Kim Bullimore
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said on July 19 that air strikes and artillery shelling of his country by Israel over the previous seven days had killed 300 people, wounded 1000, displaced at least half a million and inflicted "unimaginable losses" to his nation's civilian infrastructure.
His comments, made to a gathering of foreign ambassadors, were the first casualty figures officially announced by the government since Israel began its bombardment of Lebanon on July 12 after guerrillas from the popular Shiite Hezbollah ("Party of God") political movement captured two Israeli soldiers.
Israel claims that its bombardment of Lebanon is an act of "self-defence", aimed at destroying Hezbollah's "terrorist infrastructure". However, Saniora showed the ambassadors photographs of the damage inflicted by Israeli attacks in which Beirut's international airport was bombed and closed, bridges destroyed and port facilities severely damaged.
In a swipe at the US, which has parroted Israel's claim that its bombing campaign is an act of "self-defence", Saniora said: "Is this what the international community calls the right of self-defence? Is this the price to pay?"
"The destruction is not targeting one group and it's not only making Hezbollah pay. It's making all of Lebanese society suffer", Lebanese finance minister Jihad Azour told the London Financial Times on July 19. He estimated that Israeli attacks had caused up to US$2 billion in damage including to telecommunications, electricity production and supply, ports, airports and food warehouses, and even a milk factory.
That same day, Israeli warplanes bombed the Christian Ashrafiyah neighbourhood in eastern Beirut. Two trucks were hit near a department store in the heart of the neighbourhood. Ratiba Naaman, a 73-year-old Palestinian refugee who was forced to flee to Lebanon in 1948, asked reporters: "Why are they attacking these areas? It is them who are the terrorists."
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Israeli warplanes also attacked Hadath, a mainly Christian town just east of Beirut.
Israeli air strikes have forced the evacuation of at least 30 villages in southern Lebanon. During one evacuation, at least 20 civilians died, including at least 15 children, when they were told by the Israelis to flee the Lebanese border village of Marwaheen. The villagers, who were given just two hours to evacuate their homes, were killed when Israel bombed their civilian convoy.
In retaliation for the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, Hezbollah guerrillas have launched 50-100 Katyusha rockets per day into northern Israel, killing 15 Israeli civilians.
On July 14, Hezbollah fired a missile against one of the Israeli warships blockading Lebanon's ports, killing four Israeli sailors. According to Beirut-based British journalist Robert Fisk, Hezbollah attacked a secret Israeli military installation at Miron in the north of Israel. The installation, a key component of Israel's northern military command, housed in mountain caves, came under a barrage of Katyusha rockets just before Hezbollah launched its July 15 rocket attack on the northern Israeli city of Haifa.
According to Fisk, writing in the July 16 British Independent daily, Hezbollah also destroyed the first Israeli tank to enter Lebanon, just 70 metres into Lebanese territory. He reported that Hezbollah's successful capture of Israeli soldiers, its attacks on Israel military installations, warships and tanks have "deeply shocked Israel's military planners", who assumed they could attack Lebanon with impunity.
Since the beginning of the current conflict, Israel, the US and the Western corporate media have portrayed Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers as "unprovoked". However, despite officially withdrawing its troops from southern Lebanon in 2000 — after an 18-year occupation — Israeli security forces have continued to enter Lebanon and carry out acts of aggression. In May for example, Israeli forces assassinated a senior Islamic Jihad member in the Lebanese city of Sidon.
The Turkish AKI news agency reported on July 19 that Sheikh Qudur Nur ad Din, a member of Hezbollah's political bureau, said its guerrillas had captured the two Israeli soldiers to force Israel to negotiate a prisoner exchange, as had occurred in November 2004. But this time, the Israelis "used the capture of two Israeli soldiers as a pretext to destroy Lebanon", he said.
"We are now focusing all our efforts on getting an unconditional ceasefire", he told AKI. However, Israel has laid down three conditions that it says must be complied with before it will halt its attacks — withdrawal of Hezbollah guerrillas north of the Litani River, the disarmament of the Shiite group's militants and the release of the two Israeli soldiers.
"It won't be the Israelis who will force us to withdraw from our own land", Nur ad-Din said, vowing that Hezbollah "will continue to fight them" if the Israelis continue their attacks on Lebanon.
The US, Israel's chief ally and arms supplier, has given Israel the "green light" to continue its military assault on Lebanon and Gaza. Agence France Presse reported on July 14 that Washington "wielded the US veto to block a UN resolution calling on Israel to halt military operations in Gaza", and the next day the US blocked an attempt by Lebanon to get a resolution calling on Israel to halt its bombing campaign.
"The debate", AFP reported, "highlighted divisions in the [UN Security] Council, with US Ambassador John Bolton standing alone in refusing to even caution restraint from
Israel over its military offensives in both Lebanon and Gaza."
The German DPA news agency reported on July 19 that UN peacekeepers on the Lebanese border with Israel said their headquarters and one of their positions had come under Israeli fire. "Our headquarters in Naquora was hit by an artillery shell and another UNIFIL post in Maroun al Ras was hit by two mortars", Milos Stugar , a spokesperson for the 2000-soldier United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, told DPA.
"The people [in southern Lebanon] are clearly terrorised. Many Lebanese are fleeing north", said French Army Major Eric Minoli, commander of one UNIFIL contingent.
The July 19 Haaretz reported that the "Israeli Defense Forces estimate that 10-14 more days are necessary in order to meet the military aims of the operation in Lebanon". Haaretz reported that a "senior military source said on Tuesday that Israel seeks 'to significantly weaken Hezbollah but not crush it'. He said that 'it is impossible to crush a popular, religious movement'."
While world attention has been focused on events in Lebanon, Israel's continuing war on Palestinians in Gaza has all but disappeared from the corporate media's coverage. On July 19, 30 Israeli tanks attacked the Mughazi refugee camp in central Gaza, home to 22,000 Palestinians, killing 15 residents and wounding 52 others.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, July 26, 2006.
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