Number of Lebanese refugees caused by war: at least 700,000
Lebanon’s population: 3,500,000
So that’s a fifth of the population that was made into refugees.
Month: July 2006
A war on Shias?
From Jim Quilty’s MERIP piece, Israel’s war against Lebanon’s Shias:
Israel has blithely played upon Lebanon’s sectarian divisions with the patterns of bombing and with leaflets asserting that Nasrallah is beholden to foreign masters. Though the Shi‘a of Lebanon are not pre-programmed to be Hizballah supporters, and many are not, the unremitting strikes against south Lebanon, the Bekaa and Beirut’s southern suburbs punish the Shi‘i population for being the constituency that Hizballah primarily serves. They also replicate international sanctions against Palestinians for having the temerity to vote for Hamas in the January 2006 Palestinian elections.
Below Leaflets dropped by Israel on Lebanon, showing Nasrallah as a snake conjured by Syria and Iran (from the MERIP piece.)
Fallout
Salama Ahmed Salama, one of Egypt’s most prestigious and influential columnists, in a recent (23 July, sorry no link) Al Ahram editorial:
Egypt should adopt the same policy as Iran with regards to acquiring new military technology, notably nuclear weapons, in order to prevent Israeli threats, which are constantly getting worse.
Strategically speaking, can you say he’s wrong? Incidentally Salama has been going around this issue cautiously for weeks while commenting on the Iran nuclear crisis, but I think this is his most frank statement so far.
Angry Arab on Arab media coverage of war
The Angry Arab does a vitriolic round-up of the Arab (and especially Lebanese) media’s coverage of the war, as always bereft of paragraph breaks. (I think that adds to his madness.) I doubt his assertion that al-Manar is the most watched satellite news station in Morocco, though. Perhaps we’ll know soon as Morocco just got its first real media monitoring firm recently.
Mustafa al-Fiqi, pro-Hizbullah?
Watchers of Egyptian politics will appreciate this:
Just today, I watched an appearance by Mustafa Al-Faqi (chairperson of the Egyptian parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee). He spoke like a Hizbullah spokesperson. A Hizbullah guest on the show (Lebanese member of parliament Husayn Hajj Hasan who is such an ineffective propagandist for the party) noted that tone and that change, even from a few days ago.
Mustafa al-Fiqi? HA! Why is it that Egyptian politicians (although al-Fiqi, arguably the biggest cheater of last year’s parliamentary elections, probably doesn’t deserve to be called even a “politician”) change what they say constantly depending on who they’re talking to, even when their government has a pretty clear line it’s following?
The rest of the post linked to above at the Angry Arab is his reasons why Israel miscalculated. Too soon to tell, as I’m not sure Israel’s objectives are the ones it is stating publicly…
Parting the Red Sea
This is intriguing:
The scientists from the University of Leeds, one of the largest universities in the UK, say millions of years from now, the pulling apart of the Arabian and Nubian tectonic plates will let waters to rush into and widen the Red Sea. The Leeds scientists have also been able to get an unprecedented picture of the workings of stretching plates, the rock crust moving across Earth’s surface at up to 12 centimeters per year. While the exact course of this continental drift is hard to predict, the movement of the fault promises eventually to widen the Red Sea between Africa and the Arabian peninsula and extend it southwards, cutting a marine inlet inland.
Tim Wright of the University of Leeds and his international team of colleagues gathered ground and space-based observations of a widening fraction in the Afar Desert of Ethiopia. Between September and October of last year, a 60-kilometer-long stretch of rock spread by as much as eight meters. Magma from adjacent volcanoes filled in the bottom part of the rift, creating new continental crust and a dyke of roughly 2.5 cubic kilometers–twice as much material as erupted from Mount St. Helens–more than two kilometers below the surface. Geologists from the UK believe that they are witnessing a tectonic process similar to the one that formed the Atlantic Ocean, as adjacent plates push apart over millions of years to change the shape of the continents.
Random Lebanon notes
This (also here) is worth investigating. Based on early news reports, it claims it was Israel that invaded Lebanon first and then was ambushed by Hizbullah — not a Hizbullah excursion into Israel.
The original story, as most media tell it, goes something like this: Hezbollah attacked an Israeli border patrol station, killing six and taking two soldiers hostage. The incident happened on the Lebanese/Israel border in Israeli territory. The alternate version, as explained by several news outlets, tells a bit of a different tale: These sources contend that Israel sent a commando force into southern Lebanon and was subsequently attacked by Hezbollah near the village of Aitaa al-Chaab, well inside Lebanon’s southern territory. It was at this point that an Israel tank was struck by Hezbollah fighters, which resulted in the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the death of six.
If Israel was the one that started this war, then there is no justification for all the woe-is-me we must go after Hizbullah going around. But I remain doubtful: after all, didn’t Nasrallah confirm the excursion into Israel version of events and boast the operation took five months to plan? And why is it not denying the rest of the world’s version of events? If anyone knows different (original Arabic reports best) say so in the comments.
Nasrallah profiled, by the Nation’s Adam Shatz, who’s done good work before. He suggests Nasrallah has a death wish, I’m not so sure. I have a biography of Nasrallah in Cairo that I haven’t read, will do so next week when I get back.
The ICG has a report on the Israel-Palestine-Lebanon crisis. They say “an immediate Israeli-Lebanese ceasefire is necessary: pursuing a military knockout is unrealistic and counterproductive” and aren’t pushing 1559 as an urgent issue like the White House. This is perhaps the most respected think tank on earth, remember.
Today on the train to Casablanca I listened to yesterday’s Democracy Now radio show very interesting interview of Yonatan Shapira, a refusenik Israeli air force pilot, and former Palestinian resistance fighter Bassem Aramim, who co-founded Combatants for Peace with former Palestinian resistance members. It was a really moving interview, I highly recommend it.
From the longest-serving Conservative MP in Britain:
Sir Peter Tapsell, a Tory MP, said Tuesday that British Prime Minister Tony Blair was “colluding” with U.S. President George W. Bush in giving Israel the okay to wage “unlimited war” in Lebanon – a war crime he claimed was “gravely reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter of Warsaw.”
AFP has an article about Egyptians making the parallel between Nasser and Nasrallah, mentioning an Al Arabi headline that said “Nasser 1956 – Nasrallah 2006.” For some reason it reminds me that the London Times (for which I work for) called Nasser (edit: originally wrote “Hitler) “Hitler on the Nile” in 1956, which makes you think about how some papers are describing Nasrallah now. But anyway, Nasrallah’s rising profile around the Arab world is one consequence of this war we may have to live with for a while…
Interesting juxtaposition: the New York Times finds resentment against Hizbullah in Iran but AFP finds that its government is very supportive indeed. I have no idea about Iran but I do find it a bit hard to swallow that there are no ordinary Iranians supportive of Hizbullah (at least none quoted in the NYT story).
This is a little bit old, but here’s the Aardvark on Al Jazeera’s war coverage.
Carnegie Endowment does a roundtable analysis on the current crisis, country-by-country:
One common point emerges clearly from all the analyses, however: the crisis cannot be solved by a single grand strategy that would broaden the conflict to Syria or even Iran and would change the face of the Middle East forever. As in all other crises in the Middle East, at the heart of the problem is the difficult task of negotiating coexistence in a small, overpopulated, and resource-poor part of the world among population groups that have strong identities, different cultures, conflicting interests, and seemingly irreconcilable goals. No grand strategy will alter this most fundamental of Middle East realities.
An Egyptian diplomat has told AFP that Egypt and Saudi Arabia will propose a ceasefire in Rome. The EU has said it will also push for one. As we know they will most likely be ignored. Condi Rice didn’t sound eager to have a ceasefire fast today:
So I will go to Israel, we’ll go to Rome, and I’ll go to Kuala Lumpur for the Asia Regional Forum. I have a little work to do there on North Korea. And I’m fully prepared to return to the region if that would be necessary or helpful. But I’m going to leave David Welch and Elliott Abrams in the region to continue to work on the humanitarian situation as well as the underlying conditions for a cease-fire.
Lebanon reports that four UN peacekeepers were killed today in an Israeli air strike. The UN has confirmed two for now. Kofi Annan says he’s “shocked.” Really, Kofi?
It’s being said that the war will last 10 more days. A lot can happen in 10 days.
Latest developments
Current death toll: 418 Lebanese, 42 Israelis dead. Still 10 to 1.
July 25, (Reuters) – Here are developments in the Middle East on the 14th day of Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon.
* Israeli air raid in south Lebanon kills four U.N. military observers in attack which U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan describes as “apparently deliberate.”
* Israel says it regrets deaths of U.N. military observers in southern Lebanon and will investigate air strike that killed them.
* Deaths come on eve of international conference in Rome where Arab and some European nations are expected to call for immediate end to war over U.S. objections.
Middle East Desk
Check out Middle East Desk, a new resource for journalists in the Middle East.
Nasrallah on TV
Al-Jazeera is now broadcasting a videostatement by Nasrallah given to Al-Manar.
He’s accusing the US of sponsoring the current war, saying the plans for Rice’s “New Middle East” has been laid a long time ago. This project is nothing but a new Pax Americana, said Nasrallah, that aims at liquidating the resistance groups in Palestine and Iraq.
He also threatened Israel, “We are now at the post-Haifa stage. Our missiles campaign will be extended to a new level.”