at the protest. She was initially applauded when she said that the war should stop, but was then booed when she said that the war had started out as a "just war."

The police were sometimes violent and at one point beat up a Palestinian guy. There were five policemen against a single guy, whose head they repeatedly smashed onto a car hood. Israeli spectators were screaming that he was just a dirty Arab and deserved to be "sent to Gaza to be killed."

I spoke to a young Israeli woman whose parents were from Kazakhstan. She was against the war but stayed at the edges of the protest, because she felt a little hypocritical. AS it turns out, she'll be starting her military service in a couple of months. As a woman, she won't be sent to Lebanon or Gaza, but she still feels guilty. When I reminded her that it was compulsory for all Israelis, she told me that as a woman, it's fairly easy to get out of, but for reasons that she was unsure of, she didn't.

After the protest, we had dinner in the area and then came back to Jerusalem and took a stroll in the western part of the city. I was shocked to see young Israeli men out for a night on the town with their friends or girlfriends carrying automatic weapons and spare ammunition. They were not soldiers and were not in any sort of uniform. They brought their weapons into the bars and restaurants, sometimes when the streets were especially crowded, you might have the muzzle of an M-16 bump your leg as you wade through the scantily clad human masses. I am used to seeing civilians with guns and soldiers and policemen, but I was taken aback at the amount of young Israelis armed to the teeth in the West Jerusalem equivalent of Times Square or the Bastille.

I asked a policewoman about it this morning in the old city, and she told me that they were probably soldiers, but when she left, I was called back to the shopfront by some Palestinians. They asked me if the armed youth were wearing big watches or if they were wearing yarmukles.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Israeli war crimes in Lebanon


From Human Rights Watch's press release about their report on Israeli war crimes.

Some Israeli Attacks Amount to War Crimes

(Beirut, August 3, 2006) ? Israeli forces have systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said in report released today. The pattern of attacks in more than 20 cases investigated by Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon indicates that the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes.

The 50-page report, "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon," analyzes almost two dozen cases of Israeli air and artillery attacks on civilian homes and vehicles. Of the 153 dead civilians named in the report, 63 are children. More than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli fire since fighting began on July 12, most of them civilians.

"The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military's disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Our research shows that Israel's claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel's indiscriminate warfare."

The report is based on extensive interviews with victims and witnesses of attacks, visits to some blast sites, and information obtained from hospitals, humanitarian groups, security forces and government agencies. Human Rights Watch also conducted research in Israel, assessing the weapons used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Human Rights Watch researchers found numerous cases in which the IDF launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military objectives but excessive civilian cost. In many cases, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians.
Read the rest of the press release and the report itself for specific instances of indiscriminate killing.

Talking to Syria


The US says that it is involved in diplomacy, but it's hard to call only meeting with the people who agree with you diplomatic. It is obvious that peace in Lebanon and Israel will have to involve Syria, but the US refuses to talk to Damascus.

This piece in the LA Times by Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States (often called the lonliest diplomat in Washington) is interesting:

The underlying idea behind demanding Syrian withdrawal [from Lebanon] was simple: It would precipitate the fall of the Syrian regime, and the U.S. would end up with a new government in Damascus that is both Israel-friendly and an ally of the U.S. Does that have any resemblance to the neoconservative justification for the war on Iraq?

To the dismay of U.S. policymakers, this belligerent attitude only rallied Syrians behind their own government.

Ultimately, the Bush administration has to realize that by trying to isolate Syria politically and diplomatically, the U.S. continues to lose ability to influence a major player in the Middle East. In the wake of the ongoing instability in Iraq and violence in Palestine and Lebanon, it begs the larger question: Has isolating Syria made the region more secure?

Currently, the White House doesn't talk to the democratically elected government of Palestine. It does not talk to Hezbollah, which has democratically elected members in the Lebanese parliament and is a member of the Lebanese coalition government. It does not talk to Iran, and it certainly does not talk to Syria.

Gone are the days when U.S. special envoys to the Middle East would spend hours, if not days, with Syrian officials brainstorming, discussing, negotiating and looking for creative solutions leading to a compromise or settlement. Instead, this administration follows the Bolton Doctrine: There is no need to talk to Syria, because Syria knows what it needs to do. End of the matter.

When the United States realizes that it is high time to reconsider its policies toward Syria, Syria will be more than willing to engage. However, the rules of the game should be clear. As President Bashar Assad has said, Syria is not a charity. If the U.S. wants something from Syria, then Syria requires something in return from the U.S.: Let us address the root cause of instability in the Middle East.

The current crisis in Lebanon needs an urgent solution because of the disastrous human toll. Moreover, the whole Middle East deserves a comprehensive deal that would put an end to occupation and allow all countries to equally prosper and live in dignity and peace.
Of course, as an ambassador, his points toe the Syrian line (a line that I generally don't believe as regards Lebanon), but he does have some interesting and valid points. It might seem obvious that diplomacy is not the same as dictating orders, but many don't see it that way in Washington.

Ramallah and a Palestinian government without paychecks


Ramallah was interesting. I met an American-Palestinian woman who works in one of the minstries there. She talked about a lot of things, but mostly about how she hasn't been paid for a while and how the financial squeeze has gotten so bad that employees who live outside Ramallah only come in three times a week, since they haven't been paid and cannot afford to pay for transportation to work and back every day.

Most business with foreign countries is being done through the office of the President, because no one wants to work with the new Hamas government. Interestingly enough though, in the ministries that Hamas controls now, only the ministers have been changed. Everyone, including the deputies, have stayed the same. So just liek most governments and large organizations, there is always a core of career bureaucrats that stays the same, regardless of who is in charge of the ministry.

The wall was again very present, impossible to miss. It cuts the landscape and lengthens commutes. It is often covered with graffiti, both domestic and foreign, in Arabic and English. To get back to Jerusalem, we had to go through two different checkpoints, just as we had to got through two on the way there. Without these checkpoints, the trip would only take about 30 minutes.

I went out last night in West Jerusalem with a couple from Europe who work in NGOs here in the West Bank and Jerusalem. On our way back to the old city, we ran into a couple of young and hip Israelis busily tearing down fliers for a protest against the war in Lebanon.

I'm increasingly worried about a probable escalation. Nasrallah said the night before last on television that if the center of Beirut was hit, then he would hit Tel Aviv. I beleive that this is a warning, not a bluff. Israel probably won't accept this as a deterrant and will probably hit Beirut, if only to assert its manliness and regain the IDF's "honor." Then since he said he would, Nasrallah will order an attack on Tel Aviv.

If only the belligerents in the Middle East were less worried about being "manly" and more interested in being humane, we'd all be a lot better off.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Images from the Dahiyeh


The Times has done a simple interactive graphic of the Southern suburb of Beirut, Haret Hreik, which is where Hizbollah has its offices and which has been the target of many of the Israeli attacks.

It's good that the Times has decided to put it next to a map of Manhatten (at the same scale). Maybe some people might better be able to imagine what it would be like if New York were being attacked instead of Beirut.

The London Review of Books has several pieces by people in Beirut now. This one reminds me the most of my Beirut, parfticularly the ambivalence about leaving Lebanon. It wouldn't surprise me if we went to the same café in Hamra:

I am a secular person and I?m democratically inclined. I have never supported Hizbullah, but I do not question its legitimacy as a political force in Lebanon. It would be folly to regard Hizbullah as just another radical Islamist terrorist organisation. It is a mature political organisation with an Islamist ideology. It has learned (very quickly) to coexist with other political agents in the country, as well as other sects. There have been exceptional moments when the country has united willingly and spontaneously (as during the Israeli attacks in 1993 and 1996), but other less spectacular moments have punctuated the lived postwar experience of every single Lebanese, in which sectarian prejudice was easily set aside. When Hariri was assassinated, the country seemed divided into two camps. There was, however, an overwhelming consensus that we would not go back to fighting one another. If Israel plans to annihilate Hizbullah, it will annihilate Lebanon. Hizbullah is an essential element of contemporary Lebanon.


Otherwise, I'm supposed to be going to Ramallah today, which should prove to be an interesting trip.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Death tolls


The death toll in Lebanon has topped 900 people now, with 3,000 people injured. Only about 100 of the dead were from Hizbollah. (Israel claims that 300 Hizbollah militants have been killed, but I believe the number is closer to the Lebanese security force's estimate, since Nasrallah is always forthright about Hizbollah deaths.)

Compare that to 37 dead Israeli soldiers and 19 civilians.

Bethlehem


I spent all day in Bethlehem, exploring several refugee camps and the Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Camp in the Aida Camp. The children were bright-eyed and friendly, and everyone else was welcoming and helpful.

I got up close to the seperation wall, which often came about 10 meters from Palestinian houses, cutting the family off from the rest of their land.

On the way back, I took a bus back to Jerusalem with my friend. When we were stopped at the checkpoint, everyone in the bus got out and showed their bags and identity cards to the young Israeli soldier, who only spoke to us in Hebrew. He was kurt and methodical. Sometimes, apparently, they won't make you get out of the bus, but we saw that they were making women and children get out and show their ID, so we knew that we would have to also. When we got back into the bus, I asked my friend how often these searches happened. "All the time," he told me.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Jerusalem - Al-Quds


I arrived in Jerusalem yesterday. I set out in a taxi from Amman to the Allenby Bridge crossing. Once I was on the Israeli side of the border, everything slowed to a crawl. I was expecting a modern border crossing that was orderly and efficient. I was wrong.

There were practically no signs, and the Israeli soldiers on duty were usually not at all helpful: one girl refused to even talk to me when I asked her a question. I was held for about 3 hours and interrogated by a young Ethiopian girl, who I assume was doing her military service. She told me to sit down, because it was going to be a long time before I went anywhere. I asked why, and she responded, "Because you was in Lebanon." She asked why I was there, and I told her that I was on vacation. "Vacation in Beirut?" she asked with suprise. "Yes, it's a wonderful city, hopefully, one day you'll be able to visit." She said that "they" would kill her, and I suggested that she should just speak in Amahric, since there are many Ethiopians in Beirut.

When I finally made it into Jerusalem, I was met by a Palestinian friend of the family who has put me up in Amman. He took me out for a very late lunch, showed me around the neighborhood (East Jerusalem, near the Damascus Gate), and we talked about mutual friends and politics. He introduced me to his friends and some of his family; everyone seems to know him in the neighborhood. After talking and eating with a group that got bigger and bigger, we went to a candle light vigil against the wars in Lebanon and Gaza. He told me about a protest in front of the American consulate in East Jerusalem (there's also one in West Jerusalem and an Embassy in Tel Aviv). Since they couldn't get a permit, the police came and broke it up with clubs and tear gas.

After the vigil, I went out with a Palestinian girl who is a citizen of Israel, who tried to explain to me why she refuses to be called an Israeli Arab, and an Israeli Jewish girl from Moldavia. They talked about the news here (the Palestinian girl speaks Hebrew as well as Arabic and English) and about how all but the most radical of the left supports the war in Lebanon.

The hotels are mostly full here, because many people have left the north because of Hizbollah's rocket attacks. Otherwise, my friends back in Lebanon tell me that the Israelis have gone farther and farther into southern Lebanon, and there is talk of going as far north as the Litani, which is eerily reminiscent of the 1982 invasion. I've been taking pictures, but I don't have my computer here, so I'll have to upload them when I get back to Amman in a few days.

Otherwise, Al Aqsa is closed to non-Muslim foreigners for "security reasons," but I am convinced to see al-Haram ah-Sherif before I leave. Tomorrow, my friend is going to take me to see Bethlehem and part of the separation wall.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

In case you've forgotten...


Darfur is still a disaster. One might be tempted to think that things have gotten better there since it hasn't been in the news. If anything, it's just getting worse:

So far, negotiations over a proposed United Nations force to shore up the shaky peace in Darfur have limped along with no sign of compromise. The opposing sides in the conflict now seem headed toward a large-scale military confrontation, bringing Darfur to the edge of a new abyss -- perhaps the deepest it has faced.

"Unfortunately, things seem to be headed in that direction," said Gen. Collins Ihekire, commander of the beleaguered 7,000-member African Union force that is enforcing a fragile peace agreement between the government and one rebel group.

Nearly four months after signing the agreement, the government is preparing a fresh assault against the rebel groups that refused to sign. Years of conflict have already killed hundreds of thousands of people here and sent 2.5 million fleeing their homes. But that may be a prelude of the death likely to come from further fighting, hunger and disease. In the past few months, killings of aid workers and hijackings of their vehicles, mostly by rebel groups, have forced aid groups to curtail programs to feed, clothe and shelter hundreds of thousands of people.

Add to that the fact that many people are cut off from humanitarian aid and the African Union's mandate is about to expire next month.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Last Refuge


Again from the Times magazine, an article by Hassan Daoud about last refuges, and how even they can be destroyed.

Israel and Hizbollah to negotiate prisoner swap


It seems that after the destruction of much of Lebanon, and the death of around 1,100 Lebanese (most of whom were civilians) and over 150 Israeli deaths (most of whom were soldiers), there will be an exchange in prisoners after all.

Interestingly enough, Hassan Nasrallah said last night that had he known that Israel was going to react so strongly, he would not have captured the two Israeli soldiers:

"We did not think, even one percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude," Hassan Nasrallah, the cleric who leads Hizbullah, told Lebanon's New TV channel. "You ask me, if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not." He said Italy would play a part in negotiating the soldiers' eventual release. "Contacts recently began for negotiations," he said. "It seems that Italy is trying to get into the subject." From the start, Mr Nasrallah has said he wanted to exchange the soldiers for Lebanese and Palestinians held in Israel.

Sergio de Gregorio, head of Italy's senate defence committee, said that Iran, Hizbullah's backer, wanted Italy involved. Mr de Gregorio told Reuters he expected talks to start this week. He said the two Israelis were "still alive, fortunately", but would not talk about how they were or what kind of deal might free them.

An Egyptian newspaper reported that German diplomats had helped negotiate a deal to have them freed in two or three weeks. A number of Lebanese held by Israel would be freed in return a day or two later, it said.

While it is true that Israel's reaction to the capture of one soldier by militants in Gaza should have been viewed as a bellwether for Israel's reaction in Lebanon, not many people expected such a violent reaction. After all, attacking Gaza is like shooting fish in a barrel for the IDF, whereas Hizbollah, as we have seen, is capable of not only withstanding an Israeli attack, but fighting back. So in the end, I'm inclined to believe Nasrallah, first because he's not prone to political bluster and usually says what he means and means what he says, and second, because I didn't see the war coming either.

This was obviously not a deterrent to Israel, but it might make Tel Aviv think twice about rushing into a large-scale military solution rather than continuing the status quo of small-scale tit for tat military action or, hopefully, initiating a broad diplomatic process that would help stabalize the region in the long run.

Disarming Hizbollah


In Sunday's Magazine in the Times, there was an article on disarming Hizbollah, in which parallels are made to the situations in the Ivory Coast, Kosovo, the Congo and Northern Ireland. The point is made that disarmament cannot realistically be done by force (unless one is prepared and able to destroy the force) and that there has to be a good political and diplomatic framework that offers the militants a reason to disarm themselves.

Israel launched its air, land and sea attack on Lebanon with the goal, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it, of "disarming this murderous organization"; in that regard, the campaign failed. How, then, could any lesser force succeed? Lebanon's defense minister, Elias Murr, has defended Hezbollah and flatly asserted that the Lebanese Army "is not going to the south to strip Hezbollah of its weapons and do the work that Israel did not." Neither will a U.N. peacekeeping force, however large. "You cannot impose peace on these people if they?re ready to fight you," as a D.D.R. [disarmament, demobilization and reintegration] expert in the U.N.'s peacekeeping department puts it. "You need to be able to annihilate them, because they?re not going to lay down their arms voluntarily." Even robust United Nations forces do not seek to annihilate their adversaries.

If Hezbollah cannot be forcibly disarmed, can some political arrangement induce the militia to disarm itself? This, of course, raises a question about Hezbollah?s aspirations: is it seeking to achieve through force a goal that can be attained through diplomacy, or through political activity? That this is in fact the case is the unspoken premise of United Nations Resolution 1559, passed in 2004, which sought to release Lebanon from the suffocating grip of Syria, and thus to begin a national dialogue that would ultimately lead to the incorporation of Hezbollah into Lebanese affairs.

I've said this before, but the only realistic way to get Hizbollah to disarm is politically and diplomatically. Israeli attacks on Lebanon only serve to strengthen Hizbollah's raison d'être, showing that they do need a strong paramilitary force to defend Lebanon from another Israeli invasion. That the invasion might not have occured if it weren't for the conflict is not really important: the conflict does exist. If Israel were really interested in getting rid of Hizbollah's militia forces, then Tel Aviv would have to start another round of "land for peace" negotiations. The problem is that since Lebanon's (and perhaps more importantly, Hizbollah's) policy toward Israel is inextricably linked with that of Syria, the process would have to be much wider. This means that it wouldn't be enough to just give back Lebanese territory; a peace initiative would have to include at least the Syrians if not the Palestinians in order to work.

This would be a lot of hard and complicated work; however, if Israel is really interested in peace, they're going to have to start sometime. And the sooner the better.

Friday, August 25, 2006

More French and Italian peacekeepers


France has agreed to send 2,000 peacekeepers to Southern Lebanon, and Italy is expected to confirm its offer of 3,000 troops. France was waiting for clarifications on the force's mandate, chain of command (which will be military and not civilian), and "freedom of movement and capacity for action."

It is still unclear exactly to what extent UN troops will be excpected to disarm Hizbollah and to what extent the latter will cooperate with the force. It seems clear to me that the only way to successfully disarm Hizbollah is politically and diplomatically, dealing with its grievances, such as the Shebaa Farms currently occupied by Israel and Lebanese prisoners being held in Israeli jails. The IDF's recent attacks have shown how difficult it is to disarm Hizbollah, and if French and Italian troops try to engage Hizbollah militarily with the aim of disarming them, they will certainly find themselves in a repeat of the 1980s when French and American troops were attacked and then withdrew from Lebanon.

US investigation into Israeli use of American munitions


The US State Department has decided to conduct an inquiry into Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs in Lebanon. The two countries have a secret agreement that such munitions are only to be used against military targets:

The investigation by the department?s Office of Defense Trade Controls began this week, after reports that three types of American cluster munitions, anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area, have been found in many areas of southern Lebanon and were responsible for civilian casualties.

...Several current and former officials said that they doubted the investigation would lead to sanctions against Israel but that the decision to proceed with it might be intended to help the Bush administration ease criticism from Arab governments and commentators over its support of Israel's military operations. The investigation has not been publicly announced; the State Department confirmed it in response to questions.

So is this a real inquiry or is it being done to try to make the US look a little better in the eyes of the rest of the world? According to the Times article, there was a six-year ban imposed on cluster bomb sales to Israel in 1982 after a Congressional investigation found that Israel had used the weapons against civilian areas in violation of the agreements.

Here is a map made by the UN that shows cluster bomb attacks in the South of Lebanon.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Aid and Hizbollah


Relief agencies in Southern Lebanon that receive American funding are finding themselves in a difficult situation. The US government says that they are not allowed to give out aid or money through Hizbollah. This means that they should bypass the organization completely, a difficulyt task in Southern Lebanon:

"Unicef has been here, and Mercy Corps and other groups," said Ahmad Zogby, 39, whose house was destroyed, along with that of his parents. "But everything coming in, Hezbollah puts an eye on it, makes sure it is all given out in the proper way. It is all in the hands of Hezbollah."

Though Hezbollah is only one of many groups providing social services in Lebanon, its reputation for delivering those services honestly is unmatched, making it that much harder to circumvent. In nearby Nabatiye, for instance, Mercy Corps has begun working through the Jabbar Foundation, a nonprofit group run by Yaseen Jabbar, a wealthy member of Parliament.

But the mayor of Nabatiye, Mustapha Badreddine, 55, says he considers the foundation ineffective. For his own part, Mr. Badreddine says he does not belong to Hezbollah, but that he works with it because it is trustworthy, far more so than any other group in the area.

...As an example of Hezbollah's hold on everyday life in southern Lebanon, Ali Bazzi, the mayor of Bint Jbail, outlined his big dreams for his half-demolished town as workmen raced past and tractors rumbled.

...Bint Jbail, the main Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon, saw some of the worst bombing and fighting during the monthlong war, in which Hezbollah, which is integrated with the general population, was Israel's target. But Mr. Bazzi intends to complete the reconstruction without using a single cent from the Lebanese government, much less the United States or the West.

Instead, Mr. Bazzi is counting on Construction Jihad [Hizbollah's building company]. Just a day after the fighting stopped, Construction Jihad enlisted the volunteer services of 1,700 engineers, electricians, plumbers, architects and geologists who have cleared streets, dug ditches and built temporary bridges.

While the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has just begun organizing committees to study the reconstruction of the country, Construction Jihad has all but completed surveys of southern Lebanese towns.

I've talked to people from other internaitonal NGOs, and this is a common problem in places like Lebanon. The US government stipulates that organizations cannot have anything to do with anyone who has anything to do with groups on the "terrorist list." This has caused NGOs to be fractured to the point where the American and other European branches have seperate offices in the same city.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Brahimi's plan for peace


Lakhdar Brahimi, former special adviser to the United Nations Secretary General, weighs in on the war in Lebanon with a five-point plan:

1. ensuring Lebanon's unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity and the full implementation of the 1989 Taif accord

2. encouraging Hizbollah to play a responsible role in the internal dynamics of Lebanon and expecting it to accept the Lebanese state?s exclusive right to possess armaments and use force

3. demanding that Syria and Iran, as well as all other states in the region and beyond, respect Lebanon's sovereignty and abstain from interfering in its internal affairs

4. telling Israel to withdraw its troops from all the territory it currently occupies, including the Shebaa Farms

5. focusing urgent and sustained attention on the problem that underlies the unrest in the Middle East: the Palestinian issue.

He also expresses his disgust at the the loss of life in this war, the destruction of Lebanon and the short-sighted analyses that seem so commonplace:

Wat a waste that it took more than 30 days to adopt a United Nations Security Council resolution for a cease-fire in Lebanon. Thirty days during which nothing positive was achieved and a great deal of pain, suffering and damage was inflicted on innocent people.

The loss of innocent civilian life is staggering and the destruction, particularly in Lebanon, is devastating. Human rights organizations and the United Nations have condemned the humanitarian crisis and violations of international humanitarian law.

Yet all the diplomatic clout of the United States was used to prevent a cease-fire, while more military hardware was rushed to the Israeli Army. It was argued that the war had to continue so that the root causes of the conflict could be addressed, but no one explained how destroying Lebanon would achieve that.

And what are these root causes? It is unbelievable that recent events are so regularly traced back only to the abduction of three Israeli soldiers. Few speak of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, or of its Lebanese prisoners, some of whom have been held for more than 20 years. And there is hardly any mention of military occupation and the injustice that has come with it.

What most people don't seem to understand is that the only way to disarm Hizbollah is to do so politically and diplomatically, and the only way to do this is to take away their raison d'être, which is Israeli occupation of Lebanese and Syrian land. I say Lebanese and Syrian, because the foreign policy of these two countries (at least insofar as Israel is concerned) is inextricably linked. Syria is willing to negotiate peace for land, but Israel doesn't seem interested. Ironically, the very land that Israel occupies for "security reasons" is making the country that much less secure.

Labor solidarity


The British Labor party is showing a little solidarity regarding the one word summary of Bush's handling of the Middle East:

Labour agrees: Bush is crap

Ian Davidson Glasgow South West MP

"I think that John Prescott is to be commended for the quality of his political analysis. His comment on American policy is brief and accurate. Britain has got to ensure that it is no longer seen as simply being the glove puppet of the United States."

Thursday, August 17, 2006

I love Beirut


The Lebanon Chronicle has been sending out stickers and posting photos of the stickers all over the world:



Los Angeles:



Berlin:



They've also been posting all of the many reasons why people love Beirut. It was only after they posted mine that I realized that "pretty girls" ended up on my list three times...

Lebanese death toll reaches 1,300


The death toll has reached 1,300 in Lebanon.

In Srifa, south of the Litani river, they found 26 bodies beneath ruins which I myself stood on just three days ago. At Ainata, there were eight more bodies of civilians. A corpse was discovered beneath a collapsed four-storey house north of Tyre and, near by, the remains of a 16-year old girl, along with three children and an adult. In Khiam in eastern Lebanon, besieged by the Israelis for more than a month, the elderly village "mukhtar" was found dead in the ruins of his home.

Not all the dead were civilians. At Kfar Shuba, dumper-truck drivers found the bodies of four Hizbollah members. At Roueiss, however, all 13 bodies found in the wreckage of eight 10-storey buildings were civilians. They included seven children and a pregnant woman. Ten more bodies were disentangled from the rubble of the southern suburbs of Beirut - where local people claimed they could still hear the screams of neighbours trapped far below the bomb-smashed apartment blocks.

...How many of these dead would have survived if George Bush and Tony Blair had demanded an immediate ceasefire weeks ago will never be known. But many would have had the chance of life had Western governments not regarded this dirty war as an "opportunity" to create a "new" Middle East by humbling Iran and Syria.

Is Hamas ready to deal?


When I was in Ramallah, a friend introduced me to his American/Palestinian cousin who works in the Palestinian Authority. She's young and intelligent, grew up abroad and feels more comfortable in English than in Arabic. She had to move back in with her family, because she hasn't been paid in months. She spoke to me about a plan to try to reshuffle the ministers, adding some members of Fatah, in order to appease the US so that their assets will be unfrozen. (The only people who changed with Hamas's success in the recent elections were the ministers, the other ministry workers, and in most cases even the deputy ministers, remained the same.)

A reasearcher from the CNRS in Paris asks whether this means that Hamas is ready to deal.

A bold gesture now by Israel would surprise its adversaries, convey strength, and even catch domestic political opposition off guard. And as strange as it may seem, were the United States able to help Israel help Hamas, it might turn the rising tide of global Muslim resentment.

Recent discussions I've had with Hamas leaders and their supporters around the globe indicate that Israel might just find a reasonable and influential bargaining partner.

Hamas's top elected official, Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, now accepts that to stop his people's suffering, his government must forsake its all-or-nothing call for Israel's destruction. "We have no problem with a sovereign Palestinian state over all our lands within the 1967 borders, living in calm," Mr. Haniya told me in his Gaza City office in late June, shortly before an Israeli missile destroyed it. "But we need the West as a partner to help us through."

Mr. Haniya's government had just agreed to a historic compromise with Fatah and its leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, forming a national coalition that implicitly accepts the coexistence alongside Israel. But this breakthrough was quickly overshadowed by Israel?s offensive into Gaza in retaliation for the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants, including members of Hamas?s military wing.

...Khaled Meshal, the Damascus-based head of the Hamas politburo, refused to release Corporal Shalit unless Israel freed hundreds of prisoners. While it is true that Israel has shown willingness to release hundreds of Palestinian detainees in return for a single Israeli in the past, Mr. Meshal's stand might have been part of a larger political game.

...Prime Minster Haniya and many of Hamas's other Sunni leaders are known to be uncomfortable with the loose coalition that Mr. Meshal has been forging with Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. Hasan Yusuf, a Hamas official held in Israel's Ketziot prison, doesn't think President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran's declaration that the main solution to the Middle East crisis is for the elimination of the "Zionist regime" is practical or wise. "The outcome in Lebanon doesn't change our view," Mr. Yusuf informed me last weekend. "We believe in two states living side by side."

He also said that "all Hamas factions have agreed to a unilateral cease-fire, including halting Qassam rockets; the movement is ready to go farther if it receives any encouraging responses from Israel and the West."

But even moderate Hamas figures feel that as long as Israel, the United States and Europe boycott the elected government in Gaza and the West Bank, there is little choice but to accept whatever help comes along.

This is doubly unfortunate. While Mr. Meshal says Islam allows only a long-term truce with Israel, Hamas officials closer to Prime Minister Haniya believe that a formal peace deal is possible, especially if negotiations can begin out of the spotlight and proceed by degrees.

"You can't expect us to take off all of our clothes at once," one Hamas leader told me, "or we'll be naked in the cold, like Arafat in his last years." This official said that if Hamas moved too fast, it would alienate its base, but if his government continued to be isolated, the base would radicalize. "Either way, you could wind up with a bunch of little Al Qaedas."

...Tangible results, like prisoner exchanges, are important. However, so are symbolic actions. Hamas officials have stressed the importance of Israel's recognizing their suffering from the original loss of Palestinian land. And survey research of Palestinian refugees and Hamas by my colleagues and I, supported by the National Science Foundation, reliably finds that violent opposition to peace decreases if the adversary is seen to compromise its own moral position, even if the compromise has no material value.

"Israel freeing some of our prisoners will help us to stop others from attacking it," said the Hamas government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad. "But Israel must apologize for our tragedy in 1948 before we can talk about negotiating over our right of return to historic Palestine."

Talking and negotiating with Hamas, and Hizbollah and Damascus for that matter, would take a bold move on Israel's part, which would most likely have to be preceded by a strong push from the US. Unfortunately, I think that what we can probably expect is more rhetoric about how one can't talk to terrorists and how poor Israel would love to settle this conflict once and for all but just can't find a partner in peace.

And if that's the case, we can look forward to things not only not getting better, but getting dramatically worse in the region, and consequently, all over the world.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Herr Grass's wartime career


And now for something completely different. It seems that Nobel laureate, Günter Grass, Germany's greatest living writer, had been lying about his past. It seems that when he was 17, he was in the Waffen SS.

Now the great advocate of facing unpalatable truths has lived up to his own standards, but a little late. The revelation came in an interview with Germany's respected conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), and while it is certain to boost interest in his forthcoming autobiography it has done immeasurable harm to the writer's squeaky-clean reputation.

...Grass's insistent, repetitive message to his fellow citizens was that they should never, ever forget. It seems that only now has he himself chosen to remember.

I'm not really sure what to think about this information. I suppose being in the SS when you were 17 is forgivable, particularly when the Nazis were drafting everyone; however, the fact that he's hidden it for so long really gives me a bad taste in my mouth.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The real war starts


Robert Fisk does not seem optimistic. In today's Independent, he predicts weeks of guerrilla warfare in the south, despite that fact that the roads to the south were already packed with Lebanese trying to get back to their homes and bury their dead:

The real war in Lebanon begins today. The world may believe - and Israel may believe - that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed. But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose.

...From this morning, Hizbollah's operations will be directed solely against the invasion force. And the Israelis cannot afford to lose 40 men a day. Unable to shoot down the Israeli F-16 aircraft that have laid waste to much of Lebanon, the Hizbollah have, for years, prayed and longed and waited for the moment when they could attack the Israeli army on the ground.

Now they are set to put their long-planned campaign into operation. Thousands of their members remain alive and armed in the ruined hill villages of southern Lebanon for just this moment and, only hours after their leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel on Saturday that his men were waiting for them on the banks of the Litani river, the Hizbollah sprang their trap, killing more than 20 Israeli soldiers in less than three hours.

...At this fatal juncture in Middle East history - and no one should underestimate this moment's importance in the region - the Israeli army appears as impotent to protect its country as the Hizbollah clearly is to protect Lebanon.

But if the ceasefire collapses, as seems certain, neither the Israelis nor the Americans appear to have any plans to escape the consequences. The US saw this war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but already it seems as if the tables have been turned. The Israeli military appears to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and apartment blocks - but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army they swore to liquidate.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Lebanon as a test run for Iran


Sy Hersh has a new piece on Lebanon in The New Yorker. He says that this conflict had been planned by Israel and approved by the US for several months. The idea was that Israel's attacks on Hizbollah and Lebanon's infrastructure would serve as a trial run for a future American attack on Iran.

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel?s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground. ...

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah -- and shared it with Bush Administration officials -- well before the July 12th kidnappings. "It's not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into," he said, "but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it."

The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, "The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy."

Of course this attack has not gone as smoothly as the Israelis would have liked it to. The results have so far been unclear, with both sides claiming victory. This war seems to have been sold to the US by Israel, but so far, notes Richard Armitage it has been less than convincing and should serve as a warning against attacking Iran:

"The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. "Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House "has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah." He added, "It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it." (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush's first term -- and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah "may be the A team of terrorists" -- Israel's campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. "If the most dominant military force in the region -- the Israel Defense Forces -- can't pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million," Armitage said. "The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis."

Cease-fire begins


After a last-minute push by Israeli troops and another 220 rockets fired by Hizbollah, the cease-fire has begun. It only took a month:

...since July 12, nearly 1,150 Lebanese are estimated to have died, most of them civilians, and about 150 Israelis, mostly soldiers. Israel says 500 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, a figure Hezbollah disputes. In Gaza, nearly 200 Palestinians have died, many of them militants.
We'll see what this actually means, since both sides seem to have reserved the right to respond to the other:

Eli Yishai, the Israeli trade minister, also issued a stark warning to Lebanon even if the ceasefire comes into force, saying, "If a single stone is thrown at Israel from whatever village that happens, it should be turned into a pile of stones."

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Saturday, "As long as there is Israeli military movement, Israeli field aggression and Israeli soldiers occupying our land ... it is our natural right to confront them, fight them and defend our land, our homes, and ourselves."

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Hizbollah's other war


Reading some of Michael Young's pieces in the Daily Star while I was in Beirut a few weeks ago sometimes made me sick to my stomach. However, his piece in the NY Times Magazine this week is definitely worth a read.

He goes into the dense jungle that is Lebanese politics, explaining the constantly changing alliances and feuds that are often difficult to follow for outsiders. He speaks of the gains that the Shia, who had been historically left out of Lebanese poltical life, have made through Hizbollah, and the tensions felt between the pro-Syrian parties and the March 14 group.

It's a long article, but very much worth a read.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

The London Review on Lebanon and Israel


The London Review has updated, and there are several articles about Lebanon and Israel, including Yitzhak Laor on the IDF and Charles Glass on Hizbollah. There is also a good article by Michael Byers on the limits of self-defence:

'I entirely understand the desire, and indeed need, for Israel to defend itself properly,' Tony Blair said on 14 July. 'As a sovereign nation, Israel has every right to defend itself,' George W. Bush said on 16 July. By the time these statements were made, the IDF had bombed Beirut?s international airport, destroyed roads, bridges, power stations and petrol stations, and imposed an air and sea blockade. The Israeli army chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, had promised to 'turn back the clock in Lebanon by twenty years'. All this in response, ostensibly, to the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others by Hizbullah militants on 12 July.

The right of self-defence identified by Blair and Bush is part of international law. Which makes two conclusions possible: either this area of international law is so elastic as to be inoperative; or it is being interpreted by Blair and Bush in an untenable way. ...


Then there is international humanitarian law, which both Hizbullah and Israel have violated. These rules are set out in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which Israel ratified in 1951. The direct targeting of civilians is categorically prohibited, and this includes acts or threats of violence intended to spread terror or impose collective punishment. Indiscriminate attacks are proscribed. Above all, individual targets may be selected only if the direct military advantage anticipated from the strike exceeds the expected harm to civilians or civilian objects. Hizbullah?s rocket attacks, which have been aimed in the general vicinity of Israeli cities and towns rather than at specific military targets, are illegal.

So too are many of Israel's attacks. More than seven hundred Lebanese civilians have been killed to date, most of them women and children. Some were struck by missiles as they fled for safety. Others were hit because blasted roads, bridges and petrol stations had made it impossible for them to flee. More died when Israel dropped bombs in densely populated neighbourhoods. Even more are dying now as hospitals, water filtration plants and sewage treatment facilities struggle with power shortages. In no circumstance may attacks on civilians or civilian infrastructure be justified by similar violations on the other side. The horrors of Qana, where dozens of Lebanese civilians died in a single precision air-strike, cannot be balanced by lost Israeli lives.

It has been suggested that Israel's actions are aimed at turning the Lebanese population against Hizbullah. A similar kind of thinking was popular during the Second World War, as evidenced by the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg and several cities in Japan. It re-emerged shortly before the 2003 Iraq war in the language of 'shock and awe'. But military action undertaken with such an intention was rejected during the negotiation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and remains illegal. It's also wrong-headed, since people who have been attacked are more likely to blame their attackers than anyone else.

International humanitarian law forbids methods of warfare that cause 'unnecessary suffering or superfluous injury'. For this reason, Hizbullah's use of rockets packed with ball-bearings is illegal, while Israel?s reliance on cluster bombs, fuel-air explosives, white phosphorus (as a weapon rather than for illumination) and depleted uranium is immoral and quite possibly also illegal.

Finally, there's the death of the four UN observers, struck by a precision-guided bomb in a highly visible, long-established post located on a barren hilltop ? after Israeli forces had been warned repeatedly that their projectiles were falling perilously close by. It's easy to suspect that the attack was deliberate, perhaps intended to force the UN to withdraw its other observers from the area, which it duly did. It may even have been designed to dissuade countries from offering troops for the international force being championed by Tony Blair ? a force that, if it's ever created, will take months to deploy. If the killing of the observers was deliberate, it would constitute a clear violation of international humanitarian law.

Violations of these various rules constitute war crimes, which are subject to universal jurisdiction in the sense that the perpetrators may be prosecuted in any country's domestic courts. This raises the possibility of trials if they are foolish enough to travel abroad and the local authorities brave enough to arrest them. The Israeli justice minister, Haim Ramon, will wish to be particularly careful. On 27 July, he said that civilians had been given ample warning and 'all those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hizbullah.' Unfortunately, there?s no possibility of prosecutions in the International Criminal Court, since neither Israel nor Lebanon has ratified the court's statute, and the United States would veto any attempt by the Security Council to use its power to send the matter there.

The absence of a reliable mechanism for prosecuting Hizbullah and Israeli leaders is less serious, however, than the support that Bush and Blair have given to clear violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions. The long-term viability of these rules depends on the willingness of politicians ? and the general public ? to speak out in defence of international law.

Friday, August 11, 2006

America at its worst


While I was in Jerusalem, I was sent a forwarded e-mail that asked whether or not a good Muslim can be a good American. The answer, of course, was no. I figured that this was just another case of racist drivel perpetuated by forwarded e-mails, but imagine my disappointment when I saw that it is a sentiment shared by many Americans according to this Gallup poll.

A new Gallup poll finds that many Americans -- what it calls "substantial minorities" -- harbor "negative feelings or prejudices against people of the Muslim faith" in this country. Nearly one in four Americans, 22%, say they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbor.

While Americans tend to disagree with the notion that Muslims living in the United States are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, a significant 34% believe they do back al-Qaeda. And fewer than half -- 49% -- believe U.S. Muslims are loyal to the United States.

Almost four in ten, 39%, advocate that Muslims here should carry special I.D. That same number admit that they do hold some "prejudice" against Muslims. Forty-four percent say their religious views are too "extreme."

In every case, Americans who actually know any Muslims are more sympathethic.

The poll was taken at the end of July and surveyed 1,007 adult Americans.
Special identification? Is the US going even more insane? Why don't we just make them little crescents to sew on their clothes?

Pictures from the holy land


Here are a bunch of different photos that I took while in the holy land:

This is the Wailing Wall, or the Western Wall, if you prefer:



This a picture of the young Israelis who shocked me with their guns in the middle of West Jerusalem's night life:



Here are pictures from the anti-war rally in Tel Aviv. The first is the protest, the second is a Palestinian protester being roughed up by the police while people yelled that he should be sent to Gaza to be killed, and the third is a pro-war protest across the street:








A poster from the rally:




The walls of Jerusalem's old city:




Inside the old city in the morning at one of the gate's leading to al-Aqsa or al-Harem as-sharif:



The Dome of the Rock:



The anti-war candle light vigil at Damascus Gate (Bab al-Amoud) in Jerusalem:



This is a view from Bethlehem. The walled off section is a settlement, which is 70% empty:



This is part of the seperation wall that has cut right by a Palestinian home, cutting the home off from the rest of its land:



Here is the wall up close in Bethlehem:



These pictures are from the Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Camp in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem:



Wednesday, August 09, 2006

A letter from Beirut...


I arrived in Amman from Jerusalem yesterday. I was worried about crossing back over, especially since I brought back a small olive tree for the Palestinian family who's been so kind as to take care of me while I'm here, but the Israelis don't seem to care about what goes out of the country.

George Galloway spoke out against the media bias while I was on my way home.

A friend also sent me a link to a video letter from Beirut...to who love us. You can download it here:

Now, listen well. We are besieged and the smell of gunpoweder is in the air. Gunpowder, and the world is watching.We are besieged because the world is watching. What matters is that we still have a bit of food and water. And pride. And dignity. And above all lots of love.

We are 4 million people; 4 million and one who was born today in a school under siege. We are here. Where are you?




The first clip is angry, because there is a lot to be angry about. The second clip is sad, because there is even more to be sad about.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Satellite images of Beirut, before and after


The Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten has sattelite images of Beirut (I think this is in the Dahiye, the southern suburb of the capital) from 12 July and 31 July:

Sunday, August 06, 2006


Beirut responds to the text of the proposed Security Council resolution:

Nouhad Mahmoud, a Lebanese foreign ministry official, said on Sunday that the government "would have liked to see our concerns more reflected in the text" of the draft resolution.

"Unfortunately, it lacked, for instance, a call for the withdrawal of Israeli forces which are now in Lebanon. That is a recipe for more confrontation."

He said the government was also unhappy that the resolution does not call for the Shebaa Farms area to be put under UN control, as Lebanon has asked, while its future status is figured out.

Protest in Tel Aviv and guns over Jerusalem


I went to Tel Aviv last night for a protest againt the war in Lebanon. There was a group of Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners protesting the war and a group of Israelis protesting the protest. The first group was holding signs in Hebrew, Arabic and English calling for an end to the war and to the occuptation. The others were holding signs with slogans like "Let the Army win" and "All terrorists are Muslim." Yael Dayan, the daughter of Moshe Dayen also spoke at the protest. She was initially applauded when she said that the war should stop, but was then booed when she said that the war had started out as a "just war."

The police were sometimes violent and at one point beat up a Palestinian guy. There were five policemen against a single guy, whose head they repeatedly smashed onto a car hood. Israeli spectators were screaming that he was just a dirty Arab and deserved to be "sent to Gaza to be killed."

I spoke to a young Israeli woman whose parents were from Kazakhstan. She was against the war but stayed at the edges of the protest, because she felt a little hypocritical. AS it turns out, she'll be starting her military service in a couple of months. As a woman, she won't be sent to Lebanon or Gaza, but she still feels guilty. When I reminded her that it was compulsory for all Israelis, she told me that as a woman, it's fairly easy to get out of, but for reasons that she was unsure of, she didn't.

After the protest, we had dinner in the area and then came back to Jerusalem and took a stroll in the western part of the city. I was shocked to see young Israeli men out for a night on the town with their friends or girlfriends carrying automatic weapons and spare ammunition. They were not soldiers and were not in any sort of uniform. They brought their weapons into the bars and restaurants, sometimes when the streets were especially crowded, you might have the muzzle of an M-16 bump your leg as you wade through the scantily clad human masses. I am used to seeing civilians with guns and soldiers and policemen, but I was taken aback at the amount of young Israelis armed to the teeth in the West Jerusalem equivalent of Times Square or the Bastille.

I asked a policewoman about it this morning in the old city, and she told me that they were probably soldiers, but when she left, I was called back to the shopfront by some Palestinians. They asked me if the armed youth were wearing big watches or if they were wearing yarmukles.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Israeli war crimes in Lebanon


From Human Rights Watch's press release about their report on Israeli war crimes.

Some Israeli Attacks Amount to War Crimes

(Beirut, August 3, 2006) ? Israeli forces have systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said in report released today. The pattern of attacks in more than 20 cases investigated by Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon indicates that the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes.

The 50-page report, "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon," analyzes almost two dozen cases of Israeli air and artillery attacks on civilian homes and vehicles. Of the 153 dead civilians named in the report, 63 are children. More than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli fire since fighting began on July 12, most of them civilians.

"The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military's disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Our research shows that Israel's claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel's indiscriminate warfare."

The report is based on extensive interviews with victims and witnesses of attacks, visits to some blast sites, and information obtained from hospitals, humanitarian groups, security forces and government agencies. Human Rights Watch also conducted research in Israel, assessing the weapons used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Human Rights Watch researchers found numerous cases in which the IDF launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military objectives but excessive civilian cost. In many cases, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians.
Read the rest of the press release and the report itself for specific instances of indiscriminate killing.

Talking to Syria


The US says that it is involved in diplomacy, but it's hard to call only meeting with the people who agree with you diplomatic. It is obvious that peace in Lebanon and Israel will have to involve Syria, but the US refuses to talk to Damascus.

This piece in the LA Times by Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States (often called the lonliest diplomat in Washington) is interesting:

The underlying idea behind demanding Syrian withdrawal [from Lebanon] was simple: It would precipitate the fall of the Syrian regime, and the U.S. would end up with a new government in Damascus that is both Israel-friendly and an ally of the U.S. Does that have any resemblance to the neoconservative justification for the war on Iraq?

To the dismay of U.S. policymakers, this belligerent attitude only rallied Syrians behind their own government.

Ultimately, the Bush administration has to realize that by trying to isolate Syria politically and diplomatically, the U.S. continues to lose ability to influence a major player in the Middle East. In the wake of the ongoing instability in Iraq and violence in Palestine and Lebanon, it begs the larger question: Has isolating Syria made the region more secure?

Currently, the White House doesn't talk to the democratically elected government of Palestine. It does not talk to Hezbollah, which has democratically elected members in the Lebanese parliament and is a member of the Lebanese coalition government. It does not talk to Iran, and it certainly does not talk to Syria.

Gone are the days when U.S. special envoys to the Middle East would spend hours, if not days, with Syrian officials brainstorming, discussing, negotiating and looking for creative solutions leading to a compromise or settlement. Instead, this administration follows the Bolton Doctrine: There is no need to talk to Syria, because Syria knows what it needs to do. End of the matter.

When the United States realizes that it is high time to reconsider its policies toward Syria, Syria will be more than willing to engage. However, the rules of the game should be clear. As President Bashar Assad has said, Syria is not a charity. If the U.S. wants something from Syria, then Syria requires something in return from the U.S.: Let us address the root cause of instability in the Middle East.

The current crisis in Lebanon needs an urgent solution because of the disastrous human toll. Moreover, the whole Middle East deserves a comprehensive deal that would put an end to occupation and allow all countries to equally prosper and live in dignity and peace.
Of course, as an ambassador, his points toe the Syrian line (a line that I generally don't believe as regards Lebanon), but he does have some interesting and valid points. It might seem obvious that diplomacy is not the same as dictating orders, but many don't see it that way in Washington.

Ramallah and a Palestinian government without paychecks


Ramallah was interesting. I met an American-Palestinian woman who works in one of the minstries there. She talked about a lot of things, but mostly about how she hasn't been paid for a while and how the financial squeeze has gotten so bad that employees who live outside Ramallah only come in three times a week, since they haven't been paid and cannot afford to pay for transportation to work and back every day.

Most business with foreign countries is being done through the office of the President, because no one wants to work with the new Hamas government. Interestingly enough though, in the ministries that Hamas controls now, only the ministers have been changed. Everyone, including the deputies, have stayed the same. So just liek most governments and large organizations, there is always a core of career bureaucrats that stays the same, regardless of who is in charge of the ministry.

The wall was again very present, impossible to miss. It cuts the landscape and lengthens commutes. It is often covered with graffiti, both domestic and foreign, in Arabic and English. To get back to Jerusalem, we had to go through two different checkpoints, just as we had to got through two on the way there. Without these checkpoints, the trip would only take about 30 minutes.

I went out last night in West Jerusalem with a couple from Europe who work in NGOs here in the West Bank and Jerusalem. On our way back to the old city, we ran into a couple of young and hip Israelis busily tearing down fliers for a protest against the war in Lebanon.

I'm increasingly worried about a probable escalation. Nasrallah said the night before last on television that if the center of Beirut was hit, then he would hit Tel Aviv. I beleive that this is a warning, not a bluff. Israel probably won't accept this as a deterrant and will probably hit Beirut, if only to assert its manliness and regain the IDF's "honor." Then since he said he would, Nasrallah will order an attack on Tel Aviv.

If only the belligerents in the Middle East were less worried about being "manly" and more interested in being humane, we'd all be a lot better off.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Images from the Dahiyeh


The Times has done a simple interactive graphic of the Southern suburb of Beirut, Haret Hreik, which is where Hizbollah has its offices and which has been the target of many of the Israeli attacks.

It's good that the Times has decided to put it next to a map of Manhatten (at the same scale). Maybe some people might better be able to imagine what it would be like if New York were being attacked instead of Beirut.

The London Review of Books has several pieces by people in Beirut now. This one reminds me the most of my Beirut, parfticularly the ambivalence about leaving Lebanon. It wouldn't surprise me if we went to the same café in Hamra:

I am a secular person and I?m democratically inclined. I have never supported Hizbullah, but I do not question its legitimacy as a political force in Lebanon. It would be folly to regard Hizbullah as just another radical Islamist terrorist organisation. It is a mature political organisation with an Islamist ideology. It has learned (very quickly) to coexist with other political agents in the country, as well as other sects. There have been exceptional moments when the country has united willingly and spontaneously (as during the Israeli attacks in 1993 and 1996), but other less spectacular moments have punctuated the lived postwar experience of every single Lebanese, in which sectarian prejudice was easily set aside. When Hariri was assassinated, the country seemed divided into two camps. There was, however, an overwhelming consensus that we would not go back to fighting one another. If Israel plans to annihilate Hizbullah, it will annihilate Lebanon. Hizbullah is an essential element of contemporary Lebanon.


Otherwise, I'm supposed to be going to Ramallah today, which should prove to be an interesting trip.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Death tolls


The death toll in Lebanon has topped 900 people now, with 3,000 people injured. Only about 100 of the dead were from Hizbollah. (Israel claims that 300 Hizbollah militants have been killed, but I believe the number is closer to the Lebanese security force's estimate, since Nasrallah is always forthright about Hizbollah deaths.)

Compare that to 37 dead Israeli soldiers and 19 civilians.

Bethlehem


I spent all day in Bethlehem, exploring several refugee camps and the Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Camp in the Aida Camp. The children were bright-eyed and friendly, and everyone else was welcoming and helpful.

I got up close to the seperation wall, which often came about 10 meters from Palestinian houses, cutting the family off from the rest of their land.

On the way back, I took a bus back to Jerusalem with my friend. When we were stopped at the checkpoint, everyone in the bus got out and showed their bags and identity cards to the young Israeli soldier, who only spoke to us in Hebrew. He was kurt and methodical. Sometimes, apparently, they won't make you get out of the bus, but we saw that they were making women and children get out and show their ID, so we knew that we would have to also. When we got back into the bus, I asked my friend how often these searches happened. "All the time," he told me.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Jerusalem - Al-Quds


I arrived in Jerusalem yesterday. I set out in a taxi from Amman to the Allenby Bridge crossing. Once I was on the Israeli side of the border, everything slowed to a crawl. I was expecting a modern border crossing that was orderly and efficient. I was wrong.

There were practically no signs, and the Israeli soldiers on duty were usually not at all helpful: one girl refused to even talk to me when I asked her a question. I was held for about 3 hours and interrogated by a young Ethiopian girl, who I assume was doing her military service. She told me to sit down, because it was going to be a long time before I went anywhere. I asked why, and she responded, "Because you was in Lebanon." She asked why I was there, and I told her that I was on vacation. "Vacation in Beirut?" she asked with suprise. "Yes, it's a wonderful city, hopefully, one day you'll be able to visit." She said that "they" would kill her, and I suggested that she should just speak in Amahric, since there are many Ethiopians in Beirut.

When I finally made it into Jerusalem, I was met by a Palestinian friend of the family who has put me up in Amman. He took me out for a very late lunch, showed me around the neighborhood (East Jerusalem, near the Damascus Gate), and we talked about mutual friends and politics. He introduced me to his friends and some of his family; everyone seems to know him in the neighborhood. After talking and eating with a group that got bigger and bigger, we went to a candle light vigil against the wars in Lebanon and Gaza. He told me about a protest in front of the American consulate in East Jerusalem (there's also one in West Jerusalem and an Embassy in Tel Aviv). Since they couldn't get a permit, the police came and broke it up with clubs and tear gas.

After the vigil, I went out with a Palestinian girl who is a citizen of Israel, who tried to explain to me why she refuses to be called an Israeli Arab, and an Israeli Jewish girl from Moldavia. They talked about the news here (the Palestinian girl speaks Hebrew as well as Arabic and English) and about how all but the most radical of the left supports the war in Lebanon.

The hotels are mostly full here, because many people have left the north because of Hizbollah's rocket attacks. Otherwise, my friends back in Lebanon tell me that the Israelis have gone farther and farther into southern Lebanon, and there is talk of going as far north as the Litani, which is eerily reminiscent of the 1982 invasion. I've been taking pictures, but I don't have my computer here, so I'll have to upload them when I get back to Amman in a few days.

Otherwise, Al Aqsa is closed to non-Muslim foreigners for "security reasons," but I am convinced to see al-Haram ah-Sherif before I leave. Tomorrow, my friend is going to take me to see Bethlehem and part of the separation wall.