I have not opened the blog life since the Israeli brutality massacred the Palestinian citizens.
I am coming back to write, specially I missed writing on a lot of important and controversial incidents. As difficult it may seem from where I am currently and the situation I am in, I decided that writing is the most important tool to preserve the ideas. My email address will be activated in the next few days.
Last but not least, enjoy the latest brutality of the Zionist regime and their racist brutality.
Gaza peace protester is prisoner in own home
MFL
Showing posts with label Refugees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Refugees. Show all posts
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Waking Up to Abu Mazen's Rotten Voice...
To my rotten luck, I had to wake up and see Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas speak.
Abbas is still speaking about peace. He also seems to have forgotten that it is by resistance the Palestinians bulldozed their way into getting international recognition of their existence. Abbas simply wants the Egyptian Initiative which cripples the Palestinians, places high restrictions on Gaza, and doesn't condemn the war crimes committed by Israel.
Not in a life time of a war, specially against a war machinery that kills over 780 citizens in two weeks (excluding the fact that over 400 wounded Palestinian are in critical situation, with 150 Palestinians reported missing), we see a president doing lip service to Israel in order to halt the war, and argue that he wants peace by all costs. We all know that such peace will dismantle whatever chances the Palestinians have to fight for their rights.
Abbas also forgot that diplomacy with the Zionists brings nothing good. Yasser Arafat tried diplomacy and ended up living his final years in confinement in Ramallah. Abbas had been giving the Israelis everything they need, now if Abbas is AWARE that nothing good comes out, then Abbas is simply thinking for the short-run, which is to eradicate any competitor to Fatah. Abbas also so far got nothing from the Israelis except fancy pictures with a stupid American President, Mr. Bush. The fastest question to the PA, if there were no resistance, how is Abbas able to negotiate?
Now if we assume that Abbas is really dumb, then I am not surprised. Yasser Arafat's death left a lot of void in his party. Like a one man show, Arafat was everything, and always refused to delegate or empowers his senior party members. I guess it is understandable that Abbas was the one who did the morning coffee to Arafat. For this reason, it is not surprising that Abbas appears to think that way, disregarding the Zionist butchery and simply focus on Hamas, and argue that 'Peace is under threat'
Disgusting...someone bring Abbass back to Planet Earth...
MFL
Abbas is still speaking about peace. He also seems to have forgotten that it is by resistance the Palestinians bulldozed their way into getting international recognition of their existence. Abbas simply wants the Egyptian Initiative which cripples the Palestinians, places high restrictions on Gaza, and doesn't condemn the war crimes committed by Israel.
Not in a life time of a war, specially against a war machinery that kills over 780 citizens in two weeks (excluding the fact that over 400 wounded Palestinian are in critical situation, with 150 Palestinians reported missing), we see a president doing lip service to Israel in order to halt the war, and argue that he wants peace by all costs. We all know that such peace will dismantle whatever chances the Palestinians have to fight for their rights.
Abbas also forgot that diplomacy with the Zionists brings nothing good. Yasser Arafat tried diplomacy and ended up living his final years in confinement in Ramallah. Abbas had been giving the Israelis everything they need, now if Abbas is AWARE that nothing good comes out, then Abbas is simply thinking for the short-run, which is to eradicate any competitor to Fatah. Abbas also so far got nothing from the Israelis except fancy pictures with a stupid American President, Mr. Bush. The fastest question to the PA, if there were no resistance, how is Abbas able to negotiate?
Now if we assume that Abbas is really dumb, then I am not surprised. Yasser Arafat's death left a lot of void in his party. Like a one man show, Arafat was everything, and always refused to delegate or empowers his senior party members. I guess it is understandable that Abbas was the one who did the morning coffee to Arafat. For this reason, it is not surprising that Abbas appears to think that way, disregarding the Zionist butchery and simply focus on Hamas, and argue that 'Peace is under threat'
Disgusting...someone bring Abbass back to Planet Earth...
MFL
Friday, January 09, 2009
The United Nations: As Always: Clowns
Someone said that the United Nations is nothing but a forum to display muscles.
As always, we see the UN as an inefficient tool that requires immediate replacement. So far, the only side that bombed UN based buildings, or staff had been Israel, but no condemnations had taken place, because Mr. Ban is simply terrified to lose his job.
Two years ago, Israel bombed UNIFIL which prompted scandanavian objections to the level of brutality that Israel was using on citizens.
Once it gets too hot for the UN on the ground, they just FLEE the scene. While Gaza had been suffering for quiet a long time from blockades, patients dying due to lack of medical supplies, and day-to-day picking lottery winners randomly of its winners, the UN realized that it is too dangerous for it to remain there, instead to broadcast world wide the attoricities of the Israeli Defense Forces, hence they simply request for immediate seize fire from both sides, which places Hamas to the level of Mr. Olmert, whose war machinary had devastated the lives of thousands of people in less than two weeks. Of course, that is called self-defense. Now Mr. Olmert still believes that they will bomb the hell out of the people of Gaza, reject any peace offers, and the UN meantime goes: 'in principle' reached an agreement. Can those diplomats tell that to the surviving relatives of the Palestinian genocide? UNRWA when needed most are considering to suspend their operations.
Israel is also focused on Gaza, today, unknown missiles were launched from South Lebanon. The villagers were terrified. All eyes go on Ahmad Gibreel's General Command, nevertheless Israel's reply was smooth. Six rockets in retaliation (for once in equal numbers almost, although it also proved that their warning systems suffered malfunctioning. When asked by New TV if they would like to open a new front with Israel, the border villagers' reply was: "they wouldn't mind as long as all other Arab countries do so, we already suffered enough". This leads us again to the pethatic performance of the UN, a dysfunctional system where one country can veto the decisions of the majority within the security council. This reminds us of the UN's capabilities of not protecting normal citizens, like the Qana martyrs of 1996, who were killed hiding at the UN HQ there, or worse, Marwaheen, where a massacre took place by the hands of the Israelis because the UN refused to grant refugees who had no where to run assylum. Israel of course, called that self-defense. This also reminds us of when Fawaz Traboulsi disparaged Hezbollah and the 14th of March (then) based government for not building safety underground rooms for the citizens on the borders, and prepare an evacuation route for them to escape faster the Israeli blind machinary.
Over 750 palestinians are killed, and out of those so far, 245 are children. The UN is also aware of Israel's use of banned weaponry, and of course, the UN General Secretary, keeps his mouth shut and says: "both sides should hold a seize fire". Someone reminds us on how Kofi Anan, after finishing his term, bluntly said that the Palestinians are the most marginalized and require aid; of course, he didn't mention all the injustices when he was the general secretary, but afterwards. One wonders how cheap a human life can be when it doesn't enjoy the coverage of CNN and ABC news (along with others).
Of course, Israel after the UNRWA bombings, decided to show its "merciful" side by stopping the destruction for three hours per day. Also, of course, sometimes they issue warnings on the locations they will bomb. Nevertheless, we all remember how Israel has this hobby of bombing first all routes of escaping, then bomb the citizens, later warn them of incoming bombs, then bomb again. That is exactly what happened in the July War of 2006. Any more meetings and statements to be done while innocent people are dying?
Damned UN Security Council and the Entire UN Institution...since 1947 the UN had taken decisions destructive to the Palestinians, what kind of an international body that recognizes Israel back then which built its roots on ethnic cleansing and expulsions?
MFL
As always, we see the UN as an inefficient tool that requires immediate replacement. So far, the only side that bombed UN based buildings, or staff had been Israel, but no condemnations had taken place, because Mr. Ban is simply terrified to lose his job.
Two years ago, Israel bombed UNIFIL which prompted scandanavian objections to the level of brutality that Israel was using on citizens.
Once it gets too hot for the UN on the ground, they just FLEE the scene. While Gaza had been suffering for quiet a long time from blockades, patients dying due to lack of medical supplies, and day-to-day picking lottery winners randomly of its winners, the UN realized that it is too dangerous for it to remain there, instead to broadcast world wide the attoricities of the Israeli Defense Forces, hence they simply request for immediate seize fire from both sides, which places Hamas to the level of Mr. Olmert, whose war machinary had devastated the lives of thousands of people in less than two weeks. Of course, that is called self-defense. Now Mr. Olmert still believes that they will bomb the hell out of the people of Gaza, reject any peace offers, and the UN meantime goes: 'in principle' reached an agreement. Can those diplomats tell that to the surviving relatives of the Palestinian genocide? UNRWA when needed most are considering to suspend their operations.
Israel is also focused on Gaza, today, unknown missiles were launched from South Lebanon. The villagers were terrified. All eyes go on Ahmad Gibreel's General Command, nevertheless Israel's reply was smooth. Six rockets in retaliation (for once in equal numbers almost, although it also proved that their warning systems suffered malfunctioning. When asked by New TV if they would like to open a new front with Israel, the border villagers' reply was: "they wouldn't mind as long as all other Arab countries do so, we already suffered enough". This leads us again to the pethatic performance of the UN, a dysfunctional system where one country can veto the decisions of the majority within the security council. This reminds us of the UN's capabilities of not protecting normal citizens, like the Qana martyrs of 1996, who were killed hiding at the UN HQ there, or worse, Marwaheen, where a massacre took place by the hands of the Israelis because the UN refused to grant refugees who had no where to run assylum. Israel of course, called that self-defense. This also reminds us of when Fawaz Traboulsi disparaged Hezbollah and the 14th of March (then) based government for not building safety underground rooms for the citizens on the borders, and prepare an evacuation route for them to escape faster the Israeli blind machinary.
Over 750 palestinians are killed, and out of those so far, 245 are children. The UN is also aware of Israel's use of banned weaponry, and of course, the UN General Secretary, keeps his mouth shut and says: "both sides should hold a seize fire". Someone reminds us on how Kofi Anan, after finishing his term, bluntly said that the Palestinians are the most marginalized and require aid; of course, he didn't mention all the injustices when he was the general secretary, but afterwards. One wonders how cheap a human life can be when it doesn't enjoy the coverage of CNN and ABC news (along with others).
Of course, Israel after the UNRWA bombings, decided to show its "merciful" side by stopping the destruction for three hours per day. Also, of course, sometimes they issue warnings on the locations they will bomb. Nevertheless, we all remember how Israel has this hobby of bombing first all routes of escaping, then bomb the citizens, later warn them of incoming bombs, then bomb again. That is exactly what happened in the July War of 2006. Any more meetings and statements to be done while innocent people are dying?
Damned UN Security Council and the Entire UN Institution...since 1947 the UN had taken decisions destructive to the Palestinians, what kind of an international body that recognizes Israel back then which built its roots on ethnic cleansing and expulsions?
MFL
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Not the Final Chapter of the July War
I have not been blogging due to personal obligations but intended to return blogging in two months. Now, that a lot of events took place, I have no choice but to write...
Introduction and Cont'd of an Earlier Article
Last year, I wrote extensive analysis in "Lessons from the July War". Now, the main logo of Hezbollah for launching their July War "Operation Honest Promise" was achieved. Israel gave Hezbollah Samir Quntar in return for their two soldiers, who so far, we didn't know what happened to them till the last moment.
In Israel, the primary question was bombarded on Olmert and his allies as follows: "Why did we enter a war if there was going to be a swipe?" Hence, what started Israel's humiliation in 2000, aggravated in 2006, and climaxed in the liberation of Lebanon's national hero, Samir Quntar, a man who symbolized resistance to the Zionists, and resilience to the Zionists' attempts to crush the soul of resistance.
Samir Quntar argued in TV that his 1978 operation, the hostages were shot by Israeli soldiers. While the Israeli media hovered around how their government released him, the whole media of the world forgot how many Lebanese children the Israelis have cold-bloodedly butchered. Of course, whenever the pictures of our massacred children pop up the news, the Israelis rudely accuse the Lebanese as "faking" the picture.
The Israeli media also accused Nasrallah as shrewd, since he considered the liberation of Samir Quntar as a national victory. This was not the first time, when the Lebanese ousted the Israeli Defense Forces and their puppies, the Southern Lebanese Army, from Lebanese soil, Nasrallah argued it was a victory for the resistance, Lebanon, the Muslims, and the entire Arab World. The fact all the Lebanese politicians were there to welcome Quntar and the last Hezbollah soldiers, reflected the dimension of the long awaited victory of Samir Quntar, whom we were raised to hear his name: the man whose will never shook down.
Brief Bolshevik Point
Now for me, as a revolutionary Marxist, we oppose individual acts of operations from the view point that such operations aggravate the unity of the Proletariat across borders, hence our unity as Lebanese Proletariat, with the residents of Occupied Palestine and Israel minus the Arab reactionary leaders and the Zionists. We believe in longer run emancipation tactics which requires more patience while focusing on welfare policies and women empowerment in the short-run. What I would respect about Samir Quntar is what he did inside the Israeli prisons. The man was named "Dean of the Prisoners" not because he is the oldest of prisoners, rather, his activism inside the Israeli prisons. He was the one who organized informal networks inside Israeli prisons across nationalities whereby the prisoners self-educated themselves, resisted Israeli pressure to break the will of the prisoners, and always held their heads high in the face of Zionist brutalities.
Impact of Samir Quntar's release
The release of Samir Quntar was greeted by over a million Lebanese (mainly) citizens, among a small minority of others. Quntar's freedom brought Lebanon to the 1970s nostalgia where dreamers hoped for the crush of Israel and liberation of Palestine whereby the Palestinians can finally and peacefully return to their homes. This nostalgia which witnessed the PLO and other radical factions waging operations against Israel also included the factions of the Lebanese National Front, and the Lebanese Resistance Front (whose three pillars were the SSNP – LCP – Order for Communist Action). Now my personal opinion is known, I oppose the ideological demands of the Lebanese National Movement, while I oppose their tactics, specially going blindly behind the PLO. The higher euphoria, in the words of Jubran Arayji, an SSNP top official to NBN," was the belief in your own platform to be actualized".
While Israel wept, Lebanon celebrated. The Israelis in a pathetic manner tried to show that the Lebanese are barbaric while they are a civilized nation surviving this barbaric world is the fact that the Lebanese danced, celebrated, while Hassan Nasrallah did a sudden appearance in the festivalities to greet his own soldiers and Samir Quntar. Quntar, for a man living 30 years in prisons, always kept his head up and till now he doesn't show his real age, 47. The insistence of Quntar to remain wearing his military suit showed to what extent his will remained unbroken.
Dancing Coffins
The Israelis also were baffled on how the Lebanese and Palestinians welcomed the martyrs' bodies with rice, dancing, and flowers. To this Perez called our traditions as "shameful". The Lebanese and the Palestinians, from years of agony, learnt to welcome their beloved in a "marriage" ceremonial manner. Several Muslim and Christian traditions of funerals included whistling, dancing, clapping, throwing rice, and "dancing the coffin" whereby the people carrying the coffin get the coffin to move up and down which appears dancing. The purpose of such a process is to pay tribute to the deceased. When Samir Qassir was buried, his coffin was dancing amidst flying flowers, wedding singing called "Zalghota" in Arabic, amongst others. When George Hawwi, the ex-stalinist Communist Party leader was assassinated, everyone clapped and danced as the men "danced the coffins". Such traditions are a tribute to the deceased and paying respect. The second significance is to show for the deceased and whoever wanted him/her dead that the people are not weeping, rather they do a wedding instead of a funeral to pay respect because one popular culture includes the belief that the deceased do not want their beloved to cry for them, rather they should celebrate and rejoice. The final reason for such festivities is to prove to the deceased and to recharge amongst them that they are celebrating instead of mourning because the person involved is not dead, rather still alive in their hearts. And that is how the Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians welcomed the deceased martyrs' bodies.
Israel yet again Humiliated
Now for the celebrations of what that ugly Levni proclaimed as shameful welcome of a criminal, the Lebanese are over-joyous in welcoming a hero who made the enemy cry on their knees after killing over 60,000 Lebanese, across the years, displacing over a quarter of citizens (in 2006), and eventually proving how stupid she and her country is. They waged a war on the Lebanese, called it "War on Hezbollah" which included the killing of everyone except Hezbollah in general, such as the red cross, the foreign journalists, the Lebanese Army, and the Police, and even three members of Hezbollah's archenemies: the Lebanese Forces. Hence, that war was everything but a war on Hezbollah. The other dimension is that almost the entire Lebanese citizens across political and sectarian lines in one way or another cooperated to contain the Southern exodus. Even Palestinian camps such as Ain el Hilwi welcomed Lebanese fleeing under bombardment their homes for safety. After all, Israel used the refugee buses as target practice. Shameful and uncivilized. Hence, how can Lebanon not welcome Samir Quntar as a hero, or even as a liberator, who proved to the Lebanese and Palestinians that the Israelis are ineffective to do anything right? He even inspired to others that Israel's days are countable, so many believed that thought, happily to see their Southern racist neighbor drowning in tears, same people whose media forgot to announce how many they killed of children in Palestine and Lebanon, forgot to compare Israel's operation to Palestine in 1948 to Milosevic's ethnic cleansing in 1999 to Kosovo. In one of those few occasions Lebanon celebrated in joy and happiness while Tel Aviv drowned in tears.
Israeli reactions to the Lebanese victory were different in several manners. For starters, the Israeli intelligence added Samir Quntar's name to be assassinated next to Nasrallah. After all, Lebanon shouldn't go against the flow of Arab regimes trying to convince that Israel is here to stay. Reactions from normal Israeli citizens within Israeli media demanded that the next war with Lebanon have Beirut leveled down. I have news to them, in the last war, half of it was already leveled down. Finally, to the families of the deceased soldiers, they should expect such operations when they are wearing the military suit.
Israel since the year 2000 has had their victories cut short. All of Israel is in a way trained soldiers because all its citizens should serve the Israeli Defense Forces. Hence such an operation impacted them in 2006 because each citizen thought to himself/herself "It could have been me or my relatives". Well, to them, start changing your racist policies if you want legitimacy within your neighborhoods.
Impacts of Hezbollah and Lebanese Victory
While the entire cabinet of different political parties gathered in the airport , Israel tried to downsize Lebanon's happiness as "Nasrallah has the entire Lebanese as hostages". If that is true, I love Israel's way of dealing with a hostage crisis, burn the entire country to kingdom come (2006).
Hezbollah have been in a winning since 2000. They ousted the Israelis outside Lebanon in 2000 and proclaimed themselves as the descendants of the Resistance front forged by the Lebanese Communist Party and Order for Communist Action, and followed by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. However, the latter three's leaders were marginalized and persecuted by Syria. In the words of one Iranian Diplomat during the July war to Ahmad Fatat, "we the Iranians learnt how to resist from the Christians, such as George Habbash and George Hawwi." Hezbollah by 2004 proved their complete dominance over the Bekaa and South in municipalities elections whereby AMAL movement's influence was downsized. In the end, Syria had to intervene to face-save their allies AMAL. Hence, Hezbollah officially dominated the Shiite sect while AMAL became a relative minority. The defeat of 2006 of Israel on the infantry level reflected how the underdogs caught up with the giants. Israel's army is not indestructible. The assassination of Imad Moghnieh was again a defeat to Israel even if it is not 100% confirmed that they assassinated him. Hezbollah's alliance to the Christian bloc, the Free Patriotic Movement, moved them away from isolation as well as a Shiite sect. Their military power also remained undisputed in Lebanon when they swept Beirut against 14th of March in one evening, while Mt. Lebanon collapsed in two hours. Hence, they got the demands they have been requesting: Red lines on Hezbollah's arms, no Western power can oust Hezbollah out, got the national unity government they needed to veto any governmental decisions that might touch their arms. Finally, to complete Hezbollah's euphoria, they did the impossible and liberated Samir Quntar and left the Israelis feeling canned inside their borders. The timing of Samir Quntar was marked with the 2nd memory of the July war.
The liberation of Samir Quntar was highly valuable for Israel. Their 2006 across borders operation was called "The Honest Promise", which means the promise to liberate Samir Quntar. Olmert and his goons crumbled down at timing more perfect for Hezbollah. For starters, they pulled Lebanon in a euphoria outside the last civil war we had couple of months ago and diverted attention to this blunder operation they did whereby retribution will take a long run form between the Sunnis and Druze and the Shiites. Their and their allies' vulgar behavior "as peaceful" diverted to the liberation of Samir Quntar. Trying to erase the breach in their promise "no weapon shall be turned to the inside of Lebanon", they proved that they are the only force to inflict defeat on Israel and their arms are still needed.
As a matter of fact, the pro-14th of March are trying to pull a symbolic victory by getting Shebaa farms diplomatically. Second, Samir Quntar's allegiance to Hezbollah was also what they needed. After all, Quntar spent his time reading Israeli media, whereas the most hated to them were Hezbollah, hence, they became his favorites, specially they were the ones who liberated him. So, whereas March 14th accused Hezbollah to ignite the July war in 2006 to protect their allies Syria from the International Tribunal, now got their promise actualized and diverted attention that the war was not about Syria's attention. Although, Bashar Assad's hypocritical attitude celebrating the July war as the real victor on the ashes of Lebanon is quiet lame. Sadly, Quntar supported Syria blindly without investigating what has happened during their era. Hopefully he will have much more time to do so to fill the gap.
Now the term resistance became over-charged, Ali Kanso was bragging that the SSNP will not surrender their weapons because it is "Arms for Resistance" although we didn't see a single shot directed on Israel all this time except on other Lebanese. The election of Assad Herdan as SSNP president shows the partial return of the Syrians, and the military urgency that the SSNP are currently living in especially several Ras Beirut zones are still within the newly resurrected SSNP cantons. Hence, Hezbollah's allies are now justified to preserve their weapons while leaving the 14th of Marchers in another security dilemma to rebuild their forces, hence a new showdown coming soon within the next decade.
Now, Hezbollah can behave the Judge and Executioner if things don't go the way they don't like. Simply unleash the AMAL movement goons on those supporters.
More to the point, Hezbollah's victories have an impact on the Arab region and the World as a whole. Most of the Arab regime, dictators like Egypt's Moubarak, Jordan's King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's al-Saud, Qatar's Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, and most recently Iraq's Maliki, among others, are having aftermaths of Hezbollah and Lebanon's victories. While al-Assad, along with Libya and few other Arab nations support War with Israel, the majority don't The mentioned states are satellite regimes for the USA, who established peace with Israel on the account that "Israel is here to stay" and "let us do the best out of it". Hence, they oppressed their people under that logo plus receiving US funds as support. Egypt and Jordan are the second and third most funded governments by the US for signing peace treaties. Such victories, destabilize Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt whereby the oppressed majorities can dream of ousting their tyrants and boycott Israel.
The questions goes: how long Israel plans to distort history, for 1948 has its impact on all Arab worlds, specially Lebanon. How long they plan to remain racists and Zionists, after all Racism and Zionism go hand in hand with each other. The underdogs in a military sense are catching up, once the underdogs know how to shoot down Israeli planes, Israel's very existence is threatened with extermination and the Jewish Proletariat are threatened with another ethnic cleansing as a payback for what their Zionist leaders pushed to do throughout the British mandate. The on-going atrocities do not help on the Palestinians. Furthermore, how long can those US satellite regimes hold on, and haven't they realized the more the Israelis are brutal, the more secular and progressive forces are purged or shoved into Islamic movements, like Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Muslim Brotherhoods. Finally, Hezbollah's victories sustained the Assad regime to rule for the next decade or two with maximum peace inside his lands and oppress his own people; specially the British themselves declared that Assad is different than Saddam. The reason for this is the fact that the alternative to Assad's regime in Syria would be the three more oppressive, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Last, I hope Nasrallah would live as long as possible, because the scariest of all is the relations of Hezbollah to Ali Khamanei through the Iranian funds and Wilayat el Faqih. If Nasrallah passes away, the option is not a moderate tolerant leader like Hassan Nasrallah, rather the extremist Na'im Qassem who, all Hezbollah's allies on grassroots level from pro-Hezbollah Palestinians, Syrians, Aounis, and even the SSNP, expressed that "all hell would break loose if he takes control."
Unwanted Palestinians
What were most disgusting about 14th of March, the Opposition, Hezbollah, the Lebanese President, and others is their behavior: "Palestinians are not welcomed to stay here" hence the "Liberation".
Finally
With Nasrallah declaring that the war with Israel is an open war, following Moghnieh's assassination, and promising us future wars, paralleled with Israel's nutcases such as Olmert and Perez that new wars are coming up as retributions, a doomed nation like Lebanon has no choice but to wait for the next disaster.
MFL
Introduction and Cont'd of an Earlier Article
Last year, I wrote extensive analysis in "Lessons from the July War". Now, the main logo of Hezbollah for launching their July War "Operation Honest Promise" was achieved. Israel gave Hezbollah Samir Quntar in return for their two soldiers, who so far, we didn't know what happened to them till the last moment.
In Israel, the primary question was bombarded on Olmert and his allies as follows: "Why did we enter a war if there was going to be a swipe?" Hence, what started Israel's humiliation in 2000, aggravated in 2006, and climaxed in the liberation of Lebanon's national hero, Samir Quntar, a man who symbolized resistance to the Zionists, and resilience to the Zionists' attempts to crush the soul of resistance.
Samir Quntar argued in TV that his 1978 operation, the hostages were shot by Israeli soldiers. While the Israeli media hovered around how their government released him, the whole media of the world forgot how many Lebanese children the Israelis have cold-bloodedly butchered. Of course, whenever the pictures of our massacred children pop up the news, the Israelis rudely accuse the Lebanese as "faking" the picture.
The Israeli media also accused Nasrallah as shrewd, since he considered the liberation of Samir Quntar as a national victory. This was not the first time, when the Lebanese ousted the Israeli Defense Forces and their puppies, the Southern Lebanese Army, from Lebanese soil, Nasrallah argued it was a victory for the resistance, Lebanon, the Muslims, and the entire Arab World. The fact all the Lebanese politicians were there to welcome Quntar and the last Hezbollah soldiers, reflected the dimension of the long awaited victory of Samir Quntar, whom we were raised to hear his name: the man whose will never shook down.
Brief Bolshevik Point
Now for me, as a revolutionary Marxist, we oppose individual acts of operations from the view point that such operations aggravate the unity of the Proletariat across borders, hence our unity as Lebanese Proletariat, with the residents of Occupied Palestine and Israel minus the Arab reactionary leaders and the Zionists. We believe in longer run emancipation tactics which requires more patience while focusing on welfare policies and women empowerment in the short-run. What I would respect about Samir Quntar is what he did inside the Israeli prisons. The man was named "Dean of the Prisoners" not because he is the oldest of prisoners, rather, his activism inside the Israeli prisons. He was the one who organized informal networks inside Israeli prisons across nationalities whereby the prisoners self-educated themselves, resisted Israeli pressure to break the will of the prisoners, and always held their heads high in the face of Zionist brutalities.
Impact of Samir Quntar's release
The release of Samir Quntar was greeted by over a million Lebanese (mainly) citizens, among a small minority of others. Quntar's freedom brought Lebanon to the 1970s nostalgia where dreamers hoped for the crush of Israel and liberation of Palestine whereby the Palestinians can finally and peacefully return to their homes. This nostalgia which witnessed the PLO and other radical factions waging operations against Israel also included the factions of the Lebanese National Front, and the Lebanese Resistance Front (whose three pillars were the SSNP – LCP – Order for Communist Action). Now my personal opinion is known, I oppose the ideological demands of the Lebanese National Movement, while I oppose their tactics, specially going blindly behind the PLO. The higher euphoria, in the words of Jubran Arayji, an SSNP top official to NBN," was the belief in your own platform to be actualized".
While Israel wept, Lebanon celebrated. The Israelis in a pathetic manner tried to show that the Lebanese are barbaric while they are a civilized nation surviving this barbaric world is the fact that the Lebanese danced, celebrated, while Hassan Nasrallah did a sudden appearance in the festivalities to greet his own soldiers and Samir Quntar. Quntar, for a man living 30 years in prisons, always kept his head up and till now he doesn't show his real age, 47. The insistence of Quntar to remain wearing his military suit showed to what extent his will remained unbroken.
Dancing Coffins
The Israelis also were baffled on how the Lebanese and Palestinians welcomed the martyrs' bodies with rice, dancing, and flowers. To this Perez called our traditions as "shameful". The Lebanese and the Palestinians, from years of agony, learnt to welcome their beloved in a "marriage" ceremonial manner. Several Muslim and Christian traditions of funerals included whistling, dancing, clapping, throwing rice, and "dancing the coffin" whereby the people carrying the coffin get the coffin to move up and down which appears dancing. The purpose of such a process is to pay tribute to the deceased. When Samir Qassir was buried, his coffin was dancing amidst flying flowers, wedding singing called "Zalghota" in Arabic, amongst others. When George Hawwi, the ex-stalinist Communist Party leader was assassinated, everyone clapped and danced as the men "danced the coffins". Such traditions are a tribute to the deceased and paying respect. The second significance is to show for the deceased and whoever wanted him/her dead that the people are not weeping, rather they do a wedding instead of a funeral to pay respect because one popular culture includes the belief that the deceased do not want their beloved to cry for them, rather they should celebrate and rejoice. The final reason for such festivities is to prove to the deceased and to recharge amongst them that they are celebrating instead of mourning because the person involved is not dead, rather still alive in their hearts. And that is how the Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians welcomed the deceased martyrs' bodies.
Israel yet again Humiliated
Now for the celebrations of what that ugly Levni proclaimed as shameful welcome of a criminal, the Lebanese are over-joyous in welcoming a hero who made the enemy cry on their knees after killing over 60,000 Lebanese, across the years, displacing over a quarter of citizens (in 2006), and eventually proving how stupid she and her country is. They waged a war on the Lebanese, called it "War on Hezbollah" which included the killing of everyone except Hezbollah in general, such as the red cross, the foreign journalists, the Lebanese Army, and the Police, and even three members of Hezbollah's archenemies: the Lebanese Forces. Hence, that war was everything but a war on Hezbollah. The other dimension is that almost the entire Lebanese citizens across political and sectarian lines in one way or another cooperated to contain the Southern exodus. Even Palestinian camps such as Ain el Hilwi welcomed Lebanese fleeing under bombardment their homes for safety. After all, Israel used the refugee buses as target practice. Shameful and uncivilized. Hence, how can Lebanon not welcome Samir Quntar as a hero, or even as a liberator, who proved to the Lebanese and Palestinians that the Israelis are ineffective to do anything right? He even inspired to others that Israel's days are countable, so many believed that thought, happily to see their Southern racist neighbor drowning in tears, same people whose media forgot to announce how many they killed of children in Palestine and Lebanon, forgot to compare Israel's operation to Palestine in 1948 to Milosevic's ethnic cleansing in 1999 to Kosovo. In one of those few occasions Lebanon celebrated in joy and happiness while Tel Aviv drowned in tears.
Israeli reactions to the Lebanese victory were different in several manners. For starters, the Israeli intelligence added Samir Quntar's name to be assassinated next to Nasrallah. After all, Lebanon shouldn't go against the flow of Arab regimes trying to convince that Israel is here to stay. Reactions from normal Israeli citizens within Israeli media demanded that the next war with Lebanon have Beirut leveled down. I have news to them, in the last war, half of it was already leveled down. Finally, to the families of the deceased soldiers, they should expect such operations when they are wearing the military suit.
Israel since the year 2000 has had their victories cut short. All of Israel is in a way trained soldiers because all its citizens should serve the Israeli Defense Forces. Hence such an operation impacted them in 2006 because each citizen thought to himself/herself "It could have been me or my relatives". Well, to them, start changing your racist policies if you want legitimacy within your neighborhoods.
Impacts of Hezbollah and Lebanese Victory
While the entire cabinet of different political parties gathered in the airport , Israel tried to downsize Lebanon's happiness as "Nasrallah has the entire Lebanese as hostages". If that is true, I love Israel's way of dealing with a hostage crisis, burn the entire country to kingdom come (2006).
Hezbollah have been in a winning since 2000. They ousted the Israelis outside Lebanon in 2000 and proclaimed themselves as the descendants of the Resistance front forged by the Lebanese Communist Party and Order for Communist Action, and followed by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. However, the latter three's leaders were marginalized and persecuted by Syria. In the words of one Iranian Diplomat during the July war to Ahmad Fatat, "we the Iranians learnt how to resist from the Christians, such as George Habbash and George Hawwi." Hezbollah by 2004 proved their complete dominance over the Bekaa and South in municipalities elections whereby AMAL movement's influence was downsized. In the end, Syria had to intervene to face-save their allies AMAL. Hence, Hezbollah officially dominated the Shiite sect while AMAL became a relative minority. The defeat of 2006 of Israel on the infantry level reflected how the underdogs caught up with the giants. Israel's army is not indestructible. The assassination of Imad Moghnieh was again a defeat to Israel even if it is not 100% confirmed that they assassinated him. Hezbollah's alliance to the Christian bloc, the Free Patriotic Movement, moved them away from isolation as well as a Shiite sect. Their military power also remained undisputed in Lebanon when they swept Beirut against 14th of March in one evening, while Mt. Lebanon collapsed in two hours. Hence, they got the demands they have been requesting: Red lines on Hezbollah's arms, no Western power can oust Hezbollah out, got the national unity government they needed to veto any governmental decisions that might touch their arms. Finally, to complete Hezbollah's euphoria, they did the impossible and liberated Samir Quntar and left the Israelis feeling canned inside their borders. The timing of Samir Quntar was marked with the 2nd memory of the July war.
The liberation of Samir Quntar was highly valuable for Israel. Their 2006 across borders operation was called "The Honest Promise", which means the promise to liberate Samir Quntar. Olmert and his goons crumbled down at timing more perfect for Hezbollah. For starters, they pulled Lebanon in a euphoria outside the last civil war we had couple of months ago and diverted attention to this blunder operation they did whereby retribution will take a long run form between the Sunnis and Druze and the Shiites. Their and their allies' vulgar behavior "as peaceful" diverted to the liberation of Samir Quntar. Trying to erase the breach in their promise "no weapon shall be turned to the inside of Lebanon", they proved that they are the only force to inflict defeat on Israel and their arms are still needed.
As a matter of fact, the pro-14th of March are trying to pull a symbolic victory by getting Shebaa farms diplomatically. Second, Samir Quntar's allegiance to Hezbollah was also what they needed. After all, Quntar spent his time reading Israeli media, whereas the most hated to them were Hezbollah, hence, they became his favorites, specially they were the ones who liberated him. So, whereas March 14th accused Hezbollah to ignite the July war in 2006 to protect their allies Syria from the International Tribunal, now got their promise actualized and diverted attention that the war was not about Syria's attention. Although, Bashar Assad's hypocritical attitude celebrating the July war as the real victor on the ashes of Lebanon is quiet lame. Sadly, Quntar supported Syria blindly without investigating what has happened during their era. Hopefully he will have much more time to do so to fill the gap.
Now the term resistance became over-charged, Ali Kanso was bragging that the SSNP will not surrender their weapons because it is "Arms for Resistance" although we didn't see a single shot directed on Israel all this time except on other Lebanese. The election of Assad Herdan as SSNP president shows the partial return of the Syrians, and the military urgency that the SSNP are currently living in especially several Ras Beirut zones are still within the newly resurrected SSNP cantons. Hence, Hezbollah's allies are now justified to preserve their weapons while leaving the 14th of Marchers in another security dilemma to rebuild their forces, hence a new showdown coming soon within the next decade.
Now, Hezbollah can behave the Judge and Executioner if things don't go the way they don't like. Simply unleash the AMAL movement goons on those supporters.
More to the point, Hezbollah's victories have an impact on the Arab region and the World as a whole. Most of the Arab regime, dictators like Egypt's Moubarak, Jordan's King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's al-Saud, Qatar's Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, and most recently Iraq's Maliki, among others, are having aftermaths of Hezbollah and Lebanon's victories. While al-Assad, along with Libya and few other Arab nations support War with Israel, the majority don't The mentioned states are satellite regimes for the USA, who established peace with Israel on the account that "Israel is here to stay" and "let us do the best out of it". Hence, they oppressed their people under that logo plus receiving US funds as support. Egypt and Jordan are the second and third most funded governments by the US for signing peace treaties. Such victories, destabilize Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt whereby the oppressed majorities can dream of ousting their tyrants and boycott Israel.
The questions goes: how long Israel plans to distort history, for 1948 has its impact on all Arab worlds, specially Lebanon. How long they plan to remain racists and Zionists, after all Racism and Zionism go hand in hand with each other. The underdogs in a military sense are catching up, once the underdogs know how to shoot down Israeli planes, Israel's very existence is threatened with extermination and the Jewish Proletariat are threatened with another ethnic cleansing as a payback for what their Zionist leaders pushed to do throughout the British mandate. The on-going atrocities do not help on the Palestinians. Furthermore, how long can those US satellite regimes hold on, and haven't they realized the more the Israelis are brutal, the more secular and progressive forces are purged or shoved into Islamic movements, like Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Muslim Brotherhoods. Finally, Hezbollah's victories sustained the Assad regime to rule for the next decade or two with maximum peace inside his lands and oppress his own people; specially the British themselves declared that Assad is different than Saddam. The reason for this is the fact that the alternative to Assad's regime in Syria would be the three more oppressive, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Last, I hope Nasrallah would live as long as possible, because the scariest of all is the relations of Hezbollah to Ali Khamanei through the Iranian funds and Wilayat el Faqih. If Nasrallah passes away, the option is not a moderate tolerant leader like Hassan Nasrallah, rather the extremist Na'im Qassem who, all Hezbollah's allies on grassroots level from pro-Hezbollah Palestinians, Syrians, Aounis, and even the SSNP, expressed that "all hell would break loose if he takes control."
Unwanted Palestinians
What were most disgusting about 14th of March, the Opposition, Hezbollah, the Lebanese President, and others is their behavior: "Palestinians are not welcomed to stay here" hence the "Liberation".
Finally
With Nasrallah declaring that the war with Israel is an open war, following Moghnieh's assassination, and promising us future wars, paralleled with Israel's nutcases such as Olmert and Perez that new wars are coming up as retributions, a doomed nation like Lebanon has no choice but to wait for the next disaster.
MFL
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Shame on LBC's Basmat Watn
A clip passed on LBC's Basmat Watan whereby a Lebanese ties a Palestinian and wears the Red Scarf (Koufieh), and takes a check from the Public Sector compensation, and then as he is fleeing, he dumps the Koufieh on the head of the tied-up Palestinian, and tells him: "I am a Lebanese who had to steal your identity to make cash from the state.... (laughs)... the immigrants of the Mountain (Mt. Lebanon/ al-Jabbal) till now didnt return, but a Palestinian?" and he runsaway
First, I want to say that even if this is intended towards the government, this is very racial towards the Palestinian civilians...
Second, opening the issue of Mt. Lebanon immigrants is illogical since a lot of the political figures of 8th of March never tackled such an issue while they were part of the government. (then it was Junblatt who took charge of the Immigrants' Box)
Third, Basmat Watan is known to be mostly Pro-Aoun (despite LBC is pro-14th of March)... and that is the type of extreme Nationalism that we expect from all of them...
Fourth, if people are so bothered by the presence of the Palestinian Refugee Camps and their residents, perhaps they can wonder why several militant groups rose over there due to bad conditions, specially most of the Palestinians (mostly lower class) never allowed to have full rights as citizens, while different reports warned about the aggravated sanitory and living conditions of the camps... so what are the Palestinian Refugees to the political officials (14th of March/Opposition)? Bargaining cards with the outside world?!
Fifth, already Racism has spread toward the Palestinians in Lebanon, due to extreme nationalist parties, Arafat's blunders in the Past, and of course, most recently to heavily politicized Nahr el Bared events whereby the Palestinians are suffering part of the accountability of the existence of Fatah Islam. Well, wasnt it the fleeing residents of Nahr el Bared, two weeks before the war with Fatah Islam broke out, were begging any official to intervene on an investigation that appeared on LBC itself?!
Sixth, whatever is racist it is replaced with reverse racism... so now people think they are getting even with the Palestinians due to the events starting since late sixties: first Palestinian Missile propagading from Lebanon and to Israel. Well guess again, this would cause both Lebanese and Palestinians to be more isolated than ever even though they both live in the same country. Moreover, a lot of Lebanese Christians are originally Palestinians given the Lebanese identity when the racist Zionist organization expelled them from their homes, and till now they dont dare to expose themselves as "Palestinian Christians"
Finally, specially to the Christian parties of Lebanon, such as Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement & Phalange Party, there is a joke that ends with nice ironic information "Jesus is Palestinian". As for the rest racist parties, they are not excluded. Till now, several AMAL movement members take pride in the "War of the Camps" against the Palestinians, while the old generation of the Sunni faction still remember the horrors of the PLO reign over "West Beirut" and blame it on the current generation of civilians who are neither combatants nor even politicians, simply civilians with minimum conditions of living. The Upper class Palestinians live equally like the rest of the Lebanese because money buys rights, while they drifted in general (interview with 12 different families) away from Politics and prefer to keep a low profile rather shed light on the situation. This may sound as a very subjective post, but yes, what to expect from a stupid post that attacks the government on the expense of the Palestinians...
No War but Class War
MFL
First, I want to say that even if this is intended towards the government, this is very racial towards the Palestinian civilians...
Second, opening the issue of Mt. Lebanon immigrants is illogical since a lot of the political figures of 8th of March never tackled such an issue while they were part of the government. (then it was Junblatt who took charge of the Immigrants' Box)
Third, Basmat Watan is known to be mostly Pro-Aoun (despite LBC is pro-14th of March)... and that is the type of extreme Nationalism that we expect from all of them...
Fourth, if people are so bothered by the presence of the Palestinian Refugee Camps and their residents, perhaps they can wonder why several militant groups rose over there due to bad conditions, specially most of the Palestinians (mostly lower class) never allowed to have full rights as citizens, while different reports warned about the aggravated sanitory and living conditions of the camps... so what are the Palestinian Refugees to the political officials (14th of March/Opposition)? Bargaining cards with the outside world?!
Fifth, already Racism has spread toward the Palestinians in Lebanon, due to extreme nationalist parties, Arafat's blunders in the Past, and of course, most recently to heavily politicized Nahr el Bared events whereby the Palestinians are suffering part of the accountability of the existence of Fatah Islam. Well, wasnt it the fleeing residents of Nahr el Bared, two weeks before the war with Fatah Islam broke out, were begging any official to intervene on an investigation that appeared on LBC itself?!
Sixth, whatever is racist it is replaced with reverse racism... so now people think they are getting even with the Palestinians due to the events starting since late sixties: first Palestinian Missile propagading from Lebanon and to Israel. Well guess again, this would cause both Lebanese and Palestinians to be more isolated than ever even though they both live in the same country. Moreover, a lot of Lebanese Christians are originally Palestinians given the Lebanese identity when the racist Zionist organization expelled them from their homes, and till now they dont dare to expose themselves as "Palestinian Christians"
Finally, specially to the Christian parties of Lebanon, such as Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement & Phalange Party, there is a joke that ends with nice ironic information "Jesus is Palestinian". As for the rest racist parties, they are not excluded. Till now, several AMAL movement members take pride in the "War of the Camps" against the Palestinians, while the old generation of the Sunni faction still remember the horrors of the PLO reign over "West Beirut" and blame it on the current generation of civilians who are neither combatants nor even politicians, simply civilians with minimum conditions of living. The Upper class Palestinians live equally like the rest of the Lebanese because money buys rights, while they drifted in general (interview with 12 different families) away from Politics and prefer to keep a low profile rather shed light on the situation. This may sound as a very subjective post, but yes, what to expect from a stupid post that attacks the government on the expense of the Palestinians...
No War but Class War
MFL
Monday, July 23, 2007
Assaf Kfoury: The Palestinians' Purgatory In Lebanon
Article published in ZNet July 19 2007, link
In a matter of just a few days in June, the Palestinian unity government patiently brokered by Saudi Arabia three months earlier foundered in bloody clashes between Hamas and Fatah. Outnumbered and outgunned but more disciplined Hamas fighters routed Fatah in a violent takeover of the Gaza Strip. Mahmoud Abbas, head of Fatah and president of the Palestinian Authority, promptly dissolved the power-sharing cabinet led by prime minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. The US, Israel and the European Union joined in a chorus of support for Abbas, praising him as a "moderate" (because he has serviced Israeli policies diligently, though not always successfully, in the occupied territories) and pledging to help him fight off the "Hamas extremists" (because they remain an obstacle to the ongoing dismemberment of the territories). The Israelis have now resumed financial and material aid for a Fatah-led administration in the West Bank, while continuing the blockade of the Gaza Strip which they started shortly after Hamas won in the legislative elections in January 2006.
Thus another episode in the long and painful fragmentation of Palestinian society has come to a close. The separation of Gaza and the West Bank under two rival administrations -- and each largely disconnected from Palestinian communities in surrounding Arab countries (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan), inside Israel proper, and in the global diaspora -- makes Palestinians ever more vulnerable to the regional power play and the idea of an independent Palestinian state more remote than ever. Palestinians are now divided into seven geographically separate groups. Beyond a shared identity and a shared experience of deprived rights in host societies, powerful bonds as these may be, the truth is there is not much left that is binding together institutionally the splintered and dispersed Palestinian communities.
Perhaps nowhere is this fragmentation and absence of unifying institutions felt more acutely than in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon today. There is bitter irony in this. Although Lebanese and Palestinians are in many ways closer to each other than they are to any other Arab society -- in their cultural and social habits, in their long experience of facing Israeli military might and manipulation at the hands of more powerful regional players -- Palestinians in Lebanon are subjected to some of the most discriminatory and demeaning measures.
There was a time in the late 1960's and early 1970's, in the heydays of PLO power, when Palestinian factions coordinated their activities in the camps, dispensed social services in orderly fashion and projected their influence throughout the Palestinian diaspora, in Lebanon and elsewhere. Since that time, through repeated setbacks over more than three decades, the PLO and its institutions have become a bloated and largely ineffectual bureaucracy, more a burden than an instrument of liberation for the Palestinian people. That was the corrupting legacy inherited by the Palestinian Authority, when the latter was established in the occupied territories in the mid-1990s, pursuant to the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993.
Abandoned to their fate by a declining PLO, the Palestinian camps in Lebanon have become a breeding ground for competing armed groups, which are all too often unaccountable to outside authority and which, for sheer survival, engage in petty criminal activities or accept to do the dirty work of the highest bidder among local parties or regional governments. Some of the more recent among these groups include violent fugitives of various political stripes that are neither Palestinian nor Lebanese, who come from countries far and close, traveling across the porous borders or slipping through the notoriously lax security measures at Beirut International Airport.
The cruelty of the camps
Some 400,000 Palestinians are currently registered as refugees in Lebanon with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Of these, more than half live in refugee camps scattered throughout the country. Of the original 16 official camps in Lebanon, four were destroyed or evacuated during different periods of conflict since 1948. According to the UNRWA, the remaining 12 camps in Lebanon:
suffer from serious problems -- no proper infrastructure, overcrowding, poverty and unemployment. [They] have the highest percentage of Palestine refugees who are living in abject poverty and who are registered with the Agency's "special hardship" programme.
The UNRWA further reports that:
Palestine refugees in Lebanon face specific problems. They do not have social and civil rights, and have very limited access to the government's public health or educational facilities and no access to public social services. The majority rely entirely on UNRWA as the sole provider of education, health and relief and social services. Considered as foreigners, Palestine refugees are prohibited by law from working in more than 70 trades and professions. This has led to a very high rate of unemployment amongst the refugee population.
Palestinian refugees enjoy far fewer civil liberties in Lebanon than in Syria, Jordan or the other Arab countries they fled to after 1948. As a result in Lebanon, the refugees have to rely more on UNRWA services, where they are forbidden by law (though often broken) from building inside the camps, owning property or working in jobs other than the most menial. The situation has been documented in numerous UNRWA reports over the years. Sheer ordinary living is thus all too often and unavoidably a criminalized activity. To secure the means of a meager existence, the refugees often have to pay exorbitant bribes to work (illegally) for subpar wages or else to emigrate (also illegally).
Since the "Cairo Agreement" (November 1969) and the "Melkart Understanding" (May 1973) brokered by Egypt between the Lebanese government and the then-powerful PLO, the camps have been off-limits, at least officially, to the Lebanese army and police. With the gradual demise of the PLO in the 1980s and 1990s, the camps have turned into something of a no man's land. The lack of a recognized authority in the camps became more acute after the abrupt withdrawal of Syrian troops, in April 2005, which had maintained a heavy-handed security presence, especially in the camps around Beirut and to the north. In the larger ones, most notably in Ain al-Hilweh (in the southern coastal city of Sidon) and Nahr al-Bared (the northernmost camp on the Lebanese coast), several armed groups have emerged to fill the political vacuum -- competing or coexisting with remnants of earlier PLO factions, carving out their own enclaves of influence and racketeering, and shifting political alliances according to needs and circumstances.
To be sure, this is not the entire Palestinian experience in Lebanon. Middle-class Palestinians have always had the means to buy their way into Lebanese society or to migrate to other lands. None of these have ever needed to register with the UNRWA as refugees for the meager rations and services it doles out. If successful in finance or in business, well-off Palestinians have seamlessly joined the ranks of the Beirut bourgeoisie over the years. Thus, among many others, Yusuf Baydas developed his Intra Bank in the 1960's into the largest bank in Lebanon, Said Khoury and Hasib Sabbagh succeeded in turning their Consolidated Contractors International Company into the eighteenth-ranked construction and engineering firm worldwide, and the Palestinian (and Lebanese and Jordanian) founders of Dar al-Handasah have transformed their modest Beirut office of the mid-1950's into one of the top ten international contracting and consulting firms in the world fifty years later.
The lot of the camps in Lebanon is therefore that of the poorest and wretched, those who came with nothing except for a few bundled clothes on their backs, from their villages in Palestine in 1948, and their descendants who were born in the camps since. The humane solution is of course to lift all legal restrictions on the camp dwellers and, even more, let them integrate into the rest of Lebanese society, if they so wish, with the right of acquiring Lebanese citizenship. This is moreover the practical solution, if one is also concerned about ultimately dismantling the camps as incubators of despair, lawlessness and unnecessary animosity between their disfranchised inhabitants and the rest of the population.
Will Palestinian integration work? Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are already part of a much larger shadow economy, comprising no less than one million refugees and migrant workers according to some estimates, in a country whose total resident population is about 4 million. But there are other factors indicating integration will work without much disruption. At a popular level, there is far less antagonism between Lebanese and Palestinians than one is led to believe from reading the Western press. In time of duress, both sides have readily helped each other. During the US-Israeli bombing campaign in July-August 2006,[1] Palestinian camps in southern Lebanon, already overcrowded and impoverished, provided shelter and food to the Lebanese fleeing from their devastated villages. In the current confrontation between the Lebanese army and the Fatah al-Islam group in and around the Palestinian camp of Nahr el-Bared in northern Lebanon, its 30,000 to 40,000 dwellers have had to seek refuge elsewhere, most of them in the nearby Beddawi camp and the rest in points further south; Lebanese NGO's and humanitarian groups have promptly mobilized their resources to respond to the humanitarian crisis.[2]
But Palestinian integration is one of the permanently debated issues of Lebanese politics since 1948, a political football that all parties, both internal and external, have always played in pursuit of their own short-sighted agendas quite separate from the well-being of the Palestinian refugees themselves and, in the long run, also the well-being of the Lebanese population surrounding them. What is at stake is the delicate balance of the sectarian-based (so-called confessional) system of government which would be undermined as a result. The sectarian power-sharing formula is in fact as much crippling as it is delicate, the cause of many of the country's woes in recent decades, with politicians all too ready to decry its ills but none really willing or able to give up the privileges it accords them.
The majority of the Palestinian refugees are Sunni Muslim whose integration, it would seem, would be encouraged by the Sunni segment of the Lebanese ruling class, since it would tip the sectarian balance in their favor. But confessionalism is not just a power-sharing formula based on religious sect, but a whole system of patronage, increasingly entrenched in the political life of the country, into which the landless and stateless refugees (and other non-Palestinian migrant workers) do not readily fit. This system of patronage identifies ordinary citizens by both sect and district of origin (the latter often being different from district of residence), and makes them depend on politicians of their own sect and district of origin to promote and defend their rights. Class interests cut across the divisions promoted by the confessional system, and any form of class solidarity undermines these divisions. Integration of Palestinian refugees would likely lead to many of them joining an urban lumpenproletariat that would not be answerable to the established Sunni (or other confessional) parties and would thus be disruptive of their hold on power.
There are courageous voices that defend the only humane option, namely, that of allowing all Palestinians in Lebanon to be fully integrated, if they so wish. One such voice is that of Fawwaz Traboulsi, a historian and prominent advocate of human rights and democracy in Arab countries. But these voices remain too few and isolated, without much echo from (extra-parliamentary) secular left parties that have been in decline since the 1970's. If the issue of al-tawteen (settling) of the Palestinian refugees is raised, politicians and public commentators of all stripes, whether in pro-government or opposition parties, routinely reject the idea because they consider it "a burden Lebanon cannot shoulder alone" or "a betrayal of the Palestinian cause," or they even argue against it in thinly-disguised racist terms.
Nahr al-Bared and Ain al-Hilweh
On May 19, Lebanon's Internal Security Forces (ISF) botched a raid to apprehend members of a fundamentalist Sunni (Salafi) group, Fatah al-Islam, that had robbed a bank near the northern city of Tripoli. Overwhelmed by a handful of gunmen of Fatah al-Islam, the ISF called the Lebanese army for help. Soon after the ISF raid, other militants of Fatah al-Islam, based in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, made stealth attacks on several positions of the Lebanese army nearby; they killed many soldiers, first torturing them and then beheading them. As there was little or no coordination between the ISF and the army, the latter had not alerted its men around the camp and was badly mauled, suffering a larger number of casualties than Fatah al-Islam.
With scores of its soldiers killed in the initial assault and determined to prevail, the Lebanese army has received uniform support from all parties across the Lebanese political spectrum, as well as from Palestinian organizations wary of extremist and largely non-Palestinian groups gaining influence in the camps. Having nothing to lose and no place to retreat to, Fatah al-Islam has dug in for the long haul, even though it has gradually abandoned many of its positions and retreated to the southern parts of Nahr al-Bared in the face of the army's superior firepower. Reacting to the growing humanitarian crisis in Nahr al-Bared, violence has fitfully spread to other Palestinian camps, notably to Ain al-Hilweh in the southern city of Sidon where, on June 3, gunmen from another extremist group, Jund al-Sham, attacked a nearby army checkpoint slaying two soldiers.
As of this writing, more than 200 people have been killed in the Nahr al-Bared events, in the worst internal violence since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.[3] Since the middle of June, Lebanon's defense minister Elias al-Murr has on several occasions announced that "Fatah al-Islam has been crushed," only to be refuted within hours by another armed clash in the fight in and around Nahr al-Bared.
These are the incontrovertible facts since May 19, reported equally by all sides of the Lebanese media -- pro-government, pro-opposition, and independent. Beyond the facts however, explanations abound as to what party or government is really at fault for the violence.
The political rumor mill is always buzzing in Beirut, and perhaps never at a higher pitch than after Seymour Hersh repeated to the Beirut press some of what he had written in his article "The Redirection" (The New Yorker, March 5, 2007). According to Hersh, the Bush administration, with the help of members of the Saudi royal family, has been secretly funding radical Sunni groups, some with ties to al-Qaeda, to counter Shiite groups in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region that are backed by Iran. Hersh maintained there is American money, none of it approved by Congress, sent to the government of prime minister Fuad Siniora, which then funnels it into "at least three different Sunni jihadist groups." Among the radical Sunni groups Hersh explicitly mentioned in his article were Fatah al-Islam in Nahr al-Bared and Usbat al-Ansar in Ain al-Hilweh. (The group that attacked an army checkpoint on June 3, Jund al-Sham, split from Usbat al-Ansar in 2002.)
If the information passed on by Hersh is correct, the whole episode since May 19 is the consequence of a reckless policy that backfired of trying to contain Hizbullah by arming unruly radical Sunni groups. This is a highly embarrassing charge against the Siniora government which, naturally enough, vehemently rejects it. Instead, Siniora and his allies put the blame entirely on the Syrian government, which they accuse of constantly fomenting disorder to remind the Lebanese (and the world) that security in Lebanon cannot be maintained without a Syrian presence. They point out that Fatah al-Islam started in late 2006, splitting from another older group, Fatah al-Intifada, totally aligned with Syria; its members are extreme Sunni fundamentalists who entered Lebanon across the border from Syria, then ensconced themselves in Nahr al-Bared where they took over the quarters of Fatah al-Intifada. The opposition parties led by Hizbullah have been a little more circumspect in the blaming game, simply accusing Fatah al-Islam and other al-Qaeda inspired extremist groups of trying to ignite a Shiite-Sunni confrontation in Lebanon.
This is all a little murky, and it will take some time for the truth to surface about which parties and which governments have been involved -- directly or indirectly -- whether because of recklessness, or incompetence, or outright complicity. But be that as it may, what is already clear is that the biggest losers from these events are the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.
First and foremost are the 30,000 to 40,000 inhabitants of Nahr al-Bared themselves, many of whose homes have been turned to rubble, creating a new humanitarian crisis among a segment of the population least prepared to sustain it and in a country still reeling from the devastating US-Israeli bombing campaign of July-August 2006. During sporadic lulls in the fighting in and around Nahr al-Bared, most of the camp dwellers have managed to flee to the nearby camp of Beddawi or to take shelter with friends and family further south. Various news reports mention that approximately 2,000 refugees are still inside Nahr al-Bared. If and when the fighting stops, it is not clear how much of the camp infrastructure will be left intact, much of it already in ruins after the point-blank exchanges of artillery and heavy machine-gun fire.
The Lebanese government has repeatedly announced it will shoulder the burden of rebuilding Nahr al-Bared and compensating its inhabitants. However, given the government's sluggish performance in rebuilding after the war of July-August 2006, these announcements may turn out to be mostly worthless promissory notes. If precedents are any indication, it will be the Palestinian refugees themselves and non-governmental organizations allied with them that will have to shoulder the burden of rebuilding Nahr al-Bared. This is an effort that will be far more difficult this time around, given that world attention is turned elsewhere; if it is about Palestine and Palestinians, the struggle between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza and the West bank now grabs the headlines; if it is about Lebanon, international opinion is almost entirely focused on the ongoing crisis pitting the pro-US Siniora government against the Hizbullah-led opposition; and if it is about the region as a whole, the catastrophe in Iraq dominates most public discussions. More than ever, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, hapless and desperate, are thus left to fend for themselves.
Quite apart from the humanitarian crisis and the burden of having to handle it on their own, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are already facing the scapegoating from the political fallout of the Nahr al-Bared events. In typical right-wing fashion of blaming the victim, prominent politicians allied with the Siniora government have suggested Palestinians have only themselves to blame, since they allowed Fatah al-Islam to enter Nahr al-Bared in the first place. Conveniently ignored is that for years Lebanese security agencies -- up until 2005 acting at the behest of Syrian intelligence -- worked diligently to deprive the Palestinian camps of any effective independent authority, especially in the northern camps. The bitter irony is that the vast majority of the 200 to 300 gunmen of Fatah al-Islam are neither Palestinian nor Lebanese, and among the few that are, there are probably more Lebanese than Palestinians.
None of the opposition parties have mounted a serious campaign to counter right-wing declarations whipping up anti-Palestinian feelings, as all parties, both pro-government and pro-opposition, seem engaged in a competition to rally behind the army and pay tribute to the troops. As if to preserve the only institution of the Lebanese state that still unites all factions of the political establishment, support for the army has taken precedence over the human suffering in the camps.
Where To From Here?
At the start of the Nahr al-Bared events two months ago, several commentators expressed fears about the "Iraqization" of Lebanon, a ruthless civil war between clans and sects partly fueled by extremist groups inspired or directly linked to al-Qaeda. In spite of sporadic flareups in Ain al-Hilweh and elsewhere in Lebanon in response to Nahr al-Bared, the fears have proved exaggerated if not groundless. Nahr el-Bared is now devastated, its inhabitants made refugees once again, bitterness and alienation is more widespread, but generalized civil warfare did not ignite.
Similar fears were expressed after the murder of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005 and again after each of a half-dozen political assassinations since then, and again after the war of July-August 2006 specifically intended to crush Hizbollah and goad the pro-US government of Fuad Siniora into armed conflict with the latter. None of these events was enough to trigger civil warfare. Whatever the reason -- the frightening sight of the catastrophe in Iraq nearby, the disintegration and infighting in the Palestinian territories, or memories from the futile bloodletting of the years 1975-1990 -- Lebanese and Palestinians in Lebanon have refused to re-enter civil war, at least not yet.
But politicians in Lebanon continue their incendiary exchanges, the standoff between the Siniora government and the Hizbollah-led coalition of opposition parties is nowhere near resolution, and the sore of the Palestinian camps is even further away from any remedy. The internal situation echoes more than ever the regional conflicts as local politicians are urged by their foreign sponsors not to make any concessions to their opponents. Indeed, the gravest danger now is that the US government, confronted with the disaster in Iraq, will become more determined to show some measure of "success" in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories where it can count on loyal local enforcers. Will the politicians in Lebanon come to their senses, distance themselves from their foreign sponsors, and reach an accommodation before it is too late?
Notes
1. The pilots, of course, were Israeli, but the bombs and the sponsorship came from Washington.
2. In a recent article, "The Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon," Nubar Hovsepian views the situation of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon differently. Hovsepian calls for a UN resolution to put the camps under a UN Trusteeship in order to protect them and their inhabitants from further violence. Regardless of its merits, Middle East expert and former French ambassador Eric Rouleau points out (private conversation) the idea of a UN Trusteeship is legally impractical. The UN and the UN Security Council deal with conflicts between sovereign states. The UN can issue a report on the Palestinian camps as well as condemn the Lebanese government for its treatment of the Palestinian refugees. But a UN Trusteeship for the Palestinian camps and its enforcement with UN troops would breach the sovereignty of the state of Lebanon.
3. Not counting, of course, the far more devastating violence of Israel's repeated campaigns against southern Lebanon. Since 1990, these include large-scale military attacks in July 1993 (one week), April 1996 (three weeks), and July-August 2006 (34 weeks).
Assaf Kfoury is professor of computer science at Boston University. He is a former member and Chair of the Board of Grassroots International, a non-governmental aid and development agency, and returned from a two-week trip to Lebanon in early June. A shorter version of the present article appeared in the Grassroots International newsletter.
In a matter of just a few days in June, the Palestinian unity government patiently brokered by Saudi Arabia three months earlier foundered in bloody clashes between Hamas and Fatah. Outnumbered and outgunned but more disciplined Hamas fighters routed Fatah in a violent takeover of the Gaza Strip. Mahmoud Abbas, head of Fatah and president of the Palestinian Authority, promptly dissolved the power-sharing cabinet led by prime minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. The US, Israel and the European Union joined in a chorus of support for Abbas, praising him as a "moderate" (because he has serviced Israeli policies diligently, though not always successfully, in the occupied territories) and pledging to help him fight off the "Hamas extremists" (because they remain an obstacle to the ongoing dismemberment of the territories). The Israelis have now resumed financial and material aid for a Fatah-led administration in the West Bank, while continuing the blockade of the Gaza Strip which they started shortly after Hamas won in the legislative elections in January 2006.
Thus another episode in the long and painful fragmentation of Palestinian society has come to a close. The separation of Gaza and the West Bank under two rival administrations -- and each largely disconnected from Palestinian communities in surrounding Arab countries (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan), inside Israel proper, and in the global diaspora -- makes Palestinians ever more vulnerable to the regional power play and the idea of an independent Palestinian state more remote than ever. Palestinians are now divided into seven geographically separate groups. Beyond a shared identity and a shared experience of deprived rights in host societies, powerful bonds as these may be, the truth is there is not much left that is binding together institutionally the splintered and dispersed Palestinian communities.
Perhaps nowhere is this fragmentation and absence of unifying institutions felt more acutely than in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon today. There is bitter irony in this. Although Lebanese and Palestinians are in many ways closer to each other than they are to any other Arab society -- in their cultural and social habits, in their long experience of facing Israeli military might and manipulation at the hands of more powerful regional players -- Palestinians in Lebanon are subjected to some of the most discriminatory and demeaning measures.
There was a time in the late 1960's and early 1970's, in the heydays of PLO power, when Palestinian factions coordinated their activities in the camps, dispensed social services in orderly fashion and projected their influence throughout the Palestinian diaspora, in Lebanon and elsewhere. Since that time, through repeated setbacks over more than three decades, the PLO and its institutions have become a bloated and largely ineffectual bureaucracy, more a burden than an instrument of liberation for the Palestinian people. That was the corrupting legacy inherited by the Palestinian Authority, when the latter was established in the occupied territories in the mid-1990s, pursuant to the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993.
Abandoned to their fate by a declining PLO, the Palestinian camps in Lebanon have become a breeding ground for competing armed groups, which are all too often unaccountable to outside authority and which, for sheer survival, engage in petty criminal activities or accept to do the dirty work of the highest bidder among local parties or regional governments. Some of the more recent among these groups include violent fugitives of various political stripes that are neither Palestinian nor Lebanese, who come from countries far and close, traveling across the porous borders or slipping through the notoriously lax security measures at Beirut International Airport.
The cruelty of the camps
Some 400,000 Palestinians are currently registered as refugees in Lebanon with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Of these, more than half live in refugee camps scattered throughout the country. Of the original 16 official camps in Lebanon, four were destroyed or evacuated during different periods of conflict since 1948. According to the UNRWA, the remaining 12 camps in Lebanon:
suffer from serious problems -- no proper infrastructure, overcrowding, poverty and unemployment. [They] have the highest percentage of Palestine refugees who are living in abject poverty and who are registered with the Agency's "special hardship" programme.
The UNRWA further reports that:
Palestine refugees in Lebanon face specific problems. They do not have social and civil rights, and have very limited access to the government's public health or educational facilities and no access to public social services. The majority rely entirely on UNRWA as the sole provider of education, health and relief and social services. Considered as foreigners, Palestine refugees are prohibited by law from working in more than 70 trades and professions. This has led to a very high rate of unemployment amongst the refugee population.
Palestinian refugees enjoy far fewer civil liberties in Lebanon than in Syria, Jordan or the other Arab countries they fled to after 1948. As a result in Lebanon, the refugees have to rely more on UNRWA services, where they are forbidden by law (though often broken) from building inside the camps, owning property or working in jobs other than the most menial. The situation has been documented in numerous UNRWA reports over the years. Sheer ordinary living is thus all too often and unavoidably a criminalized activity. To secure the means of a meager existence, the refugees often have to pay exorbitant bribes to work (illegally) for subpar wages or else to emigrate (also illegally).
Since the "Cairo Agreement" (November 1969) and the "Melkart Understanding" (May 1973) brokered by Egypt between the Lebanese government and the then-powerful PLO, the camps have been off-limits, at least officially, to the Lebanese army and police. With the gradual demise of the PLO in the 1980s and 1990s, the camps have turned into something of a no man's land. The lack of a recognized authority in the camps became more acute after the abrupt withdrawal of Syrian troops, in April 2005, which had maintained a heavy-handed security presence, especially in the camps around Beirut and to the north. In the larger ones, most notably in Ain al-Hilweh (in the southern coastal city of Sidon) and Nahr al-Bared (the northernmost camp on the Lebanese coast), several armed groups have emerged to fill the political vacuum -- competing or coexisting with remnants of earlier PLO factions, carving out their own enclaves of influence and racketeering, and shifting political alliances according to needs and circumstances.
To be sure, this is not the entire Palestinian experience in Lebanon. Middle-class Palestinians have always had the means to buy their way into Lebanese society or to migrate to other lands. None of these have ever needed to register with the UNRWA as refugees for the meager rations and services it doles out. If successful in finance or in business, well-off Palestinians have seamlessly joined the ranks of the Beirut bourgeoisie over the years. Thus, among many others, Yusuf Baydas developed his Intra Bank in the 1960's into the largest bank in Lebanon, Said Khoury and Hasib Sabbagh succeeded in turning their Consolidated Contractors International Company into the eighteenth-ranked construction and engineering firm worldwide, and the Palestinian (and Lebanese and Jordanian) founders of Dar al-Handasah have transformed their modest Beirut office of the mid-1950's into one of the top ten international contracting and consulting firms in the world fifty years later.
The lot of the camps in Lebanon is therefore that of the poorest and wretched, those who came with nothing except for a few bundled clothes on their backs, from their villages in Palestine in 1948, and their descendants who were born in the camps since. The humane solution is of course to lift all legal restrictions on the camp dwellers and, even more, let them integrate into the rest of Lebanese society, if they so wish, with the right of acquiring Lebanese citizenship. This is moreover the practical solution, if one is also concerned about ultimately dismantling the camps as incubators of despair, lawlessness and unnecessary animosity between their disfranchised inhabitants and the rest of the population.
Will Palestinian integration work? Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are already part of a much larger shadow economy, comprising no less than one million refugees and migrant workers according to some estimates, in a country whose total resident population is about 4 million. But there are other factors indicating integration will work without much disruption. At a popular level, there is far less antagonism between Lebanese and Palestinians than one is led to believe from reading the Western press. In time of duress, both sides have readily helped each other. During the US-Israeli bombing campaign in July-August 2006,[1] Palestinian camps in southern Lebanon, already overcrowded and impoverished, provided shelter and food to the Lebanese fleeing from their devastated villages. In the current confrontation between the Lebanese army and the Fatah al-Islam group in and around the Palestinian camp of Nahr el-Bared in northern Lebanon, its 30,000 to 40,000 dwellers have had to seek refuge elsewhere, most of them in the nearby Beddawi camp and the rest in points further south; Lebanese NGO's and humanitarian groups have promptly mobilized their resources to respond to the humanitarian crisis.[2]
But Palestinian integration is one of the permanently debated issues of Lebanese politics since 1948, a political football that all parties, both internal and external, have always played in pursuit of their own short-sighted agendas quite separate from the well-being of the Palestinian refugees themselves and, in the long run, also the well-being of the Lebanese population surrounding them. What is at stake is the delicate balance of the sectarian-based (so-called confessional) system of government which would be undermined as a result. The sectarian power-sharing formula is in fact as much crippling as it is delicate, the cause of many of the country's woes in recent decades, with politicians all too ready to decry its ills but none really willing or able to give up the privileges it accords them.
The majority of the Palestinian refugees are Sunni Muslim whose integration, it would seem, would be encouraged by the Sunni segment of the Lebanese ruling class, since it would tip the sectarian balance in their favor. But confessionalism is not just a power-sharing formula based on religious sect, but a whole system of patronage, increasingly entrenched in the political life of the country, into which the landless and stateless refugees (and other non-Palestinian migrant workers) do not readily fit. This system of patronage identifies ordinary citizens by both sect and district of origin (the latter often being different from district of residence), and makes them depend on politicians of their own sect and district of origin to promote and defend their rights. Class interests cut across the divisions promoted by the confessional system, and any form of class solidarity undermines these divisions. Integration of Palestinian refugees would likely lead to many of them joining an urban lumpenproletariat that would not be answerable to the established Sunni (or other confessional) parties and would thus be disruptive of their hold on power.
There are courageous voices that defend the only humane option, namely, that of allowing all Palestinians in Lebanon to be fully integrated, if they so wish. One such voice is that of Fawwaz Traboulsi, a historian and prominent advocate of human rights and democracy in Arab countries. But these voices remain too few and isolated, without much echo from (extra-parliamentary) secular left parties that have been in decline since the 1970's. If the issue of al-tawteen (settling) of the Palestinian refugees is raised, politicians and public commentators of all stripes, whether in pro-government or opposition parties, routinely reject the idea because they consider it "a burden Lebanon cannot shoulder alone" or "a betrayal of the Palestinian cause," or they even argue against it in thinly-disguised racist terms.
Nahr al-Bared and Ain al-Hilweh
On May 19, Lebanon's Internal Security Forces (ISF) botched a raid to apprehend members of a fundamentalist Sunni (Salafi) group, Fatah al-Islam, that had robbed a bank near the northern city of Tripoli. Overwhelmed by a handful of gunmen of Fatah al-Islam, the ISF called the Lebanese army for help. Soon after the ISF raid, other militants of Fatah al-Islam, based in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, made stealth attacks on several positions of the Lebanese army nearby; they killed many soldiers, first torturing them and then beheading them. As there was little or no coordination between the ISF and the army, the latter had not alerted its men around the camp and was badly mauled, suffering a larger number of casualties than Fatah al-Islam.
With scores of its soldiers killed in the initial assault and determined to prevail, the Lebanese army has received uniform support from all parties across the Lebanese political spectrum, as well as from Palestinian organizations wary of extremist and largely non-Palestinian groups gaining influence in the camps. Having nothing to lose and no place to retreat to, Fatah al-Islam has dug in for the long haul, even though it has gradually abandoned many of its positions and retreated to the southern parts of Nahr al-Bared in the face of the army's superior firepower. Reacting to the growing humanitarian crisis in Nahr al-Bared, violence has fitfully spread to other Palestinian camps, notably to Ain al-Hilweh in the southern city of Sidon where, on June 3, gunmen from another extremist group, Jund al-Sham, attacked a nearby army checkpoint slaying two soldiers.
As of this writing, more than 200 people have been killed in the Nahr al-Bared events, in the worst internal violence since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.[3] Since the middle of June, Lebanon's defense minister Elias al-Murr has on several occasions announced that "Fatah al-Islam has been crushed," only to be refuted within hours by another armed clash in the fight in and around Nahr al-Bared.
These are the incontrovertible facts since May 19, reported equally by all sides of the Lebanese media -- pro-government, pro-opposition, and independent. Beyond the facts however, explanations abound as to what party or government is really at fault for the violence.
The political rumor mill is always buzzing in Beirut, and perhaps never at a higher pitch than after Seymour Hersh repeated to the Beirut press some of what he had written in his article "The Redirection" (The New Yorker, March 5, 2007). According to Hersh, the Bush administration, with the help of members of the Saudi royal family, has been secretly funding radical Sunni groups, some with ties to al-Qaeda, to counter Shiite groups in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region that are backed by Iran. Hersh maintained there is American money, none of it approved by Congress, sent to the government of prime minister Fuad Siniora, which then funnels it into "at least three different Sunni jihadist groups." Among the radical Sunni groups Hersh explicitly mentioned in his article were Fatah al-Islam in Nahr al-Bared and Usbat al-Ansar in Ain al-Hilweh. (The group that attacked an army checkpoint on June 3, Jund al-Sham, split from Usbat al-Ansar in 2002.)
If the information passed on by Hersh is correct, the whole episode since May 19 is the consequence of a reckless policy that backfired of trying to contain Hizbullah by arming unruly radical Sunni groups. This is a highly embarrassing charge against the Siniora government which, naturally enough, vehemently rejects it. Instead, Siniora and his allies put the blame entirely on the Syrian government, which they accuse of constantly fomenting disorder to remind the Lebanese (and the world) that security in Lebanon cannot be maintained without a Syrian presence. They point out that Fatah al-Islam started in late 2006, splitting from another older group, Fatah al-Intifada, totally aligned with Syria; its members are extreme Sunni fundamentalists who entered Lebanon across the border from Syria, then ensconced themselves in Nahr al-Bared where they took over the quarters of Fatah al-Intifada. The opposition parties led by Hizbullah have been a little more circumspect in the blaming game, simply accusing Fatah al-Islam and other al-Qaeda inspired extremist groups of trying to ignite a Shiite-Sunni confrontation in Lebanon.
This is all a little murky, and it will take some time for the truth to surface about which parties and which governments have been involved -- directly or indirectly -- whether because of recklessness, or incompetence, or outright complicity. But be that as it may, what is already clear is that the biggest losers from these events are the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.
First and foremost are the 30,000 to 40,000 inhabitants of Nahr al-Bared themselves, many of whose homes have been turned to rubble, creating a new humanitarian crisis among a segment of the population least prepared to sustain it and in a country still reeling from the devastating US-Israeli bombing campaign of July-August 2006. During sporadic lulls in the fighting in and around Nahr al-Bared, most of the camp dwellers have managed to flee to the nearby camp of Beddawi or to take shelter with friends and family further south. Various news reports mention that approximately 2,000 refugees are still inside Nahr al-Bared. If and when the fighting stops, it is not clear how much of the camp infrastructure will be left intact, much of it already in ruins after the point-blank exchanges of artillery and heavy machine-gun fire.
The Lebanese government has repeatedly announced it will shoulder the burden of rebuilding Nahr al-Bared and compensating its inhabitants. However, given the government's sluggish performance in rebuilding after the war of July-August 2006, these announcements may turn out to be mostly worthless promissory notes. If precedents are any indication, it will be the Palestinian refugees themselves and non-governmental organizations allied with them that will have to shoulder the burden of rebuilding Nahr al-Bared. This is an effort that will be far more difficult this time around, given that world attention is turned elsewhere; if it is about Palestine and Palestinians, the struggle between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza and the West bank now grabs the headlines; if it is about Lebanon, international opinion is almost entirely focused on the ongoing crisis pitting the pro-US Siniora government against the Hizbullah-led opposition; and if it is about the region as a whole, the catastrophe in Iraq dominates most public discussions. More than ever, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, hapless and desperate, are thus left to fend for themselves.
Quite apart from the humanitarian crisis and the burden of having to handle it on their own, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are already facing the scapegoating from the political fallout of the Nahr al-Bared events. In typical right-wing fashion of blaming the victim, prominent politicians allied with the Siniora government have suggested Palestinians have only themselves to blame, since they allowed Fatah al-Islam to enter Nahr al-Bared in the first place. Conveniently ignored is that for years Lebanese security agencies -- up until 2005 acting at the behest of Syrian intelligence -- worked diligently to deprive the Palestinian camps of any effective independent authority, especially in the northern camps. The bitter irony is that the vast majority of the 200 to 300 gunmen of Fatah al-Islam are neither Palestinian nor Lebanese, and among the few that are, there are probably more Lebanese than Palestinians.
None of the opposition parties have mounted a serious campaign to counter right-wing declarations whipping up anti-Palestinian feelings, as all parties, both pro-government and pro-opposition, seem engaged in a competition to rally behind the army and pay tribute to the troops. As if to preserve the only institution of the Lebanese state that still unites all factions of the political establishment, support for the army has taken precedence over the human suffering in the camps.
Where To From Here?
At the start of the Nahr al-Bared events two months ago, several commentators expressed fears about the "Iraqization" of Lebanon, a ruthless civil war between clans and sects partly fueled by extremist groups inspired or directly linked to al-Qaeda. In spite of sporadic flareups in Ain al-Hilweh and elsewhere in Lebanon in response to Nahr al-Bared, the fears have proved exaggerated if not groundless. Nahr el-Bared is now devastated, its inhabitants made refugees once again, bitterness and alienation is more widespread, but generalized civil warfare did not ignite.
Similar fears were expressed after the murder of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005 and again after each of a half-dozen political assassinations since then, and again after the war of July-August 2006 specifically intended to crush Hizbollah and goad the pro-US government of Fuad Siniora into armed conflict with the latter. None of these events was enough to trigger civil warfare. Whatever the reason -- the frightening sight of the catastrophe in Iraq nearby, the disintegration and infighting in the Palestinian territories, or memories from the futile bloodletting of the years 1975-1990 -- Lebanese and Palestinians in Lebanon have refused to re-enter civil war, at least not yet.
But politicians in Lebanon continue their incendiary exchanges, the standoff between the Siniora government and the Hizbollah-led coalition of opposition parties is nowhere near resolution, and the sore of the Palestinian camps is even further away from any remedy. The internal situation echoes more than ever the regional conflicts as local politicians are urged by their foreign sponsors not to make any concessions to their opponents. Indeed, the gravest danger now is that the US government, confronted with the disaster in Iraq, will become more determined to show some measure of "success" in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories where it can count on loyal local enforcers. Will the politicians in Lebanon come to their senses, distance themselves from their foreign sponsors, and reach an accommodation before it is too late?
Notes
1. The pilots, of course, were Israeli, but the bombs and the sponsorship came from Washington.
2. In a recent article, "The Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon," Nubar Hovsepian views the situation of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon differently. Hovsepian calls for a UN resolution to put the camps under a UN Trusteeship in order to protect them and their inhabitants from further violence. Regardless of its merits, Middle East expert and former French ambassador Eric Rouleau points out (private conversation) the idea of a UN Trusteeship is legally impractical. The UN and the UN Security Council deal with conflicts between sovereign states. The UN can issue a report on the Palestinian camps as well as condemn the Lebanese government for its treatment of the Palestinian refugees. But a UN Trusteeship for the Palestinian camps and its enforcement with UN troops would breach the sovereignty of the state of Lebanon.
3. Not counting, of course, the far more devastating violence of Israel's repeated campaigns against southern Lebanon. Since 1990, these include large-scale military attacks in July 1993 (one week), April 1996 (three weeks), and July-August 2006 (34 weeks).
Assaf Kfoury is professor of computer science at Boston University. He is a former member and Chair of the Board of Grassroots International, a non-governmental aid and development agency, and returned from a two-week trip to Lebanon in early June. A shorter version of the present article appeared in the Grassroots International newsletter.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Lebanon, towards UN Protectorate Mandate?
With the assassination of Walid Eido taking place, Lebanon has jumped to a new stage of complexity amongst war with Fatah Islam, the highly controversial Jund el Sham, Iranian and Syrian escalation versus US and Israeli hegemony over the Middle East,
Last year in August 2006, Lebanon for the first time almost in two decades witnessed the decent of the Lebanese Army to the South up to the borders. Lebanon’s army going to the South was highly controversial because those who supported the idea meant they were crippling the Resistance. With the Lebanese army, due to UN resolution 1701, over 10,000 UNIFIL soldiers came to South Lebanon to control arms flowing outside the Lebanese Army, primarily Hezbollah. I still insist why UNIFIL are not distributed on the Israeli side as well, since they are breaching UN 1701 on daily basis (bulldozers, shooting at civilians, aerial flights of the Israeli Air Force…etc). Syria threatened to close its borders in case UNIFIL soldiers monitored the Lebanese/Syrian borders, even if the UNIFIL soldiers were standing on the Lebanese side of the borders. Which is ironic judging how Syria excused Israel from rockets falling close to its borders, and raising its hands that “NO it wasn’t on our side!” then they took the credit as the victors of the July war (what gives?!).
This was the beginning of the end of Lebanese Sovereignty which was restored from the ruthless and corrupt Baathi system.
Eventually, with the reactionary Opposition having the Speaker of the Parliament, the Lebanese Parliament didn’t meet since December, ever since the Opposition began their open demonstration. Moving on, the Pro-West reactionary government succeeded, after heavy clashes with the Opposition, to get the UN to agree on establishing the International Tribunal to investigate Rafiq Harriri and others. With that, the government hopes to oust Syria permanently out of Lebanese affairs, or at least to strike a final blow against Hezbollah who publicly celebrate their good relations with Syria, and have financial and religious ties (Vilayat el Faqih) with Iran (both despised by the West).
With the Tribunal fully effective, that was part II of getting Lebanon into the arms of the International Community, while its people are gradually losing sovereignty because the government officials want to secure their interests and sources of income.
Third, with everything crippled on parliamentary and almost governmental level, three ministries have been fully active: Ministry of Interior who keep failing to provide security for the Lebanese. Actually, the Opposition hate the Ministry of Interior since during the July war, a commander of a certain Security Forces served tea to the Israelis. (The Joke goes: Fatah Islam demanded equality to the Israelis and requested that the Ministry of Interior serve tea to them). The Ministry of Interior (along with the Army) have been also behaving in several occasions racist to Palestinians living in the Urban side of Lebanon who are involved in relief work.
The scary part is the Ministry of Finance, which is the child ministry of the late Rafiq Hariri, whose plan to bury Lebanon in the WTO for different reasons. Currently, Minister Az’ur is still fully active with that plan, under 14th of March blessings (including the ‘leftist’ Elias Atallah), and the next couple of meetings, it is anticipated that the Lebanese Parliament would vote for adopting WTO procedures to attain membership and attempt to get rid, in another way, from Syrian Hegemony, while the US would increase their sphere of activity through out Lebanon.
Now, with the assassination of late MP Walid Eido, 14th of March, on the same day, made it clear they are going to ask for assistance from the International Community to monitor and control illegal activity on the Syrian Side, which Syria would react by closing borders. This is one messed up scenario, I sense we are almost close to become a UN protectorate while most of the Lebanese preach that a civil war is coming and take it for granted.
Meanwhile, social life has been as slow as ever. With Lebanon gradually becoming the next Iraq in terms of explosives, few people dare to go out of fear that this car parked or that car might carry explosives. Meanwhile Beqaa valley witnessed more arrests as suspected people with acquisition with arms. Now, everywhere is fire and Lebanon is more bi-polar as ever, specially yesterday Hezbollah captured three security forces in Dahhieh region (Beirut Suburbs) and released them later after interrogation. The North witnesses heavy confrontations between the army and Fatah Islam whereby Palestinian citizens, activist volunteers (such as the Red Cross), and Lebanese civilians are paying the price.
Worse, the South is on fire ever since the unknown militants launched two Katyoshas on Kiryat Shmona (Northern Israel). The reactionary government and opposition still clash each other to grab piecemeal profits. Seems that Lebanon would become the next target as a UN mandate protectorate. Personally I cant tell the difference between the government and the opposition.
Welcome to Lebanon, need a guide? Make sure that guide got militia contacts!
Last year in August 2006, Lebanon for the first time almost in two decades witnessed the decent of the Lebanese Army to the South up to the borders. Lebanon’s army going to the South was highly controversial because those who supported the idea meant they were crippling the Resistance. With the Lebanese army, due to UN resolution 1701, over 10,000 UNIFIL soldiers came to South Lebanon to control arms flowing outside the Lebanese Army, primarily Hezbollah. I still insist why UNIFIL are not distributed on the Israeli side as well, since they are breaching UN 1701 on daily basis (bulldozers, shooting at civilians, aerial flights of the Israeli Air Force…etc). Syria threatened to close its borders in case UNIFIL soldiers monitored the Lebanese/Syrian borders, even if the UNIFIL soldiers were standing on the Lebanese side of the borders. Which is ironic judging how Syria excused Israel from rockets falling close to its borders, and raising its hands that “NO it wasn’t on our side!” then they took the credit as the victors of the July war (what gives?!).
This was the beginning of the end of Lebanese Sovereignty which was restored from the ruthless and corrupt Baathi system.
Eventually, with the reactionary Opposition having the Speaker of the Parliament, the Lebanese Parliament didn’t meet since December, ever since the Opposition began their open demonstration. Moving on, the Pro-West reactionary government succeeded, after heavy clashes with the Opposition, to get the UN to agree on establishing the International Tribunal to investigate Rafiq Harriri and others. With that, the government hopes to oust Syria permanently out of Lebanese affairs, or at least to strike a final blow against Hezbollah who publicly celebrate their good relations with Syria, and have financial and religious ties (Vilayat el Faqih) with Iran (both despised by the West).
With the Tribunal fully effective, that was part II of getting Lebanon into the arms of the International Community, while its people are gradually losing sovereignty because the government officials want to secure their interests and sources of income.
Third, with everything crippled on parliamentary and almost governmental level, three ministries have been fully active: Ministry of Interior who keep failing to provide security for the Lebanese. Actually, the Opposition hate the Ministry of Interior since during the July war, a commander of a certain Security Forces served tea to the Israelis. (The Joke goes: Fatah Islam demanded equality to the Israelis and requested that the Ministry of Interior serve tea to them). The Ministry of Interior (along with the Army) have been also behaving in several occasions racist to Palestinians living in the Urban side of Lebanon who are involved in relief work.
The scary part is the Ministry of Finance, which is the child ministry of the late Rafiq Hariri, whose plan to bury Lebanon in the WTO for different reasons. Currently, Minister Az’ur is still fully active with that plan, under 14th of March blessings (including the ‘leftist’ Elias Atallah), and the next couple of meetings, it is anticipated that the Lebanese Parliament would vote for adopting WTO procedures to attain membership and attempt to get rid, in another way, from Syrian Hegemony, while the US would increase their sphere of activity through out Lebanon.
Now, with the assassination of late MP Walid Eido, 14th of March, on the same day, made it clear they are going to ask for assistance from the International Community to monitor and control illegal activity on the Syrian Side, which Syria would react by closing borders. This is one messed up scenario, I sense we are almost close to become a UN protectorate while most of the Lebanese preach that a civil war is coming and take it for granted.
Meanwhile, social life has been as slow as ever. With Lebanon gradually becoming the next Iraq in terms of explosives, few people dare to go out of fear that this car parked or that car might carry explosives. Meanwhile Beqaa valley witnessed more arrests as suspected people with acquisition with arms. Now, everywhere is fire and Lebanon is more bi-polar as ever, specially yesterday Hezbollah captured three security forces in Dahhieh region (Beirut Suburbs) and released them later after interrogation. The North witnesses heavy confrontations between the army and Fatah Islam whereby Palestinian citizens, activist volunteers (such as the Red Cross), and Lebanese civilians are paying the price.
Worse, the South is on fire ever since the unknown militants launched two Katyoshas on Kiryat Shmona (Northern Israel). The reactionary government and opposition still clash each other to grab piecemeal profits. Seems that Lebanon would become the next target as a UN mandate protectorate. Personally I cant tell the difference between the government and the opposition.
Welcome to Lebanon, need a guide? Make sure that guide got militia contacts!
Monday, June 04, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Assist the Nahr el Bared Refugees
After the shaky cease fire in Nahr el Bared, scores of refugees have been fleeing the camp to go to Badawi camp (MFL notes: and other locations), people's homes and UNRWA schools. The Badawi clinics and hospital are running severely short on medical supplies. We have been coordinating with relief NGOs in Beirut who are going up to the North to assist the refugees and have obtained the following list of urgent supplies:
diapers
medical kits
liquid panadol
insulin
nervous system medicine
kovaj for diabetes
clamid 5 mg
saline solution
irdan for muscles
stiching kits
If you are able to provide any of the following asap, please email Rasha ( r.moumneh at gmail dot com) or Marcy Newman (marcynewman at gmail dot com)
This is the blog site that updates on the on-going progress of such activism, under the title of Nahr El Bared Donations, over here.
For those unable to assist, I would hope that the bloggers can place the link of their blog to their site.
Thank You
MFL
diapers
medical kits
liquid panadol
insulin
nervous system medicine
kovaj for diabetes
clamid 5 mg
saline solution
irdan for muscles
stiching kits
If you are able to provide any of the following asap, please email Rasha ( r.moumneh at gmail dot com) or Marcy Newman (marcynewman at gmail dot com)
This is the blog site that updates on the on-going progress of such activism, under the title of Nahr El Bared Donations, over here.
For those unable to assist, I would hope that the bloggers can place the link of their blog to their site.
Thank You
MFL
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