_______________________________

WEEKDAY PRESS PICKS FROM
THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
AND ELECTRONIC IRAQ

http://electronicIntifada.net
http://electronicIraq.net
http://electronicLebanon.net

_______________________________

21 July 2006

NOTE: For additional eyewitness accounts, commentary and other coverage of the Israeli attack on Lebanon, stay tuned to EI's special and newly upgraded site http://electronicLebanon.net

NEWS:
1) Israel executes four by shelling house in Gaza (BBC)
2) With focus on Lebanon, Israeli massacres continue in Gaza (DS)
3) One third of Israel's victims are children says UN (Irish Examiner)
4) But Shimon Peres says all those dead children are alive and well (R)
5) Beirut neighborhoods reduced to rubble (AFP)
6) Nightmare in South grows worse (Daily Star)
7) Scale of destruction in Lebanon massive (Guardian)
8) Thousands of Israeli soldiers inside Lebanon, suffer losses (Haaretz)
9) Israel preparing major ground invasion (AP)
10) Israeli invaders meet fierce resistance in south Lebanon (DS)
11) Nazareth residents blame Israel not Hizbullah for children's deaths (AP)
12) EU's Solana meets Israel POW families, ignores Palestinian hostages (Ha)

13) Latin American demonstrators protest Israeli aggression (Ha)
14) US lawmakers rush to endorse Israeli massacres (USA Today)
15) Bush believes destruction of Lebanon is step to "peace" (Wash Post)
16) Labour MPs turn on Blair govt for supporting Israel (Ind)

17) Massacres Soar in Central Iraq: Maliki Government Discredited (CP)
18) Normal life impossible in Bush's Iraq (Antiwar)
19) 30,000 more flee as Iraq violence deepens (JT)

ANALYSIS & VIEWS:
20) Israel's long roll call of dishonour (Jonathan Cook/EL)
21) The wrath to come: Israel's miscalculation (Graham Usher/Al-Ahram)
22) The lies and racism of the US media (FAIR)
23) Israel as the eternal victim (Emad Mekay/Al-Ahram)
24) The Israel we know (Khaled Amayreh/Al-Ahram)
25) Israel's aggression long in the planning (Azmi Bishara/Al-Ahram)
26) An excursion to the distant past - 7 weeks ago! (Cockburn/Counterpunch)

Ali Abunimah

**********************************************************

(1) Israeli fire' kills four in Gaza

BBC News
21 July 2006

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/5201896.
stm

Four Palestinians have been killed in a blast in Gaza City
that witnesses say was caused by an Israeli tank shell.

The house targeted in the blast, in the Shajaiyeh
district, reportedly belonged to Hamas activists, locals
quoted by the Associated Press news agency said.

At least three people are said to have been hurt in the
explosion.

Israel launched its military offensive in the Gaza Strip
three weeks ago after a soldier was captured by militants
linked to Hamas's military wing.

Cpl Gilad Shalit was captured in a cross-border raid near
the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military has not confirmed its involvement in
the latest incident.

Hamas sources said the blast had killed a militant from
their group, as well as his mother and two of her
grandchildren.

According to Palestinian security officials, Israeli tanks
had been moving around the Shajaiyeh neighbourhood, which
lies near the border with Israel.

They said Israeli helicopters had also attacked the area.

**********************************************************

(2) With focus on Lebanon, Israelis keep hitting Gaza; Army
threatens to hit homes used to store arms

The Daily Star
21 July 2006

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&
categ_id=2&article_id=74120#

Israel Thursday pursued its air and ground offensive in
the Gaza Strip, where it has killed nearly 100 people in
three weeks, and warned civilians that every home storing
weaponry was now a target. "The life of all those who are
holding military equipment and ammunition in their homes
is in danger and they should leave the premises for their
safety and that of their families," warned Israeli
leaflets dropped on the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Army "will
strike and destroy all sites and buildings housing
ammunition and military materiel."

Though similar leaflets have been dropped on Gaza before,
it was the most explicit warning that civilians' homes
could be directly targeted.

A spokeswoman said the army had "specific information some
houses are storing weapons" in Gaza. "Palestinian
terrorist organizations have been using the civilian
population as human shields," she claimed.

"We're warning the civilian population because we don't
want them to get hurt ... to stay away from such houses
and stay away from terrorists," she said.

An Israeli air strike killed one militant as he was
preparing to launch an anti-tank rocket at Israeli troops
in the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, an
army spokesman said.

Israeli troops, who have been operating in the camp since
Wednesday, earlier shot dead another Palestinian gunman.

On Wednesday, Israeli troops killed 15 Palestinians,
including seven civilians, in clashes in Gaza and the
occupied West Bank in one of the worst days of violence
since Israel launched an offensive to free an abducted
soldier.

Troops also detained several Palestinian security men
during Wednesday's operation in Nablus, an Israeli
military source said.

Israeli bulldozers then tore down a building there used by
the Hamas-led Interior Ministry.

About 60 Palestinians, including 10 children, were also
wounded in the clashes in densely populated central Gaza
Wednesday, medics said.

The Israeli campaign in the impoverished Gaza Strip has
already killed 97 Palestinians.

But one of the militant groups involved in the raid that
seized the Israeli solidier said the Jewish state's
campaign was a failure.

"The soldier is still missing ... And the rockets are
continuing to strike. They [Israel] will pay a dear price
for killing our civilians and fighters," said Abu Mujahed,
a Popular Resistance Committees spokesman.

Israeli tanks Thursday were still positioned on the edge
of Maghazi camp, said local Palestinian security sources.

Two makeshift rockets fired by Palestinian militants in
the Gaza Strip exploded in Israel's southern desert town
of Sderot Thursday, causing some material damage but no
casualties, the army said.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya has accused
Israel of trying to "completely reshape" the Middle East
through its offensives.

But appeals for Israeli restraint have fallen on deaf ears
and the US, Israel's main ally, vetoed a UN resolution
urging Israel to stop the offensive.

The humanitarian situation of the 1.4 million people
living in Gaza has badly deteriorated since the West
suspended direct aid to the democratically-elected
government, plunging the territory deeper into financial
crisis. - Agencies

**********************************************************

(3) Third of Lebanon casualties are children, says UN

Irish Examiner
20 July 2007

Nearly one third of all casualties in the Lebanon-Israel
conflict have been children, according to the United
Nations' emergency relief co-ordinator, Jan Egeland.

He said it appeared neither Hezbollah nor the Israelis
seemed to care about civilian suffering.

Nearly a third of the dead or wounded were children and
the wounded could not be helped because roads and bridges
had been cut by Israeli air strikes.

"It is nearly impossible in southern Lebanon to move
anything anywhere because it is too dangerous. It is too
dangerous for our people to move things," Egeland said.

Without a truce allowing aid agencies to begin the relief
effort there would be a "catastrophe".

**********************************************************

(4) Israel's Peres questions Lebanon's casualty toll

Reuters
20 July 2006

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N19340116.htm

WASHINGTON, July 19 (Reuters) - Israeli Vice Premier
Shimon Peres on Wednesday questioned the reported casualty
count in Lebanon after days of pounding by Israeli
warplanes.

Lebanese government and police sources and local residents
have reported at least 299 people killed in Lebanon, in
the conflict triggered in retaliation for Hizbollah's July
12 capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.

In Israel, 29 people have been killed, according to
accounts from the Israeli Army and medics. "The numbers of
the victims (in Lebanon) are not acceptable. We think that
information coming from Lebanon is totally unreliable,"
Peres said in an interview on CNN. Peres did not offer a
casualty figure.

He said the Israeli military was taking steps to make sure
"no civilian life will be hit, that no civilian
infrastructure will be destroyed."

Peres also dismissed criticism from Lebanese Prime
Minister Fouad Siniora of the relentless Israeli bombing
campaign.

"Why doesn't he stop the Hizbollah?" Peres asked. "Israel
didn't start the war. Israel didn't attack anybody.


**********************************************************

(5) Beirut suburbs reduced to rubble

By Charles Levinson

Agence France-Presse
21 July 2006

http://jordantimes.com/fri/news/news8.htm

BEIRUT -- Shoes, photo albums, teddy bears and a cash
register poke through the debris. What were once
eight-storey residential blocks are now rubble. The
devastation in Beirut's southern suburbs is complete, and
disturbing.

It's an apocalyptic scene of a once densely-packed
neighbourhood gutted as if by earthquake.

The detritus lying on the dust and smashed concrete is
that of ordinary people's possessions, now nothing more
than the grit of war to be trod underfoot. Israeli bombs
and missiles caused the destruction, launched by pilots
ordered to strike at what was once the stronghold of
Hizbollah, the Shiite Lebanese group whose headquarters
were nestled in the middle of the Haret Hreik district.
Now, that building, and many of the others in streets and
blocks around are flattened. The ones left standing have
been stripped of walls and roofs, exposing modest
apartments inside.

"What the Israelis are doing has nothing to do with the
two Israel soldiers," says Hizbollah's spokesman, Hussein
Nabulsi, showing journalists the area.

"This is a kind of a revenge against not only Hizbollah
but against Lebanon as a whole, because only Lebanon was
able to defeat the Israelis," he says, referring to the
group's boast that its actions forced Israel to withdraw
from southern Lebanon six years ago. "This was a
supermarket," he says, pointing to a mound of broken
blocks.

"And this building we see, this is where we worked -- the
Hizbollah media offices." A satellite dish is visible in
the rubble. The southern suburbs, along with the area
along the southern border with Israel, have borne the
brunt of the Jewish state's offensive. Hizbollah targets
and civilian homes alike have been wiped out. Israel has
said such widespread attacks are necessary because
Hizbollah hid weapons in homes and sought to protect its
positions by using civilian areas.

But Nabulsi contests that.

"Do you see any military targets? It's just houses, the
homes of civilians. It's just our families, our
relatives." An overnight bombardment against what the
Israelis claimed was a Hizbollah command bunker "was a
building for clerics, it's just a mosque," he adds.

The scale and intensity of the devastation makes it
impossible to verify the claims of either the group or
Israel, but journalists saw no signs of weapons or
military equipment in the zone. Nor were there any bodies.

Hizbollah's spokesman said Israel was failing in its
mission to uproot the Lebanese movement.

"They say they have destroyed 60 per cent of our rockets.
But now we are launching more rockets into Israel. That
means our military capabilities are getting stronger."

**********************************************************

(6) Nightmare in South grows worse

By Adnan El-Ghoul

The Daily Star
21 July 2006

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&
categ_id=2&article_id=74125

TYRE: A Lebanese family of five and two UN personnel
remained buried under the rubble of a two-story building
on Thursday after an Israeli strike Tuesday evening in the
eastern Tyre suburb of al-Hosh.

A UNIFIL rescue team has so far been unable to come to the
aid of the family and the two UN workers, both from Ghana.

In addition, local UN officials said they had yet to
receive confirmation from the Israeli military regarding
assurances of safe passage from their Naquora
headquarters.

Heavy shelling continues to pound the coastal road in the
area, which is effectively under the control of the
Israeli Army.

"The Israelis have asserted their full control from air
and sea over the area south of Tyre," a Lebanese Army
official told reporters. An army official added that
UNIFIL does not have the capability, jurisdiction or
authority to operate in times of violent hostilities.

"The Israeli warplanes are targeting all civilian or
military cars, including UN bulldozers and forklifts
needed to remove heavy rubble," the army official said.
"We advise reporters and everyone else not to go beyond
Al-Hosh; it is too risky."

Israeli is in no hurry to have images of dead UN personnel
broadcast on the world's television networks, the official
said.

Israel had dropped leaflets and telephoned local mayors,
mukhtars and other prominent figures, urging the residents
of Tyre's eastern suburbs and the villages and towns
surrounding the port city to evacuate the area by
Wednesday.

However, five rockets were seen being launched here early
Wednesday morning. Israeli sources and news agencies later
said the rockets had hit the port city of Haifa.

Meanwhile, hundreds of families fled the South on
Wednesday in minivans and cars waving white flags and
coming from Bint Jbeil, Aitaroun, Meiss al-Jabal, Haris,
Qanan and other battered border villages, heading north
through the only available route via the Chouf area.

"We could not hold on any longer because of the
indiscriminate shelling, targeting civilians on purpose,"
Hussam Mawassi of Aitaroun said in haste, refusing to stop
his car completely, desperate to resume his non-stop
journey to safety.

"Sorry, I cannot stop for long. We have to cross the
passage before noon or else risk more intense bombardments
in the afternoon," he added.

Word-of-mouth initiated by those who already had made it
to safety has informed the Southern population on how,
where and when to move, and what to do next.

"We left mainly because we ran out of provisions and
nobody told me how to behave or react," Mawassi said. "We
have accumulated enough experience over the years in
dealing with Israeli aggression. The continued massacres
in border villages simply aim to evacuate the South,
isolating Hizbullah's fighters like fish out of water."

But Southern towns and villages remain packed with Shiite
expats who came to spend their summer in Lebanon but ended
up stranded with no way home.

"The expatriates suffered a high rate of casualties, with
dozens of them with severe wounds, some of which cannot be
treated in our hospital," said Jawad Najm, the owner and
manager of Tyre's Najm Hospital. "Many expatriate victims
called their embassies for help but have not received any
positive response as of yet."

A source close to UNIFIL estimated that 35 percent of
Southern residents have left.

"However, the pace of evacuation is still slow compared to
previous evacuations, especially during the Israeli
assaults in 1996, when more than 80 percent of the
population fled to safety within the first few days of
hostilities," the source added.

"To further isolate Hizbullah from its Shiite base, the
evacuations are being directed by the military targeting
of certain roads that link the various Lebanese areas,
pushing the displaced families to take narrow corridors
leading to non-Shiite areas," the source said.

The wide-scale displacement of citizens taking place
across Lebanon seems to be working slowly but steadily in
favor of the Israelis, the source added.

Israel's psychological warfare has also intensified, with
more and more leaflets being dropped in the area insulting
Hizbullah's leadership.

"The Southerners won't buy Israeli propaganda, which can't
decide the fate of this war or effect the people's
fundamental beliefs," said Salah Atwi from Borj
al-Shamali, east of Tyre.

"Israel's tactics and military actions and Hizbullah's
ability to sustain prolonged and accurate rocket fire will
decide the general direction of this war and determine who
wins the battle," Atwi added.

Working alongside local news agencies and television
crews, a few foreign correspondents have risked their
necks to reach Tyre.

"We learned that rushing to a bomb site means risking
being hit by a second raid targeting the same place," a
photographer working for Reuters in Tyre told The Daily
Star.

"We have to come back by the late afternoon because we
have noticed that after 4 p.m. the Israeli bombardment
becomes even more ferocious ... The roads have become
free-fire zones," said Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times.
"We are aware that there are so many victims out there,
but it's frustrating because we can't get to them."

**********************************************************

(7) Battered Lebanon counts the cost of Israeli onslaught;
Infrastructure damage will cost 'billions of dollars to
repair'

By Brian Whitaker in Beirut

The Guardian
21 July 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1825670,00.html

The catastrophic scale of destruction inflicted on
Lebanon's infrastructure and economy by the Israeli
bombardment was becoming apparent yesterday as government
officials released details to the Guardian of the damage
so far. With countless homes wrecked, 55 bridges destroyed
and numerous roads made impassable, factories, hospitals
and airports hit and fuel storage facilities destroyed,
estimates of the reconstruction cost already run into
billions of dollars.

"We know the cost is in billions," a government
spokeswoman said yesterday. "But it's very difficult to
estimate more precisely because there are many places we
can't reach."

The prime minister, Fouad Siniora, has already said he
will "spare no avenue" to to obtain compensation from
Israel "for the barbaric destruction it has inflicted and
continues to inflict upon us".

In imposing an air and sea blockade, Israeli forces have
put Beirut airport out of action and damaged two smaller
airports, one of them military, and knocked out all the
civilian and military radar stations, according to
officials.

Israeli forces have also attacked three of the country's
main seaports - Beirut, Tripoli and Jamil Gemayel - as
well as putting Beirut's lighthouse out of action and
hitting an antenna in Tripoli that was vital for maritime
operations.

The energy sector has been hit too, with the destruction
of 17 fuel stores, four gas stores and the bombing of 12
petrol stations. An electricity generator in Sibline has
also been damaged.

Various factories and warehouses have been destroyed or
put out of action. Last night the social affairs minister,
Nayla Mouawad, singled out two she said had been wrecked
"on purpose". One was a milk plant in the Bekaa valley.

"It was our biggest milk factory in the Bekaa ... an
essential asset for bringing milk to newborn babies and
young children," she said.

The other was a detergent and foodstuffs warehouse for
Procter & Gamble, which she described as "essential for
food and hygiene".

Lebanon had also been expecting more than 1.2 million
tourists - mainly wealthy Gulf Arabs and people of
Lebanese descent - this summer. "It was going to be
brilliant," Ms Mouawad said. "We were expecting an income
of $2.5bn to $3bn [#1.3bn to #1.6bn], which was necessary
to start repaying our debts."

Some hotels have temporarily closed, although others in
Beirut have been full over the past few days with Lebanese
fleeing the Israeli onslaught and foreigners awaiting
evacuation.

Many shops and other small businesses have also closed,
either through lack of customers or because staff can no
longer travel to work.

According to Sami Haddad, the minister of economy and
trade, Lebanon has enough essential supplies to last two
months. The government's prime concern is food -
especially getting flour and grain to outlying villages.

"Any large transportation vehicles are being bombed ...
There is difficulty getting flour to some villages," he
said.

Besides securing food supplies, the government's other
main objective is to keep the price of essential goods
stable.

Despite the attacks on fuel stores, Mr Haddad said
supplies of petrol and diesel were "more than adequate"
for the time being. To conserve fuel, though, electricity
is being cut off in Beirut for six hours a day.

"Our fuel will last 45 to 60 days on this basis," the
minister said.

In the meantime, the Lebanese government has launched a
diplomatic initiative aimed at bringing in fresh supplies
through the Israeli-imposed blockade.

There have been contacts with the US, Britain and France,
and Lebanon is seeking international protection for
transporting essential goods.

"We are asking for a humanitarian corridor to link Lebanon
with the rest of the world - and a corridor within Lebanon
to bring assistance to most of the villages in the south
which are cut off from the rest of the country," Ms
Mouawad said. "They are poor villages and they are lacking
everything."

In one attack on Monday, Israeli missiles hit a convoy
near the town of Zahle as it approached Beirut from Syria.
Three trucks were damaged or destroyed, as well as four
passenger vehicles.

Journalists at the scene reported that the trucks had
contained supplies of medicines, vegetable oil, sugar and
rice. The Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates
said in a statement that the convoy had included medical
supplies and medicines, as well as several ambulances.
Officials in the UAE also said the convoy was clearly
marked as a relief operation.

The mass exodus from Lebanon has led many people to empty
their bank accounts, raising fears of a financial crisis.

The Central Bank has been propping up the Lebanese pound,
but according to local press reports there is no need to
panic because it has more than $13bn in foreign currency
reserves.

By tradition, Lebanon has a dual currency system, and US
dollars are in increasingly short supply. Banks have also
been restricting cash withdrawals in dollars, with an
upper limit of $2,000 to $3,000 a person.

Damage to date

Energy

. Jiye power station, 20 miles south of Beirut, repeatedly
hit; electricity generator hit in Sibline.

. Electricity in Beirut said to be "feeble and
flickering", with large areas cut off.

. In south, electrical supply almost completely cut.
Estimated total of 750,000 people without electricity.

. Four gas stores hit; 17 fuel stores destroyed; 12 petrol
stations bombed. Prices have rocketed sixfold in some
cities, such as Tyre.

Water

. Treatment plant hit in Dair al-Zahrani, south of Sidon.

. Two trucks with water drilling equipment destroyed in
Ashrafiyeh, Beirut.

Transport

. Of Lebanon's seven airports, Beirut airport out of
action (runways damaged, fuel tanks destroyed), Qoleiaat
in the north and Riyaq military airport in Bekaa severely
damaged. All main civilian and military radar stations out
of action.

. Three main seaports - Beirut, Tripoli and Jamil Gemayel
- hit. Maritime operations antenna hit in Tripoli; Beirut
lighthouse out of action.

. 38 main roads severely damaged from the air, including
road to Damascus.

. 55 bridges destroyed, mainly those running to southern
Lebanon.

Medical care

. Two hospitals hit, one in Nabatiyeh and one in the
southern suburbs of Beirut; at least one destroyed (Mayss
al-Jabal).

. Convoy of donated medical goods hit near Zahle.

Communications

. Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV station in Beirut hit.

Industry

. Liban Lait milk plant in Bekaa hit.

. Tissue paper factory in Sidon attacked.

. Paper mill in southern Beirut hit.

. Medical supplies company in southern Beirut hit; grain
silos hit at port.

. Warehouse of Transmed company in Beirut caught fire;
$10m losses.

. Stores of Procter & Gamble products hit in Choueifat.

Economy

. Stock market closed on Monday after falling 14%.

. Banks limit withdrawals by panicked customers to $1,000.
Central bank keeping currency stable, say dealers.

**********************************************************

(8) Thousands of IDF troops operating in S. Lebanon

Haaretz
21 July 2006

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/740874.html

Two IDF soldiers were killed and six others were wounded
in heavy clashes with Hezbollah just inside south Lebanon,
close to Moshav Avivim, on Thursday afternoon.

Hezbollah fired mortar shells in the area in effort to
disrupt the rescue of the wounded. The IDF believes that
several Hezbollah guerillas were killed in the
close-quarter confrontation.

A pilot was killed and three others were injured late
Thursday night when two IDF Apache helicopters collided in
northern Israel, near Kiryat Shmona.

Firefighters rushed to the scene of the collision on a
mountain overlooking Kiryat Shmona to put out a fire that
broke out.

Major-General Benny Gantz, who serves as the head of the
Ground Forces Command, said on Thursday that ground
fighting in limited areas in Lebanon would continue
despite the IDF's causalties.

Hezbollah bunkers are well-hidden and discernible only
from a close distance, said Gantz. "The operation is
challenging, difficult and complex. Unfortunately, there
is the price of casualties, but the other side, unlike us,
doesn't report their casualties," he added.

Thousands of Israeli troops are operating in south Lebanon
where they are targetting Hezbollah positions. Among their
activities, they are searching for tunnels dug by
Hezbollah militants. According to the army, Hezbollah
fighters have taken refuge inside these tunnels - often
dug under homes in villages - along with their rockets,
and that they occasionally emerge to fire one into Israel.

On Thursday morning, three IDF soldiers were wounded in
two separate clashes with Hezbollah in the same area.

Two of the soldiers were wounded, one moderately and the
other lightly, when a rocket hit a tank.

A third soldier from a paratroop unit was seriously
wounded in fighting with a Hezbollah cell.

The soldier sustained head injuries and was taken to
Rambam Hospital in Haifa.

The army said Thursday's clashes broke out not far from
where Hezbollah killed two IDF troops and wounded nine
others Wednesday.

Four civilians were killed in an Israel Air Force strike
on a car in the southern coastal city of Tyre.

Earlier Thursday, IAF jets renewed air strikes on Beirut's
southern suburbs, Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV reported.

Al-Manar's report of the attack on the Bir al-Abed
neighborhood came after a relatively quiet night in
Beirut, following the massive Wednesday evening attack by
IAF jets on what the military believed was a bunker used
by senior Hezbollah leaders, including Sheikh Hassan
Nasrallah.

There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties in
Bir al-Abed.

Army chief tells troops fighting may last a long time
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz told IDF
troops that the fighting in the north may go on for an
extended period of time. In his first missive since the
start of the recent conflict with Hezbollah, Halutz stated
that, "We are responsible for defending our independence
and the integrity of our country."

"The State of Israel is in the midst of fighting an
extremist Islamic terrorist organization that denies our
right to exist, and is operating under the auspices of
Iran and Syria, which aim to threaten Israel's
sovereignty. The fighting was aggravated after
provocations by Hezbollah and Hamas, which carried out
terrorist attacks in Israeli territory, in which a number
of IDF fighters were killed and Corporal Gilad Shalit and
reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were abducted.
We are responsible for defending our country's
independence and sovereignty, and for the security of its
citizens.

"The fighting in the north was added to the fighting in
Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and may continue for an extended
period of time. This is a test for us. Our moral and
ideological strength will reflect on the country's
citizens and will aid their ability to face the threat on
the home front. The society's strength and the trust has
in the IDF strengthens us and will continue to do so. We
will do whatever it takes to maintain the state's
security.

"The terrorist groups misread the map and misinterpreted
the resolve of Israeli society and the IDF. The army is
operating on the Lebanese front to destroy terrorist
infrastructure and terrorist-supporting infrastructure. We
hit and will hit Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, as well
as the organization's rockets, while hitting Palestinian
terror.

"You - the dedicated and determined soldiers and
commanders - who remain true to the mission and operate
according to the IDF spirit, will continue to serve as the
source of strength for the IDF and the basis for our
success. A strong IDF serves as a security network for our
country's continued existence.

"I send my condolences to the families who paid the heavy
price of losing a loved one, wish a speedy recovery to the
wounded, and support the families of our abducted
soldiers. We are trying to bring our boys home.

"IDF soldiers and commanders - we carry the flag of
security and defend the borders of the state of Israel.
Together we will continue to carry out our missions with
diligence, wisdom and resolve."

Halutz warns Hezbollah wants war of attrition with Israel
Halutz warned the security cabinet on Wednesday that
Hezbollah wants to drag Israel into a war of attrition in
Lebanon, whereas Israel wants "a short and forceful war."

His comments came as two Israeli children were killed by a
rocket in Nazareth and two IDF soldiers were killed and
nine wounded in clashes with Hezbollah gunmen in Lebanon.

"They realize that prolonged attrition causes internal
pressure from Israeli citizens and international pressure,
and think that those are our weak points," Halutz said,
adding that Hezbollah wants the fighting to extend over a
long period "so that we will capitulate."

The chief of staff said that IDF 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
in an effort to damage Hezbollah's tactical operational
capability.

The IDF has succeeded in damaging Hezbollah's ability to
fire rockets on Israel, Halutz said.

"We damage, diminish, weaken and erode," he told the
ministers. "Hezbollah's consciousness has already been
seared, and they understood completely that Israel is
reacting in a way that they never thought we would react."

Halutz said that plans have already been laid for a ground
incursion, but that the army is not implementing them at
the moment.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that the IDF has "as much
time as you want to complete the mission."

**********************************************************

(9) Israel preparing Lebanon ground offensive

By LEE KEATH

Associated Press
21 July 2006

Pitched battles raged between Israeli forces and Hezbollah
fighters on the border Thursday, and Israel warned
hundreds of thousands of people to flee southern Lebanon
"immediately," preparing for a likely ground offensive to
set up a buffer zone.

U.N. chief Kofi Annan warned of a humanitarian crisis in
Lebanon and called for an immediate cease-fire, even as he
admitted "serious obstacles" stand in the way of even
easing the violence. Annan denounced Israel for "excessive
use of force" and Hezbollah for holding "an entire nation
hostage" with its rocket attacks and snatching of two
Israeli soldiers last week.

As the death toll rose to 330 in Lebanon, as well as at
least 32 Israelis, Lebanese streamed north into the
capital and other regions, crowding into schools,
relatives' homes or hotels. Taxi drivers in the south were
charging up to $400 per person for rides to Beirut -- more
than 40 times the usual price. In remote villages of the
south, cut off by strikes, residents made their way out
over the mountains by foot.

The price of food, medical supplies and gasoline rose by
as much as 500 percent in parts of Lebanon on Thursday as
Israel's relentless bombardment destroyed roads, bridges
and other supply routes. The World Food Program said
estimates of basic food supplies ranged from one to three
months.

On a day that saw U.S. Marines return to Lebanon for the
first time in 22 years, the war looked ready to expand
dramatically. Neither side showed any sign of backing
down. Hezbollah refused to release its two Israeli
soldiers without a prisoner exchange, Israel was aiming to
create a new buffer zone in a region that saw 18 years of
Israeli presence ending in 2000.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah shrugged off
concerns of a stepped-up Israeli onslaught, vowing never
to release two Israeli soldiers captured by his guerrillas
even "if the whole universe comes (against us)." He said
they would be freed only as part of a prisoner exchange
brokered through indirect negotiations.

He spoke in an interview with the Al-Jazeera news network
taped Thursday to show he had survived a heavy airstrike
in south Beirut that Israel said targeted a Hezbollah
underground leadership bunker. The guerrillas said the
strike only hit a mosque under construction and no one was
hurt.

The United States -- which has resisted calls to press its
ally Israel to halt the fighting -- was sending Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice to the region, arriving in
Israel on Tuesday or Wednesday after stopping over in Arab
nations, Israeli officials said. They spoke on condition
of anonymity because the schedule was not yet confirmed.

The mission would be the first U.S. diplomatic effort on
the ground since the Israeli onslaught against Lebanon
began nine days ago.

Israel has decided air power alone will not be enough to
drive Hezbollah back from the Israeli-Lebanon border and
that a ground force will be needed to establish a zone
that is at least 20 miles deep, senior military officials
said Thursday. That would force Hezbollah behind the
Litani River.

Israel wants to send a strong message to all its enemies,
especially Iran, that the consequences of attacking the
Jewish state will be unbearable.

But mounting civilian casualties and the displacement of
hundreds of thousands of Lebanese could limit the amount
of time Israel has to achieve its goals, as international
tolerance for the bloodshed and destruction runs out.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora put the death toll at
more than 330 -- at least 11 of them killed Thursday -- with
1,100 wounded. At least 32 Israelis have been killed,
including 17 service members -- three of them killed in
military operations Thursday and early Friday.

Saniora said more than 55 bridges across the country had
been destroyed, and that Israeli forces had targeted
ambulances and medical convoys.

"This attack is no longer against Hezbollah, it is an
attack against the Lebanese and Lebanon," Saniora told
CNN.

The U.N. estimated that about a half-million people have
been displaced in Lebanon, with 130,000 fleeing to Syria
and about 45,000 believed to be in need of assistance.

More than 600 relatives of U.N. peacekeepers and other
foreigners were evacuated by ship from the southern port
city of Tyre, a region south of the Litani that has seen a
ferocious pounding by Israeli warplanes and gunboats for
days. Many of the women and children had spent the night
on the beach waiting for the ship that arrived Thursday
morning and took them to Cyprus.

The exodus of Americans and other foreign nationals
stepped up dramatically, with ships lining up off Beirut
to take thousands of families waiting at the port out of
the war zone.

A group of around 40 U.S. Marines hit the ground in
Beirut, helping in the evacuation of hundreds of Americans
to a Navy transport vessel, the USS Nashville, offshore --
the first U.S. military deployment in Lebanon in 22 years.
More than 2,200 Americans were pulled out Thursday, twice
the number a day before.

Israeli forces resumed attacks on Beirut at daybreak on
Friday, witnesses said. One loud explosion was heard in
the Lebanese capital. Al-Arabyia TV said the strike
targeted Beirut's southern suburbs, Hezbollah's
stronghold.

Israeli aircraft also targeted the town of Nabi Sheet in
the eastern Bekaa valley, witnesses and Hezbollah's
Al-Manar TV said. Witnesses said strikes hit the town and
overlooking hills, where Hezbollah guerillas have been
known to operate. There were no immediate reports of
casualties.

Israeli strikes Thursday also pounded southern Beirut and
the Bekaa valley as well as villages and towns in the
Shiite heartland of the south.

Hezbollah, in turn, fired more than 40 rockets into
northern Israel.

The clashes about a mile inside the Lebanese side of the
border Thursday evening came when an Israeli patrol
sweeping for Hezbollah bunkers was ambushed by guerillas,
taking casualties. The fight rapidly expanded, with
Israeli helicopters firing missiles at targets on the
ground and rescue forces storming in.

The Israeli military said two Israeli soldiers died in the
fighting and several guerrillas were killed. Hezbollah's
Al-Manar television said three Israeli soldiers were
killed but did not mention guerrilla casualties.

Two Apache attack helicopters collided in an accident
northern Israel near the Lebanon border early Friday,
killing one air force officer and injuring three others,
two seriously, Israeli officials said. Al-Jazeera reported
that four soldiers were killed in the crash, but did not
give a source.

The commander of Israel's air force appointed an inquiry
team to determine the cause.

Israel has stepped up its small-scale forays over the
border in recent days, seeking Hezbollah positions, rocket
stores and bunkers. Each time it has faced tough
resistance from the guerrillas.

In preparation for a more powerful punch deeper into
Lebanon, an Israeli military radio station that broadcasts
into the south issued what it called "a strict warning"
that Israeli forces would "act immediately" to halt
Hezbollah rocket fire.

"It will act in word and deed inside the villages of the
south against these aggressive terrorist acts. Therefore
all residents of south Lebanon south of the Litani must
leave their areas immediately for their own safety," the
message in Arabic on the Al-Mashriq station said.

More than 300,000 people are believed to live south of the
Litani -- which twice has been the border line for Israeli
buffer zones. In 1978, Israel invaded up to the Litani to
drive back Palestinian guerrillas, withdrawing from most
of the south months later.

Israel invaded Lebanon again in a much bigger operation in
June 1982 when its forces seized parts of Beirut. It
eventually carved out a buffer zone that stopped at the
Litani. That zone was reduced gradually but the Israeli
presence lasted for 18 years until 2000, when it withdrew
its troops completely from the country.

_ Associated Press reporter Maria Sanminiatelli in
Larnaca, Cyprus, contributed to this report.

**********************************************************

(10) Invaders test ground defenses in South

By Leila Hatoum and Mohammed Zaatari

The Daily Star
21 July 2006

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&
categ_id=2&article_id=74137

BEIRUT: Israel has opened a 60-kilometer front along the
southern Lebanese border, from Naqoura to Majidiyeh, a
Lebanese security source said on Thursday. "This front is
to estimate Hizbullah's retaliation strength on the
ground," the source said. "The fighting zone is inside
Lebanese territory, which the UN itself has marked and
which Israel agrees is Lebanese."

As The Daily Star went to press, three Israeli bombs fell
on the southern suburbs of the capital and additional
ordnance hit the northern city of Baalbek, leaving both
areas ablaze. No casualty count was available.

Although up to now Israel has only hinted that it might
undertake a full-scale invasion of Lebanon, on Thursday
its tanks in fact attempted to cross the UN-demarcated
Blue Line.

According to a Hizbullah statement, Israeli troops met
"fierce resistance from Hizbullah fighters as the Israelis
crossed into Lebanon."

An Israeli Army spokesperson said his troops were looking
for "tunnels and weapons for the second day."

The Hizbullah statement said Israeli tanks and soldiers
were "relentlessly trying to advance into Lebanese
territory to achieve any military victory, but they were
defeated by Hizbullah fighters. The latest Israeli attempt
to advance toward the Southern Lebanon town of Maroun
Al-Rass failed as the Israelis lost two Merkava tanks and
a helicopter."

According to a statement from Amal, one Hizbullah fighter
- identified as Hani Alawiya, 50 - died in the clashes at
Maroun Al-Rass.

A separate Hizbullah statement said nine Israeli soldiers
died in a Hizbullah ambush Thursday afternoon.

The resistance group's Al-Manar TV aired footage of
Israeli Army equipment seized by Hizbullah fighters in the
clashes.

Hizbullah guerrillas continued on Thursday their missile
bombardment of Haifa, the party said, and fighters
advanced as far inside Israel as the northern settlement
of Avirvim.

Meanwhile, a source close to the resistance denied reports
that rocket posts in Baalbek had been hit, or that the
party had such posts in the area.

Media reports said Thursday that Israeli warplanes had
struck Hizbullah's rocket operations headquarters in
Baalbek and claimed the unit controlled the party's
storage and distribution of rockets.

Also Thursday, Israeli warplanes and warships continued
their bombardment of Lebanon, from the North to the South
and the Bekaa Valley.

In the latest reported civilian casualties, four Lebanese
were killed when an Israeli missile struck their car in
Tyre as they were fleeing the city.

Beirut's southern suburbs were hit in the early morning.
The strike targeted a construction site that Hizbullah
said was a mosque.

"No Hizbullah leaders or members died in Thursday's
bombing of Bourj al-Barajneh [part of Beirut's southern
suburbs]," said a statement. Hizbullah dismissed as false
claims made by the Israeli Army that the strike targeted a
bunker.

"The building which Israel used 23 tons of explosives on
was a mosque," it said.

The bombardment of the suburbs resumed Thursday afternoon
as Israeli attack helicopters targeted the area's empty
streets and buildings.

The flow of displaced Lebanese also continued Thursday, as
residents of Southern towns and villages, under constant
attack by Israel, continued to pour into Sidon.

Eyewitnesses said that convoys of hundreds of families
"crammed in cars and buses, starting to arrive in Sidon
and its suburbs during the early hours Thursday."

Malek Abdul-Khaliq, the governor of the South, and
representatives from the Higher Relief Committee
distributed 4,000 food portions and aid to the displaced
Thursday, in collaboration with the army.

The Hariri Foundation has also provided the displaced with
7,000 food portions, 2,000 mattresses and 3,000 blankets
over the past week.

The UN and several humanitarian organizations have
estimated that some 500,000 Lebanese have been displaced
by the Israeli assault.

The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
(UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees said Thursday that the
situation for civilians in the South "is increasingly
critical due to Israeli raids."

Sven Berthelsen told the Danish news agency Ritzau from
Beirut that "the situation is serious and is deteriorating
every day.

"They are starting to lose electricity, and water pumps
are working less and less," he added. "Very few basic
foodstuffs are getting to this zone."

In the absence of safe passage guarantees from Israel,
UNRWA is unable to send aid to the region. UNICEF, the WHO
and the UNHCR are facing the same dilemma.

Other NGOs are working on the ground to help the displaced
but their numbers are increasing and the offerings the
NGOs have are insufficient, a Daily Star reporter
observed.

Separately, the Lebanese Higher Relief Commission said
that at least 30 houses had been completely destroyed
since Israel launched its attacks, 1,000 residences
damaged, 20 bridges demolished and five gas stations
burned in the Bekaa district. - With agencies

**********************************************************

(11) Nazareth residents blame Israel for attack

By BENJAMIN HARVEY

Associated Press
20 July 2006

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060721/ap_on_re_mi_ea/
mideast_fighting_israel_s_arabs

About 60 men gathered under a black tent in this Arab
Israeli city Thursday to drink bitter coffee, accept
condolence visits and mourn two young brothers killed by a
Hezbollah rocket the day before.

Many in this town did not blame Hezbollah for the deaths,
holding Israel responsible instead. Some expressed support
for the Lebanese guerrillas -- underscoring the divided
allegiances of Israel's Arabs.

"I'm not angry at anyone, this is all from God," said Abir
Talussi, the father of 4-year-old Mahmoud and 8-year-old
Rabiah, who were killed as they played in the street.

"It's war, and we are stuck in the middle," said his
brother, Omar Talussi. "All the world knows the reason,
everybody knows."

Another mourner chimed in: "It's Israel's fault."

"That's it," Omar Talussi said, wiping his hands in a
motion of disgust.

Many Arabs here, who are Israeli citizens, feel they are
involved in their own low-level fight with Israel.

Though they make up about 20 percent of Israel's
population, their towns often get less development money
than comparable Jewish areas and their average incomes are
usually far less than those of the general population.

Many Israelis consider the Arabs a fifth column allied
with the country's enemies, while many Arabs feel the
country's Jews would just as soon push them out.

Nazareth, where scripture says Jesus grew up, is the
largest Arab city in Israel. Two-thirds of its 70,000
residents are Muslims, with Christians making up the rest.
Few believed Hezbollah, the Islamic group that has been
raining hundreds of rockets across northern Israel, would
have intentionally attacked them.

"This is not Israel. This is Nazareth," said 36-year-old
Ayman Besher.

"Everybody knows it was an accident," said Afif Zidani,
who acted as a translator for the grieving family.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah expressed regret
in an interview on Al-Jazeera TV Thursday, saying he
apologized to the family and considered the children
martyrs.

"No one here is mad at Hezbollah," Zidani said. "Nobody."

Nazim Abu Salim, the Muslim cleric who addressed the
mourners, seated on plastic chairs in a parking lot, said
the radical Islamic militia is Lebanon's protector -- a far
cry from official Israel's description of the organization
as a terrorist group that provoked Israel's nine-day-old
bombing campaign in Lebanon by kidnapping two soldiers in
a cross-border raid.

"Hezbollah belongs to Lebanon," Abu Salim said. "They are
the sons of Lebanon, the heart of Lebanon. Not like
America says, they protect Lebanon from these evils."

People in Nazareth's downtown tourist district, near the
Basilica of the Annunciation, where Christians believe the
Angel Gabriel foretold the birth of Jesus to the Virgin
Mary, were more guarded in their language but expressed
similar sentiments.

"Nobody will tell you (Hezbollah leader Hassan) Nasrallah
is a killer," one man said, refusing to give his name.
"Ask. No one here will tell you he's a terrorist."

**********************************************************

(12) EU's Solana meets families of three abducted IDF soldiers

By Jack Khoury and Tomer Levi

Haaretz
21 July 2006

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/741149.html

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana on
Thursday met the families of the three captured Israeli
soldiers, promising to help free them.

"Solana was more optimistic about the release of Gilad,"
said Noam Shalit, the father of Gilad Shalit, after the
meeting held in the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. "I very
much hope he is right, and of course, we want the three
boys to come home as soon as possible."

Shalit was captured over three weeks ago near Kerem
Shalom, near the Gaza border. The other two soldiers, Ehud
Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, were abducted on the Lebanese
border.

"I was so surprised by his approach, and feel he really
means to help us return the boys," said Shlomo Goldwasser,
Ehud's father, who described the meeting as 'very warm.'
"He said he has connections in Iran."

The meeting, which Solana initiated, took place a day
after IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz visited the homes of
the two soldiers captured in Lebanon.

Goldwasser said the families did not receive any new
details about their sons' condition. 'I assume the chief
of staff doesn't know much either," he said.

Local and foreign media outlets are also interested in
talking to the families. The Goldwassers, for example,
received a call from Larry King, who asked to interview
them live on his CNN talk show.


**********************************************************

(13) Latin American demonstrators protest Israel offensive in
Lebanon

Associated Press
21 July 2006

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/741148.html

Protesters burned an Israeli flag Thursday outside the
country's embassy in Venezuela and demanded an end to
Israel's military offensive in Lebanon, while crowds also
took to the streets in Mexico and El Salvador to press for
a halt to the fighting.

More than 2,000 protesters, including Venezuelans of Arab
descent, marched through Caracas waving Lebanese, Syrian
and Palestinian flags. Many were die-hard supporters of
President Hugo Chavez, who has denounced the Israeli
bombardments in Lebanon as a "genocide."

Dozens of protesters pumped their fists in the air and
shouted "Viva Lebanon!" when one man held up a poster of
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

Others raised a banner reading, "Stop the genocide by the
Zionist killers!"

Venezuela has a sizeable Arab immigrant community,
including many Lebanese.

Protester Abdul Chaaban, 50, said he feared for the lives
of his relatives in southern Lebanon, which was hit by
Israeli warplanes again on Thursday as Hezbollah
guerrillas fired more rocket volleys into Israel.

"There is no justification for Israel's actions," said
Chaaban, holding up a Lebanese flag.

The demonstrators marched several kilometers (miles) from
a city park in eastern Caracas to the Israeli Embassy,
where protesters burned an Israeli flag.

Chavez on Wednesday night said the Israelis "are bombing
entire cities - a true genocide."

His government has said in the past that it maintained
good relations with Israel. Israeli Embassy officials
could not immediately be reached for comment.

In Mexico City, meanwhile, about 100 people from the
Lebanese immigrant community gave a letter to U.N.
representatives saying that "Lebanon cannot be kept as a
battlefield," and urging peace. They marched to the
Lebanese Embassy, where they held a moment of silence and
left a vase of roses outside.

"It is a peaceful protest to repudiate the war and the
amount of innocent blood that has been shed," said Jose
Luis Nacif, vice president of the Lebanese Center in
Mexico City.

In El Salvador, protesters gathered outside the Israeli
Embassy and criticized Salvadoran President Tony Saca, who
is of Palestinian descent, for not denouncing Israel.

"We want to condemn the massacre that Israel is committing
in Palestinian and Lebanese territories. It is an
injustice," said Jhon Nasser, from the Friends of
Palestinians Association in El Salvador.

In Chile, President Michelle Bachelet said an air force
plane will fly to the Syrian capital of Damascus Friday to
bring home Chileans and other Latin Americans who fled
there from the fighting in Lebanon. The Chilean foreign
ministry said about 150 Chileans were believed to have
been in Beirut when fighting broke out.

Venezuelans also have been evacuated from Lebanon to
Madrid, Spain.

Officials in Sao Paulo said at least 700 Brazilians were
seeking help from Brazil's government to leave Lebanon.
Some 100 Brazilians were brought back to Brazil earlier
this week, government officials said.

**********************************************************

(14) House on track to voice support for Israel's military
campaign in Lebanon

Associated Press
20 July 2006

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-07-20-house-
lebanon_x.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Little of the political divisiveness in
Congress over Iraq war policy is evident as lawmakers rush
to embrace the Bush administration's staunch support of
Israel in the latest flare-up of violence in the Middle
East. House Republican leader John Boehner cited Israel's
"unique relationship" with the United States as a reason
for his colleagues to swiftly go on record supporting
Israel in its confrontation with Hezbollah guerrillas in
Lebanon.

So strong was the momentum that it was steamrolling
efforts by a small group of House members who argued that
Congress's pro-Israel stance goes too far.

The non-binding resolution, expected to pass the House by
a large margin Thursday, is similar to one the Senate
passed Tuesday. It harshly condemns Israel's enemies and
says Syria and Iran should be held accountable for
providing Hezbollah with money and missile technology used
to attack Israel.

"I certainly sympathize with the Lebanese people and the
Lebanese government," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CBS'
"The Early Show" on Thursday. But, he said, if Hezbollah
is "going to launch attacks from the Lebanese territory,
then tragically the Lebanese government and people pay a
price for that."

Yet as Republican and Democratic leaders rally behind the
measure in rare bipartisan fashion, a handful of lawmakers
have quietly expressed reservations that the resolution
was too much the result of a powerful lobbying force and
attempts to court Jewish voters.

"I'm just sick in the stomach, to put it mildly," said
Rep. Nick J. Rahall II, D-W.Va., who is of Lebanese
descent.

Rahall joined other Arab-American lawmakers in drafting an
alternative resolution that would have omitted language
holding Lebanon responsible for Hezbollah's actions and
called for restraint from all sides. Rahall said that
proposal was "politely swept under the rug," a political
reality he and others say reflects the influence Israel
has in Congress.

"There's a lot (of lawmakers) that don't feel it's right
... but vote yes, and get it the heck out of here," Rahall
said.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who co-sponsored the
alternative resolution and also is of Lebanese descent,
agreed. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby
"throws in language that AIPAC wants. That isn't always
the best thing for this body to endorse," Issa said.

Nevertheless, Rahall and Issa said they were considering
voting in favor of the resolution. "I want to show support
for Israel's right to defend itself," Issa said.

Another lawmaker with Lebanese roots, Rep. Charles
Boustany Jr., R-La., said he too planned to vote in favor
of the resolution despite holding deep reservations on its
language regarding Lebanon. "I think it's a good
resolution. But I think it's incomplete," he said.

The lack of momentum for alternative proposals frustrated
pro-Arab groups.

"This is the usual problem with any resolution that talks
about Israel -- there are a lot of closet naysayers up
there (in Congress), but they don't want to be a target of
the lobby" of Israel, said Eugene H. Bird, president of
the Council for the National Interest, a group that
harshly condemns Israel's military campaign.

"These guys aren't legislating. They're politicking," said
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute.

An AIPAC spokeswoman said Congress's overwhelming support
for Israel reflects the support of U.S. voters and not any
pressure applied by lobbyists. "The American people
overwhelming support Israel's war on terrorism and
understand that we must stand by our closest ally in this
time of crisis," said Jennifer Cannata.

Meanwhile, Israel is predicting its offensive could last
for weeks, although international pressure is building for
a quick cease-fire. Israel and the United States oppose
that move, preferring a more comprehensive agreement.
Lebanon's prime minister estimated Wednesday that Israel's
military week-old campaign had killed some 300 people and
wounded 1,000 more, most of whom were civilians.

The White House on Thursday defended its stance in the
Mideast crisis, brushing off allegations that the United
States is not pressuring Israel to stop its attacks on
Hezbollah militants in Lebanon that have claimed civilian
lives.

"We think that Hezbollah has gone too far in holding
captive the southern part of Lebanon," White House press
secretary Tony Snow said.

He said U.S. officials are actively involved in
negotiations to put pressure on Hezbollah and its backers,
Syria and Iran. Two U.S. envoys have traveled to the
region and the president has had ongoing conversations
with leaders in the region, including a 12-minute call
Thursday morning with Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, Snow said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice planned to discuss
diplomatic efforts to end the violence, and the
possibility of international troops to police a peace,
over dinner Thursday in New York with United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Snow declined to disclose details of Bush's conversations
with leaders in the region, but said the U.S. wants a
cease-fire, but one that would ensure the integrity of the
Lebanese government and that Hezbollah would stop firing
rockets into Israel and using people in southern Lebanon
as human shields.

"The question is 'How would the United States stop the
fighting?'" Snow asked. "I'm not sure at this juncture --
you don't just step in and put up a stop sign."

**********************************************************

(15) In Mideast Strife, Bush Sees a Step To Peace

By Michael Abramowitz

The Washington Post

21 July 2006

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/
07/20/AR2006072001907_pf.html

President Bush's unwillingness to pressure Israel to halt
its military campaign in Lebanon is rooted in a view of
the Middle East conflict that is sharply different from
that of his predecessors.

When hostilities have broken out in the past, the usual
U.S. response has been an immediate and public bout of
diplomacy aimed at a cease-fire, in the hopes of ensuring
that the crisis would not escalate. This week, however,
even in the face of growing international demands, the
White House has studiously avoided any hint of impatience
with Israel. While making it plain it wants civilian
casualties limited, the administration is also content to
see the Israelis inflict the maximum damage possible on
Hezbollah.

As the president's position is described by White House
officials, Bush associates and outside Middle East
experts, Bush believes that the status quo -- the presence
in a sovereign country of a militant group with missiles
capable of hitting a U.S. ally -- is unacceptable.

The U.S. position also reflects Bush's deepening belief
that Israel is central to the broader campaign against
terrorists and represents a shift away from a more
traditional view that the United States plays an "honest
broker's" role in the Middle East.

In the administration's view, the new conflict is not just
a crisis to be managed. It is also an opportunity to
seriously degrade a big threat in the region, just as Bush
believes he is doing in Iraq. Israel's crippling of
Hezbollah, officials also hope, would complete the work of
building a functioning democracy in Lebanon and send a
strong message to the Syrian and Iranian backers of
Hezbollah.

"The president believes that unless you address the root
causes of the violence that has afflicted the Middle East,
you cannot forge a lasting peace," said White House
counselor Dan Bartlett. "He mourns the loss of every life.
Yet out of this tragic development, he believes a moment
of clarity has arrived."

One former senior administration official said Bush is
only emboldened by the pressure from U.N. officials and
European leaders to lead a call for a cease-fire. U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan demanded yesterday that the
fighting in Lebanon stop.

"He thinks he is playing in a longer-term game than the
tacticians," said the former official, who spoke
anonymously so he could discuss his views candidly. "The
tacticians would say: 'Get an immediate cease-fire. Deal
first with the humanitarian factors.' The president would
say: 'You have an opportunity to really grind down
Hezbollah. Let's take it, even if there are other serious
consequences that will have to be managed.' "

Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Jewish Congress, said
Bush's statements reflect an unambiguous view of the
situation. "He doesn't seem to allow his vision to be
clouded in any way," said Rosen, a Democrat who has come
to admire Bush's Middle East policy. "It follows suit.
Israel is in the right. Hezbollah is in the wrong.
Terrorists have to be eliminated, and he sees Israel
fighting the war he would fight against terrorism."

Many Mideast experts warn that there is a dangerous
consequence to this worldview. They believe that Israel,
and the United States by extension, is risking serious
trouble if it continues with the punishing air strikes
that are producing mounting casualties. The history of the
Middle East is replete with examples of the limits of
military power, they say, noting how the Israeli campaign
in Lebanon in the early 1980s helped create the conditions
for the rise of Hezbollah.

They warned that the military campaign is turning
mainstream Lebanese public opinion against Israel rather
than against Hezbollah, which instigated the violence. The
attacks also make it more difficult for the Lebanese
government to regain normalcy. And what seems now to be a
political winner for the president -- the House
overwhelmingly approved a resolution yesterday backing
Israel's position -- could become a liability if the
fighting expands to Syria or if the United States adds
Lebanon to Iraq and Afghanistan as a country to which U.S.
troops are deployed.

"There needs to be a signal that the Bush administration
is prepared to do something," said Larry Garber, the
executive director the New Israel Fund, which pushes for
civil rights and justice in Israel. "Taking a complete
hands-off, casual-observer position undermines our
credibility. . . . There is a danger that we will be seen
as simply doing Israel's bidding."

Robert Malley, who handled Middle East issues on the
National Security Council staff for President Bill
Clinton, voiced skepticism about whether the current
course would pay off for either Israel or the United
States. "It may not succeed with all the time in the
world, and Hezbollah could emerge with its dignity intact
and much of its political and military arsenal still
available," said Malley, who monitors the region for the
International Crisis Group. "What will you have gained?"

Those who know Bush say his view of the conflict was
shaped by several formative experiences -- in particular
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which made fighting terrorism
the central mission of his presidency. Another formative
experience was a helicopter ride over the West Bank with
Ariel Sharon in 1998, when Bush was Texas governor -- a
ride he later said showed him Israel's vulnerability. The
cause of Israel has been championed by many of the
evangelical Christians who make up a significant chunk of
the president's political base.

Bush and his team were also deeply skeptical of the Middle
East policy of the previous administration, and of what
they see as an excessive devotion to a peace process in
which one of the protagonists, Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat, was not seriously invested. Explaining the
reluctance to push quickly for a cease-fire, one senior
administration official who was not authorized to speak on
the record indicated a belief that premature diplomacy
might leave Hezbollah in a position of strength.

"We don't want the kind of truce that will lead to another
conflict," said this official, who added that, when the
time comes, "you will see plenty of diplomacy."

Fred S. Zeidman, a Texas venture capitalist who is active
in Jewish affairs and has been close to the president for
years, said the current crisis shows the depth of the
president's support for Israel. "He will not bow to
international pressure to pressure Israel," Zeidman said.
"I have never seen a man more committed to Israel."

**********************************************************

(16) Ministers accused of giving Israel green light to bomb

By Ben Russell and Colin Brown

The Independent
21 July 2006

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1188876.
ece

Ministers faced strong criticism from across the House of
Commons yesterday as MPs accused the Government of helping
to fuel the crisis in the Middle East.

Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, faced angry
claims from Labour and Opposition benches that the
Government had given diplomatic cover to continued Israeli
bombing by failing to call for an immediate ceasefire.

In the Commons, Labour MPs led by Clare Short, the former
international development secretary, attacked the
Government for its stance on Israeli attacks.

Ms Short warned that "massive killing of innocent Lebanese
civilians and destruction of infrastructure" amounted to a
war crime. She said: "We are heading for further violence
and catastrophe. And I'm sad to say that our Government is
following President Bush's errors and pouring petrol on
the flames."

Privately some senior ministers said they were "appalled"
that Mrs Beckett had failed to visit the region to
demonstrate British concern at the scale of the Israeli
bombardment. Mrs Beckett told the Cabinet that those
calling for a halt to hostilities, including the French
government, were in effect demanding a one-sided
ceasefire.

She told MPs Britain was committed to ending the conflict
and maintained that Britain had urged restraint on all
sides, and said she "regretted" loss of life.

But MPs queued up to criticise the Government. Joan
Ruddock, Labour MP for Lewisham Deptford and a former
minister, asked Mrs Beckett: "There can be no doubt that
Hizbollah started this conflict. But would she not agree
that the response by Israel with 300 Lebanese civilians
dead, 1,000 injured, and half a million people
dispossessed, is utterly disproportionate?"

Michael Ancram, the former shadow foreign secretary,
asked: "Does she believe that the action taken by the
Israeli government, understandable initially as a response
against terrorism, is proportionate or disproportionate?"

Chris Mullin, a former Foreign Office minister, said: "Is
it not just a tiny bit shameful that although we rightly
condemn Hizbollah for what they have done, we can find
nothing stronger than the word regret to describe the
slaughter and misery and mayhem that Israel has unleashed
on a fragile country like Lebanon?"

Mrs Beckett insisted that Syria and Iran were "giving
support" to Hizbollah. She said: "Syria finances Hizbollah
and facilitates the transfer of weapons including
thousands of weapons which appear to be supplied by Iran."

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, said:
"Both myself and others have repeatedly asked for the
Prime Minister to support an even-handed response. We all
accept the Hizbollah should be condemned.

"Tony Blair must now accept that Israel's actions are
disproportionate and amount to collective punishment.
There should be an immediate ceasefire as Kofi Annan has
now confirmed."

**********************************************************

17) UK govt rift over Blair's cheerleading for Israeli attack (Guardian)

Downing St and Foreign Office at odds on Lebanon

By Patrick Wintour and Ewen MacAskill

The Guardian
21 July 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,1825645,00.html

A rift has opened up between Downing Street and the
Foreign Office over Israel's continued bombing of Lebanon
and the high civilian death toll. Tony Blair is publicly
highly supportive of Israel and has declined to call for
an immediate ceasefire. But some in the Foreign Office are
now privately urging greater restraint by Israel amid
concern that the scale of the bombardment is
counter-productive, disproportionate, and undermining the
political stability of the Lebanese government.

Margaret Beckett, who only became foreign secretary three
months ago, is trying to straddle the divide between
Downing Street and her department. But she refused to bow
to intense Labour backbench pressure yesterday in the
Commons either to call for an unconditional ceasefire or
condemn the Israeli action as disproportionate.

The Tories for the first time condemned the Israeli
actions as disproportionate.

Mrs Beckett limited herself to calling for restraint on
all sides, and pointing out it would be "a pity" if Israel
lost the "window of opportunity in which it can highlight
to the international community the scale and nature of the
danger which Israel and its people face". She added that
"the government has no wish or desire for the events in
Lebanon to continue for a second longer than is
necessary".

Her remarks were taken to imply that the Israeli action,
in response to the arrest of two Israeli soldiers and the
Hizbullah rocket attacks, was necessary.

By contrast, her junior minister, Kim Howells - due to
travel to the region today - was more openly critical of
the Israelis, as well as Hizbullah, reflecting the mood
among many British diplomats and most Labour MPs.

Mr Howells revealed the Foreign Office "had repeatedly
urged Israel to act proportionately, to conform with
international law and to avoid the appalling civilian
deaths and suffering we are witnessing on our television
screens".

He added that Louise Arbour, the United Nations high
commissioner for human rights, had to be taken very
seriously when she said this week that the attacks on both
sides could be war crimes under international law.

No 10 has given no sign that it is shifting from its
support of the US position of giving Israel time to reduce
Hizbullah's military capacity.

In private, the Foreign Office, which has a reputation as
being traditionally pro-Arabist, is sceptical about the
Israeli strategy and its impact on the wider Middle East.
It regards the Israeli bombardment as partly reflecting a
need by the new Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to
establish his credibility as successor to the hawkish
Ariel Sharon.

Reports from British representatives in Lebanon challenge
whether Israel, after its initial attack, is having much
impact on Hizbullah. A British official in London warned
there was a danger that the civilian deaths risked
alienating Arab governments that until now had refrained
from condemning Israel's attacks.

Fighting flared on both sides of the border yesterday,
amid signs that Israel was preparing a ground invasion. At
least two Israeli soldiers and two Hizbullah fighters were
killed. Later two Israeli helicopters collided six miles
from the border, injuring four Israeli servicemen.

There has been an apparent policy vacuum at the Foreign
Office since the conflict began last week. A Foreign
Office source said: "It is difficult for the British to do
anything. We cannot work out the direction of travel until
we hear from the UN security council and know the intent
of the US."

In the Commons, many Labour MPs were furious that the the
shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, was prepared to
be tougher in his warning to Israel than Mrs Beckett. "I
think we can say that elements of the Israeli response are
disproportionate, including attacks on Lebanese army
units, the loss of civilian life and essential
infrastructure and such enormous damage to the capacity of
the Lebanese government, [which] does damage the Israeli
cause in the long term," he told MPs.

The former international development secretary, Clare
Short, described the British policy as "so unbalanced,
morally wrong and counter-productive and disrespectful of
international law".

The former Labour Foreign Office minister Chris Mullin
asked Mrs Beckett if it was not "a tiny bit shameful that
we can find nothing stronger than the word 'regret' to
describe the slaughter and misery and mayhem that Israel
has unleashed on a fragile country like Lebanon".

The Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, said:
"The prime minister's uncritical acceptance of the Bush
administration is not only wrong but deeply damaging to
Britain's international reputation."

**********************************************************

(17) Massacres Soar in Central Iraq: Maliki Government
Discredited

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Counterpunch
19 July 2006

http://www.counterpunch.org/Patrick07192006.html

Baghdad--A civil war between Sunni and Shia is spreading
rapidly through central Iraq with each community seeking
revenge for the latest massacre. A suicide bomber driving
a van packed with explosives blew himself up yesterday
outside the golden-domed mosque in Kufa yesterday killing
at least 59 and injuring 132 Shia.

In the last ten days, while the world has been absorbed by
the war in Lebanon, sectarian massacres have started to
take place on an almost daily basis leading observers to
fear a level of killing approaching that of Rwanda
immediately before the genocide of 1994. On one single
spot on the west bank of the Tigris river in north Baghdad
between 10 and 12 bodies have been drifting ashore every
day.

In Kufa, a city on the Euphrates south of Baghdad, the
suicide bomber drove his vehicle into a dusty square 100
yards from a Shia shrine at 7.30am. He knew that poor day
laborers gathered there looking for work. He said "I need
labourers" and they clambered into his van which exploded
a few moments later killing them and other workers
standing around. "Four of my cousins were killed," said
Nasir Feisal, who survived the blast. "They were standing
beside the van. Their bodies were scattered far apart by
the blast.

The dramatic escalation in sectarian killings started on
July 9 when black-clad Shia militiamen sealed off the
largely Sunni al-Jihad district in west Baghdad and
slaughtered every Sunni they identified, killing over 40
of them after glancing at their identity cards. Since then
there has been a tit-for-tat massacre almost every day. On
Monday gunmen, almost certainly Sunni, first attacked Shia
mourners at a funeral near Mahmoudiya, a market town of
100,00 people 75 miles north of Kufa. They then shot down
another 50 people in the local market.

The failure of the newly formed government of Nouri
al-Maliki to stop the mass killings has rapidly
discredited it. The Shia and Sunni militias - in the
latter case the insurgents fighting the Americans - are
becoming stronger as people look to them for protection.
After the explosion in Kufa angry crowds hurled stones at
the police demanding that the militiamen of the Mehdi
Army, followers of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr,
take over security in the city. "We want the Mehdi Army to
protect us," screamed a woman in a black abaya robe. "We
want Muqtada's army to protect us." Other people chanted
at the police, who began to fire in the air to disperse
them, "you are traitors!" and "American agents!"

In much of Baghdad the militias have taken over and are
killing or driving out the minority community. It has
become very easy to get killed anywhere in central Iraq,
where one third of the 27 million population live, through
belonging to the wrong sect. Many people carry two sets of
identity papers, one forged at a cost of about $60, so
they can claim to be a Sunni at Sunni checkpoints and Shia
at Shia checkpoints.

Even this may not be enough to stay alive. Aware of the
number of forged identity papers being used Mehdi Army
checkpoints in the largely Shia Shu'ala district in west
Baghdad have started to ask drivers questions about Shia
theology to which a Sunni would not know the answer. One
man, who was indeed a Shia, passed the test but was still
executed because he was driving a car with number plates
from Anbar, a wholly Sunni province.

While the White House and Downing Street still refuse to
use the phrase 'civil war' Iraqis in the centre of the
country have no doubt what is happening. Baghdad mortuary
alone received 1,595 bodies in June. It has got worse
since then. Many people are fleeing. On one day early this
month at al-Salhai bus station in central Baghdad there
were 23 buses, each carrying 49 people as well as 30 four
wheel drive vehicles, all departing for Syria carrying
refugees. Access to Jordan has become more difficult with
many Iraqis turned back at the border. All buses have
Sunni drivers these days since five Shia drivers were
killed as 'spies' driving through the Sunni heart lands of
western Iraq on their way to Jordan and Syria.

**********************************************************

(18) Normal Life Impossible in Iraq

By Aaron Glantz

Antiwar
21 July 2006

Living in Iraq is becoming absolutely impossible.

The numbers tell part of the story. The United Nations
announced Tuesday that, on average, 100 Iraqi civilians
died every day in May and June. According to the report,
about 2,700 civilians were killed in May and 3,100 were
killed in June. Two days later, the Iraqi government
announced least 162,000 people have fled their homes over
the past five months in an effort to escape the sectarian
violence that has swept the country.

Amid the violence, the "Iraqi government" has been next to
worthless.

On Monday, after a truck bomb killed at least 59
day-laborers in the Shi'ite holy city of Kufa, protesters
attacked the Iraqi police.

According to Reuters, after the attacks, police at the
scene were pelted with rocks by angry crowds, many of whom
demanded that militias loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr take over security in Kufa. Protesters gathered
around the blackened mangle of vehicles - bloodstained
clothes scattered amid the debris.

"You are traitors!" some chanted at the police. "You are
not doing your job!" "American agents!"

Few in Iraq are unsympathetic to the protesters.

Ali, an Iraqi Special Forces officer in charge of
investigating the car bombing in Kufa, said he sympathized
with the protesters.

"The police don't have any information about anything," he
told me. "They're just kids. They don't really check
anything at checkpoints. They just ask people where they
are from and let them go without checking anything."

The U.S. military and Iraqi government are only increasing
the numbers of police officers rather than their
effectiveness, Ali said.

"Until recently, you didn't need any kind of education to
join the police. Now, they changed it so you have to have
graduated from middle school to apply to be a police
officer," he noted.

Gatherings of poor laborers in crowded markets have become
a favorite target of fighters who intend to inflict the
maximum number of civilian casualties. Baghdad journalist
Mo'ayyad al-Hamdani said despite the risk the poor in Iraq
still must work in order to eat.

"Why do these workers stand in front of a truck and never
suspect anything?" he asked rhetorically. "These workers
may have been waiting in the street for more than a week
to find work for just one day. So even the work that he's
gonna find - it's not going to cover him for one or two
weeks until his next day of work."

Those with means, however, are increasingly trying to flee
the country. Over the last three years, more than a
million Iraqis have fled to Jordan and Syria. Boston
University Professor Shakir Mustafa grew up in Iraq and
got his Ph.D. at Baghdad University.

Now he's trying to get his family out.

"My family couldn't care less about sect," he told me. "My
family are Shi'ites, and they are not saying they hate
Sunnis. They are just saying they want to get out because
life has becoming impossible."

But Shakir Mustafa says as more Iraqis (and now Lebanese)
try to flee, the neighboring countries are becoming less
welcoming.

"It's becoming increasingly difficult and increasingly
expensive to go to Jordan or Syria, which is usually where
they are going. There are much stricter visa regulations.
... My brother is trying to figure out how to leave, but he
will only be able to get a visa for one week in Jordan or
Syria. What will he do afterwards? The neighbors are not
in a position to take so many refugees."

A report released last month by a number of United Nations
groups said child labor, sex trafficking, poverty, and
malnutrition are likely to increase among refugee
communities as the governments of Syria and Jordan become
increasingly intolerant of such a large influx of Iraqis.

**********************************************************

(19) 30,000 more flee as Iraq violence deepens

The Jordan Times
21 July 2006

http://jordantimes.com/fri/news/news5.htm

BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- Tens of thousands more Iraqis have
fled their homes as sectarian violence looks ever more
like civil war two months after a US-backed national unity
government was formed, official data showed on Thursday.

Iraq's most powerful religious authority, Shiite Grand
Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, joined the United Nations and US
officials in raising the alarm that a spike in bloodshed
and "campaigns of displacement" threaten Iraq's very
future.

The US military admitted violence in Baghdad was little
changed by a monthlong clampdown and the city morgue said
it had seen 1,000 bodies so far in July, a slight increase
on June.

A day after the United States issued a stern warning to
both Shiite and minority Sunni leaders to match talk with
action on reining in and reconciling "death squads" and
"terrorists" from their respective communities, the
migration ministry said more than 30,000 people had
registered as refugees this month alone.

"We consider this to be a dangerous sign," ministry
spokesman Sattar Nowruz told Reuters, acknowledging that
many more people fled abroad or quietly sought refuge with
relatives rather than sign up for official aid or move
into state camps.

The increase took to 27,000 families -- some 162,000 people
-- the number who have registered for help with the
ministry in the five months since the February 22 bombing
of a Shiite shrine at Samarra sparked a new phase of
communal bloodshed.

Among 11 new tented camps being set up by the ministry is
one in the southern city of Diwaniya, where police said
some 10,000 Shiite refugees have arrived in recent weeks.

They include Abd Hammad Saeidi: "Gunmen told us to leave
or they would kill us," said the farmer from the violent
lands just south of Baghdad. His family of 11 now live in
a tent.

At a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, Red Crescent officials said
numbers taking refuge there rose sharply after suspected
Shiite militiamen killed 40 in the Sunni district of Jihad
on July 9.

Mother of 10 Um Yaseen recalled fleeing the area: "It was
a black day ... and not a single policeman was there to
help us."

Crackdown

The US military conceded that a massive security operation
launched a month ago to stop violence tearing Baghdad
apart had achieved only a "slight downtick" in bloodshed.

"It's a start. We're moving in the right direction," Major
General William Caldwell said, saying it would take
"months not weeks" to gain a victory he described as a
"must win" for Iraq.

A car bomb killed three people in west Baghdad on
Thursday.

The United Nations matched the US ambassador and the US
military commander in Iraq on Wednesday in sounding an
alarm, two months after Prime Minister Nuri Maliki's
coalition of Sunnis, Kurds and fellow Shiites was sworn in
by parliament.

The UN envoy to Baghdad warned of a risk of civil war.

Sistani, a reclusive sage whose restraining grip on Shiite
factions appears to be slipping, issued a rare statement:
"I call on all sons of Iraq ... to be aware of the danger
threatening their nation's future and stand
shoulder-to-shoulder in confronting it by rejecting hatred
and violence," he said.

The Shiite Endowment, which oversees mosques, joined its
Sunni counterpart in suspending work for five days in
protest at the kidnapping of 19 Sunni Endowment officials
in Baghdad.

Iraq's Olympic Committee is missing after another big
kidnap this week but four of those seized with him were
freed unharmed.

Four of the bloodiest incidents this year have taken place
this month -- two Al Qaeda car bombings of Shiite markets
in Baghdad and Kufa and two gun attacks blamed on Shiite
factions.

Those four alone, two of them just this week, claimed some
220 lives. But as the United Nations said this week, that
is a fraction of some 100 civilians a day who are dying in
violence.

Maliki goes next week to Washington, where President
George W. Bush hopes for progress in Iraq that may help at
November's congressional elections and make it easier to
withdraw troops.

But Iraqi politicians and diplomats increasingly question
the resolve within the government and parliament to set
aside partisan aims to stop a bloody break-up of the
oil-rich state.

Maliki has outlined a national reconciliation plan that he
calls a "last chance" for peace. He announced a first
meeting of a panel on Saturday that he said would feature
former opponents.

But there is little substance yet to be seen in the plan.


****************
ANALYSIS & VIEWS
****************

(20) Israel's long roll call of dishonour

By Jonathan Cook

Electronic Lebanon
20 July 2006

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5132.shtml

The general surprise that Lebanese civilians are taking
the brunt of Israel's onslaught -- and the unwillingness
in some quarters of the media to report the fact --
reflects a poor understanding of Israel's historical use
of violence. Since its birth six decades ago, Israel has
always been officially "going after the terrorists", but
its actions have invariably harmed civilians in an
indiscriminate manner.

The roll call of dishonour is long indeed, but its
highlights include: the massacre of some 200 civilians in
Tantura, as well as large-scale massacres in at least a
dozen other Palestinian villages, during the 1948 war that
established Israel; Ariel Sharon's attack on the village
of Qibya in 1953 that killed 70 innocent Palestinians; the
Kfar Qassem massacre inside Israel when 49 farm workers
were gunned down at an improvised army checkpoint; a
massacre in the same year in the refugee camp of Khan
Yunis, in Gaza, in which more than 250 civilians were
killed; attacks on dozens of Palestinian, Egytian and
Syrian villages during the 1967 war; the killing of six
unarmed Arab citizens of Israel in 1976; the massacre of
hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the Lebanese refugee
camps of Sabra and Shatilla in 1982; the unremitting use
of lethal force by the army against unarmed Palestinians,
often women and children, during the first intifada of
1987-93; the aerial bombardment of Qana in south Lebanon
in 1996 that killed more than 100 civilians; and the
endless "collateral damage" of Palestinian civilians
during the second intifada, including a half-ton bomb that
killed a husband and wife and their seven children a week
ago.

The true reasons for these deaths are concealed from
credulous observers by Israel's use of Orwellian language.
When it says it is destroying the "infrastructure of
terror", Israel means it is crushing all Arab resistance
to its territorial ambitions in the region. The
"infrastructure" includes most Arab men, women and
children because they continue to support -- against
Israel's wishes -- their peoples' rights to
self-determination without interference from the Israeli
army.

In this sense, and others, there is very little difference
between what Israel is doing in Gaza to overturn the
democratic wishes of the Palestinian electorate and what
it is doing in Lebanon to smash any hopes of a democratic
future for its northern neighbour. In Gaza, it wants Hamas
destroyed because Hamas is prepared to counter Israel's
unilateral policies with its own unilateral agenda; and in
Lebanon, Israel wants Hizbullah obliterated because it is
the only force capable, possibly, of preventing a repeat
of Israel's long invasion and occupation of the 1980s and
1990s.

By rounding up the Palestinian cabinet, Israel is not
destroying terror, it is clipping the political wings of
Hamas, those in its leadership who are quickly learning
the arts of government and searching for a space in which
they can negotiate with Israel. Through its rejectionist
behaviour, Israel is only confirming the doubts of those
in the Hamas military wing who argue Israel always acts in
bad faith.

Similarly in Lebanon, Israel is holding Hizbullah less to
account with its attacks than the Lebanese people and
their government, despite the latter's transparently shaky
grip on the country. Israel's military strikes polarise
opinion in Lebanon, weaken Fouad Siniora and his
ministers, and threaten to push Lebanon over the brink
into another civil war.

Israel is keen to talk about "changing the balance of
power" in Gaza and Lebanon, implying that it is trying to
stregthen the "democrats" against the "terrorists". But
this impression is entirely false. Israeli actions are
destroying what little balance of power exists in Gaza and
Lebanon so that the two areas become ungovernable.

In Gaza, Israel has been engineering a debilitating
struggle for power between Fatah and Hamas, while in
Lebanon whatever hollow shell of national unity has
existed till now is in danger of cracking under the strain
of the Israeli onslaught.

Superficially at least, this seems self-destructive
behaviour on Israel's part, given that it has also been
striving to detect the fingerprints of outside actors in
Gaza and Lebanon.

In the case of Gaza, Israel points to Syria as a safe
haven for the exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, to
Hizbullah and Iran as sponsors of Hamas "terror" and even
to a new al-Qaeda presence. In the case of Lebanon, Israel
additionally identifies the strong ties between Hizbullah
and Damascus and Tehran.

So why would Israel want Lebanon and Gaza to be ravaged by
factional fighting of the kind that might make them more
vulnerable to this kind of unwelcome interference from
outside?

A history lesson or two helps clarify Israel's reasoning.

In the occupied Palestinian territories, Hamas was born
during the upheavals of the first intifada and encouraged
by Israel as a counterweight to the unifying secular
Palestinian nationalism of Yasser Arafat.

In Lebanon, the Shiite militia Hizbullah was the
inevitable byproduct of Israel's occupation of the south
and its establishment of a mostly Christian proxy militia,
the South Lebanon Army, against the Muslim majority.

In both cases it is clear Israel hoped that, by Islamising
its opponents in these regional conflicts, it would
delegitimise them in the eyes of Western allies and that
it could cultivate sectarianism as a way to further weaken
the social cohesiveness of its neighbours.

Recently Israel has encouraged the slide deeper into
Islamic extremism through its policies of unilateralism
and its refusal to negotiate.

The same set of policies is being continued now in the
Palestinian territories and Lebanon: the shattering of
these two societies will only deepen the trend toward
radical Islam. Islamic movements not only offer the best
hope of local resistance to Israel for these weakened
societies but they also offer a parallel social
infrastructure of health care and welfare services as
state institutions collapse.

There is immediate advantage for Israel in this outcome.
With secular society crushed and Islamic resistance
movements filling the void, Israel will be able to
reinforce the impression of many in the West that Israel
is on the front line of global "war of terror" being waged
by a single implacable enemy, Islam. Israel's ability to
persuade the world that this war is being waged against
the whole "civilised" Judeo-Christian West will be made
that bit easier.

As a result, Israel may be able to drag its paymaster, the
United States, deeper into the mire of the Middle East as
a junior partner rather than as an honest broker, giving
Israel cover while it carves up yet more Palestinian land
for annexation, puts further pressure on the Palestinains
to leave their homeland, and destablises its regional
enemies so that they are powerless to offer protest or
resistance.

For some time President Bush has found himself in no
position to criticise Israeli actions when Tel Aviv claims
to be doing no more to the Palestinians than the US is
doing to the Iraqis. If the US allows itself to be
handcuffed to Israel's even more extreme version of the
"war on terror", the consequences will be dire not just
for the Palestinians or the region, but for all of us.

Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, is the author of Blood
and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic
State, published by Pluto Press and available in the US
from University of Michigan Press. His website is
www.jkcook.net.

**********************************************************

(21) The wrath to come

By Graham Usher

Al-Ahram Weekly
20-26 July 2006

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/804/fr1.htm

In ambition and miscalculation, Israel's latest Lebanese
adventure looks ominously similar to 1982, writes Graham
Usher

In October 2000 Hizbullah guerrillas captured three
soldiers on the Lebanese border with Israel. Israel's then
prime minister, Ehud Barak, chose not to respond. With the
Al-Aqsa Intifada less than a month old, he was wary of
opening a "second front." In April 2002 -- at the height
of the Israeli army's re-conquest of Palestinian West Bank
cities -- Hizbullah killed several soldiers on the border.
Barak's successor, Ariel Sharon, too, did not respond.

Instead he warned Syria while continuing indirect
negotiations with the Lebanese resistance that led,
eventually, to the release of 410 Arab prisoners in
exchange for the bodies of the three dead soldiers and the
release of the Israeli "businessman" Elhanan Tennenbaum.
Even Sharon, it seemed, accepted the status quo on the
Lebanese- Israeli border, buttressed by 10,000-12,000
Hizbullah missiles aimed at Israeli cities.

On 12 July 2006 Hizbullah guerrillas captured two soldiers
and, in battle, killed eight more. Israel, in occupation
of Gaza for the first time in a year, responded by
unleashing its worst ground, air and sea assault on
Lebanon, certainly since Operation Grapes of Wrath in
1996, and arguably since Operation Peace in the Galilee in
1982. Hizbullah hit back with rockets into Haifa and
Tiberias.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert clearly has no problem
fighting on two fronts. Like Samson, he willingly upturned
the "balance of fear" that had kept the peace on Israel's
northern border for the last six years. As Azmi Bishara
wrote in Lebanon's As-Safir newspaper, "Hizbullah did not
engage in 'adventurism' against Israel. Israel engaged in
war against Hizbullah."

But why did it do so? Israel's argument that it is no
longer prepared to negotiate the fate of "kidnapped"
soldiers is the easiest to rebut. Asked on Israeli TV how
the two Israeli soldiers would be released without
negotiation, Israel's Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni
answered, "we will bomb the Beirut airport." Asked how
this would help, she answered, "we will bomb the roads
leading to airport." Freeing prisoners is obviously not an
Israeli priority just now, whether in Lebanon or Gaza.

Israel's priority rather is "eliminating Hizbullah's
military power from the Lebanese and regional equation,"
says one Lebanese commentator. It is using two means. The
first is the deliberate destruction Lebanon's national
infrastructure -- roads, ports, power stations, etc. -- to
compel the Lebanese government to deploy its army on the
Israeli border and disarm Hizbullah -- in other words "the
implementation of UN Resolution 1559 by force."

In the likely event of this not happening, the second
means is to disarm Hizbullah by attrition -- targeting its
arms stocks, rocket launchers and headquarters and
regardless of the civilian cost. The alarming aspect of
this second goal is that many Israelis believe it can be
done, with one commentator predicting an end to the
military campaign "within a week."

It is all eerily similar to the hubris that accompanied
the first weeks of Israel's 1982 invasion. Then too there
were predictions that the PLO would be vanquished "within
a week." The PLO fought for over 100 days. Hizbullah is an
indigenous movement, with a solid Shia constituency which
views it as their only protector. The idea that Hizbullah
can somehow be "removed from Lebanon" is an Israeli
fantasy. "We will never leave, even if Lebanon is reduced
to scorched earth," says Hizbullah cadre, Abdullah Kassir.
He means it.

Israel's ambition is driven by the "regional equation."
Since 2002, Israel has ploughed a unilateralist path in
the Palestinian occupied territories with the
encouragement of the United States, complicity of Europe
and passivity of the Arab League. The only consistent
resistance has come from Hamas and Hizbullah and their
regional allies, Syria and Iran. By delivering Hizbullah a
mortal blow in Lebanon, Israel believes it can "serve
deterrence" on Tehran and Damascus without resort to a
regional war. It also believes it can remove the last
barrier to knocking over the Hamas government in Gaza.

This is particularly important for Olmert. A shibboleth of
the Israeli right and many in the army is that Israel's
flight from Lebanon in 2000 cleared the way for the
Intifada. The same forces think the Gaza disengagement
enabled the Qassam rockets and Hamas's electoral victory.
The centrepiece of Olmert's political programme is some
kind of territorial redeployment on the occupied West
Bank. He knows that "realignment" cannot happen,
domestically, if Hamas and the other Palestinian
resistance forces are fighting in Gaza and Hizbullah
remains armed and in place on the Lebanese border.

"We've decided to put an end to this saga and change the
rules of the game where a terrorist organisation that is
part of the government can push the region to an abyss,"
said security cabinet member, Isaac Herzog. He was
referring to Hizbullah. He could just have easily been
referring to Hamas.

This dangerous mix of Israeli self-righteousness and
miscalculation suggests the latest assault on Lebanon
could last a while. There are some, Iran and Syria
apparently among them, who believe an internationally
brokered ceasefire, followed by a prisoner exchange, could
lead all back to politics and the negotiating table.

But Israel is not interested in a ceasefire, still less in
politics. This is not 1996, when operation Grapes of Wrath
was eventually tamed via "understandings" reached between
Israel, Hizbullah, America and Syria's Hafez Al-Assad.
This campaign is closer to 1982, when Israel believed it
could recast Lebanon and thence the region in line with
its own ambition. "Israel is not looking for an
understanding with Hizbullah," said Israeli analyst, Guy
Becher, on 16 July. "It is looking for victory."

**********************************************************

(22) "Because This Is the Middle East"

FAIR
20 July 2006

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5128.shtml

On July 16, CBS Face the Nation host (and CBS Evening News
anchor) Bob Schieffer dedicated the entire Sunday morning
news show to the Middle East conflict. In his closing
editorial, he adapted a well-known fable in an attempt to
explain the causes of the current conflict--or rather, the
lack of causes:

"Finally today, when the war broke out in the Middle East,
the first thing I thought about was the old story of the
frog and the scorpion who were trying to cross a river
there. The scorpion couldn't swim, the frog was lost. So
the scorpion proposed a deal, 'Give me a ride on your
back, and I'll show you the way.' The frog agreed, and the
trip went fine until they got to the middle of the river,
and then suddenly the scorpion just stung the frog. As
they were sinking, the frog asked, in his dying breath,
'Why would you do that?' To which the scorpion replied,
'Because this is the Middle East.'"

Lest there be any doubt about who is the frog and who is
the scorpion in that parable, Schieffer went on to spell
it out:

"It is worth noting that the Palestinians in the Gaza
Strip did not kidnap that Israeli soldier and provoke all
of this because the Israelis were invading Gaza. No, all
this happened in the wake of the Israeli withdrawal, which
was what the Palestinians supposedly wanted. But this is
the Middle East. Why would fundamentalists in Gaza and
Lebanon choose to provoke this war at this time? There is
no real answer except this is the Middle East."

Schieffer was echoing the media's conventional wisdom in
portraying the Palestinian raid that captured the Israeli
soldier as an inexplicable provocation. The New York
Times, in a June 29 editorial headlined "Hamas Provokes a
Fight," declared that "the responsibility for this latest
escalation rests squarely with Hamas," adding that "an
Israeli military response was inevitable."

The media assumption is that in withdrawing from Gaza in
September 2005, Israel ended its conflict with at least
that portion of Palestine and gave up, as Schieffer put
it, "what the Palestinians supposedly wanted." In reality,
however, since the pullout and before the recent
escalation of violence, at least 144 Palestinians in Gaza
had been killed by Israeli forces, often by helicopter
gunships, according to a list compiled by the Israeli
human rights group B'tselem. Only 31 percent of the people
killed were engaged in hostile actions at the time of
their deaths, and 25 percent of all those killed were
minors.

From the time of the pullout until the recent upsurge in
violence, according to B'tselem's lists, no Israelis were
killed by violence emanating from Gaza. Although during
this period Palestinian militants launched some 1,000
crude Kasam missiles from Gaza into Israel, no fatalities
resulted; at the same time, Israel fired 7,000 to 9,000
heavy artillery shells into Gaza. On June 9, just two
weeks before the Hamas raid that killed two Israeli
soldiers and captured a third, an apparent Israeli missile
strike killed seven members of a Palestinian family
picnicking on a Gaza beach, which prompted Hamas to end
its 16-month-old informal ceasefire with Israel. (Though
Israel has denied responsibility for the killings, a Human
Rights Watch investigation strongly challenged the denial,
calling the likelihood of Israel not being responsible
"remote"; Human Rights Watch, 6/15/06.) Hamas has
repeatedly pointed to the Gaza beach incident as one of
the central events that prompted its cross-border
raid--indeed, Schieffer's own CBS Evening News has reported
that claim (CBS Evening News, 6/25/06). Even so, Schieffer
seems unable to recall this recent event.

Hamas also points to the capture of some of its leaders by
Israel as the provocation for its raid. If Israelis had
every right, as Schieffer said, to respond with force to
the capture of one soldier by Hamas, then how are
Palestinians expected to feel about the more than 9,000
prisoners captured and held by Israel--including 342
juveniles and over 700 held without trial (Mandela Center
for Human Rights, 4/30/06)?

Moreover, Israel's withdrawal did not remotely give
Palestinians "what they wanted." In addition to its
continued deadly attacks on Gaza, Israel has continued to
control Gaza's borders and has withheld tens of millions
of dollars of tax revenue in response to Hamas' victory in
democratic elections in January 2006. Israel's actions
crippled the Gaza economy and prompting warnings from the
U.N. of a looming humanitarian disaster (UNRWA, 7/8/06).

None of this is to say that Hamas, which has regularly
ignored the distinction between military and civilian
targets, does not share part of the blame for the current
crisis. But to act as though Israel had been behaving as a
peace-loving neighbor to Gaza until the soldier's capture
is a willful rewriting of very recent history. The most
Schieffer can bring himself to say about Israel is this:

"Israel had every right to respond, and it did. But again,
this is the Middle East, so perhaps a response may have
made it all worse by giving moderate Arabs in the region
an excuse to distance themselves from Israel."

Israel's "response" has resulted in the deaths to date of
at least 103 Palestinians, while no Israelis have died
other than one soldier killed by friendly fire (New York
Times, 7/19/06). Meanwhile, Israel has also destroyed
Gaza's main power plant and its water system, leaving tens
of thousands of Gaza families without access to food,
water and medical care (Oxfam, 7/19/06). In Lebanon,
Israel has killed over 300 people, the vast majority of
them civilians, wounded over 1000 and displaced half a
million (MSNBC, 7/19/06). To call such devastation an
"excuse" for Arabs to "distance themselves from Israel" is
a trivialization of real human suffering.

Why is Bob Schieffer allowed to get away with such
shallow, dismissive coverage of complicated and tragic
events? Because it's the Middle East.

**********************************************************

(23) Never wrong

By Emad Mekay

Al-Ahram Weekly
20-26 July 2006

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/804/re71.htm

Portrayed as the world's eternal victim, Israel in the
eyes of the Americans is unquestioned, even when it is
bombing civilians, writes Emad Mekay, in New York

For the United States, Israel is always the victim when at
conflict with its Arab neighbours. Otherwise, the zealous
mobilisation of US politicians and intellections in
support of Israel's war against Lebanon and their
justification of the bloodshed it has caused would be
ludicrous.

On Sunday morning millions of Americas watched former
Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (Republican, Georgia)
tell them that Israel's demolition of Lebanese
infrastructure, targeting of civilians and total blockade
of Lebanon was an act of self-defence. He and many other
public figures in the US also parroted the Israeli line of
blaming Iran and Syria for the events. There is, Gingrich
said, a "Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas alliance trying to
destroy Israel".

"You clearly have Iranian involvement; there are at least
400 Iranian guards in south Lebanon," he added without
citing any evidence.

The US continues to back Israeli aggression with weapons
and aid, justified by claims made by many pro-Israel
intellectuals that this conflict is a world war that
includes the United States. "I mean, this is absolutely a
question of the survival of Israel, but it's also a
question of what is really a world war," Gingrich said

Other neo-conservatives and staunch pro-Israel allies also
saw opportunity in the lethal violence gripping Lebanon.
William Kristol, editor of the right-wing Weekly Standard,
told Fox News Sunday that the Israeli attacks were in
response to the Hizbullah operation that lead to the
capture of two Israel soldiers, failing to mention how the
Lebanese government and Hizbullah have been pleading with
Israel to return maps of some 140,000 mines it left when
it was forced out of Lebanon in 2000.

Israel still holds Lebanese prisoners and thousands of
Palestinians in its US-funded prisons. It has also
rejected calls for a withdrawal from the Shebaa Farms area
that it continues to occupy.

Kristol -- a main propagandist for the US invasion of Iraq
-- also said that the Hizbullah operation was an
"opportunity" for the US to be back on the offensive in
the region after a series of setbacks in Iraq and
Afghanistan. "This aggression is a great opportunity to
begin resuming the offensive against the terrorist
groups," he said.

"Israel is fighting four of our five enemies, in a sense,
in the Middle East: Iran and Syria, sponsors of terror,
Hizbullah and Hamas. Al-Qaeda doesn't seem to be directly
involved. We have to take care of them in Iraq," Kristol
added. "This is an opportunity to begin to reverse the
unfortunate direction of the last six months to nine
months and get the terrorists and the jihadists back on
the defensive," he said.

The US media has also played a role in downplaying scenes
of civilian causalities on the Lebanese side. On Monday,
the front-page picture of The Washington Post depicted
Israeli rescue workers operating in Haifa. The day before
was a bland, practically generic, picture of an explosion
in Lebanon. Most headlines have either sympathised with
Israel or undermined the gravity of Israel's attacks.

Alternatively, many TV stations sought to present the
current crisis in terms of equal suffering; that Israeli
civilians suffered under Hizbullah rockets as much as
Lebanese civilians under Israeli aerial bombing.

More than 250 Lebanese, most of them civilians, including
women and children, were killed in Israeli raids using
500-pound laser guided US-made bombs. The Lebanese economy
suffered billions of dollars worth of damage after Israel
targeted Beirut's airport, bridges, roads and factories.
To date, 24 Israelis have been killed -- half of them
uniformed soldiers in combat with Hizbullah fighters.

'Syrian President May Hold Key to Mid-East Crisis' read
the headline of The Wall Street Journal Tuesday. 'Toll
Climbs In Mid- East As fighting Rages on' was the
uninformative Washington Post headline. In editorial after
editorial, Israel is portrayed as the victim. "Make no
mistake about it: Responsibility for the escalating
carnage in Lebanon and northern Israel lies with one side,
and one side only. And that is Hizbullah, the Islamist
militant party, along with its Syrian and Iranian
backers," said The Los Angeles Times editorial on Monday.

Palestine Media Watch has said that it had to call CNN's
international desk Sunday complaining about the network's
lack of coverage of civilian suffering on the Lebanese
side. The pro-Arab organisation reported that the answer
they got from CNN was they did "not have enough equipment
and could not be everywhere at the same time".

"I think it's been strikingly one-sided in the coverage.
The downplaying of the civilian casualties in Lebanon, I
think, is fairly remarkable," said Jim Naureckas of the
New York media-watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting (FAIR). "And the sort of acceptance that Israel
is engaging in some kind of normal behaviour by responding
to the one violent incident on the border by declaring war
on an entire country is treated as a matter of course by
US media commentators when it is really an amazing
escalation."

Analysts say that with the US media coverage so biased,
the American public and politicians would be very hard
pressed not to take sides with Israel. "Certainly by
giving only one part of the narrative where you have
Israeli victims as the victims of unprovoked violence, it
would be hard not to take Israel's side. If you are taking
your information from the US media, it'll be hard to
construct a different way of looking at it," said
Naureckas.

Meanwhile, more US lawmakers came to the defence of
Israel, regurgitating the Israeli line that it was
provoked and that its military action was self-defence.
Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton pledged support for
Israel. Clinton, regarded as a possible presidential
candidate for the 2008 elections, criticised the
"unwarranted, unprovoked attacks from Hamas, Hizbullah and
their state sponsors" and named them "the new
totalitarians of the 21st century."

"We will stand with Israel because Israel is standing for
American values as well as Israeli ones," Clinton said.

On Tuesday, the US Senate was still preparing a resolution
supporting Israel in its conflict in Lebanon.

Nobel laureate and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and
Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman,
joined dozens who rallied outside the United Nations in
support of Israel's aggressive stand. In Washington,
Christians United For Israel, a group of right-wing
Christian fundamentalists, said they were gathering at
least 3500 people to rally in the US capital in order to
drum up political support for Israel in its offensive
against Lebanon.

The organisation, led by fundamentalist pastor John C
Hagee, says that Jewish leaders will also take part,
including Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon, retired
Israeli defence chief Lt General Moshe Yaalon and
Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman.

Perhaps those jumping to the defence of defending Israel
ought to be more aware of US laws. The US Arms Export
Control Act restricts the use of US weapons to justifiable
self-defence and internal policing, meaning that US
weapons cannot be used to target civilians in offensive
operations. The US Foreign Assistance Act also bars US aid
to a country with a pattern of gross human rights
violations. Several human rights groups have so far
condemned the Israeli attack.

But despite these injunctions in US law, on the first few
days of the offensive against Lebanon hundreds of millions
of dollars worth of US munitions have been used by the
Israeli army against a country friendly to the United
States and a government fully supported by the United
States. The fact that civilian structures, including milk
factories and houses of worship, have been targeted may
leave a long-term dent on the position of those backing
Israel's offensive. That no such effect has been felt thus
far is only because the US continues to succeed in
portraying Israel as the eternal victim.

**********************************************************

(24) The Israel we know

By Khaled Amayreh

Al-Ahram Weekly
20-26 July 2006

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/804/re111.htm

Israel's bombing of Lebanon has roused international
attention while Palestinians see in televised images
scenes from their everyday lives, writes Khaled Amayreh in
the West Bank

Palestinians under military occupation have been watching
with helpless anguish the gruesome images of Israel's
campaign of murder and horror in Lebanon. For a people who
have just buried an additional 100, victim to Israeli
state terrorism which also targets schools, bridges and
power stations, the merciless killing of Lebanese
civilians and wanton destruction of Lebanon's
infrastructure, clarion testimony to Israeli criminal
savagery, are scenes all too familiar.

Equally familiar for the Palestinians has been the brazen
approval by the Bush administration of Israel's murderous
aggression, as well as the impotent silence and betrayal
by brotherly Arab states and segments of the international
community as a whole.

"What is happening in Lebanon doesn't surprise us at all.
We ourselves have been -- and continue to be --
slaughtered by Israel on a daily basis while the Arabs are
watching passively as if this was happening on another
planet. The West is merely pleading with Israel to
exercise a modicum of discretion while killing us," said a
Hebron physician while watching dead Lebanese children and
women being retrieved from under the rubble of a Tyre
building bombed by Israeli warplanes.

Palestinian identification with Hizbullah has assumed
several manifestations. Portraits of Sheikh Hassan
Nasrallah, now available everywhere, are pasted
prominently throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This
is significant given that Palestinians are Sunni Muslims
and that Nasrallah is a Shia leader who, unlike
predominantly Sunni Arab states in the region, has made
the Palestinian cause a central theme, if not the raison
d'etre, of Hizbullah.

It is the camaraderie of the oppressed vis- a-vis the
oppressor, said Khaled Al-Batsh, an Islamic Jihad leader
in the Gaza Strip, explaining Palestinian solidarity and
identification with Hizbullah. "Hizbullah is doing all of
this for Palestine and because of Palestine. We must show
the brothers in Lebanon that we are with them heart and
soul."

Apart from "the camaraderie of suffering", Palestinians
are hoping that the capture of two Israeli soldiers by
Hizbullah last week, ostensibly triggering the current
Israeli rampage, will eventually lead to the release from
Israeli jails of hundreds of Palestinian political and
resistance prisoners. Israel is holding as many as 10,000
Palestinian activists, including numerous women and
children, in harsh conditions, many of them kept as
hostages or bargaining chips against the resistance.

Earlier this month, the Israeli army abducted scores of
Palestinian lawmakers and ministers in a show of arrogance
aimed at demonstrating to Palestinians that Israel is the
master and that their democratically elected government --
indeed, the entire Palestinian Authority (PA) -- enjoys
not one iota of sovereignty. Some of these detainees, like
PA Minister of Endowment and Islamic Affairs Sheikh Nayef
Rajoub, have been placed in solitary confinement in the
notorious Askalan Prison for no apparent purpose or
reason.

The often open-ended imprisonment by Israel of so many
Palestinians, and the unmitigated emotional anguish to
numerous Palestinian families, has generated a solid
Palestinian consensus in solidarity with the prisoners.
According to a survey published in the West Bank this
week, a vast majority of Palestinians believe that every
conceivable effort must be made -- presumably including
capturing Israeli soldiers -- in order to free the
prisoners, especially those who have spent more than 20
years behind Israeli bars.

According to the poll, conducted by Nabil Kukali of Hebron
University, the vast bulk of Palestinians adamantly oppose
releasing the Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian
resistance fighters near Gaza a month ago without Israel
releasing Palestinian prisoners and detainees in return.
This despite the rampant destruction in Gaza, including
entire families exterminated when Israeli F- 16s warplanes
bombed their homes at night.

By equal measure, virtually all Palestinians pray that
Hizbullah will emerge defiant from the wrath of Israel's
war machine. Many Palestinians have found pride in the
firing of rockets by Hizbullah on several Israeli towns,
including for the first time Haifa and Affula. "Now, the
Israelis will feel some of the pain and death they have
been meting out to us," said one northern Gazan whose home
was destroyed by Israel's artillery bombardment.

"Yes, I know their pain is nothing compared to the
massacres they are carrying out here in Gaza and there in
Lebanon, but at least they can get a taste of what we are
undergoing," he added.

Some Palestinian leaders meanwhile hope that when the dust
settles in Lebanon the world community will pay more
attention to the Palestinian issue, the core problem in
the Middle East. "The war in Lebanon, the war in Iraq and
so-called 'terror' are in the final analysis mere symptoms
of the Palestinian plight," said a Palestinian government
official and advisor to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

"The world must know that there can be no stability or
security in this region, and probably in the world as
well, if the Palestinian people are not granted justice
and freedom," he added.

For his part, Arab League Secretary- General Amr Moussa
this week reflected Arab frustration and disenchantment
with the international community's powerlessness to end
the Israeli occupation of the occupied Palestinian
territories. He warned during an extraordinary meeting of
Arab foreign ministers in Cairo that chaos and terror
would spread all over the region and beyond if the world
-- and specifically the United States -- continues to
treat Israel as above international law.

"By now it is clear that the peace process is dead; there
is no road and there is no map," said a visibly frustrated
Moussa, alluding to the moribund American-backed "roadmap
plan for peace".

The question is black and white: If Arab youth sees that
justice cannot be obtained through international law and
via the moral authority of the international community,
who is to blame them for resorting to force to gain their
rights?

Caption: Sister of Palestinian Mohannad Musleh is helped
after she fainted during her brother's funeral in the town
of Beit Hanun, northern Gaza. Musleh was killed during
clashes in Gaza with Israeli troops

**********************************************************

(25) Blackmail by bombs

By Azmi Bishara
Al-Ahram Weekly

20-26 July 2006

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/804/op1.htm

Israel's determination to unbalance the Lebanese equation
has been long in the planning, writes Azmi Bishara. All
they were waiting for was an auspicious time

Any comparison between Olmert's and Nasrallah's political
rhetoric must conclude that the latter is the more
rational. His speeches are more consistent with the facts
and rely less than Olmert's on religious expressions and
allusions. Nasrallah would never dare seal a parliamentary
speech with a lengthy prayer, as Olmert did in his latest
speech before the Knesset.

Israeli politicians have no cultural or moral edge over
resistance leaders. The latter are far less attached to
Iran than the former are to the US, and Hizbullah's
constituency is less attached to Iran than the organised
Jewish community abroad is to Israel.

The people who unleashed the brutal war against Lebanon
are neither intelligent nor courageous. Quite the
opposite; they are mediocrities, cowards and opportunists,
but they happen to have military superiority. And they
possess the keys to the machinery of a state, a real
state, one that is secure in its identity, that has clear
national security goals and channels of national
mobilisation, as opposed to a long deferred project for
statehood and a states built on the fragmentation of
national identity. On the other side is a resistance
movement operating in the context of a denominationally
organised society, a Lebanese government neutralised to
everything but sectarianism, and an Arab order parts of
which are rooting for Israel to do what it is incapable,
or too embarrassed, to do itself, which is to deal with
the resistance as a militia because it foregrounds their
own lack of national and popular legitimacy.

Israel has nothing to show for ten days of barbaric
vandalism and the deliberate targeting of civilians. It
cannot claim a single military victory against the
Lebanese resistance. It can, though, point proudly to
whole residential quarters that have been reduced to
rubble, to the burned out hulks and ruins of countless
wharfs, factories, bridges, roads, tunnels, electricity
generators and civil defence buildings. In terms of
explosive and destructive power Israel has thrown an atom
bomb on Lebanon, it is the Israeli Hiroshima.

True, Israel suffers a paucity of intelligence on the
whereabouts of Hizbullah members, which is why it has been
targeting the homes of their families. But this does not
justify the systematic bombardment of Lebanese society,
and the attempts to destroy its economy. This is the
epitome of terrorism: the incitement of terror in a
civilian populace by unleashing massive violence and
destruction against it in an attempt to compel the
people's political leaders to act against the Lebanese
resistance or to change their positions.

The current Israeli assault against Lebanon has nothing to
do with freeing two captured soldiers. That is a purely
tangential concern, and Israel will probably agree to a
prisoner exchange when the time comes. Of prime concern,
on the other hand, is an agenda that has bearings on
Lebanese domestic, as well as American agenda for
regional, politics.

The issue is not why the resistance chose this particular
time for its operation. Timing, here, becomes another
pretext for vilifying the resistance and justifying the
aggression. The fact is that, over the past few months,
the resistance made several attempts to capture Israeli
soldiers. The difference is that its last attempt
succeeded. Also, the Israeli soldiers that died in this
operation were not killed in combat, but rather because
their tank rolled over a landmine while pursuing the
kidnappers. A more important question is why Israel choose
this time to launch a full scale attack?

The timing is an Israeli-American one. And the answer
resides with the Arabs and the US, and their inability to
implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559 and
dismantle the Lebanese resistance with Arab tools. So
Israel stepped forward. The only difference between today
and the earlier bombardments -- the "Day of Reckoning" and
"Grapes of Wrath" between 1993 and 1996 -- is that Syrian
forces are no longer present in Lebanon. Instead there is
an American-sponsored project for the country, involving
the rest of the Arab world, which was to change the
structure of government in Lebanon and transform it into
an ally of the US, a good neighbour to Israel and a
participant in US- oriented alliances in the region.

The project took off following the assassination of
Al-Hariri, but in recent months it had run aground as it
became increasingly clear that the Arabs had no practical
means to keep it afloat. What kept discussions in Beirut
from collapsing completely was the fact that the only
alternative was internal violence and civil war. But while
it was obvious that the talks were useful in keeping
violence at bay and, hence, good for the tourist season,
they were not helping to advance the American project in
Lebanon. It was equally obvious, therefore, that those who
wanted to push this project were expecting something to
happen -- a US strike against Iran, for example, or an
Israeli strike against Lebanon. Given the Iranian option
remains currently out of bounds Israel knew it could count
on a tacit green light from major Arab powers for its
attack against Lebanon, and they did not disappoint it. It
was the scope and vehemence of Israel's actions in Lebanon
that came as the surprise.

This is neither an Iranian nor a Syrian war.The fist is
just being involved in dialogue with the Americans and the
second has been trying to avoid a war with Israel for
decades.

Israel's aim is to change the rules of the game between
Israel and Lebanon and, therefore, within Lebanon itself.
This is the only point of similarity between the current
campaign and the war of 1982. The major differences are
that, on the negative side, international and regional
circumstances favour Israel, while on the positive side
the resistance, which is not Palestinian but Lebanese this
time, is much stronger and better organised. To these two
we can add another, which is that the Lebanese are not
heading towards another 17 May; that experience they have
put firmly behind them and no one wants to rake it up
again. Even after the Syrian withdrawal the Lebanese
society has much more positive attitude towards the
Lebanese resistance than it had towards the Palestinian
resistance, in those days of 1982 a part of the Lebanese
people fought on the side of the Israelis. The initiative
now lies in the hands of the Lebanese people and the
resistance. They, alone, have the ability to thwart the
conspiracy.

International delegations will soon appear in Lebanon to
reap the fruits of the aggression. They will promise the
Lebanese a ceasefire if they implement 1559, saying that
there is no longer any excuse for delaying implementation
now that the Israeli army has demonstrated the
consequences of non- implementation.

Roed-Larsen's visit was not a fact-finding mission.
Sending Roed-Larsen was in itself a political statement.
He is not only the Israeli Labour Party's man on the
conflict with the Palestinians, he is also the spokesman
of the Israeli position with respect to the Lebanese
resistance. He is the one who is after blood-money to
compensate for Barak's loss of honour after withdrawing
from Lebanon and the one who was called in to supervise
the implementation of Resolution 1559. Larsen has not only
drawn a red line at crossing the blue line, he regards the
Lebanese resistance as a local militia. He is also a
foremost exponent of that now old term, "the New Middle
East", by which is meant, at best, the normalisation of
Arab relations, ie according inter-Arab relations no more
priority than bilateral relations between individual Arab
states and Israel. Larsen was the sworn enemy of Yasser
Arafat, who spoiled the Oslo recipe and refused to behave
as he was supposed to. He is filled with a mixture of
hatred and bitterness against "Arab extremists" and
harbours low expectations of, and disappointment with,
"Arab moderates" who should always demonstrate that they
are up to the Israeli establishment's expectations.

That's what it's all about; the rest is decor. We'll see
Larsen in the garb of mediator, which hardly suits him
since he is not an arbitrator and nowhere near the middle.
And, we'll be inundated with details about ceasefires,
truces, and preparations for implementing 1559.

The resistance isn't playing the role of victim. It didn't
ask for international sympathy with the victims but for
solidarity among freedom-seeking peoples. These are the
rules of another game, a language that Arab regimes have
forgotten, if they ever really knew it, though they owe
their own existence to such a discourse. I am speaking of
the language of liberation movements that exact a payment
for colonisation from the coloniser. Resistance movements
attempt to exact a price that their adversaries cannot
afford and that the societies of their adversaries do not
wish to pay, and they try to encumber their adversaries in
a manner that inhibits the full use of force. This is how
resistance movements try to neutralise military
superiority.

The resistance was not being unduly reckless; it did not
even select the timing. It was Israel that chose to open a
broad battlefront against the resistance. It feared that
putting off an inevitable battle with the Lebanese
resistance would only give the resistance time to grow
stronger and increase its arsenal. One reason why Israel
chose this time in particular was that it already knew how
key Arab regimes would react. The situation, therefore, is
the opposite of what is being portrayed: the charge that
the resistance has courted disaster betrays the existence
of an Arab camp that regards robust resistance in Lebanon
and Palestine as an adventure.

The US, meanwhile, is futilely trying to regulate Israel's
cowardly assault against civilians and its destruction of
civilian infrastructure. It wants Israel to target the
resistance and the society that supports it without
jeopardising the American project in Lebanon. It wants
Israel to bully and blackmail America's allies without
crushing them, alienating them completely or driving their
supporters into the arms of the resistance. The difference
between the Israel and the US, here, maybe tactical, but
it is important. It is one of degree, of pushing or not
pushing people over the edge.

Whereas the US wants Israel to promote the American
project in Lebanon rather than throw out the baby with the
bathwater, Israel wants the US, Washington's allies and
all the international agencies at their disposal, to
negotiate with the Lebanese government a ceasefire that
fulfils several conditions. The first is to disarm
Hizbullah, the second to deploy the official Lebanese army
in the south and substitute the international force with a
proper NATO force, the third to release the Israeli
captives. But it is the first condition that is the one
that counts; meeting this will be sufficient for Israel to
agree to a ceasefire. The political order that emerges
from the rubble of Israel's destruction in will see to the
rest. Israel, in other words, has decided to settle
internal Lebanese dialogue by Israeli force of arms.

A Nato force accepted by the government without the
consent of the people will be considered an occupation
force and will be the next target of the resistance thus
creating a new Iraq, a fragmented Lebanon. If the Lebanese
government agrees to the proposed settlement that includes
dismantling Hizbullah a process of attrition will start
also from the inside aimed at getting Lebanese society to
pressure the resistance into conceding. This is how
internal strife is ignited and it is part of the plan.

Israel decided that this would not only be a good time to
go on the offensive but that the battle would be decisive.
If the Israeli terrorist project and military adventure is
not to prevail, it is not just the resilience of the
resistance that matters but also the unity of the Lebanese
against Israeli aggression and its political aims.

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(26) A perilous excursion into the distant past, starting seven
whole weeks ago

Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Counterpunch
21 July 2006

http://www.counterpunch.org/Cockburn07212006.html

As the tv networks give unlimited airtime to Israel's
apologists, the message rolls out that no nation, least of
all Israel, can permit bombardment or armed incursion
across its borders without retaliation.

The guiding rule in this tsunami of drivel is that the
viewers should be denied the slightest access to any
historical context, or indeed to anything that happened
prior to June 28, which was when the capture of an Israeli
soldier and the killing of two others by Hamas hit the
headlines, followed soon thereafter by an attack by a unit
of Hezbollah's fighters.

Memory is supposed to stop in its tracks at June 28, 2006.

Let's go on a brief excursion into pre-history. I'm
talking about June 20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired
at least one missile at a car in an attempted
extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between
Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car.
Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded
15.

Back we go again to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired
missiles at a van in another attempted extrajudicial
assassination. The successive barrages killed nine
innocent Palestinians.

Now we're really in the dark ages, reaching far, far back
to June 9, 2006, when Israel shelled a beach in Beit
Lahiya killing 8 civilians and injuring 32.

That's just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip
over the bodies of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded,
all of them Palestinians, most of them women and children.

Israel regrets... But no! Israel doesn't regret in the
least. Most of the time it doesn't even bother to pretend
to regret. It says, "We reserve the right to slaughter
Palestinians whenever we want. We reserve the right to
assassinate their leaders, crush their homes, steal their
water, tear out their olive groves, and when they try to
resist we call them terrorists intent on wrecking the
'peace process'".

Now Israel says it wants to wipe out Hezbollah. It wishes
no harm to the people of Lebanon, just so long as they're
not supporters of Hezbollah, or standing anywhere in the
neighborhood of a person or a house or a car or a truck or
a road or a bus or a field, or a power station or a port
that might, in the mind of an Israeli commander or pilot,
have something to do with Hezbollah. In any of those
eventualities all bets are off. You or your wife or your
mother or your baby get fried.

Israel regrets... But no! As noted above, it doesn't regret
in the least. Neither does George Bush, nor Condoleezza
Rice nor John Bolton who is the moral savage who brings
shame on his country each day that he sits as America's
ambassador (unconfirmed) at the UN and who has just told
the world that a dead Israel civilian is worth a whole
more in terms of moral outrage than a Lebanese one.

None of them regrets. They say Hezbollah is a cancer in
the body of Lebanon. Sometimes, to kill the cancer, you
end up killing the body. Or bodies. Bodies of babies. Lots
of them. Go to the website fromisraeltolebanon.info and
take a look. Then sign the petition on the site calling on
the governments of the world to stop this barbarity.

You can say that Israel brought Hezbollah into the world.
You can prove it too, though this too involves another
frightening excursion into history.

This time we have to go far, almost unimaginably far, back
into history. Back to 1982, before the dinosaurs, before
CNN, before Fox TV, before O'Reilly and Limbaugh. But not
before the neo-cons who at that time had already crawled
from the primal slime and were doing exactly what they are
doing now: advising an American president to give Israel
the green light to "solve its security problems" by
destroying Lebanon.

In 1982 Israel had a problem. Yasir Arafat, headquartered
in Beirut, was making ready to announce that the PLO was
prepared to sit down with Israel and embark on peaceful,
good faith negotiations towards a two-state solution.

Israel didn't want a two-state solution, which meant -- if
UN resolutions were to be taken seriously -- a Palestinian
state right next door, with water, and contiguous
territory. So Israel decided chase the PLO right out of
Lebanon. It announced that the Palestinian fighters had
broken the year-long cease-fire by lobbing some shells
into northern Israel.

Palestinians had done nothing of the sort. I remember this
very well, because Brian Urquhart, at that time assistant
secretary general of the United Nations, in charge of UN
observers on Israel's northern border, invited me to his
office on the 38th floor of the UN hq in mid-Manhattan and
showed me all the current reports from the zone. For over
a year there'd been no shelling from north of the border.
Israel was lying.

With or without a pretext Israel wanted to invade Lebanon.
So it did, and rolled up to Beirut. It shelled Lebanese
towns and villages and bombed them from the air. Sharon's
forces killed maybe 20,000 people, and let Lebanese
Christians slaughter hundreds of Palestinian refugees in
the camps of Sabra and Chatilla.

The killing got so bad that even Ronald Reagan awoke from
his slumbers and called Tel Aviv to tell Israel to stop.
Sharon gave the White House the finger by bombing Beirut
at the precise times -- 2.42 and 3.38 -- of two UN
resolutions calling for a peaceful settlement on the
matter of Palestine.

When the dust settled over the rubble, Israel bunkered
down several miles inside Lebanese sovereign territory,
which it illegally occupied, in defiance of all UN
resolutions, for years, supervising a brutal local militia
and running its own version of Abu Graibh, the torture
center at the prison of Al-Khiam.

Occupy a country, torture its citizens and in the end you
face resistance. In Israel's case it was Hezbollah, and in
the end Hezbollah ran Israel out of Lebanon, which is why
a lot of Lebanese regard Hezbollah not as terrorists but
as courageous liberators.

The years roll by and Israel does its successful best to
destroy all possibility of a viable two-state solution. It
builds illegal settlements. It chops up Palestine with
Jews-only roads. It collars all the water. It cordons off
Jerusalem. It steals even more land by bisecting
Palestinian territory with its "fence". Anyone trying to
organize resistance gets jailed, tortured, or blown up.

Sick of their terrible trials, Palestinians elect Hamas,
whose leaders make it perfectly clear that they are ready
to deal on the basis of the old two-state solution, which
of course is the one thing Israel cannot endure. Israel
doesn't want any "peaceful solution" that gives the
Palestinians anything more than a few trashed out acres
surrounded with barbed wire and tanks, between the Israeli
settlements whose goons can murder them pretty much at
will.

So here we are, 24 years after Sharon did his best to
destroy Lebanon in 1982, and his heirs are doing it all
over again. Since they can't endure the idea of any just
settlement for Palestinians, it's the only thing they know
how to do. Call Lebanon a terror-haven and bomb it back to
the stone age. Call Gaza a terror-haven and bomb its power
plant, first stop on the journey back to the stone age.
Bomb Damascus. Bomb Teheran.

Of course they won't destroy Hezbollah. Every time they
kill another Lebanese family, they multiply hatred of
Israel and support for Hezbollah. They've even unified the
parliament in Baghdad, which just voted unanimously --
Sunnis and Shi'ites and Kurds alike -- to deplore
Israel's conduct and to call for a ceasefire.

I hope you've enjoyed these little excursions into
history, even though history is dangerous, which is why
the US press gives it a wide birth. But even without the
benefit of historical instruction, a majority of Americans
in CNN's instant poll -- about 55 per cent out of 800,000
as of midday, July 19 -- don't like what Israel is up to.

Dislike is one thing, but at least in the short term it
doesn't help much. Israel's 1982 attack on Lebanon grew
unpopular in the US, after the first few days. But forcing
the US to pressure Israel to settle the basic problem
takes political courage, and virtually no US politician is
prepared to buck the Israel lobby, however many families
in Lebanon and Gaza may be sacrificed on the altar of such
cowardice.

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