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Israel's Secret War: The Humanitarian Disaster Unfolding in Palestine •
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Israel Rejects Peace Offer
By Rone Tempest and Laura King
The Los Angeles Times
Saturday 29 July 2006
Hezbollah signs on to Lebanon's proposal
for a cease-fire and prisoner swap, but disarmament is not included. The pace
of diplomacy quickens.
Beirut - After more than two weeks of fierce fighting between Israeli
forces and Hezbollah guerrillas, leaders from the Middle East to Washington
and the United Nations signaled a sense of urgency Friday to end the conflict.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns to the region today for the second
round of diplomacy in a week. In the hours before her arrival, Hezbollah political
leaders here reversed course and agreed to join a Lebanese government proposal
aimed at stopping the fighting in the country's south.
Israel dismissed Hezbollah's offer as disingenuous and said it was an indication
of the guerrillas' weakness on the battlefield. But the Shiite Muslim militia's
willingness to participate in the initiative shows a flexibility to negotiate
not previously evident as the fighting raged in southern Lebanon.
As diplomacy appeared to gain pace Friday, President Bush and British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, meeting at the White House, announced that they would push
for a United Nations resolution next week to send an international force to
southern Lebanon. But both leaders again refused to press for a cease-fire until
Hezbollah was disarmed.
At the U.N., Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other diplomats said discussions
were underway on a possible temporary truce of 72 hours to allow the world body
to evacuate children, the elderly and the disabled from southern Lebanon; on
the formation of an international force; and on the terms of a cease-fire.
"A cease-fire in these situations will have to be negotiated. I called
for cessation of hostilities, which, hopefully, will lead to cease-fire,"
Annan said, noting that a temporary truce was necessary both for humanitarian
work and to bring in any international force.
Annan and the U.N. humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, expressed impatience over
the international community's inability to agree more quickly on a strategy
to stop the fighting.
"Many battles are being fought on the soil of Lebanon and some have absolutely
nothing to do with Lebanon," Annan said.
The Lebanese government has proposed a seven-point peace plan, now endorsed
by Hezbollah, but it is unlikely to satisfy Israeli or U.S. officials.
"We'd take anything that Hezbollah says with a grain of salt," Israeli
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. Referring to international talks
this week in Rome, he added, "If they say they are on board with what was
presented in Rome by the Lebanese government, I think they are being disingenuous."
The plan does not call for the multinational force favored by the Bush administration.
Instead, it recommends beefing up the existing but largely ineffective 2,000-member
U.N. force already in place in the south.
The Lebanese proposal, which seeks an immediate cease-fire, also does not directly
address the issue of Hezbollah's disarmament, which Israel, the United States
and Britain consider essential to any agreement. It offers to exchange two Israeli
soldiers captured by Hezbollah in a cross-border raid July 12 for three Lebanese
prisoners held by Israel.
Prime Minister Fuad Siniora presented virtually the same plan at the talks
in Rome but without the support of the two main Lebanese Shiite political parties,
Hezbollah and Amal.
The two groups came on board late Thursday night after a marathon Cabinet meeting
chaired by Siniora. Two government ministers representing Hezbollah and three
from Amal agreed to add their support despite reservations about the nature
and scope of the U.N. peacekeeping force.
"We had some relatively small disagreements over details about the mandate
of the international force, but we agreed in principle," said Tarrad Hamadeh,
Lebanon's labor minister and a Hezbollah supporter.
Ghaleb Abu Zeinab, a member of the Hezbollah politburo, said in an interview
that the group's leaders decided to take the step after showing that its militia
could hold its own on the battlefield despite an intense air and ground campaign
by Israeli forces.
"The Israeli enemy has not accomplished its aims, so now is the time to
find a way out of the impasse," Abu Zeinab said. "The continued bombing
doesn't get them [Israel] anywhere; it is essential to move to the political
stage."
Israel's Regev took the opposite view.
"Obviously the fighting is very difficult, and we have taken some casualties,"
he said. "However, this is a sign that Hezbollah doesn't feel it has the
upper hand in this conflict, and that our strategy is putting pressure on them.
I think it's a sign that our strategy is on track."
Israeli forces continued Friday to pound Lebanon with heavy bombing. Israel
also reported that an attack Thursday on what it called a Hezbollah base in
the Bekaa Valley had killed Nur Shalhoub, whom it identified as a senior Hezbollah
official. The group did not immediately comment on the claim.
Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas continued to clash in and near the
town of Bint Jbeil, a Hezbollah stronghold in the southern Lebanon border area.
Both sides took casualties in what the Israeli army described as heavy exchanges
of fire over a period of hours. The army said that more than 20 Hezbollah fighters
were killed and an unspecified number of Israeli soldiers injured.
On Wednesday, nine Israeli soldiers were killed in and near the town, Israel's
highest one-day military loss since the offensive began.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah announced that it had used a new rocket to strike the
northern Israeli town of Afula. The rocket, the Khaibar 1, is named after a
famed 7th century battle between prophet Muhammad and Jewish tribes in the Arabian
peninsula. Hezbollah rockets had hit near the town before, but Friday's attack
was the deepest yet.
Israeli police said seven rockets hit outside Afula but caused no injuries.
The strike came three days after Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah,
vowed that his guerrillas would fire rockets beyond Haifa, Israel's third-largest
city, which has been hit repeatedly in the conflict.
Israeli authorities said the rocket probably was a renamed Fajr 5, an Iranian-made
weapon with a 45-mile range that could reach the northern outskirts of Tel Aviv.
It would be the first time Hezbollah, which has fired hundreds of smaller Katyusha
rockets into northern Israel, has launched a Fajr 5.
Hezbollah guerrillas also fired more than 100 smaller rockets at several northern
towns, the Israeli army said. One rocket hit the top-floor window of the main
hospital in the border town of Nahariya. No casualties were reported.
When Rice arrives in Jerusalem, she is expected to meet with Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and possibly Defense Minister Amir
Peretz. The group will discuss political and security issues for Lebanon and
consider such questions as "What is required to end the violence?"
said a U.S. official traveling with the secretary, speaking on condition of
anonymity.
He said that potential sticking points included Israel's desire for commitments
aimed at preventing new attacks on its territory, and Lebanon's insistence on
assurances on its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Lebanon, for example,
has always insisted that a disputed area known as Shebaa Farms, at the border
of Israel, Syria and Lebanon, be turned over to its control.
Since the fighting began this month, 400 to 600 people, mostly civilians, have
been killed in Lebanon. Israel's casualties include 19 civilians and 33 soldiers.
With Lebanese bridges and roads badly damaged by Israeli airstrikes, the war
has resulted in thousands of civilians trapped in the battle zone, including
an estimated 20,000 children. On Friday, the International Committee of the
Red Cross called for $81 million in aid for victims in the fighting.
"In southern Lebanon, the No. 1 issue today is ensuring the safety of
civilians and securing safe access for those engaged in medical and other humanitarian
activities," said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations for the Red
Cross.
At the United Nations, humanitarian coordinator Egeland was blunt in his criticism
of the civilian casualties. "There is something fundamentally wrong when
there are more dead children than armed men," he said.
Egeland pressed for at least a short-term truce "so that those who want
to escape can escape.... This can be done in the spirit that children have
nothing to do with this conflict and firing should stop at least until this
is solved."
He said the U.N. also was prepared to evacuate the wounded, the elderly and
the disabled, and move in supplies for hospitals and additional food and fuel
for public buildings.
The U.N. also would try to put in place some limited communications for villages
cut off because the roads and telephone lines have been bombed in the Israeli
offensive against Hezbollah.
Secretary-General Annan said he had called a meeting early next week of countries
that might contribute troops to an international force to help stabilize the
country. Troops are an essential component of any eventual cease-fire arrangement
in the region, but many countries already have military personnel in Afghanistan
or Iraq as well as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo and have been slow to commit.
The U.S. has said it will not contribute troops.
The European Union will meet Tuesday in Brussels to discuss troop contributions,
said Emyr Jones Parry, the British ambassador to the U.N. That will be followed
by a meeting of foreign ministers later in the week to discuss the broader cease-fire
issues.
--------
Tempest reported from Beirut and King from Jerusalem. Times staff
writers Alissa J. Rubin at the United Nations, Peter Wallsten in Washington
and Paul Richter in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report.
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Israel's Secret War: The Humanitarian Disaster Unfolding in Palestine
By Anne Penketh
The Independent UK
Saturday 29 July 2006
A 12-year-old boy dead on a stretcher. A mother in shock and disbelief after
her son was shot dead for standing on their roof. A phone rings and a voice
in broken Arabic orders residents to abandon their home on pain of death.
Those are snapshots of a day in Gaza where Israel is waging a hidden war, as
the world looks the other way, focusing on Lebanon.
It is a war of containment and control that has turned the besieged Strip into
a prison with no way in or out, and no protection from an fearsome battery of
drones, precision missiles, tank shells and artillery rounds.
As of last night, 29 people had been killed in the most concentrated 48 hours
of violence since an Israeli soldier was abducted by Palestinian militants just
more than a month ago.
The operation is codenamed "Samson's Pillars", a collective punishment
of the 1.4 million Gazans, subjecting them to a Lebanese-style offensive that
has targeted the civilian infrastructure by destroying water mains, the main
power station and bridges.
The similarities with Israel's blitz on Lebanon are striking, raising suspicions
that the Gaza offensive has been the testing ground for the military strategy
now unfolding on the second front in the north.
In Gaza, following the victory of the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas in January,
Israel, with the help of the US, initiated an immediate boycott and ensured
the rest of the world fell into line after months of hand-wringing. Israel has
secured the same flashing green light from the Bush administration over Lebanon,
while the rest of the world appeals in vain for an immediate ceasefire.
The Israelis, who launched their Lebanon offensive on 12 July after the capture
of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbollah fighters, intend to create a "sterile"
zone devoid of militants in a mile-wide stretch inside Lebanon.
In Gaza, Palestinian land has already been bulldozed to form a 300-metre open
area along the border with Israel proper. And in both cases, the crisis will
doubtless end up being defused by a prisoner exchange. With Lebanon dominating
the headlines, Israel has "rearranged the occupation" in Gaza, in
the words of the Palestinian academic and MP, Hanan Ashrawi. But unlike the
Lebanese, the desperate Gazans have nowhere to flee from their humanitarian
crisis.
Before Israeli tanks moved into northern Gaza, yesterday, 12-year-old Anas
Zumlut joined the ranks of dead Palestinians, numbering more than 100. His body
was wrapped in a funeral shroud, just like those of the two sisters, a three-year-old
and an eight-month-old baby, who were killed three days ago in the same area
of Jablaya.
In the past three weeks, the foreign ministry and the interior ministry in
Gaza city have been smashed, prompting speculation that Israel's offensive is
not only aimed at securing the release of Cpl Gilad Shalit, or bringing an end
to the Qassam rocket attacks that have wounded one person in the past month
and jarred the nerves of the residents of the nearest Israeli town of Sderot.
"At first we thought they were bombing the Hamas leaders by targeting
Haniyeh and Zahar," a Palestinian official said, referring to the Palestinian
Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister. "But when they targeted the economy
ministry we decided they wanted to completely destroy the entire government."
The only functioning crossing, Erez, is closed to Palestinians who are almost
hermetically sealed inside the Strip. As the local economy has been strangled
by donor countries, Gaza City's 1,800 municipal employees have not been paid
since the beginning of April. Families are borrowing to the hilt, selling their
jewellery, ignoring electricity bills and tax demands and throwing themselves
on the mercy of shopkeepers.
Western officials say they hope the pressure will coerce Hamas into recognising
Israel but the Palestinians believe the real goal is the collapse of the Hamas
government - six of whose cabinet members have been arrested, the rest are in
hiding.
The signs on the ground are that Israel's military pressure is proving counter-productive.
There is the risk of a total breakdown of the fabric of society at a time when
the main political parties, Fatah and Hamas, are at each other's throats. "The
popularity of Hamas is increasing," says the Palestinian deputy foreign
minister, Ahmed Soboh, from the comparative safety of his West Bank office in
Ramallah.
The situation has become unbearable for Gazans, says Nabil Shaath, a veteran
Fatah official who is a former foreign and planning minister. Through the window,
small fishing boats are anchored uselessly in the harbour, penned in by Israeli
sea patrols.
All mechanisms for coping are being exhausted.
Mr Shaath, who had a daughter, Mimi, late in life, says that he tried "laughter
therapy" with his five-year-old at home in northern Gaza. "Every time
there was a shell, I would burst out laughing and she would laugh with me. But
then the Israelis occupied everything around us, and there were tanks, and shrapnel
in the garden, and she saw where the shells were coming from, and she was terrified.
So Mimi now gets angry when I laugh."
Only a few miles away, on the other side of the border, the Israeli army says
it is taking pains to minimise civilian casualties. Hila, a 21-year old paratrooper
who is not allowed to give her last name, says the Hamas fighters in Gaza -
like Hizbollah in Lebanon - deliberately mingle with the civilian population
as a tactic. Weapons are stored in the upper storeys of houses where families
live downstairs, she says. "The terrorists deliberately choose places where
we can't retaliate."
But these places are being hit. And Mr Shaath is scornful of the disproportionate
Israeli reaction to the Palestinian rockets. Five Israelis have been killed
by the 10km range Qassams since 2000.
Mrs Ashrawi believes Samson's Pillars are no closer to falling. "Israelis
think they are searing the consciousness of the Palestinians and the Lebanese
with a branding iron. But if people have a cause they will never be defeated."
Day 17
- Israeli aircraft kill 12 in southern Lebanon, with hill villages near Tyre
among the targets.
- Hizbollah fires a new long-range missile, the Khaibar-1, at Afula south of
Haifa, the furthest a Hizbollah rocket has landed inside Israel.
- At least six people are wounded in rocket attacks on northern Israel. One
rocket hits a hospital in Nahariya.
- US State Department describes Israel's remarks that the Rome conference gave
it a "green light" to continue its attack on Lebanon as "outrageous".
- Emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland asks Israel and Hizbollah for a
72-hour ceasefire to allow evacuation of the elderly.
- Israeli aircraft attack homes owned by Palestinian militants and a metal
workshop in the Gaza Strip, wounding seven, doctors say.
Death Toll:
- At least 459 people, mostly civilians, in Lebanon
- 51 Israelis, including 18 civilians, according to Reuters' tally.
- Israeli military says 200 Hizbollah fighters killed, Hizbollah has said 31
of its fighters killed.
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