h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In YOUR learned and experienced opinion, ... Has THIS a hope-in-hell of happening?

This addresses most of the needs and requests of the Lebanese for the last decades, in terms of Lebanon itself, so yes, from the pov of Lebanon's cooperation, it can work. From the point of view of Israel? We shall have to wait and see, although I am encouraged by mention of the Resolutions 242 et al on down the line in the UN statements just after this resolution was passed. Israel can only have peace if its neighbours are settled and able to get on with their daily mundane lives. The Lebanese government has conceded (finally) a return to the 1949 Armistice, which would put Lebanon on a par with Jordan and Egypt in terms of Israel's neighbours. Then Israel needs to address the Palestinian question and sort that out.

It will take time and good faith and a lot of work. It may not all happen in the presence of the Bush/Blair administrations but really, I hope it does evolve further and bring a lasting peace. Enough. It has been 60 years of this. We need peace.

Nick: "In YOUR learned and experienced opinion..."

You *were* talking to me weren't you?

*looks behind her to see if anyone is standing there*

Lady C.

*crosses every thing*

Yes, Lady Wilma, I was asking of your personal opinion. You've lived, learned, studied, and lived it over, and over, and ...

The words are really so well and nicely put. And to me, you, many people, sound so 'right'. I just wonder if enough people in the picture, the one's choosing who points what at whom, will accept it.

Thanks Nick, but I am in no way in any way knowledgeable compared to others. I just tell it how I see it. I am glad it makes sense though That's always good to know and no, I don't suppose any of what I or anyone I know can say as an individual would be effective with those in power as their 'objectives' seem to always differ from those of us on the street...

AOL news is reporting that Israel has agreed to a cease fire Monday morning. (The report came from someone who is not supposed to discuss sensitive material, so how accurate is it?)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4787179.stm?ls

Hezbollah's leader has said his group will abide by a ceasefire plan agreed at the UN to end fighting with Israel.

However, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said on TV that Hezbollah would continue fighting as long as Israeli soldiers remained in Lebanon.

Lebanon has now also approved the UN resolution, which calls for a "full cessation of hostilities".

Israel has backed the plan too but has extended an offensive in south Lebanon, tripling its ground troops there.

Some Israeli troops have reached the key target of the Litani River, the army says.

Seven Israeli soldiers were killed and more than 50 wounded in the fighting on Saturday.

Israel also confirmed a helicopter had been shot down in southern Lebanon, causing some casualties. It is the first such loss to hostile fire in the conflict.

Israel's Cabinet will discuss the UN resolution on Sunday and Israel says it will only halt military action after taking a vote.

'War not ended'

On Hezbollah's al-Manar TV channel on Saturday, Sheikh Nasrallah said the UN resolution was "unfair" in holding his group responsible for the fighting.

The Security Council emphasises the need for an end of violence, but at the same time emphasises the need to address urgently the causes that have given rise to the current crisis

But he added: "We will not be an obstacle to any decision taken by the Lebanese government."

And referring to Israel's insistence it has the right to continue military operations in Lebanon in self-defence, Sheikh Nasrallah said: "As long as there is Israeli aggression, it is our right to fight them and defend our land."

He added: "The war has not ended. There have been continued strikes and continued casualties. Today nothing has changed and it appears tomorrow nothing will change."

Sheikh Nasrallah said Hezbollah would co-operate with the deployment of UN and Lebanese troops in the south.

The BBC's Nick Childs in Beirut says this appears a very conditional acceptance, aimed at maintaining Lebanese political unity.

After the Lebanese cabinet meeting that approved the UN resolution, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said the approval was "a unanimous decision, with some reservations".

/....

On Saturday, US President George W Bush praised the UN move, adding: "I now urge the international community to turn words into action and make every effort to bring lasting peace to the region."

Mr Bush also added more condemnation of Hezbollah, saying it shared the same "totalitarian ideology" as those arrested in a suspected plot to blow up US-bound jets from Britain.


Plonker.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/4E070EAD-0244-4EE8-BE24-E0DD002955CA.htm

Israel's attack on convoy a 'mistake'

Saturday 12 August 2006

More than 500 vehicles left the town of Marjayoun heading north

Israel has admitted that it was "mistaken" in attacking a convoy of hundreds of cars carrying people fleeing the fighting in southern Lebanon.

At least seven people were killed and 36 wounded when an unmanned Israeli aircraft fired on the convoy of more than 500 vehicles.

The Israeli army confirmed it had carried out an air strike on the convoy, saying it had acted on the mistaken suspicion that Hezbollah guerrillas were smuggling weapons in the vehicles.

"The attack was carried out based on a suspicion. It was found to be incorrect," an army spokeswoman said.

The Israeli army said it had not granted permission for the convoy to travel as it was too dangerous.

The attack was near the Bekaa Valley town of Chtaura, about 50km north of the Litani River below which Israel had warned it may attack any vehicle on the roads.

350 Lebanese troops were travelling wth the convoy

The Israeli army said the convoy was on a route that is often used by Hezbollah to transport weapons to the south - the convoy was heading north.

About 3,000 civilians and 350 Lebanese soldiers and policemen left the mainly Christian town of Marjayoun in the convoy a day after Israeli forces seized control of the area.

Witnesses said most of the victims were civilians.

One of the dead was a Red Cross worker who went to help people injured in the initial strikes.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/92BF797F-68AA-4EEA-AD4E-E621389FB813.htm

Israel, Hezbollah hesitate on deal


Saturday 12 August 2006

Nasrallah says Hezbollah has the right to resist Israel

Hezbollah says it will abide by a UN-backed ceasefire and Israel says it plans to halt offensive operations on Monday, but both sides issued caveats to their acceptance of a UN resolution to end the fighting.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, said on Saturday that his fighters would observe the UN resolution ending fighting once the timing of the truce was agreed and adhered to by Israel.

"We will not be an obstacle to any [government] decision that it finds appropriate, but our ministers will express reservations about articles [in the UN resolution] that we consider unjust and unfair," he said in a speech broadcast on Hezbollah's Al-Manar television.

But he called continued resistance to the Israeli offensive "our natural right" and predicted more intense fighting to come.

"The war has not yet ended," he said. "That can be seen on the ground where Israeli offensives are still ongoing.

"Hezbollah has the right to resist Israeli soldiers still in Lebanon, but will co-operate with Lebanese soldiers and UN troops due to be deployed to southern Lebanon as part of the Security Council resolution," he said.

"We must not make a mistake, not in the resistance, the government or the people, and believe that the war has ended. The war has not ended. There have been continued strikes and continued casualties," he added.

Nasrallah also warned Beirut: "During the next period, the Lebanese government should bear its responsibilities with regard to political security, reconstruction, and humanitarian sides."

The Lebanese cabinet accepted the resolution during a four-hour long meeting on Saturday.

"It was a unanimous decision, with some reservations," Fuad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, said.

Cleaning the area

Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, said on Saturday that Israel's offensive against Hezbollah was expected to end on Monday.

"We said [we would] allow the army the time it needed and I think that will be until some time on Monday," she told Channel Two television.

Another senior Israeli official said offensive operations would stop at 7am on Monday (0400 GMT), but troops would "be cleaning the area" of Hezbollah fighters and weapons after that.

"Cleaning the area falls under defensive operations," the Israeli official said. Such operations are permitted under the resolution.

"We are the tool that is supposed to drive Hezbollah out of the south so the UN force can move in," the official added.

Despite the UN resolution's demand for a "full cessation of hostilities", Israeli air raids killed 20 people on Saturday.

Israeli forces also made their deepest push into Lebanon in this conflict, some reaching the Litani River, about 20km north of the border between Israel and Lebanon.

The Litani is the line behind which Hezbollah is expected to withdraw under the UN resolution.

Hezbollah fired 65 rockets at northern Israel on Saturday, wounding several people, and clashed with Israeli troops, killing seven and wounding 70.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/4031CEB5-D787-4053-910C-22FA90573B03.htm



Friday 11 August 2006

Israeli troops seize Lebanese barracks

United Nations peacekeepers have been dispatched to evacuate about 350 Lebanese soldiers and police held by Israeli forces in Marjayoun a day after Israeli soldiers swept into the southern Lebanese town.

Security officials said that on Friday two armoured vehicles from the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, a 2,000-member peacekeeping force deployed in southern Lebanon, headed to Marjayoun, which Israeli forces occupied on Thursday.

They will escort the Lebanese soldiers out of their barracks in a convoy that will take them into government-controlled territory further north, the Lebanese security officials said.

On Thursday, Ahmed Fatfat, the interior minister, said Israeli soldiers entered the garrison in the afternoon "and asked to share it with Lebanese troops there".

He said the soldiers refused and wanted to leave, but the Israelis stopped them.

"They [Israelis] say they are searching for heavy weapons that might endanger them or that there are resistance fighters in the barracks. But our impression is that they might have wanted to use the Marjayoun barracks as a kind of human shield," he said.

"We consider them captives," Fatfat said, adding that the government was trying to win their release.

Israel said the soldiers had been prevented from leaving for their own safety.

Intervention

Lebanese and Arab media reports said that France and the US intervened to arrange for the evacuation of the Lebanese soldiers.

There are more than 1,000 Lebanese soldiers in southern Lebanon conducting security duties. But Hezbollah fighters actually control the south.

The government has pledged to send 15,000 soldiers to the border with Israel as part of a peace package to end one month of fighting and bombardment by Israel.

Israel has insisted on staying in southern Lebanon until an international force is deployed, which could take weeks or months.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/8F02BCBD-035B-452A-A35E-E5FA0EFF61A6.htm



"Preferably the fighting should stop now to respect the spirit and intent of the Council decision, the object of which was to save civilian lives, to spare the pain and suffering that the civilians on both sides are living through," Annan said.

Overnight on Saturday, at least seven civilians were killed and nine wounded as Israeli forces staged a series of attacks across Lebanon, officials said.

The dead included a mother, her three young children and their Sri Lankan maid, killed when Israeli bombs hit their home in the southern village of Burj el-Shemali.

Israel meanwhile said that 19 of its soldiers had died in fighting on Saturday - its heaviest losses in a single day since the start of the conflict.

Another five Israeli soldiers, missing after their helicopter was shot down, are also presumed to have died.

August 12 / 13, 2006
Copyright Couterpunch 2006.

The Real Reason the British Should be Frightened


How London's Terror Scare Looks From Beirut

By ROBERT FISK
Beirut.

When my electricity returned at around 3am yesterday, I turned on the BBC World Service television. There were a series of powerful explosions which shook the house--just as they vibrated across all of Beirut--as the latest Israeli air raids blasted over the city. And then up came the World Service headline: "Terror Plot". Terror what, I asked myself? And there was my favorite cop, Paul Stephenson, explaining how my favorite police force--the ones who bravely executed an innocent young Brazilian on the Tube, taking 30 seconds to fire six bullets into him--had saved the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians from suicide bombers on airliners. I'm sure our readers will join me in watching how many of the suspects--or "British-born Muslims" as the BBC defined them in its special form of "soft"
racism (they are surely Muslim Britons or British Muslims, are they
not?)--are still in custody in a couple of weeks' time. And I'm sure it's quite by chance that the lads in blue chose yesterday--with anger at Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara's shameful failure over Lebanon at its peak--to save the world. After all, it's scarcely three years since the other great Terror Plot had British armored vehicles surrounding
Heathrow on the very day--again quite by chance, of course--that hundreds of thousands of Britons were demonstrating against Lord Blair's intended invasion of Iraq. So I sat on the carpet in my living room and watched all these heavily armed chaps at Heathrow protecting the British people from annihilation and then on came President George Bush to tell us that we were all fighting "Islamic fascism".

There were more thumps in the darkness across Beirut where an awful lot of people are suffering from terror--although I can assure George W that while the pilots of the aircraft dropping bombs across the city in which I have lived for 30 years may or may not be fascists, they are
definitely not Islamic. And there, of course, was the same old problem. To protect the British people--and the American people--from "Islamic terror", we must have lots and lots of heavily armed policemen and soldiers and plainclothes police and endless departments of anti-terrorism, homeland security and other more sordid folk like the American torturers--some of them sadistic women--at Abu Ghraib and Baghram and Guantanamo. Yet the only way to protect ourselves from the real violence which may--and probably will--be visited upon us, is to deal, morally, with courage and with justice, with the tragedy of Lebanon and "Palestine" and Iraq and Afghanistan. And this we will not do. I would, frankly, love to have Paul Stephenson out in Beirut to counter a little terror in my part of the world--Hizbollah terror and Israeli terror. But this, of course, is something that Paul and his lads don't have the spittle for. It's one thing to sound off about the alleged iniquities of alleged suspects of an alleged plot to create alleged terror--quite another to deal with the causes of that terror and to do so in the face of great danger.

I was amused to see that Bush--just before my electricity was cut off again--still mendaciously tells us that the "terrorists" hate us because of "our freedoms". Not because we support the Israelis who have massacred refugee columns, fired into Red Cross ambulances and slaughtered more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians--here indeed are crimes for Paul Stephenson to investigate--but because they hate our "freedoms". And I notice with despair that our journalists again suck on the hind tit of authority, quoting endless (and anonymous) "security sources" without once challenging their information or the timing of Paul's "terror plot" discoveries or the nature of the details--somehow, "fizzy drinks bottles" doesn't quite work for me--nor the reasons why, if this whole panjandrum is correct, anyone would want to carry out such atrocities.

We are told that the arrested men are Muslims. Now isn't that interesting? Muslims. This means that many of them--or their families--originally come from south-west Asia and the Middle East, from the area that encompasses Afghanistan, Iraq, "Palestine" and Lebanon.
In the old days, chaps like Paul used to pull out a map when faced with folk of different origins or religion or indeed different names. Indeed, if Paul Stephenson takes a school atlas, he'll notice that there are an awful lot of violent problems and injustice and suffering and--a speciality, it seems, of the Metropolitan Police--of death in the area from which the families of these "Muslims" come. Could there be a connection, I wonder? Dare we look for a motive for the crime, or rather the "alleged crime"? The Met used to be pretty good at looking for motives. But not, of course, in the "war on terror", where--if he really searched for real motives--my favorite policeman would swiftly be back on the beat as Constable Paul Stephenson.

Take yesterday morning. On day 31 of the Israeli version of the "war on
terror"--a conflict to which Paul and the lads in blue apparently subscribe by proxy--an Israeli aircraft blew up the only remaining bridge to the Syrian frontier in northern Lebanon, in the mountainous and beautiful Akka district above the Mediterranean. With their usual sensitivity, the pilots who bombed the bridge--no terrorists they, mark you--chose to destroy the bridge when ordinary cars were crossing. So they massacred the 12 civilians who happened to be on the bridge. In the real world, we call that a war crime. Indeed, it's a crime worthy of the attention of Paul and his lads. But alas, Stephenson's job is to frighten the British people, not to stop the crimes that are the real reason for the British to be frightened. Personally, I'm all for arresting criminals, be they of the "Islamic fascist" variety or the Bin Laden variety or the Israeli variety--their warriors of the air really should be arrested next time they drop into Heathrow--or the American variety (Abu Ghraib cum laude) and indeed of the kind that blow out the brains of Tube train passengers. But I don't think Paul Stephenson is. I think he huffs and he puffs but I do not think he stands for law and order. He works for the Ministry of Fear which, by its very nature, is not interested in motives or injustice. And I have to say, watching his performance before the next power cut last night, I thought he was doing a pretty good job for his masters.

Exhausted Lebanese venture home as fighting ends
Lebanese refugees start to return home from Syria

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Monday, August 14, 2006


by Jihad Siqlawi

TYRE, Lebanon, Aug 14, 2006 (AFP) - Exhausted Lebanese displaced by a month of bombing left their shelters Monday to stream onto roads in the hope of finding homes intact as Israel halted attacks after a final barrage of raids.

Residents of the port city of Tyre ventured out of shelters as soon as calm prevailed after a UN-brokered ceasefire deal aimed at ending the month-long war in Lebanon entered into force at 0500 GMT.

The residents headed to inspect homes and stock up on bread and other provisions, an AFP correspondent on the scene said.

Cars and pick-ups, loaded with families and luggage, were seen streaming from Tyre on mountain roads leading to villages in the area.

Similar convoys arrived to Tyre from the north, as residents who had fled to the coastal city of Sidon started to head back home.

Hussein Abu Zeid, 38, started his car and headed to his village of Ramadiyeh, east of Tyre.

"I am heading to my village, my house, that of my brother and our shop have been destroyed," said Hussein.

"I will erect a tent and stay there with my family. This is our land, we will not stay away from it," he said.

In the city of Sidon further north, engineer Imad Ibrahim was sitting in his car. At exactly 8:00 am, he started his car and headed to his village of Dweir.

"I am going alone to inspect our house in the village and see if this ceasefire stands. If all is fine, I will return to Sidon to bring back my family," he said.

As some Israeli forces began withdrawing from southern Lebanon, Israeli warplanes disappeared from the sky over the Lebanese capital, as well as the war-battered south and east of the country as soon as the deadline for the end of the hostilities passed.

But half an hour later, warplanes roared at high altitude over the Iqlim al-Tuffah mountains east of Sidon and the eastern city of Baalbek, AFP correspondents and police said.

Israel said Monday it would maintain its air and sea blockade of Lebanon despite a ceasefire on the ground to end more than a month of fighting.

"The maritime and aerial blockade will be kept in place until a mechanism is put in place to control smuggling of arms" to Hezbollah, a military source said.

Israel had launched an 11th-hour wave of air strikes on Lebanon early Sunday.

Just before the ceasefire took hold, fighter jets also dropped leaflets over Beirut blaming Hezbollah and its Iranian and Syrian "masters" for the destruction in Lebanon and warning that Israel would respond to any new attack.

"To the Lebanese citizens of Lebanon: Hezbollah which is serving its Iranian and Syrian masters has led you to the edge of the abyss," said one of the flyers.

"With its isolationist, reckless and false policy, Hezbollah has brought you many achievements: destruction, displacement and death," said the leaflet, dropped about two hours before battles were due to stop at 0500 GMT.

"Can you pay this price a second time? Know that the Israeli Defense Forces will return and work with the required force against any terrorist act that will be launched from Lebanon to harm the state of Israel," it said.

Another leaflet showed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah building a sand castle threatened by a huge wave.

Residents of the capital and displaced people from the south were seen tearing up the leaflets and garbage workers were picking them up from the streets, an AFP correspondent said.

The Lebanese army opened fire with anti-aircraft batteries as the Israeli war planes were letting the leaflets fly.-AFP


Lebanese refugees start to return home from Syria


MASNAA, Lebanon, Aug 14, 2006 (AFP) - Hundreds of Lebanese refugees on Monday were braving a bombed-out road as they returned home in their cars from neighboring Syria over the main border crossing, an AFP correspondent said.

The cars, loaded with families of Lebanese refugees and their belongings, were circumventing a large crater on the road to the Masnaa border point in eastern Lebanon.

Dozens of people, carrying bags, also crossed on foot.

A general security officer told AFP that Lebanese nationals who had sought refuge in Syria had started crossing the passageway even before the ceasefire deal went into effect at 0500 GMT.

The Masnaa border post, like almost all the overland crossing points to Syria, had been practically closed to vehicles by a succession of Israeli air strikes since the start of Israel's offensive on its northern neighbor on July 12.-AFP


http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=74727

Lebanon's middle class is disillusioned with America

By Kamal Dib
Special to The Daily Star
Monday, August 14, 2006


The Lebanese educated middle class are asking Washington: "Why have you forsaken me?" as Lebanon's existence is bombed to smithereens. The current war is traumatizing Lebanon's Western-oriented middle class, as it witnesses the destruction of its hopes for a prosperous and independent Lebanon, as Israel, backed by the United States, systematically destroys Lebanon and places the destiny of 4 million Lebanese in serious jeopardy.

Members of the Lebanese middle class see themselves as open-minded believers in a Western-style secular democracy. They did not hesitate to make their views known that when Southern Lebanon was freed from Israeli occupation in 2000 it was time for Hizbullah to disarm. Many, including Shiites, have written articles critical of Hizbullah and its state-within-a-state in Lebanon.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the United States waged wars in Cambodia and Vietnam that involved heavy bombing campaigns and large-scale offensives that badly hurt the civilian populations. Critics used to say: "The US was destroying Vietnamese villages in order to liberate them." The same approach was utilized again in Kosovo in 1998 and in Iraq in 2003. The sheer force employed by Israel against Lebanon in 2006 has led many commentators to compare these Israeli apocalyptic bombing campaigns on Beirut and the Southern provinces to US war-making.

A strong contingent of educated middle-class Lebanese who totally oppose the current Israeli war against their country and who were pro-American, are becoming increasingly vocal about American lack of concern for the plight of Lebanon.

Lebanese journalists, authors, academics, and public figures, who have worked for decades to cure the social ills that wracked Lebanon and are not fond of radical sectarian ideologies, will not accept to be at the receiving end of Israeli bombs that pretend to be helping them get rid of Hizbullah. There is a strong belief in Lebanon that disarming Hizbullah is better dealt with as an internal Lebanese matter through dialogue, as opposed to using violent means, especially by an outside power that will only strengthen the hand of the radicals and weaken the moderates.

This sentiment was echoed by Jamil Mroue, publisher of The Daily Star, and by other enlightened commentators in Beirut. Mroue told The New Yorker magazine (August 7, 2006): "Even after September 11, 2001, there is this expectation in the United States and Israel that some unspoken middle class is just sitting there waiting to inherit the ruins of whatever country it is that they are obliterating. But there is no calculation that, if they flatten Lebanon and Nasrallah comes out of hiding and is given a microphone to deliver a speech, he can topple governments. He has been extraordinarily empowered by this. Israel and America are still obsessed with destroying hardware. But if you do this with Hizbullah you just propagate what you want to destroy. The same errors that the Americans made in Iraq are the ones being made here. You get rid of Nasrallah not by destroying his guns but by helping to create a sustainable society." Mroue predicted that before July 12, almost 90 percent of the Lebanese public opinion favored disarming Hizbullah, "but now, I'd say it's around 50, teetering on 60 percent - in favor."

In a similar vein, Robert Fisk of The Independent newspaper (July 31, 2006) writes: "From the border of Pakistan to the Mediterranean, we have turned a 2,500-mile swath of the Muslim world into a hell-disaster of unparalleled suffering and hatred. In Iraq, our soldiers and those of the United States hide in their concrete crusader fortresses while the people they so generously liberated and introduced to the benefits of Western-style democracy slash each other to death."

Lebanon's middle class was at the forefront in 2005 of the country's insurrection against Syrian hegemony and the corruption of the Lebanese political establishment. The US administration was vocal in its support for the Lebanese uprising, and State Department officials spoke of a "Cedar Revolution." During that historic moment for Lebanon, US President George W. Bush pressured Syria to withdraw from Lebanon and called for a democratic and independent Lebanon. The global community and the international media remarked that a free Lebanon would provide a good example of the success of America's policy of spreading democracy in the Middle East minus the trademark bloodshed that plagued occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.

A year later, the naked truth is revealed to the Lebanese middle class: that the relentless Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, a sovereign nation with democratic institutions, did not generate any sympathetic reaction from the United States. The Lebanese were angry that the United States administration appeared to be heartless during four weeks of Israeli attacks that killed 1,000 citizens, wounded 4,000, and displaced 1 million people. The economic dimensions of the catastrophe were as devastating to Lebanon as the human loss: After 17 years and tens of billions of dollars in expenditure, Lebanon was beginning to return to a pre-1975 situation, but Israel has caused massive destruction to the country's physical infrastructure and to private property. This has practically sent Lebanon back to square one, with future costs of untold billions of dollars, plus a sharp decline in economic activity, including the loss of over $2 billion in tourism revenues.

Prior to July 12, 2006, there was hope that the United States would help Lebanese recovery by supporting economic reconstruction and development and encouraging internal dialogue on disarming military organizations, so that Lebanon would become a strong oasis for democracy. That kind of American support was what the Lebanese expected as strong evidence of America's good intentions toward Arabs and Muslims, and a step in the right direction to stem the tidal wave of Islamic fundamentalism sweeping Asia and the Middle East.

Yet, what happened is that the US, spearheading what Muslims see as a "Christian Western Crusade," has helped the Jewish state destroy Lebanon, ending the nascent ray of hope in the little country and causing ominous prophecies about a forthcoming clash between Islam and a so-called Judeo-Christian world coming true. American complicity was clear: the Lebanese middle class witnessed the carnage and destruction of their country with US approval, and the killing of innocent women and children with advanced American weaponry that mutilated their bodies into pieces, and made their prime minister shed tears several times on television asking the world to stop the slaughter in Lebanon.

People who marched in the million-strong demonstration on March 14 last year are now wondering what happened to freedom, democracy, humanity, sovereignty, and all the lofty principles that the US said it so badly wanted for Lebanon when the issue involved forcing a Syrian departure from Lebanon. The destiny of Lebanon and its march to a secular welfare state are not on Washington's agenda as previously rumored, and Lebanon and its 4 million citizens are held ransom against the release of two Israeli soldiers. People are now seeing the unfolding events in Gaza and occupied Iraq through different eyes. These are not events of liberation and democratization, but of occupation and self interest disguised as a war on terrorism.

The Lebanese middle class, long resisting religious fundamentalism and totalitarian ideologies, is now disillusioned with a hypocritical Washington that would consent to bury the Lebanese alive and destroy their country.

******************************
Kamal Dib is a Canadian economist of Lebanese origin; he has written several books on Lebanon and the Middle East, most recently, "Warlords and Merchants."

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=17&article_id=74623
Editorial


With upward of 1 million Lebanese forced out of their homes by war, some very essential activities are being carried out by a variety of what might seem like unlikely actors. From artists and bankers to waiters and singers, many people from all walks of life are giving of their time, their money and their homes to help those less fortunate than themselves. The effort is almost exclusively ad hoc, so there has been room for both waste and corruption, but the fact remains that the Lebanese spirit has once again risen to the occasion: Acts of kindness and generosity have far outnumbered those of greed and selfishness.

This degree of moral success, though, is no substitute for practicable results. It is not too late - and certainly not too early - to recover from initial failures of planning, so the Cabinet has a responsibility to take charge of this situation to whatever extent it can, and work with Parliament to oversee the process to help ensure an adequate level of efficiency. This is especially true because there is no way of knowing how long the war will last. And even if it were to end tomorrow, there would be nothing lost by having worked on contingency planning for emergencies, an area of government activity that could obviously benefit from an injection of forethought, intelligence and organizational resources.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb

There is also a place for the private sector in this process. Lebanese companies are feeling many of the same pains that Lebanese families are, so it is only fitting that they pool their efforts in order to relieve both individual and collective suffering. For those captains of industry whose enthusiasm is not piqued by altruism, helping potential customers in their hour of need is also excellent public relations.

The state and the private sector, along with non-governmental organizations, will have to hit the ground running to keep this country afloat when the war ends. There is no better time than now to start getting ready.

Sorry but this is a bit trivial but heartening in these times.

I heard an item on BBCfivelive radio last night from Beirut. Apparently many Beirut Lebanese love to swim everyday. And despite the oil pollution problems from Israeli bombing of an installation, they have decided to still swim anyway. And fisherman are still fishing. Are people actually eating these fish?

They'd better not be eating the fish or swimming... then again, it is not such a good idea to be going south either and on cnn I can see that's exactly what they're doing - in their hundreds of thousands. We have already had reported of unexploded ('til now, anyway) ordnance blowing people up as they try to get home... The UN and Lebanese Army seem to be doing pretty amazing work though. Hard times ahead.

I wondered about the advisability of the people heading back home so soon after the cease fire. I'm not sure I would trust the cease fire holding fast. I guess I'm just a skeptic. What about the landmines? Have they been located and disarmed? Scarey stuff, that.