Turning the clock back on Lebanon http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/20/stories/2006072003250800.htm
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Turning the clock back on Lebanon


 Anjali Kamat

With Gaza as one model of Israeli collective punishment and Lebanon's own past another, the Lebanese have little to look forward to especially by way of international support.

THE STORY of the city that emerged, phoenix-like, from 15 years of a brutal civil war, to regain its position as an economic and cultural centre of the Arab world, has come to a grinding halt with Israel's continuous bombardment of Beirut and cities and villages in southern, northern, and eastern Lebanon since last week. Some say the tide began to turn against the Lebanese with the string of assassinations of well-known anti-Syrian politicians and journalists, starting with that of the former Prime Minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, the Saudi-made czar of Beirut's reconstruction, on February 14, 2005. But any residual hopes of Lebanese unity that the brief "Beirut spring" of last March might have carried have been completely shattered with Israeli bombs destroying lives, homes, and critical infrastructure across the country. Beirut is under siege and major cities are being attacked by air, sea, and land. For a people who have tried so hard to forget it, the events of the past week are a devastating flashback to the carnage of the civil war years, particularly to the three-month-long Israeli siege of Beirut in the summer of 1982.

 Lebanese opinion is divided over Hizbollah's responsibility for initiating the violence and plunging their country into war. Hizbollah, an armed Islamist political party in Lebanon with representation in the government and 14 MPs in Parliament, launched an exclusively military campaign by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers on July 11 to negotiate the release of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israel. In the subsequent clashes on July 12, it killed eight Israeli soldiers. Israel's response, on the other hand — in line with its policy towards the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank — has been one of collective punishment towards Lebanese civilians. The Lebanese Daily Star reports that the toll in less than a week included more than 200 civilians dead, over 58,000 displaced, and the destruction of basic infrastructure across the country.

 With every airport, major bridge, highway, seaport, and main electrical station under attack by Israel's relentless air strikes, Lebanon's isolation from the outside world is complete. People fleeing the bombing have nowhere to escape. Nothing captures this humanitarian crisis more agonisingly than the Associated Press images circulated on Sunday by an editor of Lebanon's Al-Safir newspaper: a highway littered with the charred bodies of children burnt by Israeli aerial bombing. The children and their families were fleeing their village of Tayr Harfa in south Lebanon, two hours after it was leafleted by Israeli planes warning that it would be bombed next. This is not an isolated case; on Saturday, July 15, Reuters reported that Israeli air strikes incinerated a van carrying 20 civilians, 15 of them children. They were fleeing their village of Marwaheen on the border with Israel after warnings over the loudspeaker to leave their homes.

 The extent of civilian casualties in Lebanon — as in Gaza — is particularly important to remember in the light of constant Israeli attempts to cash in on the U.S.-led `war on terror' and cast its own soldiers as the "most moral army in the world." This was recently expressed in Sunday's comments from the former Israeli Defence Minister, Shaul Mofaz, who called Hizbullah "Israel's Al-Qaeda" and compared Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah to Osama bin Laden.

 The worst hit areas, described as "Hizbollah strongholds" by the Israeli military and the Western media, also happen to be where the most impoverished and dispossessed Lebanese reside. The sprawling suburbs of southern Beirut, known as the "Dahiya," houses the poor Shi'ites from southern and eastern Lebanon, and was called the "belt of misery," before the birth and rise of Hizbollah, following the Israeli invasion of 1982. Rather than simply imagining these neighbourhoods and villages as terrorist breeding grounds, it is important to recall that Hizbollah's appeal partly resides on its history of providing social services to Lebanon's 1.5 million Shi'ites, long disenfranchised by the Lebanese state.

 Furthermore, in a region marked by the partition of Palestine in 1948, the 1967 Arab defeat leading to the ongoing Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and the brutal Israeli repression of the Palestinian resistance at every point creating an unending narrative of Palestinian death and displacement, the emotional appeal of what is widely considered to be the only Arab resistance group to have successfully defeated the Israelis (resulting in the Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000) cannot be underestimated.

 Of course, Hizbollah, while respected in certain circles in Lebanon, is treated with much suspicion by many in the country, particularly those who are sceptical of its links to Syria and Iran, its Islamist politics, and its overtly militarised culture. Yet, as noted by several commentators in the Arabic media, however angry Hizbollah's detractors might be about its role in precipitating the current crisis, and however anachronistic an armed resistance group protecting Lebanon from Israeli attacks might have seemed to some Lebanese groups just a few weeks ago, Israel's disproportionate response has only strengthened Hizbollah's raison d'etre. As a friend in Beirut watching the air strikes next to his apartment commented: "Israel is real. It bombs cities. Terrifies millions of people. Holds them under siege, cuts them off from the outside world by bombing airports, surrounding seaports and destroying main-roads to neighbouring countries. This is not TV."

 In this context, the tepid response from U.S.-allied Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt, and their harsh condemnation of what they called Hizbollah's Iranian influenced "irresponsible adventurism," rather than of Israel's bombing campaign against civilians, has infuriated many inside Lebanon, who have taken a dim view of these cynical attempts to curry favour with the United States. The G8 countries and the majority of the international community have done little but wring their hands at the current crisis, blame Hizbollah, and ask Israel to exercise "restraint." A recent Washington Post article quotes a senior U.S. official saying that the Israeli military "has to run its course" in Lebanon and "[has] space to operate for a period of time."

 While speculation is rife about possible Syrian and Iranian support or direction of Hizbollah's current operation — for which no evidence has been offered — Hasan Nasrallah claims the abduction was planned at least five months ago. Since the last prisoner exchange with Israel in 2004 — negotiated following Hizbollah's use of captured Israeli soldiers as bargaining chips — he has publicly stated his intent to continue to press for the release of the remaining prisoners in Israel. However, regardless of one's position on Hizbollah's policies and tactics, constant assertions by the U.S. and Israel that Hizbollah was directed by Syria and Iran is cause for serious concern — particularly in light of recent neoconservative calls for a U.S. attack on Iran and the nuclear stalemate with Iran. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that a senior U.S. official underscored a "concern among conservative Arab allies that there is a hegemonic Persian threat [running] through Damascus, through the southern suburbs of Beirut and to the Palestinians in Hamas."

 Israel's intentions with respect to Syria and Iran remain unclear, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert emphasised that Israeli bombardment of Lebanon will stop only when the two soldiers are returned and the conditions of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 are implemented — particularly the complete disarmament of Hizbollah and the deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon. Israel's insistence on disarming Hizbollah echoes the conditions it set during its 1982 bombing of Beirut, when it refused to stop the attack until all the Palestinian militias were disarmed. As in 1982, this could become the pretext for a massive ground invasion, which according to Reuters, Israel's Deputy Army Chief Moshe Klapinsky does not rule out.

 Although Israel demands Lebanese army presence in the south, it bombed Lebanese army barracks in the north on Monday, killing eight, and injuring 12, at a time when the Lebanese government has repeatedly called for a ceasefire. The Lebanese government's relative hesitation at deploying its army in the south is part of its strategy of distancing itself from Hizbollah's actions, as well as fears of igniting the real sectarian tensions below the surface of Lebanese unity that could well erupt if the army was perceived to be pitted against Hizbollah.

 Gaza might have fallen off the radar of the media with Lebanon taking centre stage, but it continues to burn under the daily fire of Israeli shells and the humanitarian crisis grows worse with every passing day — receiving only the mildest of condemnations from the international community. With Gaza as one model of Israeli collective punishment and Lebanon's own past another, the Lebanese have little to look forward to, especially by way of international support. Shockingly, it appears that IDF Chief Lt. General Dan Halutz's threat of July 12 to "turn the clock back on Lebanon 20 years," as reported in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, might slowly and sadly be coming true.

 

 

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