LEBANON NEWS
the war crime of "pre-emptive" strikes in new UN paper:

Specifically, the new rules of engagement, marked "U.N. Restricted," permit the right of self-defense and "preemptive self-defense" (thereby confirming Israel's right to have moved thus on July 12th 2006. JBraddell,editor)against an anticipated attack. But in many cases, a senior officer has to approve force if U.N. troops are not under attack.

The soldiers can also use force against anyone preventing UNIFIL from carrying out its duties and to ensure the security and freedom of movement of U.N. personnel and humanitarian workers and to protect civilians under imminent threat, the rules say.

The use of force, "including deadly force," is also authorized to defend the Lebanese armed forces that a U.N. unit may be assigned to accompany, providing the threatening group or person is armed.

Force must be commensurate with the level of the threat. But the level of response may have to be higher in order to minimize U.N. or civilian casualties, the rules say.Reuters

OUTRAGE AFTER OUTRAGE:
From : www.AngryArab.Blogspot.com Wolfowitz the architect behind the latest "drang nach osten" is right where his fellow zionists want him to be...Jew but not Zionazi | 08.22.06
Paul Wolfowitz's World Bank will oversee all foreign aid to Lebanon.
AND IN ISRAEL:Since the government refrained from declaring a state of war, a strange and unusual legal situation has emerged (OF IMPORTANCE ELSEWHERE I THINK? JBRADDELL,EDITOR), in which differences have arisen in the amount of compensation paid to various owners of businesses that were affected in a similar way.

The gap between the amount of compensation that was granted - stemming from whether the persons in question were designated as belonging to "confrontation line" communities - is well known and has already prompted three petitions to the High Court of Justice on the part of owners of small and medium businesses, who have requested that the situation be rectified. A fourth petition, submitted by attorney Samuel Dahwar from the Arab village of Fassouta in Galilee, reveals the fact that no Arab communities are included on the full-compensation list even though Arab towns and villages were in the range of the Katyushas and were hit by them.
HA'ARETZ


What happens if an insect falls in a cup of coffee ?!
 The British: will throw the cup into the street and
    leave the coffee shop for good.
 The American: will get the insect out and drink the
     coffee.
 The Chinese: will eat the insect and drink the coffee.
 The Israeli will:
 (1) Sell the coffee to the American and the insect to
    the Chinese.
 (2) Cry on all media channels that he feels insecure.
 (3) Accuse the Palestinians, Hizb Allah, Syria and
    Iran of using germ-weapons.
 (4) Keep on crying about anti-semitism and violations
     of human rights.
 (5) Ask the Palestinian President to stop planting
     insects in the cups of coffee.
(6) Re-occupy the West Bank, Gaza Strip.
(7) Demolish houses, confiscate lands, cut water and
    electrity from Palestinian houses and randomly shoot
    Palestinians.
 (8)Ask the United States for urgent military support
   and a loan of one million dollars in order to buy a
    new cup of coffee.
 (9) Ask the United Nations to punish the coffee-shop
     owner by making him offer free coffee to him till the
     end of the century.
 (10) Last but not least, accuse the whole world to be
      standing still, not even sympathizing with the Israeli
      Nation.
 From Le Monde

This is from the New York Times: "While the Israeli military is normally quick to publicize its successes — sometimes even providing videos of the raids through eerie green night-vision lenses — scant details of the commando raid near the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek were disclosed. An official statement released by the army said, “The goals of the operation were achieved in full.” But in the Lebanese village of Boudai, residents gave graphic accounts yesterday of a commando force, wearing Lebanese Army uniforms and shouting in Arabic, that was chased down by local guerrillas and forced to evacuate by helicopter. The commandos were from the Sayeret Matkal, the Israeli news media reported, the country’s most elite, legendary and secretive unit, one that carried out, among other operations, the famous Entebbe raid to free hostages held on an airliner. Lt. Col. Emanuel Morano, who was apparently the leader of the force, put at about 100 men by the Israeli news media, was killed and another officer and a soldier were wounded. In Israel, it was widely assumed that the mission was considered highly important and involved something more than interdicting an effort to resupply Hezbollah with standard weaponry. Many of the reports in the Israeli news media centered on speculation that the raid was intended to gather intelligence or evidence about advanced, Russian-made weaponry sold to Syria and being sent into Lebanon for Hezbollah. In an analysis in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, Alex Fishman wrote that Hezbollah had been using advanced Soviet-made antitank weapons. More than 10 days ago, he wrote, a legal opinion was written by lawyers reviewing the United Nations-backed cease-fire agreement “stipulating unequivocally” that attacks on Hezbollah weaponry would be classified as “an act of defense.” Whatever the purpose of the raid, most agreed it never would have been disclosed if the commandos had not run into serious difficulties. “Nobody was supposed to hear about the secret operation two days ago deep inside Lebanon, one of the secret operations the public is not told about,” the newspaper Maarivsaid. But, the paper added, “the mission got in trouble on the way.” The daily Haaretz quoted an unidentified military source as saying, “We were really lucky the operation did not end with 10 commandos killed.” Some commentators described the raid as another black mark for the Israeli military, already under severe criticism for its conduct of the Lebanon war. Writing in Yediot Aharonot, Amir Rappaport said, “The operation was intended to be absolutely secret and the mere fact that it was revealed and even claimed casualties is proof of its failure. “The skirmish between the commando troops and the Hezbollah fighters, which was not planned, also displays Israel to the world as though it violated the U.N. resolution. Absurdly enough, the mission that ran into trouble was also intended to allow Israel to provide proof later on
that Syria, Hezbollah and Iran were not honoring the agreement'" www.angryarab.blogspot.com


21st August:

Villages 'carpeted' with cluster bombs during last few hours before ceasefire
By Colin Freeman; Daily Telegraph ; Filed: 20/08/2006)
British mine clearance experts have accused Israel of "carpeting" Lebanese border villages with deadly cluster bombs, claiming that more appeared to have been used than in the American-led invasion of Iraq.The Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a Manchester-based charity working in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh, said "extreme" quantities of cluster bombs had been dropped on scores of surrounding villages during the final days of the conflict last week.

At least four people, including two teenage boys, have died after stepping on them, and 16 others have been injured, according to medics at the city's hospital.

"The Israelis dropped these in the last few hours of the war when the fighting was nearly over," said Hussein Khatib, a family friend. "They were dropped at night and landed in the rooftops, on the road, everywhere. Israel and America both know that these weapons should be banned, yet they still keep using them."

Israel says that all its munitions used in conflict comply with international law, although the American-based campaign group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), argues that their use in civilian areas breaks a legal ban on indiscriminate attacks. "Cluster munitions are unacceptably inaccurate and unreliable weapons when used around civilians," said Kenneth Roth, HRW's executive director. "They should never be used in populated areas." Chris Clark, the head of the United Nations weapons clearance team in southern Lebanon, said the cluster bombs found were contained in artillery shells and had not been dropped by aircraft. Clearing the unexploded bombs, he said, could take 12 months. Mosques have begun broadcasting warnings about the munitions, and Lebanese army soldiers have handed out leaflets to motorists at checkpoints. Sean Sutton, of MAG, said Israel appeared to have used even more cluster bombs than America during the invasion of Iraq - tactics widely criticised at the time by human rights groups.

"The contamination is incredibly widespread - I have never seen anything like it," he told The Sunday Telegraph. "In Iraq they were used mainly in rural areas and in some villages, but nothing like as much as they have been here.

"We have visited about 30 or 40 villages in the Nabatieh region, and I would say that about 50 per cent of them have been carpeted by cluster bombs, often with one lying every few metres. We have found them on peoples' doorsteps, in school playgrounds, and even in the front room of an old lady's house." Both American-made cluster bombs and Israeli-manufactured copies had been found, he said. "They are essentially anti-personnel devices and we think they have been aimed at areas where the Israeli army thought Hezbollah was firing rockets from."

19thAugust:The Russians know how to Reply to such people:
Israel: Hizbullah used Russian weapons

Israel complained to Russia that Russian-made anti-tank missiles
reached Hizbullah fighters, who used them with devastating effect
against Israeli troops.

An Israeli delegation traveled to Moscow earlier this week to deliver
the complaint, Ha'aretz reported. The anti-tank missiles proved to be
one of Hizbullah's most effective weapons in the monthlong war in
Lebanon, responsible for the deaths of at least 50 of the 118 Israeli
soldiers killed in the fighting.

Israel protested in recent years when Russia sold advanced weapons to
Syria, warning that they would be forwarded them to Hizbullah, but
Russia dismissed the concerns. A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman
said it was "impossible" that Russian weapons could have reached
Hizbullah.


The Piano Tuner who was refused admission to West Bank, Palestine writes from Beirut:

Peace
by Paul Larudee

Beirut 15 August, 2006 7:00 a.m.   This beautiful, quiet morning in Tyre fails to appropriately mourn the Lebanese lives that have been lost.  The residual coolness of the night is too refreshing for the occasion, and the pilotless drones circling overhead sound more like large mosquitoes than spotters for the weapons of the fourth most powerful military force on earth.   The drones had plenty to observe yesterday.  If the drive from Beirut is any indication, as many as 100,000 Lebanese may have tried to return to their homes in the south yesterday.  It took us nine hours to travel what had been less than an hour away only five weeks earlier.  As hawkers sold bottles of cold water to a captive market of passengers trapped in the traffic, residents of the coastal towns taunted us, "You will not return…"  We laughed, which made the wait more bearable.   I soon tired of taking pictures of bombed-out bridges, overpasses and pedestrian walkovers.  I had enough to show that Israel had been determined to cripple Lebanese life and livelihood.  

The worst bottleneck was at the Litani, Lebanon's only major river – three hours of waiting on multiple meandering paths through banana and orange groves converging on a single lane dirt embankment built over culverts barely big enough to allow the river's flow during the dry season.  It is the only way to cross without a long detour that itself faces the same problem farther upstream.   I decided not to wait in the car, and instead went down to the river to watch and take pictures.  I got as far as a small undestroyed bridge over a tiny tributary of the river, and decided that it was as good a spot as any.   I was not mistaken.  Young soldiers unfamiliar with their authority struggled to control frustrated drivers blocking traffic to gain a few precious feet of advantage.  At one point an imam in black robes and turban emerged from his Mercedes to try to mediate a dispute, but even his authority made little difference.  Most surreal was a young woman in a halter top walking her dog on a leash.  Overlooking the chaos was a billboard for the Abou Dib Hotel, with an idyllic scene of resort luxury.  

It was dark by the time we arrived in Tyre, where Ismail, a young Lebanese architect who was kind enough to take us in his car, suggested that we drop by the home of S, a dear friend of his.  After some warm hospitality and conversation, partly to assess current conditions, we headed out again to the village of Siddiqine, which is the home of Maryam, a third member of our team.  We had previously agreed to spend the night at her family home in the village.   The short drive into the low mountains took place in pitch blackness except for the headlights of the cars and the occasional generator-powered home.  For all practical purposes, there was no electricity anywhere, which meant that the glow against the sky to the south could only have come from the bright lights of Israel, invisible in normal times.   The drive took us through Qana, site of the 1996 Israeli massacre of more than 100 civilians who had taken refuge in the UN compound, as well as the one less than two weeks ago that reportedly killed another 54. 

Soon we began to see destruction all around us within the short range of our headlights, and then the unmistakable stench of death permeated the air.  At least two dead cows lay on the road, a small dehydrating calf next to one of them – a heartbreaking scene about which we could do nothing.   Unfortunately, Maryam's house was only 200 meters away, down a road made impassable with rubble.  If we decided to stay, we would have to walk it with a single flashlight (mine) among us.  Maryam's brother had negotiated the passage earlier in the day and determined that the house was relatively untouched.  However, doing it at night was another matter, especially with the stench of the cows in our nostrils and earlier warnings of cluster bombs.  We headed back to the house of S in Tyre, and accepted her hospitality for the night.  

This morning we will head out to Siddiqine and some other villages to do a bit of factfinding so that we can report back to our group in Beirut what sort of civil resistance/solidarity project might be feasible to undertake.  Who knows? Perhaps this will be the first day since my arrival without a single meeting to attend. Paul Larudee

16th Aug. Why only North of river Litani?Lebanese, Israeli and U.N. officers met on the border to discuss the withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from southern Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army in the region. Lebanon said later Monday that its
forces would be ready to deploy north of the Litani River this week.
The U.N. plan calls for a joint Lebanese-international force to move south of the Litani, about 18 miles from the Israeli border, and stand as a buffer between Israel and Hizbullah resistance fighters. Murr did not say when the Lebanese soldiers would move
south of the Litani.
However:

http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/98700

Robert Fisk: Desert of trapped corpses testifies to Israel's failure

They made a desert and called it peace. Srifa - or what was once the village of Srifa- is a place of pancaked homes, blasted walls, rubble, starving cats and trapped corpses. But it is also a place of victory for the Hizbollah, whose fighters walked amid the destruction yesterday with the air of conquering heroes. So who is to blame for this desert? The Shia militia which provoked this war - or the Israeli air force and army which has laid waste to southern Lebanon and killed so many of its people?
There was no doubt what the village mukhtar thought. As three Hizbollah men - one wounded in the arm, the other carrying two ammunition clips and a two-way radio - passed us amid the piles of broken concrete, Hussein Kamel el-Din yelled to them: "Hallo, heroes!" Then he turned to me. "You know why they are angry? Because God didn't give them the opportunity of dying."

You have to be down here with the Hizbollah amid this terrifying destruction - way south of the Litani river, in the territory from which Israel once vowed to expel them - to realise the nature of the past month of war and of its enormous political significance to the Middle East. Israel's mighty army has already retreated from the neighbouring village of Ghandoutiya after losing 40 men in just over 36 hours of fighting. It has not even managed to penetrate the smashed town of Khiam where the Hizbollah were celebrating yesterday afternoon. In Srifa, I stood with Hizbollah men looking at the empty roads to the south and could see all the way to Israel and the settlement of Mizgav Am on the other side of the frontier. This is not the way the war was supposed to have ended for Israel.

Far from humiliating Iran and Syria - which was the Israeli-American plan - these two supposedly pariah states have been left untouched and the Hizbollah's reputation lionised across the Arab world. The "opportunity" which President George Bush and his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, apparently saw in the Lebanon war has turned out to be an opportunity for America's enemies to show the weakness of Israel's army. Indeed, last night, scarcely any Israeli armour was to be seen inside Lebanon - just one solitary tank could be glimpsed outside Bint Jbeil and the Israelis had retreated even from the "safe" Christian town of Marjayoun. It is now clear that the 30,000-strong Israeli army reported to be racing north to the Litani river never existed. In fact, it is unlikely that there were yesterday more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers left in all of southern Lebanon, although they did become involved in two fire-fights during the morning, hours after the UN-ceasefire went into effect.

Down the coast road from Beirut, meanwhile, came a massive exodus of tens of thousands of Shia families, bedding piled on the roofs of their cars , many of them sporting Hizbollah flags and pictures of Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's chairman, on their windscreens. At the massive traffic jams around the broken motorway bridges and craters which litter the landscape, the Hizbollah was even handing out yellow and green "victory" flags, along with official notices urging parents not to allow children to play with the thousands of unexploded bombs that now lie across the landscape. At least one Lebanese child was killed by unexploded ordnance and another 15 were wounded yesterday.

But to what are these people returning? Haj Ali Dakroub, a 42-year old construction manager, lost part of his home in Israel's 1996 bombardment of Srifa. Now his entire house has been flattened. "What is here that Israel should destroy all this?" he asked. "We don't deny that the resistance was in Srifa. It was here before and it will be here in the future. But in this house lived only my family. So why would Israel bomb it?"

Well, I did happen to notice what appeared to be the casing of a missile hanging from the balcony of a much-damaged house facing the rubble of Ali Dakroub's home. And a group of Hizbollah militiamen, one of them with a pistol tucked into his trousers, walked past us nonchalantly and disappeared into an orchard. Was this, perhaps, where they kept some of their rockets?

Mr Dakroub wasn't saying. "I am going to rebuild my home with my two sons," he insisted. "Israel may come back in 10 years and destroy it all over again and then I'll just rebuild it all over again. This was a Hizbollah victory. The Israelis were able to defeat all the Arab countries in six days in 1967 but here they could not defeat the resistance in a month. These resistance men would come out of the ground and shoot back. They are still here."

"Come out of the ground" is an expression I have heard several times these past four weeks and I am beginning to suspect that many of the thousands of guerrillas did indeed shelter in caves and basements and tunnels, only to emerge to fire their missiles or to use their infra-red rockets on the Israeli army once it made the mistake of sending troops into Lebanon on the ground. And does anyone believe that the Hizbollah will submit to their own disarmament by a new international force of UN and Lebanese troops once - if - it arrives? There was a symbolic moment yesterday when Lebanese soldiers already based in southern Lebanon joined Hizbollah men in Srifa to clear the rubble of a house in which the bodies of an entire family were believed buried. Lebanese Red Cross and civil defence personnel - representatives of the civil power which is supposed to claw back its sovereignty from the Hizbollah - joined in the search. The mukhtar, who so blatantly regarded the Hizbollah as heroes, is also a government representative. And at the entrance to this shattered village still stands a poster of Nasrallah and the Iranian President Ali Khamenei.

Far from driving the Hizbollah north across the Litani river, Israel has entrenched them in their Lebanese villages as never before.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1219260.ece

15th Aug:Today's haaretz comtains no fewer than three deliberate provocations, aimed at making it appear that Hezbollah is going to be the first to break the cease fire.

Israeli troops killed six Hezbollah fighters Monday in
southern Lebanon, in four separate skirmishes that illustrated the fragility of an hours-old cease-fire.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spa...ges/ 750061.html

"If our fighters deep in Lebanese territory are left without food our water, I believe they can break into local Lebanese stores to solve that problem," Brigadier General Avi Mizrahi, the head of the Israel Defense Forces logistics branch, said Monday. Mizrahi's comments followed complaints by IDF soldiers regarding the lack of food on the front lines. "If what they need to do is take water from the stores, they can take," Mizrahi told Army Radio.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spa...ges/ 750384.html

The Israel Defense Forces said Monday restrictions on the movement of traffic in south Lebanon remain in place "for now," despite a United Nations-brokered cease-fire. The army said traffic restrictions south of the Litani River had not been lifted, even though thousands of Lebanese refugees reportedly were jamming bombed-out roads to return to their homes. Imposing the restrictions last week, Israel warned it would consider any movement on the roads to be a legitimate Hezbollah target. The IDF will maintain their air and sea blockade on Lebanon despite the cease-fire, military sources were quoted as saying Monday.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spa...ges/ 750326.html plus this remark in Knesset: "When Hizbullah violates the cease-fire, the world will see who the aggressor is and will understand us," a source close to Olmert said.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Sat...icle% 2FShowFull
Rowan Berkeley | 08.14.06 - 2:49 pm | #
Rowan Berkeley | 08.14.06 - 11:05 am xymphora.blogspot.com comment

My sister spoke a friend who remained in Tyre. He said that reports from the front line confirm that Israeli soldiers get very very frightened when they step on Lebanese territory. Some of the Israeli soldiers back to the Israeli side of the border as soon as they hear gunshots.Angryarab.blogspot.com

Resistance !, August 13th, 2006

 A midge, in hundred places, torments him......

 For other drawings on world news  :
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/tableauxpastels/caricatures-mariali/

30 Tanks Wiped Out in Lebanon
12:01 Aug 11, '06 / 17 Av 5766(IsraelNN.com) IDF officials admit that the biggest surprise of the ongoing war against Hizbullah is the ease by which terrorists have destroyed IDF tanks.

At least 30 tanks have been totally destroyed or seriously damaged in bomb and anti-tank rocket attacks involving state-of-the-art Russian anti-tank rockets.

About one-half of the military personnel killed in southern Lebanon were inside tanks.
Aug 13, '06 / 19 Av 5766 Ehud Olmert recommends to accept a ceasefire in Lebanon - but will Israel be the only one to halt attacks? Plus: Over 20 soldiers killed in battle in the worst day of casualties since the Yom Kippur War - what will the future bring?
15:16 Aug 13, '06 / 19 Av 5766 (IsraelNN.com) Magen David Adom emergency medical service officials report two people have sustained light physical injuries in the last rocket attack in the border community. Other victims are being treated for hysteria

www.israelnationalnews.com

AlJazeerah 11th Aug.:
IDF officers on Thursday blasted the diplomatic echelon claiming that Olmert had restrained and limited the military from expanding its ground operations into Lebanon and from dealing a heavy blow to Hizbullah. 40,000 troops were waiting along the northern border for orders to enter Lebanon and to push up to the Litani, and an additional 7000 were currently operating on the ground in Lebanon. A high ranking defense source told the Jerusalem Post that already early in the morning it was apparent that negotiations at the UN would not bear fruit and diplomats there would not succeed in mutually drafting a cease-fire. The source said that Peretz and Olmert met for several hours on Friday and reviewed different drafts of the resolution, "once it became clear that there would not be a resolution in the near future, the decision was made for the IDF to launch the operation." "We gave the diplomatic process a chance, it failed and now we will achieve our goals militarily," said the officer. The IDF said that it would take at least one week to get to the Litani river and another 4-6 weeks to clear out Hizbullah presence and rocket launchers from the area.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Sat...icle% 2FShowFull

The capture of Marjayoun came just hours before a senior Israeli occupation terrorist official, Rafi Eitan, announced the delay of an expansion of the ground offensive to give U.N. diplomats time for a cease-fire deal. Lebanon and its Arab allies demand Israel occupation terrorist government withdraw its forces as part of any cease-fire.

(Israelis, who are obsessed with occupying Arab lands and shedding more Arab blood, refuse to withdraw simultaneously with the ceasefire, hoping to drag their feet occupying south Lebanon again).

The planned Israeli terrorist offensive would thrust toward the Litani River valley, 18 miles north of the border - and would be aimed at the wishful thinking of crippling Hizbullah before a possible cease-fire.

The Israeli occupation terrorist offensive is expected to last a month and eliminate 70 to 80 percent of Hizbullah's short-range rocket launchers, but not its long-range launchers, senior military officials said.

However, the Israeli occupation terrorist Trade Minister Eli Yishai, who abstained in Wednesday's vote, said the assessment is too optimistic. "I think it will take a lot longer," he said.

The Israeli occupation terrorist government is waiting to see whether Arab and Western diplomats can find a solution to end the monthlong conflict.

The U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, met three times Thursday with Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, whose aides reported no progress on negotiations to find a cease-fire.

Relief agencies have sent aid to some Lebanese areas caught up in Israeli-Hizbullah fighting, but progress has been slow, U.N. officials said in pleading for more access.

"Anything short of full access to these areas is insufficient," ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger said.

In other developments:

- The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, travels to the Middle East Friday. He plans to visit Beirut before traveling to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

- Richard Huguenin, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said Israel has repeatedly denied requests to reach Lebanese civilians, including a family believed trapped in an abandoned orphanage in Ma'arub, about 12 miles from Tyre. The Red Cross estimates roughly 33,000 people are still living in villages in south Lebanon, another 27,000 in Tyre and 40,000 Palestinians in four camps in the south.

- The World Food Program's coordinator in Lebanon, Zlatan Milisic, said Israeli bombing of bridges and roads is creating huge obstacles for aid convoys to reach tens of thousands of displaced Lebanese.

- Israeli warplanes pounded a coastal highway junction connecting three major southern cities - Sidon, Tyre and Nabatiyeh. The junction already had been nearly cut off in a strike on July 12 - the first day of fighting - which spared only a single lane. It was not clear if the road was completely severed in Thursday's hits.

German Newspaper 10thAugust::
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently described Germany as his country's "best friend" and encouraged it to engage militarily in Lebanon. But when Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier came to explore diplomatic solutions, Olmert kept him waiting while his government decided to greatly expand Israel's offensive in southern Lebanon.

Even the United States -- in all likelihood a much greater "friend" of Israel's -- was apparently surprised by the Israeli cabinet's decision. Internationally, the chances of securing a resolution for southern Lebanon in the near future seemed to disappear, because the Israeli military spoke of a large-scale offensive that could last up to 30 days. Israeli soldiers were meant to comb the area up to the Litani rivier, driving out any Hezbollah guerrillas.

Then, in the early hours of Thursday morning, came the surprising news that the offensive had been suspended in order to give diplomacy a chance.In Beirut, the government offered to deploy Lebanese troops in the south, and in Jerusalem, the plans to expand the Israeli offensive were put on hold. A tiny window of hope has opened, but it could slam shut again at any moment.

Peter Philipp is Deutsche Welle's chief correspondent.

Hizbullah's attacks stem from Israeli incursions into Lebanon
By Anders Strindberg
"Since its withdrawal of occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israel has violated the United Nations-monitored "blue line" on an almost daily basis, according to UN reports. Hizbullah's military doctrine, articulated in the early 1990s, states that it will fire Katyusha rockets into Israel only in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians or Hizbullah's leadership; this indeed has been the pattern.

In the process of its violations, Israel has terrorized the general population, destroyed private property, and killed numerous civilians. This past February, for instance, 15-year-old shepherd Yusuf Rahil was killed by unprovoked Israeli cross-border fire as he tended his flock in southern Lebanon. Israel has assassinated its enemies in the streets of Lebanese cities and continues to occupy Lebanon's Shebaa Farms area, while refusing to hand over the maps of mine fields that continue to kill and cripple civilians in southern Lebanon more than six years after the war supposedly ended.What peace did Hizbullah shatter?

Hizbullah's capture of the soldiers took place in the context of this ongoing conflict, which in turn is fundamentally shaped by realities in the Palestinian territories. To the vexation of Israel and its allies, Hizbullah - easily the most popular political movement in the Middle East - unflinchingly stands with the Palestinians.Since June 25, when Palestinian fighters captured one Israeli soldier and demanded a prisoner exchange, Israel has killed more than 140 Palestinians. Like the Lebanese situation, that flare-up was detached from its wider context and was said to be "manufactured" by the enemies of Israel; more nonsense proffered in order to distract from the apparently unthinkable reality that it is the manner in which Israel was created, and the ideological premises that have sustained it for almost 60 years, that are the core of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0801/p09s02-coop.html

from JULY 21ST ON....
"We have lost faith in you because your democracy got exported to us with your missiles, and we are consuming them while you are consuming our news."
OIL SPILL

(SATELITE PICTURE)

Lebanon's coastline could take up to 10 years to recover from a massive oil spill, the nation's environment minister has said. Yacoub Sarraf said it was impossible to tackle the problem while the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel continued.

Marine experts have warned the spill could pose a cancer risk to people living in the affected areas.

The oil slick caused by Israeli bombing of a power station now covers 120km (75 miles) of the region's coasts. Mr Sarraf said the delay had already severely affected the Lebanese shores."The damage has been done. It goes without saying that the whole fishing community will be hit for at least two or three years before the ecosystem re-establishes itself," he told BBC News.

BLOG MESSAGE:I send following the translation of an article appeared today on a major italian leftist newspaper (Il Manifesto).
I am also asking the community if you have suggestions on how to collect, preserve and store (and send out), material related to the
allegations of chemical and biological samples (in the present difficult conditions). Any other suggestion that can help to conduct the enquiry or, better, to set up an independent expert internationally recognized enquiry will be most welcome.

INTERNATIONAL COMMETTEE FOR THE NEW WEAPONS

Angelo Baracca, Paola Manduca and Monica Zoppè

By now are countless the reports, from hospitals, witnesses, armament experts and journalists that strongly suggest that in the present offensive of Israeli forces against Lebanon and Gaza 'new weapons' are being used.

New and strange symptoms are reported in the wounded and dead.

Bodies with dead tissues and no apparent wounds; 'shrunken' corpses; civilians with heavy damage to lower limbs that require amputation, which is nevertheless followed by unstoppable necrosis and death; descriptions of extensive internal wounding with no trace of shrapnel, corpses blackened but not burnt, and others heavily wounded that did not bleed

Many of these descriptions suggest the possibility that the new weapons used include 'direct energy' weapons, and chemical and/or biological agents, in a sort of macabre experiment of future warfare, where there is
no respect for anything: international rules (from the Geneva convention to the treaties on biological and chemical weapons), refugees, hospitals and the red cross, not to mention the people, their future, their children, the environment, which is poisoned through dissemination of Depleted Uranium and toxic substances released after oil and chemical depots are bombed.

Right now, the Lebanese and Palestinian people have many urgent and impellent problems, yet many people believe that these episodes cannot and must not pass ignored. In fact several appeals were launched to
scientists and experts with the aim of investigating the issue.

With the intent of responding to such appeals, we have set up a team to investigate the testimonies, the images, and possibly the material evidence that delegations and ONG will be able to bring from affected areas. We want to offer support to health institutions of Lebanon and Palestine, which ask constantly for help and external verification and monitoring, and we are examining all materials available in order to formulate hypothesis which can be verified or disproved.

We ask for the activation of our (Italian) scientific institutions, and, following the request from medical personnel in the conflict area, we ask that the UN set up a international independent verification



Mayssoun Sukarieh Beirut 30 July 2006

I have been feeling numb for a while, the overwhelming news in the past few days has focused on the displaced, the searing stories of people who fled in fear and left all their possessions behind. Pleas on the TV stations and on the radio of people who lost their loved ones...Stories of their anxiety about homes they left behind...Scenes of people murdered on the roads as they fled...And stories of the destruction they witnessed on those roads.

I get confused: Am I seeing and hearing the stories of Palestinians who fled their homes in fear in 1948?

No: I am in Beirut, it is 2006, and these are the stories of the Lebanese who have been rendered refugees, but by the same perpetrators of the 1948 displacement: the State of Israel.

I have been collapsing. I cannot even write, or talk...I'm sad for my niece and nephew who were dreaming of a summer in Lebanon, where they hoped to attend a performance of the legendary Fairuz in Baalbeck, of seeing the ancient ruins they'd read about in their school in France. My niece was anxiously waiting to visit.

I have been feeling imprisoned, in a jail cell that is getting smaller and smaller by the day. I miss strolling by the sea. I miss reading some news...I miss receiving good news...

Good news: Analysts are saying Israel lost the war! Israelis themselves are now claiming this. I never imagined in my life that I would hear of a defeat of the state of Israel without feeling victorious and elated.

Instead, I am scared to feel happy. Israel will never accept their loss...God save us from what they will do next.

We woke up this morning to the news of another massacre in Qana, the town that suffered so much in April 1996. Reporters are choking on dust while reporting on air from the scene of the crime. The bodies of children and women start to come out.

Ten bodies were removed. Twenty bodies were removed. Forty bodies were removed.

More than 50 bodies have now been removed.

Twenty-one children under ten women, and under them, more women and children.

The rescuers are people from the village, and the story as told by one of the lucky who survived to the Lebanese reporters is as follows:

"We were 63 people from two families in that shelter, we came to this house because it is in the middle of Qana; our houses are mostly on the outskirts of the village and whenever Israeli shells we get hit with shrapnel. We decided we needed to move to this house since it is in the middle and we will be safer. We have been staying here for more than fifteen days, we do not leave the house, and the Red Cross brings water and food for us. At 1:00 AM, after everyone was asleep, my cousin called me to have a cup of tea. I went to his room, and as we were just about to sip our tea, we heard a loud explosion and, yaa Muhammad!, dust filled the air. My cousin started to cry, 'My family, my children...they are gone!' I started to comfort him. Then, a few minutes later, another Israeli missile hit the same building, and there was so much dust that we could not see....We went to the center of the village and we started to yell for anyone who was still there and had refused to move to Beirut. We told them there is a massacre and we need help! They started to call for the Red Cross, for other rescue organizations, for the Lebanese Army. We kept crying for help. From 1 AM until 8 AM, the rescue team that you see, the very meager Red Cross, and a few Lebanese army soldiers, mostly people from the village, arrived to help us.</BLOCKQUOTE>

An Al-Manar reporter, barely able to control himself, says "God is Great!" after each sentence. Scenes of horror: corpses of babies, one child, two children, three children. Fifty-seven murdered -- half of them are children under 13.

With each body removed from under the rubble, journalists run to take photos.

Click! Flash! Click! Flash!

How can they do it? I am outraged on behalf of the dead, who are turned into objects for the camera to catch...objects for some photographers hoping for a "killer" shot to advance his or her career.

I am now at my computer, trying to tell my friends what I am watching on the screen; in other words, I am doing a body count.

I write to a friend, and get an email back from her: "I wish you could send me footage for people here to see in the US!"

I am not sure how much you need to see in order to feel outrage, in order to refuse wars, in order to denounce this murder and destruction.

Why should I send footage for you to see? If the eye sees while the brain is dead -- dead from the bloody images you see so frequently that they get normalized -- what then happens if you see? Maybe you'll send me an apology? Write creatively about it? Try to aestheticize this?  Call for a theater performance with eloquently spoken words in order to give people an incentive to come here, or to act? But they won't come.

What happens if you see? You will cry a bit, like me, and maybe go about your day as planned. What happens if you see? Will the US public opinion change?

But can there be people who do not yet know what is happening here? Do they need to see the dead in order to know who to vote for the next time, in a country where there is next to no difference between Republicans and Democrats?

Does it require much more knowledge for you to know that wars that kill innocents are unjustifiable? Do we need to see the dismembered bodies, the demolished houses, and the shattered dreams? Do we need to see "women and children weeping" in order to humanize those who are dying?

Is there not a danger that the result of repetitive viewing of these crimes and atrocities might only result in amnesia and numbness? Is it simply knowledge that you lack? Or is it the courage to understand what we know. Is it the courage to draw conclusions that you lack?

Put our knowledge into your practice.

Integrate our minds into your emotions. Be passionate about what we know. That will give us, and you, the courage to act.

How many more massacres do you have to see to know that the state of Israel is brutal? Aren't Deir Yassin, Kafar Qasem, Safsaf, Tantoura, Sabra and Shatila, Qana I, Marwaheen, Sour/Tyre, and now Qana II information enough for you to know the meaning of terrorism?

Just how many outcries do you need to hear before you act out of a commitment to humanity, a humanity that links you and me and so many beyond this sick consumerism of images?

To tell you the truth, my friend, we have lost faith in the idea that "public opinion" is capable of changing anything. We have lost faith in an international community that can back us and stop these massacres. The UN is now just another cold and unfeeling face of the United States.

Or it is simply an organization as helpless and powerless as we are here. Its representatives die under the bombs alongside us, and no one is allowed to condemn Israel. We have lost faith in you because we do not think you can act on your knowledge, or that your knowledge even matters anymore.

We have lost faith in you because we think your governments do not give a damn about how you think or what you think. We have lost faith in you because you do not live in democracies, and hence your opinion does not matter anyway!

We have lost faith in you because your democracy got exported to us with your missiles, and we are consuming them while you are consuming our news.


Mayssoun Sukarieh is a native of Beirut.


More than 30 children died in the Qana attack on Sunday 30th July - the deadliest Israeli raid since hostilities began on 12 July when two Israeli soldiers were seized when they
crossed the border into Lebanon . But the US is still resisting calls for an immediate ceasefire.


rice/olmert july30th

The Israeli strike killed displaced civilians sheltering in the basement of a three-storey house. Old people, women and children were among those killed. Correspondents say Qana holds bitter memories for the Lebanese. It was the site of an Israeli bombing of a UN base in 1996 that killed more than 100 people sheltering there during Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" offensive, which was also aimed at destroying Hezbollah.
BBC WorldNews and from the AngryArab: An American friend who watched US TV news coverage of Qana Massacre II sent me this:
"Nauseating. It started out with "Well, Israel didn't know there were civilians there" and went to "It's all Hezbollah's fault anyway" to "Maybe Hezvbollah actually blew up the building after the Israeli airstrike" when Israel admitted that it was them "Israel didn't know there were civilians there". I've watched it spun ten different ways in about 5 hours."
posted by As'ad

No real humanitarian access in the south

Christopher Stokes, of Doctors without Borders, was quoted in Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper (http://www.dailystar.com.lb) saying: “In effect there is no real humanitarian access in the South; the international community is deluding itself with talk of humanitarian corridors. Talk of humanitarian corridors should not mask the real situation. We have had contacts (with the Israeli army). They have not been very productive, in terms of having contacts for security guarantees and we not been given any encouragement that we would have the guarantees to work in the south”. Stokes had nothing but praise for the Lebanese workers. "Lebanese associations are doing most of the work in the south, without any security guarantees," he said. "I have been in a lot of war zones, I have rarely seen people so committed ... They are the ones doing most of the work, not the international community."    He said it was impressive how many Lebanese doctors and surgeons in local hospitals had sent their families to safety but stayed behind to serve their communities.

In their daily update, the Lebanese Higher Relief Council stated that towns and villages along the border with Israel are in disastrous conditions and the residents have been deprived of the most basic living standards. They are lacking basic needs, including safe water, food, and medical supplies. People are drinking from contaminated ponds, used to water crops and which animals drink from. The lack of water and medications to treat people “where some houses contains 50 individuals, have caused scabies which is spreading among the people”, said a local resident who was able to leave the southern village with others under Israeli bombs. The road to Beirutwhich usually takes two hours took them 8 hours. The Daily Star newspaper indicated that on Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross drove the first aid convoy to the border village of Rmeish in south Lebanon, where about 30,000 refugees have been cut off.

Fears of a ground invasion of southern Lebanon are growing as Israeli tanks and soldiers mass on the border of the country. Some reports said there could be three or four divisions in place by the weekend.

Army reservists are also being called up, further fuelling speculation about a ground offensive.

According to Sky News correspondent Colin Brazier on the border, house-to-house fighting is already taking place in four villages.

Israel's army chief has confirmed that the army will conduct limited ground operations in Lebanon if necessary.

Doctors and NGOs are reporting heavy civilian casualties in south Lebanon after Israel's offensive in the area.

Although as many as 500,000 people have left the border area, which has received the worst of the Israeli bombing, thousands remain.

In the village of Sreefa near Naqoura at least 21 people were confirmed killed and 60 missing after Israeli rockets hit 13 homes yesterday.

Nayla Mouawad, the Lebanese social affairs minister, said: "Sreefa has suffered a real massacre but we don't have enough details."

Although the current toll in Lebanon is above 300, it is likely to be higher, especially in the southern areas where bodies have not been recovered, doctors say.

Doctors and emergency services working in south Lebanon say it is extremely difficult to get access to the wounded because Israel has fired on Red Cross vehicles and civilian traffic.

me thinks it is the Litani River that these "israeli" military and political thugs are after................editor JBraddell

No Haven in a City Paralyzed by Dread

Washington Post | July 20, 2006 | P. A01

TYRE, Lebanon, July 19 -- Soon after dawn Wednesday, Ibrahim Khalil Heidar readied his green Mercedes. His wife, son and daughter-in-law climbed in, carrying no more than would fit in the trunk. Their neighbors, among them eight women and four children, piled into two other cars, a white and a blue Mercedes. On the roof of each vehicle, they carefully tied a white sheet that rippled in the morning breeze. A universal message, it was their plea for protection.

They then left their small border town of Aitaroun, already barraged by Israeli airstrikes, and made for Tyre, and safety. But little around them was safe. A bomb-hewn crater blocked one road. A detour brought them to another crater. "Around and around" they drove, Heidar recalled, before they reached a narrow, buckling road an hour later that ran along a grove of ripening lemons bordered by stately pines.

"We didn't hear anything until the missiles struck us," the 75-year-old Heidar said. "One, two, three -- I have no idea." From his hospital bed in Tyre, he shook his head at a memory just a few hours old."God help us," he said.

In more than a week of Israeli airstrikes, his home of southern Lebanon has shattered like a china plate. Among its shards are the broken lives of tens of thousands of people fleeing villages such as Aitaroun, and tens of thousands more stranded in Tyre, a besieged city spread out along the Mediterranean Sea where aid and hospital officials say a humanitarian disaster is unfolding.

Red Cross officials here said scores of people were killed in attacks across the south on Tuesday. With roads under threat of attack, they said, the office's five ambulances couldn't reach villages, leaving victims buried under the rubble. Braving the shelling that residents describe as random, cars flew white flags from antennas, rolled-up windows, sunroofs or hand-held flagpoles.

Civil defense workers, too scared to venture out in firetrucks, had to leave a rotting corpse in a humid sun along one road. His bloodied head was propped against the window of his car, struck on Tuesday. Clothes spilled out of torn suitcases in the trunk; on the ground lay pink and blue baby shirts.

Tyre, a city of 60,000 before the war, 12 miles north of the Israeli border, is paralyzed by fear and dread. Hundreds of people have fled to The Tyre Rest House, a beachfront hotel, hoping for an evacuation. The city itself is deserted: No shop is open; few cars ply the streets, which are strewn here and there with rubble. In a traffic circle, a horse grazed , as a lonesome car alarm pierced the afternoon sky, drowned out every so often by the trail of Israeli jets
and the thud of bombing.



"It's not the end. This is only the beginning," said Katya Taleb, who got married last month. "It's the beginning of the end."

The road into Tyre hugs a coast under blockade by the Israeli navy. A scarred landscape unfurls. Virtually every bridge is destroyed. A white Mercedes, its windows shattered, is perched along one; several cars are abandoned near a cemetery. Bombs have etched craters along the highway, spraying the asphalt like buckshot. Livestock sits untended in a corral; watermelons and tomatoes rot at fruit stands.

A green medallion hung from his rearview mirror. "Mohammed," it read. "God loves me, and I love God," said Mansour, a father of two.

Then he turned more serious: "I have young. They have to eat. I don't like it, but if I don't work, they don't live." Oncoming cars, speeding at 80, maybe 90 mph, flashed their headlights as a warning. In the distance, smoke rose from the road after it was struck
by a shell. Cars screeched into a U-turn, then sped off in the other direction. At times, drivers flagged other drivers. "What's the best way to Beirut?" one shouted. Another, stranded, yelled: "Please help me! Please! I need a mechanic."

Along a dirt road crossing the Hasbaya River, a car had collided with a telephone pole.

"You have to have tough nerves so this doesn't happen," Mansour said."Scary," he then kept repeating under his breath. "Scary.
"
A crater sits at the entrance to Tyre, mounds of asphalt and dirt gathered beneath apartment buildings with shattered windows. Awnings hang in the geometry of destruction. Every so often, a group of mainly young men sits inside the entrance of an apartment building. Otherwise, the streets are given over to stray dogs. On one stood Mohammed Rahhal, a 25-year-old laborer."We're catching the worst of it -- day and night, night and day," he said. Crusted blood was still on Rahhal's ear, a wound he'd suffered a day before when an Israeli air raid targeted a building next to his masonry workshop. "The Israelis want to empty the south so that they can destroy it," he said.

"We want to leave, but there's no way out," said Sabina Hijazi, with her four children between the ages of 2 and 13. She started crying, and her words poured out. The bombing terrified her children; occasionally, it shook her house. No banks are open, so she can get no money. Nor are the shops, so no food. Her son is sick, but she's too scared to venture out to the hospital. "What can I do?" Hijazi asked. "How can I get my children out of here? If we can't leave, we're left facing death."

Hospital officials estimated that perhaps 12,000 people have already left the city, maybe more. About 15,000 poured in before the roads became too dangerous. Ali Mroue, 15, said his family had spent most of the time since then in the basement, with 75 others. During the fiercest barrages, the children cried, and parents recited verses of the Koran or read to themselves quietly.

Across the city, families are relying on what they had stocked before the fighting began -- bread, beans, milk, sugar, cheese and lunchmeat. Electricity was cut on the second day, spoiling some of the food, and water followed. The sick are running short of medicine. In attacks that have left residents bewildered, a private school was bombed, as was the
civil defense headquarters and fire station. "It's hell," said Taleb, the newlywed. "The attacks are absolutely random," said her husband, Ali. "They don't discriminate...

Next to Taleb was Martha Dubois, the French principal of the private school that was bombed. One of her students, 14-year-old Saraya Baydoun, walked by, her face cut when a bomb hurled debris near her house. Dubois had not seen her in days.

"Sweetheart, you're okay!" she said, hugging her.

At the small Red Cross office, its five ambulances parked outside,
frustration reigned as many of its 50 volunteers sat idly. On this day,
they were especially upset about the events in the nearby village of
Srifa, where the office's director, Sami Yazbak, said bombing had
collapsed 20 houses and buildings. One ambulance had made the perilous
trek, and its crew estimated that between 60 and 80 people were still
buried there.
"We're not sure if they're dead or alive," Yazbak said. "No one can get
there and take them out from under the rubble. It's not just Srifa. It's
all the villages. Sometimes people are still alive, but there's no way
to get to them. You just can't help them."

He looked over a map, roads to the largest villages highlighted in
black. "Every day is getting worse than the day before," he said.

One volunteer, Qassem Shallan, said he had taken a call from an elderly
couple in the village of Byut al-Sayyid. They pleaded for the Red Cross
to pick them up, to bring them water, to deliver medication for the
woman's high blood pressure.

"I started crying," he said. "There's no way to get there. I don't know
if she's still alive."
At Najm Hospital, doctors who had been working eight days straight said
they were running low on antibiotics, gasoline for the generator,
oxygen, suture, cotton and gauze...

Ali Najm, a 35-year-old radiologist, beckoned a visitor into a small
room. "Here, I want to show you something," he said. Najm knocked, then
gingerly opened the door. Inside was his wife, 8-year-old son and
11-year-old daughter, along with his sister-in-law and her three
children, all of whom have been sharing a cramped room for a week now,
deeming the hospital safer...

A few rooms down was Heidar, the patriarch of the family whose cars were
attacked coming from Aitaroun on Wednesday. On the road into Tyre, he
had followed 100 yards behind the two other cars. The missiles struck
those cars, and the survivors crawled out, clambering into the lemon
grove. Seeing the blast, Heidar and his family followed them, abandoning
their Mercedes. "The bombing came right on top of us," he said.

A blast severed his left pinkie finger, cut his back and broke his foot.
He crawled over to his daughter-in-law, Insaf, who was also wounded. His
71-year-old wife, Leila, was stranded farther away. Less than a minute
later, there was another explosion.

His wife was so dismembered that the hospital had no corpse to bring to
the morgue. Three others in the group died, including 31-year-old
Ghassan Faqih, whose 3-year-old daughter, Narjis, lay in another bed,
staring at the ceiling. Her face was peppered with blood.

"You see, my family." Heidar couldn't go on. His pale blue eyes watered,
and he swiped away dirt still in his gray hair from the Israelis'
attack.


*****

The Israeli military's chief of staff Dan Halutz said that Israeli
"operations are centering on south Lebanon. Among other things, the army
is trying to cleanse the border zone of Hezbollah outposts and attack
the villages from which Hezbollah is firing. When the IDF discovers that
Hezbollah is firing rockets at Israel from a particular village, Halutz
said, the army warns the residents to leave the village and then bombs
it..."
Haaretz, July 20, 2006 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/740251.html

The group, which was forced to spend the night in the open on the beachfront after the evacuation was cancelled on Wednesday, are being transferred in UN convoys to Tyre port then ferried to an awaiting passenger ship.

Many Lebanese fear that the violence could escalate further once the foreign nationals are evacuated.

"I have a very bad feeling that after the foreigners flee the bombings will get worse," Beirut resident Ziad Nayef told Reuters. "Nobody cares about Arab lives." BBC

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal criticized Israel’s heavy-handed actions against the Lebanese people.

“The Lebanese crisis today has reminded us of the arrogance which characterizes Israel’s policies toward its Arab neighbors,” he said to the press. “An entire country has been destroyed as a result of the capture of two soldiers.”The official announcement of the visit said the meetings “will permit the evocation of questions of a regional and international nature, in particular the situation in Lebanon, the Middle East and Iraq, as well as Iran. On the level of bilateral relations, the different political, civil and military aspects (of our relations) will be examined, as well as those of an economic nature. We desire to reinforce our cooperation in all these domains at a time when the Kingdom engages itself in a process of economic and social reforms.”