Official Report on the death of a Canadian Soldier in Lebanon 2006

Something about this just isn’t Right

What follows is a horror story, released on Friday, February 1st, by Stephen Harper’s government.

When the Israeli Armed Forces killed a Canadian U.N. soldier and three others, during Israel’s failed invasion of Lebanon, they explained that the killings were a mistake.

I don’t know why the Israelis killed the Canadian – Major Paeta Hess-Von Kruedener, a member of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry,  and three of his colleagues in a clearly-marked United Nations Observation Post.  But they did.

I don’t know for sure if the post was deliberately targeted – but I think it was.

The results of a Canadian Board Of Inquiry have finally come out. Today the Globe and Mail published a tiny story…not even 200 words long…explaining what we all knew a long time ago. That an unarmed Canadian Major was killed by an Israeli bomb.

The New York Times published a few words too (279). The Times explained that the U.N. wanted Israel to stop attacking its post.

So did the Winnipeg Free Press – also quite short.

This story…just like our reputation for peacekeeping…is off the government radar and hence, off the mainstream media radar as well.

In a rather bizarre addendum to a press release on this subject, the Canadian government said:

“Appropriate portions of the final report have been severed out (read censored), in accordance with Access to Information regulations to protect the operational security of the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) and the UN. (Read Cover their Asses). However the essence of the report remains and tells a little of the story of what happened that night”.

They begged, they pleaded and they yelled out.

A half hour before the fatal bomb was dropped, a United Nations Commander yelled over a radio hookup at an Israeli official: “You are killing my people”.

After that there was a brief period of silence and the Canadian soldier and his fellow soldiers thought it was all over. They thought, ah, Israel has heard us and listened.

They then prepared to evacuate the Observation Post – just in case.

But before they could pack their bags, that big Israeli bomb…a 1,100 pound GPS-guided bomb…went whistling down right on the spot.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)

Whose Mission is it fulfilling?

Franklin Lamb
UN Headquarters
Naquora, Lebanon
peoplesgeography.com

Ever since one of this student’s favorite Professors, Dr. Ruth Widmeyer, an accomplished and rare beauty still, who was the first woman to receive a PhD in Soviet Studies from Harvard nearly a half century ago, announced to our Political Science class at Portland State University that our class would be representing France at the Model United Nations Session in San Diego, Lamb was smitten: both with Professor Widmeyer and with the United Nations.

Robert Fisk: Beirut to Bosnia (documentary film)

I can’t recommend this series more highly. When I saw Fisk speak about his new book in Glasgow (2005) he used clips from it very effectively. While viewing horrible crimes committed against Muslims in the 90’s he asks (paraphrasing) “What have the Muslims got in store for us? Watchout!”

Why have so many Muslims come to hate the West? In this controversial three-part series filmed in Lebanon, Gaza, Israel, Egypt, and Bosnia, Robert Fisk—award-winning Middle East and Balkans correspondent for the London Independent—reports on Muslim unrest as ideology, religion, history, and geography come into conflict. Contains strong imagery. A Discovery Channel Production. 3-part series, 52 minutes each.
The Martyr’s Smile 

Revisiting the summer war – A MUST READ

THIS IS A MUST READ.  Israeli press confess that ISRAEL started the war, not Hezbollah.  Any rational thinker knew this already, but now we have it in print.  Also that the UN cartographer has said the Shebaa farms are lebanese, therefore Israel still occupies Lebanon in violation of UN resolution 425 (although the UN seems to have been muzzled, see Franklin Lambs article for more info).

Jonathan Cook, Electronic Lebanon, Aug 16, 2007

Hizballah supporters hold a rally in south Beirut one year after Israel’s “Second Lebanon War.” Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah addressed the crowd of thousands from a remote location, 14 August 2007. (Matthew Cassel)

This week marks a year since the end of hostilities now officially called the Second Lebanon War by Israelis. A month of fighting — mostly Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon, and rocket attacks from the Shia militia Hizballah on northern Israel in response — ended with more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and a small but unknown number of Hizballah fighters dead, as well as 119 Israeli soldiers and 43 civilians.

When Israel and the United States realized that Hizballah could not be bombed into submission, they pushed a resolution, 1701, through the United Nations. It placed an expanded international peacekeeping force, UNIFIL, in south Lebanon to keep Hizballah in check and try to disarm its few thousand fighters.

But many significant developments since the war have gone unnoticed, including several that seriously put in question Israel’s account of what happened last summer. This is old ground worth revisiting for that reason alone.

The war began on 12 July, when Israel launched waves of air strikes on Lebanon after Hizballah killed three soldiers and captured two more on the northern border. (A further five troops were killed by a land mine when their tank crossed into Lebanon in hot pursuit.) Hizballah had long been warning that it would seize soldiers if it had the chance, in an effort to push Israel into a prisoner exchange. Israel has been holding a handful of Lebanese prisoners since it withdrew from its two-decade occupation of south Lebanon in 2000.

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who has been widely blamed for the army’s failure to subdue Hizballah, appointed the Winograd Committee to investigate what went wrong. So far Winograd has been long on pointing out the country’s military and political failures and short on explaining how the mistakes were made or who made them. Olmert is still in power, even if hugely unpopular.

In the meantime, there is every indication that Israel is planning another round of fighting against Hizballah after it has “learnt the lessons” from the last war. The new defense minister, Ehud Barak, who was responsible for the 2000 withdrawal, has made it a priority to develop anti-missile systems such as “Iron Dome” to neutralize the rocket threat from Hizballah, using some of the recently announced $30 billion of American military aid.

It has been left to the Israeli media to begin rewriting the history of last summer. Last weekend, an editorial in the liberal Haaretz newspaper went so far as to admit that this was “a war initiated by Israel against a relatively small guerrilla group.” Israel’s supporters, including high-profile defenders like Alan Dershowitz in the US who claimed that Israel had no choice but to bomb Lebanon, must have been squirming in their seats.

There are several reasons why Haaretz may have reached this new assessment.

Recent reports have revealed that one of the main justifications for Hizballah’s continuing resistance — that Israel failed to withdraw fully from Lebanese territory in 2000 — is now supported by the UN. Last month its cartographers quietly admitted that Lebanon is right in claiming sovereignty over a small fertile area known as the Shebaa Farms, still occupied by Israel. Israel argues that the territory is Syrian and will be returned in future peace talks with Damascus, even though Syria backs Lebanon’s position. The UN’s admission has been mostly ignored by the international media.

One of Israel’s main claims during the war was that it made every effort to protect Lebanese civilians from its aerial bombardments. The casualty figures suggested otherwise, and increasingly so too does other evidence.

A shocking aspect of the war was Israel’s firing of at least a million cluster bombs, old munitions supplied by the US with a failure rate as high as 50 percent, in the last days of fighting. The tiny bomblets, effectively small land mines, were left littering south Lebanon after the UN-brokered ceasefire, and are reported so far to have killed 30 civilians and wounded at least another 180. Israeli commanders have admitted firing 1.2 million such bomblets, while the UN puts the figure closer to 3 million.

At the time, it looked suspiciously as if Israel had taken the brief opportunity before the war’s end to make south Lebanon — the heartland of both the country’s Shia population and its militia, Hizballah — uninhabitable, and to prevent the return of hundreds of thousands of Shia who had fled Israel’s earlier bombing campaigns.

Israel’s use of cluster bombs has been described as a war crime by human rights organizations. According to the rules set by Israel’s then chief of staff, Dan Halutz, the bombs should have been used only in open and unpopulated areas — although with such a high failure rate, this would have done little to prevent later civilian casualties.

After the war, the army ordered an investigation, mainly to placate Washington, which was concerned at the widely reported fact that it had supplied the munitions. The findings, which should have been published months ago, have yet to be made public.

The delay is not surprising. An initial report by the army, leaked to the Israeli media, discovered that the cluster bombs had been fired into Lebanese population centers in gross violation of international law. The order was apparently given by the head of the Northern Command at the time, Udi Adam. A US State Department investigation reached a similar conclusion.

Another claim, one that Israel hoped might justify the large number of Lebanese civilians it killed during the war, was that Hizballah fighters had been regularly hiding and firing rockets from among south Lebanon’s civilian population. Human rights groups found scant evidence of this, but a senior UN official, Jan Egeland, offered succor by accusing Hizballah of “cowardly blending.”

There were always strong reasons for suspecting the Israeli claim to be untrue. Hizballah had invested much effort in developing an elaborate system of tunnels and underground bunkers in the countryside, which Israel knew little about, in which it hid its rockets and from which fighters attacked Israeli soldiers as they tried to launch a ground invasion. Also, common sense suggests that Hizballah fighters would have been unwilling to put their families, who live in south Lebanon’s villages, in danger by launching rockets from among them.

Now Israeli front pages are carrying reports from Israeli military sources that put in serious doubt Israel’s claims.

Since the war’s end Hizballah has apparently relocated most of its rockets to conceal them from the UN peacekeepers, who have been carrying out extensive searches of south Lebanon to disarm Hizballah under the terms of Resolution 1701. According to the UNIFIL, some 33 of these underground bunkers — or more than 90 percent — have been located and Hizballah weapons discovered there, including rockets and launchers, destroyed.

The Israeli media has noted that the Israeli army calls these sites “nature reserves;” similarly, the UN has made no mention of finding urban-based Hizballah bunkers. Relying on military sources, Haaretz reported last month: “Most of the rockets fired against Israel during the war last year were launched from the ‘nature reserves.'” In short, even Israel is no longer claiming that Hizballah was firing its rockets from among civilians.

According to the UN report, Hizballah has moved the rockets out of the underground bunkers and abandoned its rural launch pads. Most rockets, it is believed, have gone north of the Litani River, beyond the range of the UN monitors. But some, according to the Israeli army, may have been moved into nearby Shia villages to hide them from the UN.

As a result, Haaretz noted that Israeli commanders had issued a warning to Lebanon that in future hostilities the army “will not hesitate to bomb — and even totally destroy — urban areas after it gives Lebanese civilians the chance to flee.” How this would diverge from Israel’s policy during the war, when Hizballah was based in its “nature reserves” but Lebanese civilians were still bombed in their towns and villages, was not made clear.

If the Israeli army’s new claims are true (unlike the old ones), Hizballah’s movement of some of its rockets into villages should be condemned. But not by Israel, whose army is breaking international law by concealing its weapons in civilian areas on a far grander scale.

As a first-hand observer of the fighting from Israel’s side of the border last year, I noted on several occasions that Israel had built many of its permanent military installations, including weapons factories and army camps, and set up temporary artillery positions next to — and in some cases inside — civilian communities in the north of Israel.

Many of those communities are Arab: Arab citizens constitute about half of the Galilee’s population. Locating military bases next to these communities was a particularly reckless act by the army as Arab towns and villages lack the public shelters and air raid warning systems available in Jewish communities. Eighteen of the 43 Israeli civilians killed were Arab — a proportion that surprised many Israeli Jews, who assumed that Hizballah would not want to target Arab communities.

In many cases it is still not possible to specify where Hizballah rockets landed because Israel’s military censor prevents any discussion that might identify the location of a military site. During the war Israel used this to advantageous effect: for example, it was widely reported that a Hizballah rocket fell close to a hospital but reporters failed to mention that a large army camp was next to it. An actual strike against the camp could have been described in the very same terms.

It seems likely that Hizballah, which had flown pilotless spy drones over Israel earlier in the year, similar to Israel’s own aerial spying missions, knew where many of these military bases were. The question is, was Hizballah trying to hit them or — as most observers claimed, following Israel’s lead — was it actually more interested in killing civilians.

A full answer may never be possible, as we cannot know Hizballah’s intentions — as opposed to the consequences of its actions — any more than we can discern Israel’s during the war.

Human Rights Watch, however, has argued that, because Hizballah’s basic rockets were not precise, every time they were fired into Israel they were effectively targeted at civilians. Hizballah was therefore guilty of war crimes in using its rockets, whatever the intention of the launch teams. In other words, according to this reading of international law, only Israel had the right to fire missiles and drop bombs because its military hardware is more sophisticated — and, of course, more deadly.

Nonetheless, new evidence suggests strongly that, whether or not Hizballah had the right to use its rockets, it may often have been trying to hit military targets, even if it rarely succeeded. The Arab Association for Human Rights, based in Nazareth, has been compiling a report on the Hizballah rocket strikes against Arab communities in the north since last summer. It is not sure whether it will ever be able to publish its findings because of the military censorship laws.

But the information currently available makes for interesting reading. The Association has looked at northern Arab communities hit by Hizballah rockets, often repeatedly, and found that in every case there was at least one military base or artillery battery placed next to, or in a few cases inside, the community. In some communities there were several such sites.

This does not prove that Hizballah wanted only to hit military bases, of course. But it does indicate that in some cases it was clearly trying to, even if it lacked the technical resources to be sure of doing so. It also suggests that, in terms of international law, Hizballah behaved no worse, and probably far better, than Israel during the war.

The evidence so far indicates that Israel:

• established legitimate grounds for Hizballah’s attack on the border post by refusing to withdraw from the Lebanese territory of the Shebaa Farms in 2000;
• initiated a war of aggression by refusing to engage in talks about a prisoner swap offered by Hizballah;
• committed a grave war crime by intentionally using cluster bombs against south Lebanon’s civilians;
• repeatedly hit Lebanese communities, killing many civilians, even though the evidence is that no Hizballah fighters were to be found there;
• and put its own civilians, especially Arab civilians, in great danger by making their communities targets for Hizballah attacks and failing to protect them.

It is clear that during the Second Lebanon War Israel committed the most serious war crimes.

Jonathan Cook, a journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, is the author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (Pluto Press, 2006). His website is www.jkcook.net.

Did the UN Cave to Israel? Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms

By FRANKLIN LAMB

Across the Blue Line from Shebaa Farms, Lebanon.

On July 18, 2001, nearly six years ago to the day, and under intense US pressure, the UN Security Council affixed its imprimatur to the proposition that Israel, after refusing for more than 22 years, finally complied with the provisions of UNSCR 425, and ended its illegal and brutal occupation of Lebanon.

Of course the ‘complete Israeli withdrawal’ language was a fiction, crafted by the new Bush administration to burnish Israel’s image as a reformed international outlaw. In point of fact, Israel to this date has not complied with SCR 425, 1701 or more than 30 other UN Resolutions.

Looking only at UNSCR 425, Israel continues to occupy the roughly 14 square mile water rich area of Shebaa Farms near where Syria’s Golan Heights and the Lebanese border meet. A beautiful area, where on a windless quiet night, dear reader, were you to stand at the eastern cliff edge of the former Israel run Khiam detention camp, facing in the direction of Damascus and Alsheikh Mountain and listen carefully, you could hear the intermittent click and purr of Israeli pumps sucking up hundreds of thousands of liters of Lebanon’s renowned (Bible mentioned) mountain water (the market price in Beirut this afternoon for one liter of bottled water is 1,000 Lebanese pounds or about 68 US cents. In the old days around Avignon, France we could buy a half liter of the annual press of Nouveau Beaujolais for about the same price). The stolen water is channeled to Israel’s illegal colonies/settlements throughout Palestine to help fill the swimming pools and water the plush green lawns of American and European Jewish settlers while the olive groves and farms of those whose lands were stolen become parched. Israel continues to take even more water from Lebanon’s Wazzani River. Why this latter outrage is allowed to continue should be explained to us, the obtuse, by the Bush backed Siniori government and its consigliore, Jeffrey Feltman.

In addition to the occupation of Shebba Farms, unfulfilled UNSCR 425 demands include Israel’s continuing detention of prisoners, the failure of Israel to provide maps to the deminers working to clear nearly one third of Lebanon of landmines and nearly one million remaining cluster bombs despite continual demands for the maps by the UN, including urgent demands by UN Sec-Gen. Moon earlier this month and the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre in Tyre, Lebanon just two days ago( every day the 25 teams of de-miners from 20 countries risk their lives trying to clear nearly 1 million remaining unexploded US cluster bombs inch by inch without any maps or idea where they are located until one explodes. As of July 15, 2007 UNMACC teams have found 921 bomb sites which have caused more than 240 injuries and deaths, one-third of them children over the past nearly 12 months.

In addition, Israel conducts nearly daily over flights with aircraft and drones; cross border incursions such as on May 24, 2007, as well as violations of Lebanon’s territorial waters and its continuing occupation of the Lebanese village of Ghajar. This has led several political parties in Lebanon, and NGO’s such as Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, to urge the decertification of Israel’s compliance with UNSCR 425. It should be borne in mind that Israel’s continuing UN SCR 425 Lebanese sovereignty violations also constitute noncompliance with UNSCR 170l, which ushered in the current cessation of hostilities on August 14, 2006

Despite the charade of Israeli compliance with UNSCR 425, Israel’s May 24, 2000 ‘withdrawal’ was hailed as an ‘amazingly generous and high minded humanitarian act’ by it’s amen chorus in the US Congress led on this issue by Congressman Tom Lantos, the founder and chair of the notorious House Human Rights Caucus.

The House Human Rights Caucus, active for more than 27 years as a tool of the Israeli lobby has actively sought out and found hundreds of human rights violations around the World but so far they have not found one suspected human rights violation with respect to Israel or any of its occupations and aggressions. The HHRC did manage a declaration that the Shebaa Farms belonged to Syria and that Israel had every right to occupy it until there was a Syria-Israel peace treaty. (Dear reader, if you would like to fact check this statement please call the House Human Rights Caucus at 202-225-3121 and ask for the Staff Director. Perhaps he will supply you with their remarkable list of Human Rights violations.

That the Shebba Farms belonged to Syria was astounding news to the Syrians as well as the more than 100 Lebanese farmers who daily worked the land and whose families had owned the area for generations going back deep into the Ottoman period. They flooded the UN with their land deeds in protest.

The Lebanese View

During the 1967 War Israeli forces seized the Shebaa Farms, area consisting of 14 farms located south of Shebaa, a Lebanese village. Since Lebanon was not a participant in the 1967 War, they had no voice and UN representatives were pressured by Israel, who falsely claimed that the 1923 Anglo-French demarcation and the 1949 Armistice line designated the area as Syrian territory. Charges of threats and bribes of UN Staff have still not yet been investigated according to UN sources based in Beirut.

Lebanese army maps published in 1961 and 1966 specifically pinpoint several of the Shebaa Farms, including Zebdine, Fashkoul, Mougr Shebaa and Ramta, all of which are designated as being Lebanese. Lebanese Ministry of Tourism maps also show the Lebanese-Syrian border running west of the Shebaa Farms. Lebanese and Syrian officials insist that Syria had officially given the territory to Lebanon in 1951.

Syria has repeatedly officially acknowledged the Farms are Lebanese with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad recently telling a Paris new conference during a State visit that Shebaa Farms belong to Lebanon. Lebanese and Syrian officials also point to the fact that many residents in the area have land deeds stamped by the Lebanese government.

The UN was largely moot on Shebaa Farms as Israel withdrew on May 24, 2000, and under pressure from the While House, which was under pressure from the Congress, which was under control by Israel lobby, finally declared that the Shabba farms was in fact Syrian. This meant Hezbollah could not liberate it and impliedly should disarm.

Unsaid on the House or Senate floors, following Israel’s complete withdrawal from Lebanon, as members nearly tripped over each other, such was their rush to pay homage, was the fact that Israel withdraw for Lebanon for only one reason, that it could not sustain the loses from the Lebanese resistance.

This week Bibi Netanyahu wasted no time attacking his once, and likely future, opponent, Ehud Barak, “for cutting and running” in 2,000 and in Bibi’s view causing the 2006 July war and Israel’s current humiliation. The truth, of little concern to Bibi, but which might be recalled by Israeli voters, is that in 2000 the Israeli public was no longer willing to accept the average of 25 Israel soldiers killed every year of its nearly quarter century ( 1978-2000) of occupation of Lebanon. Once Israel was forced out on May 24, 2000, according to statistics supplied by Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon, the Israeli military suffered only 17 dead soldiers, and 25 wounded between the 2000 withdrawal and the July 2006 War. Nine of the killed were in the Shebaa Farms area and the eight others were killed when they violated the Blue Line or in retaliation for Israeli caused deaths in Lebanon.

To help put Israel’s military position as of May 24, 2000 into perspective, it should be noted that Israel sustained 6,145 militant operations by the Islamic Resistance during it occupation of Lebanon. Between early January 1999 and its withdrawal 16 months later, no fewer than 2,441 operations by Hezbollah and five other resistant groups targeted Israeli forces. The Lebanese Resistance Brigades, set up by Hezbollah, accounted for 167 of these operations or 7%. Congressional kudos to Israel, notwithstanding, the Lebanese Resistance is the only reason Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2,000.

The UN effort to take Shebaa off Hezbollah’s list of unfinished business

Against this backdrop and rising tension over Israel’s garrison at Shebaa, Farms, there was some welcomed, if short lived news the other day.

According to the July 11, 2007 edition of the Israeli journal Haaretz, and confirmed by the UN ESCWA (Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia) office here in Beirut, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon transmitted messages to the Israeli government late last month informing them that UN mapping experts have now conclusively determined that the Sheba Farms is indeed Lebanese territory and that international law required Israel’s immediate withdrawal.

Ban Ki-Moon transmitted the UN’s conclusions to PM Olmert during their meeting in New York last month, while the UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East, Michael Williams discussed the decision with Israel foreign minister Tzipi Livni at about the same time.

The Secretary-General’s office also notified Olmert and Livni that Israel was to coordinate its expedited departure with UNIFIL, some of whose 13,000 troops received orders to secure Shebaa farms on the tail of the Israel’s withdrawal.

In their discussions, the UN officials also advised Israel that Syria and Lebanon agreed that the Shebaa Farms is Lebanese. This point is very important because by securing it, the UN shrewdly anticipated and precluded Israeli waffling and endless delays. This is because Israel had been objecting that its own recently retained cartographers needed to open the whole border dispute question from the beginning and examine all the work and findings of the impliedly less qualified and trustworthy UN map experts. Such a revised map review process could take several years “to do right” according to Alan Dershowitz’s April 14, 2007 legal memorandum to Israel’s Foreign Ministry. However the amicable Syria-Lebanon agreement confirming Lebanese ownership of Shebaa Farms effectively thwarted Dershowitz and the US Israeli lobby, plan. Or so it appeared for at least a few hours on July 11, 2007.

UN Sec-Gen Ki-Moon’s ‘clarification’

It is not known to what extent UN Sec-Gen. Moon felt last week that he had adjusted to the realities and pressures of his new job, but he was about to be tested. No sooner had his Shebaa Farms news item hit the air waves on the morning of July 11, 2007 than Israel’s Foreign Minister Livni contacted the White House which had already heard from Tom Lantos, founder and chair of the above mentioned US Congressional House Human Rights Caucus.

Following White House intervention, the UN acted with unusual alacrity and clarified (read: gutted) its announcement. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, following a meeting with the UK’s new Prime Minister Gordon Brown, told a news conference that in point of fact the discussion of ownership of the disputed Farms was, well, ah. er..premature. “I have submitted my Report on this issue. My senior cartographer has made some good progress but this report is not mentioning anything about ownership or sovereignty yetThe UN’s cartographer continues his work and will be visiting the area shortly.”

Minutes later a UN official explained from New York: “The secretary-general remains engaged on the issue”.

According to the Country Chief of a UN recognized NGO which is very familiar with this issue and works in the UN’s Beirut Headquarters (ESCWA): “That’s total bullshit! This was the final Report not an interim progress Report. Somebody got to Ban Ki-Moon! The map work on Sheeba has been completed for weeks. Any second year Cartography student could have done that job is less than a month. It’s not complicated”.

In the words of perhaps America’s preeminent student of the workings of the Israel lobby, San Francisco’s Jeffrey Blankfort, when he heard about the switch:

“Is this a surprise to anyone? Israel and its international lobby control the UN as much as they do Washington and the US. When there will be an international movement that will have the guts to stand up to Israel and its supporters and tell them their days of running the show are over?”

The apparent UN throwing in the town, hopefully will be reversed, but its puts pressure on Hezbollah because as Lebanon’s only deterrence to Israeli aggression and the Lebanese resistance’s pledge to liberate Lebanon from Israeli occupation, critics are using Shebaa as evidence that Hezbollah has not completed the job the Lebanese people has entrusted to it.

What particularly alarms Israel is the fact that if the UN decides that the Shebaa Farms belong to Lebanon, this clearly implies that the UN cartographer’s findings bestowed international legitimacy on Hezbollah’s continued resistance to Israel’s occupation Sheba Farms. This would also give the Lebanese resistance led by Hezbollah and supported by a clear majority of Lebanese Sunni and Christians, the moral, political, legal, and if Hezbollah chooses to exercise it, the military resistance high ground.

While the Congressional Israel lobby feels it ‘won’ against the UN on this issue the White House is decidedly conflicted. The reason is that if Israel withdraws from Shebaa Farms the Bush Administration believes the withdrawal will strengthen the government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora which it needs to keep its regional policies at least on life support.

Shebaa Farms will likely be discussed by Rice at her just rescheduled meeting for the end of this month with Livni. Rice’s concern is that Israel’s failure to withdraw from Shebaa Farms gives Hezbollah more credibility and legitimacy.

Livni thinks if Israel does withdraw it gives Hezbollah yet another victory and even more credibility and legitimacy.

Could both ladies be right or will there be a cat fight in the Holy Land?

Franklin Lamb’s just released book, The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons in Lebanon is available at Amazon.com.uk. His volume, Hezbollah: a Brief Guide for Beginners is due out in early summer, 2007. He can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

World leaders condemn Lebanon fighting, warn of human crisis

PARIS : UN chief Ban Ki-Moon on Monday led global condemnation of a resurgence in fighting in Lebanon which has killed at least 55 people in two days and fuelled fears of a fresh humanitarian crisis.

Ban’s spokeswoman Michele Montas said the the UN secretary general was “gravely concerned about the fighting in the last two days between Fatah el-Islam gunmen and the Lebanese army” and also “strongly condemns yesterday’s terrorist bombing in Beirut.”

Lebanese troops pounded Islamist militiamen in a Palestinian refugee camp on Monday, the second day of the bloodiest internal fighting since the 1975-90 civil war.

At least 55 people have died over the past two days in fierce gun battles between the Lebanese army and militants from the shadowy Sunni group Fatah al-Islam, accused of links to Al-Qaeda and Syrian intelligence services.

“The actions of Fatah al-Islam are an attack on Lebanon’s stability and sovereignty,” Montas said, adding that Ban “welcomes the united stand taken by Palestinian factions in Lebanon denouncing these attacks on the Lebanese army.”

Saudi Arabia, one of Lebanon’s principal financial backers, made an appeal to maintain “the sovereignty and stability of Lebanon and support all that is likely to consolidate its security.”

The German presidency of the European Union said Berlin viewed the fighting with very great concern, and “condemns the attack on the Lebanese security forces in the strongest terms.”

Spain expressed “grave concern” over the bloodletting and underlined its “solid backing to the Lebanese government in dealing with the situation,” according to a foreign ministry statement.

Britain backed the Lebanese military offensive in northern Lebanon in a statement by Foreign Office junior minister Kim Howells.

“The existence of extremists sympathetic to Al-Qaeda in the camp is a threat to Lebanon and the broader region and the vast majority of Palestinians in that camp and others oppose them,” he said.

London also condemned Sunday’s bombing in east Beirut that killed one person and injured many others.

In Paris, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner spoke with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora on Sunday to assure him of France’s solidarity, his office said.

During his call, Kouchner stressed the importance Paris gave to “the independence, sovereignty and stability of Lebanon” and the need to “investigate the situation, especially in Tripoli.”

Richard Cook, director of the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), said the fighting in and around Nahr al-Bared camp was a “developing humanitarian crisis.”

However, Syria on Monday said the current turmoil was a bid to prod the UN Security Council into setting up the international tribunal to try suspects in the murder of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri.

Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Jaafari also denied any ties between Damascus and the Islamist extremists currently battling the Lebanese army.

“Every time there is a meeting in the Security Council to deal with the Lebanese crisis, one or two days before the Council meets, there is some kind of trouble, either assassinations, or explosions or attempts to assassinate somebody,” he said.

“This is not a coincidence…Some people are trying to influence the Security Council and to make pressure on the Council so they can go ahead with the adoption of the draft resolution on the tribunal,” he said.

Lebanon has been in turmoil since the mandate of Damascus-backed President Emile Lahoud was extended for three years in 2004 under a Syrian-inspired constitutional amendment.

The country has remained split between pro- and anti-Syrian camps.

Source

more on Bernard Kouchner: Israel got Lucky

Lebanon – Fog of War . Shocking Documentary About Lebanon War & Qana

Building years of hatred

From the Fanonite

Only last week I had posted Alison Weir’s harrowing account of the strip-searching by Israelis of Palestinian women and children — some as young as 7-10 years of age. Despite its outrageous treatment of the Palestinians, Israel always manages to escape censure thanks to the diplomatic cover provided by the Euro-American alliance. Here the Guardian reports a British diplomat receiving a taste of the same treatment they have frequently defended as long as the victims were Palestinians.

Janet Rogan, who is Britain’s consul general in Tel Aviv, was with a delegation of British Treasury officials, led by Ed Balls, the economic secretary to the Treasury, earlier this month. They arrived at the Jerusalem office of the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, ahead of a meeting with his chief of staff and his political adviser. The names of the visitors had been given in advance, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said yesterday.

But security guards ordered Ms Rogan to undergo a physical search, the paper said. She refused and presented her diplomatic identity card. However, she was then made to step behind a partition and to undergo a physical search, which included removing her blouse. The Yedioth described the search as a “prolonged, needless and humiliating process” and said the diplomat was visibly upset.

Members of the Labour Friends of Israel – the powerful British lobby group best known for the exploits of its financier, Michael Levy – also received a taste of Israeli hospitality during a trip to the Occupied Territories:

One of its visiting members got a first-hand glimpse of IDF tactics when he got shot at in Rafah even though he arrived in a clearly marked UN vehicle. The three British MPs, surrounded by 20 children got shot at in the presence of UN officials, which led to a demand for investigation by the MPs into the IDF’s “outrageous behaviour” bordering on “lunatic”. One of the MPs, Crispin Blunt, concluded “If they are prepared to do this to people who come out of two clearly marked UN cars, what do they do when there is no one there?” He added “They are building up levels of hatred that will take decades, if not centuries, to erase.”

‘Damn proud’ of Blocking ceasefire

More proof, if more was needed that the real reason for war was to destroy the threat of Hezbollah.  That threat being that Hezbollah are capable of defending themselves and standing up to and discouraging Israeli aggression [1].  A problem they believed was only going to get worse in the future.  It was also probable that this was intended to be the beginning of a wider conflict with Israel/USA picking off weaker allies before commiting to an attack on Iran.  This wider conflict is also still possible [2].

[1] Independence and the ability to defend themselves is no good reason for Israel to destroy Lebanon. 

[2] Fanonite – AIPACs war and its bugle boy

Bolton admits Lebanon truce block

Israel was criticised for bombing Lebanese civilian centres A former top American diplomat says the US deliberately resisted calls for a immediate ceasefire during the conflict in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton told the BBC that before any ceasefire Washington wanted Israel to eliminate Hezbollah’s military capability. Mr Bolton said an early ceasefire would have been “dangerous and misguided”. He said the US decided to join efforts to end the conflict only when it was clear Israel’s campaign wasn’t working. Israel was reacting in its own self-defence and if that meant the defeat of the enemy, that was perfectly legitimate under international law John Bolton The former envoy, who stepped down in December 2006, was interviewed for a BBC radio documentary, The Summer War in Lebanon, to be broadcast in April. Mr Bolton said the US was deeply disappointed at Israel’s failure to remove the threat from Hezbollah and the subsequent lack of any attempt to disarm its forces. Britain joined the US in refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire. ‘Damn proud’ The war began when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, but it quickly escalated into a full-scale conflict. BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall says the US-UK refusal to join calls for a ceasefire was one of the most controversial aspects of the diplomacy. The UK, US and Israeli were alone in resisting an early ceasefire At the time US officials argued a ceasefire was insufficient and agreement was needed to address the underlying tensions and balance of power in the region. Mr Bolton now describes it as “perfectly legitimate… and good politics” for the Israelis to seek to defeat their enemy militarily, especially as Hezbollah had attacked Israel first and it was acting “in its own self-defence”. Mr Bolton, a controversial and blunt-speaking figure, said he was “damned proud of what we did” to prevent an early ceasefire. Also in the BBC programme, several key players claim that, privately, there were Arab leaders who also wanted Israel to destroy Hezbollah. “There were many not – how should I put it – resistant to the thought that the Israelis should thoroughly defeat Hezbollah, who… increasingly by Arab states were seen as an Iranian proxy,” said UN special envoy Terje Roed Larsen. More than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and an unknown number of Hezbollah fighters were killed in the conflict. Israel lost 116 soldiers in the fighting, while 43 of its civilians were killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks.

Source

Robert Fisk: US power games in the Middle East

As the West looks anxiously at Iraq and Afghanistan, dangerous cracks are opening up in Lebanon ­ and the White House is determined to prop up Fouad Siniora’s government

The spring rain beat down like ball-bearings on the flat roof of General Claudio Graziano’s office. Much of southern Lebanon looked like a sea of mud this week but all was optimism and light for the Italian commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, now 11,000 strong and still expecting South Korea to add to his remarkable 29-nation international army. He didn’t recall how the French battalion almost shot down an Israeli jet last year – it was before his time – and he dismissed last month’s border shoot-out between Israeli and Lebanese troops.

No specific threats had been directed at Unifil, the UN’s man in southern Lebanon insisted – though I noticed he paused for several seconds before replying to my question – and his own force was now augmented by around 9,000 Lebanese troops patrolling on the Lebanese-Israeli frontier. There was some vague talk of “terrorist threats … associated with al-Qa’ida” – UN generals rarely use the word ‘terrorism’, but then again Graziano is also a Nato general — yet nothing hard. Yes, Lebanese army intelligence was keeping him up to date. So it must have come as a shock to the good general when the Lebanese Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh last week announced that a Lebanese Internal Security Force unit had arrested four Syrian members of a Palestinian “terrorist group” linked to al-Qa’ida and working for the Syrian intelligence services who were said to be responsible for leaving bombs in two Lebanese minibuses on 13 February, killing three civilians and wounding another 20.

Now it has to be said that there’s a lot of scepticism about this story. Not because Syria has, inevitably, denied any connection to Lebanese bombings but because in a country that has never in 30 years solved a political murder, it’s pretty remarkable that the local Lebanese constabulary can solve this one – and very conveniently so since Mr Sabeh’s pro-American government continues to accuse Syria of all things bestial in the state of Lebanon. According to the Lebanese government – one of those anonymous sources so beloved of the press – the arrested men were also planning attacks on Unifil and had maps of the UN’s military patrol routes in the south of the country. And a drive along the frontier with Israel shows that the UN is taking no chances. Miles of razor wire and 20ft concrete walls protect many of its units.

The Italians, like their French counterparts, have created little “green zones” – we Westerners seem to be doing that all over the Middle East – where carabinieri police officers want photo identity cards for even the humblest of reporters. These are combat units complete with their own armour and tanks although no-one could explain to me this week in what circumstances the tanks could possibly be used and I rather suspect they don’t know. Surely they won’t fire at the Israelis and – unless they want to go to war with the Hizbollah – I cannot imagine French Leclerc tanks are going to be shooting at the Middle East’s most disciplined guerrilla fighters.

But Unifil, like it or not, is on only one side of the border, the Lebanese side, and despite their improving relations with the local Shia population — the UN boys are going in for cash handouts to improve water supplies and roads, “quick impact projects” as they are called in the awful UN-speak of southern Lebanon – there are few Lebanese who do not see them as a buffer force to protect Israel. Last year’s UN Resolution 1701 doesn’t say this, but it does call for “the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon”. This was a clause, of course, which met with the enthusiastic approval of the United States. For “armed groups”, read Hizbollah.

The reality is that Washington is now much more deeply involved in Lebanon’s affairs than most people, even the Lebanese, realise. Indeed there is a danger that – confronted by its disastrous “democratic” experiment in Iraq – the US government is now turning to Lebanon to prove its ability to spread democracy in the Middle East. Needless to say, the Americans and the British have been generous in supplying the Lebanese army with new equipment, jeeps and Humvees and anti-riot gear (to be used against who, I wonder?) and there was even a hastily denied report that Defence Minister Michel Murr would be picking up some missile-firing helicopters after his recent visit to Washington. Who, one also asks oneself, were these mythical missiles supposed to be fired at?

Every Lebanese potentate, it now seems, is heading for Washington. Walid Jumblatt, the wittiest, most nihilistic and in many ways the most intelligent, is also among the most infamous. He was deprived of his US visa until 2005 for uncharitably saying that he wished a mortar shell fired by Iraqi insurgents into the Baghdad “green zone” had killed then- Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. But fear not. Now that poor old Lebanon is to become the latest star of US foreign policy, Jumblatt sailed into Washington for a 35-minute meeting with President George Bush – that’s only 10 minutes less than Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert got – and has also met with Condi Rice, Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Gates and the somewhat more disturbing Stephen Hadley, America’s National Security Adviser. There are Lebanese admirers of Jumblatt who have been asking themselves if his recent tirades against Syria and the Lebanese government’s Hizbollah opponents – not to mention his meetings in Washington – aren’t risking another fresh grave in Lebanon’s expanding cemeteries. Brave man Jumblatt is. Whether he’s a wise man will be left to history.

But it is America’s support for Fouad Siniora’s government – Jumblatt is a foundation stone of this – that is worrying many Lebanese. With Shia out of the government of their own volition, Siniora’s administration may well be, as the pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud says, unconstitutional; and the sectarian nature of Lebanese politics came violently to life in January with stonings and shooting battles on the streets of Beirut.

Because Iraq and Afghanistan have captured the West’s obsessive attention since then, however, there is a tendency to ignore the continuing, dangerous signs of confessionalism in Lebanon. In the largely Sunni Beirut suburb of Tarek al-Jdeide, several Shia families have left for unscheduled “holidays”. Many Sunnis will no longer shop in the cheaper department stores in the largely Shia southern suburb of Dahiya. More seriously, the Lebanese security forces have been sent into the Armenian Christian town of Aanjar in the Bekaa Valley after a clump of leaflets was found at one end of the town calling on its inhabitants to “leave Muslim land”. Needless to say, there have been no reports of this frightening development in the Lebanese press.

Aanjar was in fact given by the French to the Armenians after they were forced to leave the city of Alexandretta in 1939 – the French allowed a phoney referendum there to let the Turks take over in the vain hope that Ankara would fight Hitler – and Aanjar’s citizens hold their title deeds. But receiving threats that they are going to be ethnically cleansed from their homes is – for Armenians – a terrible reminder of their genocide at the hands of the Turks in 1915. Lebanon likes its industrious, highly educated Armenians who are also represented in parliament. But that such hatred could now touch them is a distressing witness to the fragility of the Lebanese state.

True, Saad Hariri, the Sunni son of the murdered ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri, has been holding talks with the Shia speaker of parliament, Nabi Berri – the Malvolio of Lebanese politics – and the Saudis have been talking to the Iranians and the Syrians about a “solution” to the Lebanese crisis. Siniora – who was appointed to his job, not elected – seems quite prepared to broaden Shia representation in his cabinet but not at the cost of providing them with a veto over his decisions. One of these decisions is Siniora’s insistence that the UN goes ahead with its international tribunal into Hariri’s murder which the government – and the United States – believe was Syria’s work.

Yet cracks are appearing. France now has no objections to direct talks with Damascus and Javier Solana has been to plead with President Bashar Assad for Syria’s help in reaching “peace, stability and independence” for Lebanon. What price the UN tribunal if Syria agrees to help? Already Assad’s ministers are saying that if Syrian citizens are found to be implicated in Hariri’s murder, then they will have to be tried by a Syrian court – something which would not commend itself to the Lebanese or to the Americans.

Siniora, meanwhile, can now bask in the fact that after the US administration asked Congress to approve $770m for the Beirut government to meet its Paris III donor conference pledges, Lebanon will be the third largest recipient of US aid per capita of population. How much of this will have to be spent on the Lebanese military, we still don’t know. Siniora, by the way, was also banned from the United States for giving a small sum to an Islamic charity during a visit several years ago to a Beirut gathering hosted by Sayed Hussein Fadlallah, whom the CIA tried to murder in 1985 for his supposed links to the Hizbollah. Now he is an American hero.

Which is all to Hizbollah’s liking. However faithful its leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, may be to Iran (or Syria), the more Siniora’s majority government is seen to be propped up by America, the deeper the social and political divisions in Lebanon become. The “tink thank” lads, as I call them, can fantasise about America’s opportunities. “International support for the Lebanese government will do a great deal for advancing the cause of democracy and helping avoid civil war,” David Shenker of the “Washington Institute for Near East Policy” pronounced last week. “… the Bush administration has wisely determined not to abandon the Lebanese to the tender mercies of Iran and Syria, which represents an important development towards ensuring the government’s success,” he said.

I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Wherever Washington has supported Middle East “democracy” recently – although it swiftly ditched Lebanon during its blood-soaked war last summer on the ridiculous assumption that by postponing a ceasefire the Israelis could crush the Hizbollah – its efforts have turned into a nightmare. Now we know that Israeli prime minister Olmert had already pre-planned a war with Lebanon if his soldiers were captured by the Hizbollah, Nasrallah is able to hold up his guerrilla army as defenders of Lebanon, rather than provokers of a conflict which cost at least 1,300 Lebanese civilian lives. And going all the way to Washington to save Lebanon is an odd way of behaving. The answers lie here, not in the United States. As a friend put it to me, “If I have a bad toothache, I don’t book myself into a Boston clinic and fly across the Atlantic – I go to my Beirut dentist!”

Slow recovery in south Lebanon

By Kim Ghattas BBC News, south Lebanon Unifil hopes to prevent further armed confrontations on the border A massive French battle tank swings its turret slowly from left to right, its cannon barrel pointing straight at Israel down below.About a dozen French peacekeepers from the United Nationals Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), stand by two other military vehicles parked along the road. The picturesque, lush green scenery, with rolling fields on either side of the border fence is deceptively peaceful. But a rare exchange of fire between the Israeli and Lebanese armies took place just a few hundreds meters away, 12 days ago, the first serious incident on the border since the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel ended six months ago. UN peacekeepers reinforced their presence in the area hoping to make sure it would be the last one. Under pressure The reticent French soldiers had little to say other than “Tout est calme”, all is quiet. If anything happens, people will take off, no-one wants to get stuck here no more Ali Faraj A Lebanese army jeep with a couple of officers drove past, heading further down the valley, closer to the border fence. Lebanese troops hadn’t had a presence in the area for decades, until UN resolution 1701, which ended the 34-day conflict, paved the way for the deployment of about 10,000 Lebanese and 11,000 more UN peacekeepers. That is why Hezbollah is feeling under pressure in south Lebanon. Under the UN resolution, only the Lebanese army and Unifil are allowed to carry weapons in the border area. Gone are the small Hezbollah positions and the yellow and green Hezbollah flags fluttering in the face of Israelis soldiers. But these were only the visible signs of the Shia guerrilla group’s presence along the border. Hezbollah forces are still operational in the area, and they work hard to conceal their true strength. Caught in conflict In the southern town of Bint Jbeil, a Hezbollah stronghold, still heavily scarred by the fighting, life is very slowly returning to normal. Kids play on the street, shops are full of fresh vegetable produce – but memories of the war are still vivid. Many towns in south Lebanon were left in total ruin “Everybody went to the gas stations to fill up on gas,” said Ali Faraj, recalling the latest border incident. “If anything happens, people will take off, no-one wants to get stuck here no more,” he says speaking English picked in Dearborn, Michigan, in the United States. Thousands of Lebanese emigrated to the US over the years and Dearborn is a popular destination for people from the south. Ali and his friend do not see any problem if Hezbollah units work alongside the regular army in the south. “The Lebanese army is not strong enough to defend south Lebanon. “What the army can do against Israeli planes?” asks his friend, also with a strong American accent. Many of the locals, like Ali, say they don’t trust the UN peackeepers and see them as protecting Israel instead of Lebanon. In the last few days, a Spanish patrol was stoned by locals and French soldiers distributing medicine were kicked out by villagers in Maroun el-Ras by the border. The unusual incidents are a worrying development for the authorities in Beirut. Anger at government Surrounded by bombed-out buildings, torched cars and a badly damaged mosque, you can really feel the frustration and many people say they’ve been abandoned by their government. It’s a disgrace, they take our taxes but they don’t even come to see us Ali Bazzi Head of Bint Jbeil municipality “Nobody got any help from the government. In any self respecting country, the government would have come to visit the damaged area, we didn’t see a single minister,” said Ali Bazzi, the head of the Bint Jbeil municipality. “It’s a disgrace, they take our taxes but they don’t even come to see us. Given the current political situation in Beirut, we have no relations with the central government in Beirut.” The cash-strapped government has lobbied international donors and brought in international teams to help with reconstruction. But it was no match for the speed and organisation of Hezbollah, which distributed around $300m in cash straight after the war. The group’s vast social network is highly appreciated by locals. But if you’re not a Hezbollah supporter you can be left out. ‘Turned away’ “Hezbollah say they don’t differentiate between Lebanese people,” said Sita Balhas, a mother of five in the village of Siddiqine. “But when my son was wounded in the war, he went to one of Hezbollah’s medical centre, they told him: your legs are not for Hezbollah, so we won’t treat you.” The Balhas tobacco crop was mostly burned during the conflict, their butchers shop destroyed, but they say they didn’t receive any aid from Hezbollah. They haven’t received anything from the government either – but their anger seems mostly directed at Hezbollah. “The government is powerless, they don’t have money. Hezbollah started the war, they should pay us compensation,” said Sita. Hezbollah wields enormous power and control over the Shia community so it’s unusual to hear criticism of Hezbollah among ordinary people, but disgruntled voices are starting to be heard occasionally. Widening rift The nearby Christian village of Ain Ebel is practically a ghost town. Those villagers who remain blame Hezbollah for the conflict – which started after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers – but are glad about the deployment of government forces in the area. “After the war it’s so different, after so many years in an area without any Lebanese security forces here we see now the army, we see the checkpoints,” said Emad Lallousse, a translator for Unifil. He dismisses claims that Hezbollah is needed to “defend” south Lebanon. “We can live without any war, like the Egyptian, like the Jordanians, like the Syrians, why do we always have to worry about defending south Lebanon?” Tensions in south Lebanon about who should defend – and control – this region are amplified in Beirut where the political standoff continues between the government and the Hezbollah-led opposition. Although most people in the south still support the Shia group, the country as a whole is split down the middle and the rift is only widening.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6376733.stm

Lebanese fire at Israeli aircraft

Lebanon’s military says it has fired anti-aircraft rounds against Israeli jet fighters violating its airspace. The aircraft were flying at low altitude over southern Lebanon, but none appear to have been hit. It is reported to be the first time the Lebanese military has fired at the Israeli aircraft, which make regular sorties over southern Lebanon. Beirut and the United Nations say the flights violate a ceasefire agreement sanctioned by the UN Security Council. Israel says the sorties are to make sure that weapons are not being smuggled into southern Lebanon to re-supply Hezbollah militants. The UN says the flights undermine the efforts of its peacekeepers to maintain stability in the area. Hezbollah and Israel fought a 34-day conflict in 2006, in which Israeli air power caused massive destruction to south Lebanon. Fighting ended in August under the terms of the UN ceasefire resolution.

Source

UN human rights envoy says Gaza a prison for Palestinians

“In other countries this process might be described as ethnic cleansing but political correctness forbids such language where Israel is concerned”

Editor’s note: See also Finkelstein’s UNPUBLISHED OP-ED ON GAZA WITHDRAWAL from September 17, 2005:

In a recent study entitled One Big Prison, B’Tselem (report, summary) observes that the crippling economic arrangements Israel has imposed on Gaza will remain in effect. In addition, Israel will continue to maintain absolute control over Gaza’s land borders, coastline and airspace, and the Israeli army will continue to operate in Gaza. “So long as these methods of control remain in Israeli hands,” it concludes, “Israel’s claim of an ‘end of the occupation’ is questionable.”[2]

UN human rights envoy says Gaza a prison for Palestinians

Last update – 21:10 26/09/2006 | Ha’aretz
By Reuters

Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a prison for Palestinians where life is “intolerable, appalling, tragic” and the Jewish state appears to have thrown away the key, a UN human rights envoy said on Tuesday.

Special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territory John Dugard said that the suffering of the Palestinians was a test of the readiness of the international community to protect human rights.

“If … the international community cannot … take some action, [it] must not be surprised if the people of the planet disbelieve that they are seriously committed to the promotion of human rights,” he said in a statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The South African lawyer, who has been a special UN investigator since 2001, repeated earlier accusations that Israel is breaking international humanitarian law with security measures which amount to “collective punishment.”

Israel says its security restrictions, which include the construction of a steel and concrete barrier in the West Bank, are designed to stop suicide bombers entering Israel. Bombings have declined since the barrier was built.

It also maintains tight restrictions on the movement of goods and people into and out of Gaza also due to security measures.

Dugard also attacked the United States, the European Union and Canada for withdrawing funding for the Palestinian Authority in protest at the governing party Hamas’s refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist.

Hamas, a militant Islamic group that came to power after elections in January, is sworn to Israel’s destruction.

“Israel violates international law as expounded by the Security Council and the International Court of Justice and goes unpunished. But the Palestinian people are punished for having democratically elected a regime unacceptable to Israel, the U.S. and the EU,” Dugard said.

There was no immediate comment from either Israel or its main ally the United States, but the Palestinian question was due to be debated by the Human Rights Council later on Tuesday.

Past criticism, however, has been strongly rejected by Israel and the United States, which say that the current crisis has been provoked by attacks by Palestinian militants.

Dugard said that three-quarters of Gaza’s 1.4 million people were dependent on food aid. Bombing raids by Israel since the June 25 capture of an army corporal by Palestinian militants had destroyed houses and the territory’s only power plant.

“Gaza is a prison and Israel seems to have thrown away the key,” he said.

The West Bank also faced a humanitarian crisis, albeit not as extreme as Gaza, in part due to the barrier, which Dugard alleged was no longer being justified by Israel on security grounds but was part of a move to annex more land.

Palestinians living between the barrier and the Green Line, the frontier at the end of the 1967 Six Day War, could no longer freely access schools and places of work and many had abandoned local farms, he said.

“In other countries this process might be described as ethnic cleansing but political correctness forbids such language where Israel is concerned,” Dugard said.

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=541

Chavez at UN “The world is waking up against American Empire” and he promotes Chomskys book

Video of a Chavez speech at the UN, calling Bush the Devil and claiming the podium still smells of sulpher from Bushes speech the day before.  Well worth a listen.

for more see here http://fanonite.wordpress.com/2006/09/21/it-smells-of-sulphur-here/

Blair greeted by protest in Lebanon

Tony Blair meets the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora. Photo: AP/Hussein Malla

Demonstrations inside and outside Tony Blair’s summit with the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, marred the first visit by a British prime minister to the country today.As Mr Blair was speaking at a press conference, a woman named as Caoimhe Butterley interrupted and stood 10 feet from the two leaders holding a banner which said “Boycott Israeli apartheid”. She told reporters: “This visit is an insult to the memory of Lebanese, Palestinians and other Muslims. This visit is an insult to the memory of thousands of Lebanese who have died as a result of Blair’s policies. Shame on you Tony Blair.”

The woman, who officials said was Irish and working for a non-governmental organisation in Beirut, was hustled away.

The two leaders continued the press conference, and Mr Siniora said it showed that Lebanon was a vibrant democracy. The protest was mirrored by a demonstration in the city’s Martyrs’ Square, where several hundred demonstrators held placards reading “Blair go to hell”, “Blair you are not welcome in Lebanon” and “This is what intelligent bombs do”.

Mr Blair’s spokesman played down the press conference protest and the potential security risk. “A banner doesn’t harm anybody,” he said.

Mr Blair was also snubbed by radical politicians linked to the extremist group Hizbullah. The two members of the Lebanese cabinet associated with Hizbullah refused to meet him and – most damagingly – the parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a leading Shia politician and conduit for talks with Hizbullah, also failed to meet Mr Blair. Mr Berri had been due to meet the British prime minister but went to Iran on Saturday for what an aide described as a private visit.

Downing Street played down the gestures, insisting the main point of Mr Blair’s visit – the last in a three-day tour of the Middle East – was to meet Mr Siniora. The two men had spoken “almost daily” in August as the British PM supported the push to a UN resolution to end the Israeli offensive in Lebanon. Mr Blair believes that, despite the protests, his visit was a success, an important demonstration of the role he believes he can play to kickstart the faltering Middle East peace process in the last few months of his premiership.

Officials reported that the two leaders had agreed privately that there was “a window of opportunity” in the aftermath of the Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Mr Siniora was said to have told Mr Blair: “Now is the time. The moment will pass unless we use it. The moment is now.”

Mr Blair’s spokesman said the prime minister had “an important role, indeed a historic role, in trying to move forward on the issue of Palestine”.

Mr Siniora welcomed the visit, though he acknowledged the men had disagreements over Mr Blair’s refusal to condemn immediately the Israeli attacks on Lebanon. “I really want to see how we can benefit from the positions of all that can serve our cause,” he said. “We respect the positions of various countries without really agreeing with all the positions of the UK.”

Mr Blair denied accusations that he had blown his hand with Arab nations in the Middle East and, making reference to the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, said it was right to remain a strong ally of the US. He defended his position on the Lebanon war, while acknowledging that the country had been attacked seven times in the past 30 years through no fault of its people.

“I believe there is a way out of the problems of the Middle East but it can only be done if we are prepared to put in practical work and commitment to get rid of the underlying disputes,” he said.

In a nod to opinion in Lebanon, Mr Blair said he would like to “express my deepest sympathy to you and your country and for all those who lost members of their families, those that they loved and those that they knew during the recent crisis”.

Britain has given £22.3m in aid to help the reconstruction effort after the July war and £20m towards Unifil, the UN’s interim peacekeeping force in the Lebanon. It has also supplied six emergency bridges and help for “security force reform”, and HMS York is patrolling the coast with the permission of the Lebanese government.

 http://peoplesgeography.wordpress.com/2006/09/11/blair-greeted-by-protests-in-lebanon/