Also see below:     
Last-Minute Talks in Lebanon Amid Fears of Ground Invasion    [
Hizbullah Aims to Shift Power Balance    [

    End the Suffering in the Middle East
    By Rabbi Michael Lerner
    Tikkun

    Sunday 16 July 2006

    The people of the Middle East are suffering again as militarists on all sides, and cheerleading journalists, send forth missiles, bombs and endless words of self-justification for yet another pointless round of violence between Israel and her neighbors. For those of us who care deeply about human suffering, this most recent episode in irrationality evokes tears of sadness, incredulity at the lack of empathy on all sides, anger at how little anyone seems to have learned from the past, and moments of despair as we once again see the religious and democratic ideals subordinated to the cynical realism of militarism.

    Meanwhile, the partisans on each side, content to ignore the humanity of "the Other," rush to assure their constituencies that the enemy is always to blame. Each such effort is pointless. We have a struggle that has been going on for over a hundred years. Who tosses the latest match into the tinder box matters little. What matters is how to repair the situation. The blame game only succeeds in diverting attention from that central issue.

    Within the context of blame, there's enough to go around. It all depends on where you start the story. Counting on lack of historical memory, the partisans on all sides choose the place that best fits them into a narrative in which they are the "righteous victims" and the others are the evil aggressors. Palestinians like to start the story in 1948 with the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes during the war on Israel proclaimed by neighboring Arab states, and the refusal of the Israeli government to allow these people to r! eturn to once the hostilities ceased. Israelis prefer to start the story when Jews were desperately seeking to escape from the genocide they faced in Europe, and a cynical Arab leadership convinced the British military to side with local Palestinians who sought to prevent those Jewish refugees from joining their fellow Jews living in Palestine at the time. I tell the story, and how to understand both sides, in my book Healing Israel/Palestine.

    Or one can start more recently, with this summer's escalation of violence. But where exactly did that start? Please go to the website of Israeli Human Rights Organization B'tselem to see that each side can point to outrageous acts on the part of the other.

    Since the death of Yasir Arafat and the assumption of power by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestine's major political factions - Fatah and Hamas - observed a hudna, or ceasfire. Yet Israel, pointing to the fact that Abbas' police force (decimated by Israeli bombings during the 2nd Intifada of 2001-2003) was unable to fully restrain the violence of Hamas, the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade and Islamic Jihad - and used that weakness as its reason to claim that there was "nobody to talk to" when the peace forces in Israel pleaded with former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and later with current PM Ehud Olmert that the Palestinian request for negotiations should be accepted. Instead, Israel announced a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the northern West Bank (implemented in 2005) and from forthcoming sections of the West Bank (to have begun with the removal of illegal outposts this summer) that would de facto create new borders which would incorporate into Israel large parts of the West Bank that Israel had agreed to leave during the 1990s. Tikkun magazine and Israeli peace forces warned that the unilateral withdrawal, opposed by the Palestinian Authority, would add credibility t! o Hamas' claim that all the Palestinian Authority's efforts at non-violence had produced nothing more than Israel refusing to talk, whereas acts of violence by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza had led to the IDF withdrawing to protect its soldiers.

    It wouldn't be hard to see why Sharon went ahead with the unilateral withdrawal. If his intention was, as stated, to hold on to as much of the West Bank as possible, it would be far easier to convince the world that "there is nobody to talk to" if Hamas would win the coming election, since Hamas was universally recognized to be a terrorist group. When the Palestinian people complied by falling for this trick and establishing a government run by people who refused to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist, it was easy for Olmert to affirm the Sharon unilateralism and announce plans to withdraw from the West Bank that would be the political cover for Israel annexing significant parts of the Occupied Territory. Hamas played its expected role by lobbing Qassam rockets at Israeli population centers, thereby "proving" for the Israeli right that any withdrawal would only intensify Israeli vulnerability and give Israeli hard-liners reason to oppose Olmert's partial withdrawal as appeasement that had already failed to bring peace in Gaza.

    Of course, from the standpoint of Hamas, this was only part of an ongoing struggle to free thousands of Palestinians who continue to be "arrested" (or, from the Palestinian perspective, "kidnapped") by the IDF, incarcerated without charges or trial for six months in huge prison camps, often subject to torture. Yet Hamas, faced with an economic boycott (including the withholding to Hamas of taxes Israel collected from Palestinians that Israel had previously promised it would give back to the Palestinian Authority) that was preventing it from being able to function as a government, made sta! tements that indicated that it was exploring the idea of de facto recognition in response to the Prisoners document, which threatened to undercut everyone because it was signed by members of every major faction of Palestinians sitting in Israeli jails).

    For Israeli militarists and the settlers, Hamas recognition of Israel, however partial, would have been a dramatic propaganda defeat. Within days Israelis began shelling inside Gaza (allegedly to stop Hamas' firing of Qassam rockets against Israeli population centers). One such shell landed on a Gaza beach, killing a family of eight who were simply enjoying the sun and water. A few days later, a Hamas group captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and Israel used this as its excuse to implement a plan it had developed months before to re-enter Gaza and destroy the Hamas infrastructure.

    At this point a huge escalation took place. Instead of narrowly focusing on Hamas' capacity to make war, the Israelis chose the path of collective punishment, a frequently ineffective counterinsurgency policy used to eliminate public support for resistance movements. In the height of the oppressive summer heat, Israel bombed the electricity grid, effectively cutting off Gaza's water and the electricity needed to keep refrigeration working, thereby guaranteeing a dramatic decrease in food for the area's already destitute, million plus population. This act was yet another violation of international law that include the arrests of thousands by Israelis and the shooting of Qassams at population centers by Hamas.

    In response, Hezbollah fighters who had occupied the land abandoned by Israel when Israel terminated its occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, launched an attack on Israeli troops inside Israel in clear violation of the understandings that peace would be maintained on that border - understandings that made it politically possible for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon without f! ear that its northern citizens would once again be subject to rocket fire that had put many Israelis into bomb shelters off-and-on for years since Israel had invaded Lebanon in 1982.

    From the standpoint of some in the Arab world, the attack on Israeli troops in northern Israel was an act of Islamic solidarity in face of the huge escalation taken by Israel against the entire population of Gaza. They argue that what really needs to be explained is not why they acted, but why the rest of the world did not act to demand that Israel end its outrageous punishment of a million people for the acts of a few (when the U.N. tried to act, the right-wing government of the U.S. vetoed a resolution supported by the Security Council majority).

    Yet from the standpoint of Israel, the attacks by Hezbollah were a blatant violation of the understanding that had kept Israel out of Lebanon for the past seven years. And in fact, it was also a violation of international law and human rights, subjecting a civilian population to random bombings aimed at terrorizing the population. Hezbollah had shown itself to be the vicious terrorist force that Israel always claimed it to be. People living in Haifa or Tsfat or dozens of other locations in Israel are at this very moment living in the same kind of fear that rekindles the fears of earlier experiences in their lives (some, remember, are Holocaust survivors, others the children of survivors, and many have lived through wars that were explicitly aimed at the annihilation of Israel). Those fears are unfortunately likely to be played on by right wing politicians in the coming years.

    Nor should we underestimate the malevolence of Iran and Syria in attempting to stimulate unrest and destabilization. While there are some in both of these countries who genuinely feel outrage at Israeli behavior toward Muslim co-religionists, ! the reco rd of indifference to the plight of the Palestinians in their own countries and failure to provide material support for Palestine to build up its own economic infrastructure when it was needed suggests that their assistance to Hezbollah comes more from seeking political advantage and domination in the Middle East than from genuine moral solidarity with the Palestinian people. And the fear of Iran, a country whose president out and out denies that there ever was a Holocaust and who explicitly affirms the goal of destroying the State of Israel gives Israelis real reason to worry when his proxies in Hezbollah or Hamas develop the capacity to shoot rockets into Israeli population centers.

    What was Israel to do?

    Well, had Ariel Sharon been in power, having learned his lesson in Lebanon, he likely would have done the exact same thing he did two years ago when an Israeli businessman was captured by "the enemy" - namely, a prisoner exchange in which hundreds of prisoners are released for a single Israeli. That exchange had been asked for by Hamas and pleaded for by the family of POW Gilad Shalit, but was been rejected by the Israeli government. Please read the analysis of this error, and other articles analyzing the current situation at the daily updates of "Current Thinking" at www.tikkun.org. The consensus among Israeli peaceniks is that both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Labor Party Defense Minister Amir Peretz feel the political need to show that they are "strong" and hence the invasion and attack on Lebanon is their only politically possible strategy. For the sake of their egos and their future political viability, they "must" proceed with the wild escalation of the struggle against the Lebanese people, most of whom had exercised their democratic rights by rejecting Hezbollah's electoral appeals, voting in a government that had only a small minority of Hezbollah within ! it.

    What could Israel still do? It could redefine these issues as minor border irritants, exchange POWS, and unilaterally announce that it will no longer hold arrestees for more than 3 days without filing formal criminal charges against those who had acted with violence and releasing everyone else, giving speedy and public trials, and punishing any soldier or Shin Bet or Aman officer who engages in torture (or, as they call it, "moderate pressure") on detainees. It could then immediately announce its intentions to strengthen the position of Palestinian Authority President Abbas by giving to him the tax monies withheld from Hamas, and opening "final status" negotiations within two months. Meanwhile, Israel could begin dismantling the Separation Wall, and promise to rebuild it only on the lines of an international border agreed to by both sides. And Israel could unilaterally censor anti-Palestinian incitement within government-controlled media and instead begin to build a culture of non-violence and educate Israelis about the need for reparations to Palestinian refugees.

    What could Palestinians do? President Abbas could announce that he is inviting Israel to form a joint Israeli/Palestinian border force to ensure that there are no more violent attacks on Israeli civilians, in exchange for the immediate opening of "final status" negotiations with Israel before any further West Bank withdrawals are created. There were joint patrols and security coordination until Sept. 2,000 and they contributed to the low level of violence on both sides until Ariel Sharon made his famous provocative trip to the Temple Mount. Abbas could further announce that the Palestinian people who elected him are committed to a non-violent (not passive) struggle for ending the Occupation, but that anyone engaged in violence against Israel or against fellow Palestinians would be tried and, if ! convicte d, would lose their Palestinian citizenship. Abbas could tour the West Bank and Gaza preaching non-violence, implement an immediate end to anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric in the Palestinian press and in their schools, and could announce that he is determined to build a culture of non-violence inside Palestine.

    What could the U.S. and other Western states do? They could immediately establish an international conference representing all the nations of the world who were willing to accept the right of Israel to exist within the 1967 boundaries and the right of Palestine to exist within Gaza and the West Bank, and let those countries impose on both sides a settlement that is fair to both sides and enforce such a settlement, guaranteeing peace and security to both sides. Each participant country in this international conference would be allowed in after it had given to a neutral international bank a deposit equal to .01% of its GDP for the purpose of creating the beginning of an inernational fund for reparations as described below.

    As the Tikkun Community has outlined in the past, the terms of that settlement should include:

    1. Permanent boundaries for both states that roughly resemble the pre-67 borders, with some border adjustments mutually agreed to along lines developed in the Geneva Accord (Israel incorporating some of the border settlements into Israel, in exchange for Israel giving equal amounts and quality of land to the Palestinian State).

    2. Sharing of Jerusalem and its holy sites, with each side entitled to establish their national capital in Jerusalem, Israel to have control over the Jewish and Armenian quarters plus the Wall and adjacent territory, and Palestine to have control over the Temple Mount with its mosques.

    3. All states participating in the International Conference! would d edicate at least .1% of their GDP toward an international fund for reparations for Palestinians who lost property, employment or homes in the period 1947-1967, and to Jews who fled from Arab states in the same period (however, reparations will not be paid to any Arab or Jewish family with current gross assets of more than $5 million dollars).

    4. A joint Israel/Palestine/International Community police force will be set up to enforce border security for both sides. The U.S. and Nato will enter into a mutual security pact for both parties guaranteeing that each side will be protected by the U.S. and Nato from any assault by the other or by any assault from any other country in the world.

    5. Creation of an Atonement and Reconciliation Commission which will unveil all records of both sides, bring to light all violations of human rights on both sides, bring formal charges against those who do not confess their involvement in those violations and testify to the details, and supervise a newly created peace curriculum for all schools and universities aimed at teaching reconciliation and non-violence in action and communication. The explicit goal of this Commission will be to foster the conditions for a reconciliation of the heart and a new understanding on the part of both peoples that each side has been cruel and insensitive, and need to repent, and that both sides have a legitimate natrrative that needs to be understood and accepted as a legitimate viewpoint by the other side.

    Who are Israel's friends and the friends of the Jewish people? Those who support this path toward peace and reconciliation. Who are its enemies? Those who encourage it to persist in the fantasy that it can "win" militarily or politically. Just as the objective enemies of America in the 1960s were those who egged it on to persist in the Vietnam war, and those who were its objective friends were those of its citizens who actively opposed that war, so similarly today the ! friends of the Jewish people are those who are doing everything possible to restrain it from cheerleadng for Israel's militarist adventures and refusal to treat the Palestinians as equally entitled to freedom and self-determination as the Jewish people.

    Who are Palestine's friends? Those who encourage a path of non-violence and abandoning the fantasy that armed struggle combined with political isolation of Israel will lead to a good outcome for Palestinians. Who are its enemies? Those who preach ideas like "one state solution" or global economic boycott without offering the Jewish people a secure state in Palestine-paths that will never produce anything positive but continued resistance by Israel and world Jewry.

    As for us in the Tikkun Community who are friends of both sides, our orientation is clear. Our goal is to speak truth to both the powerful in Israel and the powerless in Palestine, to tell them that their goals cannot be achieved without a radical reversal in the strategic directions they have been following. This truth will eventually be heard - the only question is whether it will be heard without another generation of Arabs and Israelis losing their lives. Because we care very much about the human suffering on both sides, we pray that this truth will be heard, and our strateges for a solution will be implemented. And we will do more than pray - we will also demonstrate against the governments of the U.S., Israel and Palestine till they all change their directions in the ways suggested here, we will organize and educate, and will take other non-violent stepts to get our message heard.

    --------

    Rabbi Michael Lerner is author of Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation (Harper, 1995), Healing Israel/Palestine (North Atlantic Books, 2003), most recently The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006) and seven other books. He is the editor of Tikkun Magazine in Berkeley (510-644 1200) and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue which meets in both San Francisco and Berkeley.

    Go to Original

    Last-Minute Talks in Lebanon Amid Fears of Ground Invasion
    By Rory McCarthy in Haifa and Patrick Wintour
    The Guardian UK

    Monday 17 July 2006

Israeli PM warns of far reaching consequences as rockets hit Haifa.

    Last-minute talks were under way in Beirut last night in a desperate attempt to head off a major escalation in the six-day conflict between Israel and Lebanese Hizbullah militants.

    The UN secretary general's special envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, and the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, arrived in Beirut to meet the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, in the hope of securing an agreement to curb the violence.

    Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, warned of "far-reaching consequences" after eight civilian railway workers were killed and six seriously injured in a morning rocket strike in the city of Haifa, the deadliest strike in Israel since the conflict began last week. Some analysts now say a major ground invasion of southern Lebanon is being considered.

    Last night Hizbullah rockets hit a village outside Nazareth, home to Israel's biggest Arab community, and the town of Afula. At 33 miles from the Lebanese border, they are the southernmost targets to have been struck so far.

    Israeli jets hit army bases in Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city, and Abdeh, killing at least nine Lebanese soldiers and injuring many more.

    Earlier, at least 16 civilians were killed after a bomb flattened a building near the southern Lebanese town of Tyre. Five members of one family were killed in a strike in Aitaroun. All were visiting expatriate Lebanese who held Canadian citizenship. Around 140 Lebanese civilians have been killed so far. At least 12 Israeli civilians have died as well as 12 soldiers and sailors. Two Israeli soldiers are still being held captive by Hizbullah.

    As the pressure mounted, leaders of the G8 meeting in St Petersburg blamed Hizbullah for the upsurge in violence and said the onus was on the militant group to free the two Israeli soldiers it kidnapped on Wednesday. They held back from demanding an immediate ceasefire by Israel but called on Israel to show the utmost restraint, seek to avoid civilian casualties and consider agreeing to a UN observer and security mission being set up on the Lebanese border.

    "It is a strong message with a clear political content," said the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

    The leaders, struggling all day to reach agreement, said conditions for a sustainable cessation of violence must include the return of captured Israeli soldiers, an end to shelling of Israeli territory and an end to Israeli military operations, as well as the early withdrawal of its forces. In an attempt to reassure Israel that Hizbullah can be restrained on the Lebanese Israeli border, the G8 suggested the UN security council should consider "the possibility of an international security/monitoring presence" on the border.

    Italy's prime minister, Romano Prodi, emerged as a mediator yesterday when Lebanon said he had passed on Israeli conditions for a ceasefire.

    "Prodi told me that Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert informed him of two demands for a ceasefire - handing over the two captive Israeli soldiers and a Hizbullah pullback to behind the Litani river," a government statement quoted Mr Siniora as telling the cabinet. The Litani is 12 miles north of the border with Israel.

    Israeli jets were also in action in Gaza destroying the Palestinian foreign ministry building in northern Gaza.

    The world's financial markets are anxiously seeking news of a deal to end the conflict amid fears that it could send oil prices above $80 a barrel. Last week the cost of crude hit a record high of more than $78 a barrel.

    But in Israel there was no suggestion of a ceasefire. Mr Olmert, who met his cabinet yesterday, said: "Nothing will deter us, whatever far-reaching ramifications regarding our relations on the northern border and in the region there may be."

    One senior Israeli general warned of an imminent escalation in attacks on southern Lebanon, where Hizbullah has its key rocket-launching sites. Hassan Nasrallah, the Shia cleric who leads Hizbullah and whose apartment and offices have been bombed by the Israelis, appeared on television last night threatening yet more violence.

    "Any advances will be good news for the mujahideen," he said. "It will bring us near to victory and we will humiliate them as in the past."

    From Tehran, which in effect set up Hizbullah in the early 1980s, came an insistence that the group would not disarm. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said: "The American president says Hizbullah should be disarmed. It is obvious that you [America] want that, and it is obvious that the Zionists [Israel] want that too. But it will not happen." It is believed the rocket that hit Haifa was an Iranian-made missile. A missile that struck an Israeli warship on Friday night, killing four sailors, is now thought to have also been an Iranian-made radar-guided missile.

    "You will probably see ground forces into southern Lebanon for a brief time," Gerald Steinberg, of Israel's Bar-Ilan University, told Reuters. "With their [Hizbullah's] weapons storehouses being hit, when will the cost to them become too great to continue?"

    Western countries stepped up plans to evacuate their citizens from Lebanon. France hired a Greek cruise ship to sail its citizens out. An advance US security team arrived in Beirut to plan for an evacuation of the 25,000 Lebanese-Americans still in the country. Britain is sending the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious and assault ship HMS Bulwark.

    Go to Original

    Hizbullah Aims to Shift Power Balance
    By Nicholas Blanford
    The Christian Science Monitor

    Monday 17 July 2006

Israel, Hizbullah both hope to gain edge in changing war.

    Beirut, Lebanon - The operation to kidnap Israeli soldiers took months of planning with Hizbullah's battle-hardened fighters staking out the Lebanese border looking for weaknesses.

    Evidently they found one. Five days after they blasted through a border fence and seized two soldiers, Hizbullah is in a rapidly escalating conflict with Israel. It's a climactic struggle between two bitter foes which has become a "defining moment" for the Middle East, says Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, author of "Hizbullah: Politics and Religion."

    "This is a showdown for both sides in which Israel is attempting to neutralize Hizbullah, and Hizbullah is attempting to impose its will on Israel and [say to] the international community that it's here to stay," she says.

    By striking Haifa with a barrage of rockets that killed at least eight Israelis yesterday, Hizbullah has transferred the Arab-Israeli conflict to Israeli territory for the first time in more than 50 years, overturning Israel's long-standing military doctrine of defeating its enemies on foreign soil.

    "If the Israeli public begins clamoring for a cease-fire, then the Israeli army will have been neutralized," says Ms. Saad-Ghorayeb, who is also a professor of politics at the Lebanese American University. "It will shatter the myth of Israeli invincibility, proving Hizbullah's point that military force is not the same as power. This will change the shape of the region."

    In response to the Haifa attacks, Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday there would be "far reaching consequences." Much of Beirut's southern suburbs lay in ruins after multiple Israeli air strikes had destroyed Hizbullah's headquarters and television station.

    The roots of the current conflict go back to 2000, when Hizbullah fighters advanced as Israel withdrew from an occupied strip of Lebanese territory along the Israeli border. Over the following months, Hizbullah established a military infrastructure along the frontier, and its fighters occasionally attacked Israeli positions in the Shebaa Farms, a strip of mountainside running along Lebanon's southeast border.

    The clashes followed certain unwritten rules. If Israel was to react disproportionately to Hizbullah's needling attacks, it ran the risk of incurring a massive rocket bombardment by Hizbullah. On the other hand, if Hizbullah overstepped its boundaries in attacking Israel, the resulting heavy retaliation against Lebanon could backlash on the group's domestic popularity. The rules ensured a tense, but stable, calm along the border.

    Yet Hizbullah's preparations along the border were in anticipation of an eventual showdown with Israel, which Hizbullah officials believed was inevitable. "This will happen and we are constantly preparing for it," a Hizbullah official told The Monitor as long ago as February 2002.

    Similarly, the Israeli military drew up its own contingency plans.

    The status quo began to change in 2004 when Syria, which dominated Lebanon politically, began facing pressure to disengage from its neighbor. The US and France co-sponsored UN Security Council resolution 1559, which demanded a free and fair Lebanese election and the withdrawal of Syrian troops. But the US pressed for additional clauses calling for the "dismantling of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias," a reference to Hizbullah and armed Palestinian groups, and the deployment of Lebanese army troops to replace the Shiite group's fighters.

    The effect of the resolution was to polarize the Lebanese into pro- and anti-Syrian camps, a divide aggravated by the murder in 2005 of Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister, which was blamed by most Lebanese on the Syrian regime.

    With Syria's disengagement from Lebanon two months after Hariri's death, Hizbullah lost its political cover and was forced to defend its interests more directly.

    It struck an alliance with its Shiite rival, the Amal movement, which effectively turned the attempt to disarm Hizbullah into one perceived as disarming the Shiites. The alliance strengthened Hizbullah politically but at the expense of exacerbating sectarian tensions between Shiites and Lebanon's other communities, the Christians, Sunnis, and Druze.

    "The country is split one-third, two-thirds very simply," says Chibli Mallat, a presidential aspirant. "Unfortunately, the Shiites are on their own."

    By the end of 2005, an anti-Western alliance was crystallizing in the Middle East, linking Iran, under the newly elected president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with Syria, Hizbullah, and the Damascus-branch of the Hamas movement. By closing ranks, the alliance felt emboldened to challenge the US in the Middle East.

    Hizbullah had made it known for months that it was interested in kidnapping Israeli soldiers to exchange for prisoners. It even launched a well-planned assault on an Israeli position last November with the intention of snatching soldiers. The bid failed, however.

    Although a fresh kidnapping was bound to incur a massive response from Israel and the wrath of non-Shiite Lebanese, analysts believe that Hizbullah and its Iranian patron calculated that the Shiite group would prevail.

    "Quite frankly, they don't care" about the views of non-Shiite Lebanese, says Saad-Ghorayeb, as long as they have the support of their own constituency.

    In June, the Israeli government became embroiled in the Gaza kidnap crisis, and for Hizbullah and its allies it appeared an opportune moment to strike again, opening a new front and placing additional pressure on Mr. Olmert.

    Israel's response has knocked out roads, bridges, and power stations, and left more than 100 people dead in the airstrikes. With Israel telling residents of south Lebanon to leave their homes, a senior UN officer in the south says that much of the district had become "a free-fire zone."

    "This is a pure intimidation campaign," says Timur Goksel, professor and former UN officer in south Lebanon. "If these hardships continue, people will begin to support Hizbullah against Israel again."

    Hizbullah Leader Nasrallah

• Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is secretary-general of Hizbullah, a Lebanese political party and military group that is classified as a terrorist organization by the US and Europe.
  
  
• He became Hizbullah's leader in 1992 after Israel assassinated his predecessor.
  
  
• Under Nasrallah, Hizbullah is widely credited in the Arab world with causing Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.
  
  
• He is believed to have passed intelligence to Palestinian groups and has praised Palestinian suicide bombers.
  
  
• After last year's assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, Nasrallah led Hizbullah to win 14 parliament seats and to join the government for the first time.