Day 13

Today Condoleezza Rice arrived to Beirut and we went to welcome her. It was a hunt for Condi. We were not many and we were not organized – however a message had to be sent – of course to no avail.

The news from the field were centered on the battles on the Lebanese borders where the fighters of the resistance were making very good work the summary of the day was 4 soldiers killed, 23 injured, 1 apache Helicopter and 5 vehicles. The fighting is still centered in the village of Maroun el Rass – a strategic point the Israeli army is trying to secure. The village is on a hill that can see northern Palestine. However 13 days have passed and the Israeli army has not secured the area.

During the protest against Rice’s visit Israeli war planes were flying over our heads. The pictures of the protest and the planes will hopefully be posted tomorrow.

As for the questions raised by Andres about the Hezbollah, I will try to make some quick answers for the moment hopefully to elaborate more on the subject later – if I get the chance.

First of all one must ask one’s self what is the definition of terrorist. Then one must ask one’s self about the credibility of the EU and any other international or regional power (including Iran and the Arab summit). The thing is that reality and politics are subjected to power relations and when one talks about any judgment it is always relative to one’s interests. The Hezbollah was not on the EU terrorist list until recently and to put an organization on the terrorist list is simply a political decision (for years European countries – and until now some still – have refused to put this organization on this list). It is not to say that they should not be put or even that they should be put on the list but to point out to the fact that putting it on the list is simply a change of policy regarding Lebanon, Syria and Iran. The Hezbollah is accused to have exploded the American Marines HQ in Beirut an operation regarded as a terrorist one in US (which is normal) but as a heroic one in Lebanon (as the Marines were seen to be an occupying force). This is to summarize why and what is to be put on a terrorist list: A terrorist organization is an organization that is fighting the power that regards it as terrorist – that is when such an organization is seen on the other side of the conflict as a liberating force (which rules Al-Quaida as an absolute terrorist organization – but not Hezbollah or even Hamas).

Secondly to understand the resolution 1559 which demands the end of the Syrian presence in Lebanon and the disarming of the Hezbollah one must also look at how this resolution was adopted in contradiction to all the UN rules and laws. The UN has no right to make a resolution regarding the relation between one country and the other or any resolution that regards the internal politics of a country without one of the concerned countries having filed a complaint. In the case of the resolution 1559 Lebanon was not part of it; it was presented by the French and the American ambassador and was imposed on Lebanon. In fact the internal political problems in Lebanon in the last 2 years and the instability on security level was directly caused by this resolution which was refused by a majority of Lebanese people and politicians at first but was imposed on the government in a later time. When Hariri was killed (and I have reasons to think that he was killed to make way to its imposition) the resolution was back into debate and the first part of it (the end of Syrian presence) was accomplished. However the second part (disarming the Hezbollah) was refused by all the partitions of Lebanese society as being something that cannot be done as simply as that without resolving the cause of the presence of the Hezbollah until this day which is the occupation of the Chebaa Farms in southern Lebanon and the Lebanese detainees in Israeli prisons and the maps to the landmines still present on Lebanese soil. That is without mentioning the whole issue of the 700 000 Palestinian refugees which are still living in camps in Lebanon and which the UN resolution 194 states clearly that they must get back to what is now Israel (however Israel has never even bothered to implement this resolution but did make a war to implement a resolution that concerns Lebanon and which is the 1559). Then there is the problem of the resolution 242 which demands Israel to give back all the territories they occupied in 1967 which include the Chebaa farms and the Golan heights this resolution can also solve the middle east issue but Israel refuses to implement it.

The 1559 was part of a new Middle East Rice is now talking about and Israel is now doing supposedly for the sake of Lebanon.

For the last point which is why Hezbollah killed and kidnapped ISRAELI (and not Jewish – please it is not a religious conflict it is a conflict of power) soldiers I would say simply that this is not the first time and this is something Hezbollah has announced as the only way to liberate the last Lebanese detainees (which by the way were supposed to be released with those that were exchanged after the last kidnapping of Israeli soldiers to release the former detainees some years ago – however Israel did not release the ones remaining and refused negotiations, since then Hezbollah decided to re-kidnap Israeli soldiers to make a new negotiation). One must also look at an important fact that there is a big difference between a military operation and terrorist one – by all standards the last Hezbollah operation is not a terrorist one as it was not aimed at civilians but at soldiers in an area of conflict. Of course I do not take stand in what concerns being with the operation or not however one cannot launch a destructive war and destroy a whole country because of such an operation. Another thing we must also look into is the fact that Israel has kidnapped Lebanese and Palestinian civilians (and also recently Palestinian deputies) from inside their countries and no one has ever resented such operations, not to mention the recent assassinations and the Mossad groups that were captured few months ago in Lebanon and who acknowledged the assassination of 3 people this year and the preparation for further assassinations. It is this tendency to always measure things in an uneven way that makes this struggle one of pride and human rights. And if one looks at the chronicles of the recent war you can clearly see that the Hezbollah did not start targeting civilians in Israel until Israel started bombing the southern Suburbs and killed more than 50 Lebanese civilians in a day of massacres. The first day the Hezbollah targeted only military posts in northern Israel.

What shows from such a big scale and high demand operation is that Israel was actually waiting for a reason to launch this war to implement the last part of the 1559 which Lebanon had agreed supposedly with the UN to solve it with an internal dialogue between the different political groups, however the talk about the defense strategy to be adopted by the government and which was proposed by the Hezbollah and was being accepted more or less made things complicated for US and Israel because if Hezbollah remains powerful Iran will always have a strong point of negotiation later on when the nuclear program will be in discussion, however this too is just one quick idea open to further discussion.

In short everything that happens in the world and especially in the Middle East and more precisely in Lebanon is always subjected to conflicts of power, energy and international politics. One must not misunderstand politics as an aim in itself, it is simply a tool.

And just to stress on Giorgos’s definition the common slogan to describe Israel is to say that it is Terrorist that is on the other side of the border. In here Israel is the symbol of terrorism for both its deeds in Lebanon and Palestine. The US entered the competition of high standard terrorism in its occupation of Iraq (and Afghanistan but Iraq remains the main scare in the Arab mind).

Finally to talk about the destruction of Israel one must first look at what Israel represents for those who lived on the land that was called Palestine not more than 60 years ago and see that yes some people believe that being kicked out of your land and having a new country created on it while your identity has been stolen and you are living in refugee camps for the whole of your life without a passport nor ID papers is something that would motivate you to call for the destruction of this country that was declared on your land. One must admit that Israel (with my respect to the Holocaust and all the crimes committed against Jewish people) was created by the eviction of a whole population more than 2 million Palestinians live in camps – and if you know these people even have legal ownership documents for their lands dated from the mandate period and some from the Ottoman empire. Their lands are now called in Hebrew names and no UN resolution gave them their right to live on their land. Israel is a piece of land that was populated by what is now called Palestinians, they were not peasants nor nomads, actually Palestine was the urban center of the region (my father was born their even though he is from Beirut because his father ‘immigrated’ to Palestine at the time when it was TO Palestine that people from Beirut used to go to make more money). Has anyone who lives in Israel now asked him/herself who used to live in these old houses from the pre-1948 period and why those who lived here left their houses? One does not really believe that people can leave their land to live in refugee camps with their own will. This does not mean Jewish people should be evicted but it means that you cannot occupy a land and declare a country after evicting those who used to live in this land and not expect these people to refuse this fact and do whatever to change it, after all they have nothing else in life but death. The Hezbollah along with many non-religious groups also believe in this cause and therefore call for the destruction of Israel. However this does not mean killing the Jews, but the creation of a long awaited Palestine, which was before 1948 the jewel of the orient. By the way an interesting fact is: there are still Jewish families living in Lebanon, they refused to go to Israel and they don’t even recognize the state of Israel however one disturbing detail is that they actually live in the Hezbollah districts, to be more precise the now destroyed southern suburb of Beirut, if this shows anything it is that the Hezbollah is not anti-Jewish but anti-Israeli.