Ya Beirut! Ya Beirut, ya sit il dinyeh, ya Beirut!
The couple of hours of "rest" as I thought was just a sign for more brutality to come.
The IDF hit the airport yet again this morning. Hit the Beirut port and killed two civilians. Israeli fire did not spare the UNIFIL; an Indian soldier from UNIFIL stationed in Hawla on the Lebanese-Israeli border was wounded due to a hit from an IDF tank. Of course, more hits on the south, especially the city of Saida.
In return, Hizbullah showered Katyushas on Haifa and Nahariya.
The French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, is heading to Lebanon in a show of solidarity with the Lebanese people.
British PM has called for a ceasefire. UN Secretary General Annan has called for an immediate ceasefire in order to dispatch an interntional military intervention force.
...and that's not even three hours from my last update!
Update: The Iranian Foreign Minister arrived to Damascus conveying a letter from Iran's President Ahmadinejad to President Assad.
Addendum: Israel is working with the US and EU to evacuate foreign nationals from Lebanon. It makes me think that the hits Lebanon is sustaining is a sign for all those who need to leave Lebanon to leave, before Israel completely isolates Lebanon from the rest of the world.
Update 2: It's confirmed, an IDF plane has fallen in Kfarshima, east of Beirut, and both of its pilots have died. The IDF is denying these reports.
An Israeli military source says that some Israeli troops are entering Lebanon by land.
I'm just hearing on TV the Israeli Army alerts to the civilians in the south. They're asked to evacuate to Beirut, because the southern border is considered now a war zone. The alert went to explain in Arabic that the reason for the shelling of the villages is because Hizballah is launching its attacks from there. It's scary listening to the alerts.
The sad part is that when people try to evacuate, they are hit. Just got news of a car completely buried under the rubble after Israeli warplanes hit a bridge in the south. Three died.
500 Lebanese have gathered in Dubai, UAE to call for the end of attacks.
Update 3: A building in Haifa has collapsed as result of the Katyusha rockets.
President Lahoud has officially claimed that he supports the "Resistance" and will not give up Sayyid Nasrallah.
Update 4: AlJazeera reported that the downed Israeli plane is a pamphlet container not an F-16 jet.
Update 5: The Iranian Foreign Minister called for a ceasefire and exchange of prisoners.
Hizbullah has refused to give in to Israel's conditions.
"Nobody knows how many rebellions, besides political rebellions, ferment in the masses of life which people earth."
119 comments:
It is amazing that you have such a romantic identification with a country that was made by the French. Perhaps this is a good sign that we can create identities out of thin histories. Lines drawn on the sand in 3 generations become objects of identity to die over. This could be used to create a united Middle East, Lebanese lead the way!!
I'm not sure that attacking this army installation in the north was smart, but then I'm just an outsider watching this mess unfold. It would appear that Israel does blame the Lebanese Army, rightly or wrongly:
Israel, technically at war with Lebanon since 1948, said it had targeted radar stations in the north because Hezbollah had used them to hit an Israeli ship on Friday. It all but accused the Lebanese military of lending its support to Hezbollah.
"The attacks ... are against radar stations used, among other things, in the attack on the Israeli missile boat, by Hezbollah in cooperation with the Lebanese military," an Israeli army spokesman told The Associated Press.
The Associated Press
Some American military analysts believe that Israel is prepping the battlefield by completely isolating Lebanon in order to cut off Hezbollah and then invade to take them out. It appears that things are going to get even uglier. Dammit.
Could be, I dunno. God keep you all, I have to leave for work. Hopefully the news will be better when I return this evening.
If u ppl have brain in your head , tell you goverment to kick out the HIZZBALA... Duh !!!
How a terror group controling a goverment???
What do you expect Israel to do?
sit back and get bombed?
Return Israel soldiers and quite will return... this is THAT easy.
jad j, unfortunately i see no other tactical value of bombing the roads connecting southern with northern lebanon if the next step isn't a ground operation ... last time the israelis have donethis, the roads where not destroyed before, and many of the HA and other militant group members were able to flee to the north. i hope i'm wrong and you are right, but i'm not that convinced.
Israel is killing us to save us, same way bush killed iraqis to save them right?
define terror for me again please? i for once am terrified and and so are all the lebanese people. hitting wheat reserves is not cutting HA off, it is cutting the people off and destroying the lebanese race. terror? no?
massacres targeting whole villages and burning people alive, terror? maybe not?
cutting off electricity, all means to run away, phone lines, evacuating the whole country of all the non-lebanese souls while we watch getting the message that no chance we will survive. terror?
asking us to disarm a power that you (with your superior military power, compared to the lebanese government with its non-existing army) can hardly handle, knowing that we can't and killing us anyway.. terror? not yet?
all the lebanese prisoners of war that HA is trying to get back through exchange with 2 prisoners of yours.. 2=100's, is the equation, is how much we're worth. are you a super-race.. familiar? Nazis? terrifying isn't it?
that's terror.
i am a moderate liberal Lebanese person, who hated HA. i do not condone using the borders of my country for any operation not supported by the government (like taking 2 prisoners in the hope of exchange for hundreds).
i also do not condone killing and terrorizing millions of people for the sake of revenge.
FOR THAT IS TERROR
as i write this, civilians dying trying to run away while israel's raid destroyed the bridge.
HA is not a terrorist group. HA was founded in response to your occupation of lebanon. your invasion in 1982.
they resort to any means they have to defend their land. they blow themselves up for the lack of other means. for them it is better to die than to see you occupying our country.
if HA is terrorist based on your definition (or that of bush), so would be the palestinian children hitting your tanks with rocks to resist the opression and the injustice you put them through.
the children of the intifada don't die. they are in all of us.
and a country never dies.
Bushmert doesn’t care about “collateral damages”: someone who enthusiastically destroyed Bagdad, the former capital of an empire stretching from Spain to India, won’t have second thoughts about razing a small Arab city-state with no oil to steal.
The Arab League and its Saudi and Egyptian “pillars” did nothing for Iraq in 2003, even though TeX-Aviv was then exclusively targeting their fellow Sunni Arabs…
Don’t expect the Wahhabi collaborators of Riyadh to lift a finger for Lebanon.
Three days ago, the house of Saud sent a crystal clear message to Bushmert- a man who appreciates “moral clarity” whatever that means:
“The massacre can continue. Please Sahib President, make sure Yahweh’s glorious air force destroys in priority Beirut, the South, and the Beqaa valley. Allah blesses you. Saudi Arabia is your friend. You can always count on us. The Supreme Council of the Riyadh ‘Ulamas is praying day and night for your victory. We love you Mr. President. Allah loves you.”
sagi
why do you think israel should automatically be involved in a US/Iran war. will you guys also be fighting a war that's not yours on your land because as HA/IRAN/SYRIA is one front, the US/Israel is the same front?
i haven't talked politics since this whole thing started. as part of our united front strategy to stay alive as lebanese, we are just focused on the cease fire and on the atrocities of the war.
but i'm really interested in your analysis sagi
i do believe iran is using the arabic card. i said the first day that HA is stepping in to take the role of arafat. arafat had the palestinan cause which is, at least for show, undebatable in terms of support for the arabic rulers. he fed on it and used it while he kept selling dreams to the palestinians who just wanted to live. he gave them illusions. you do understand that within this same logic israel is the reason palestine is in this position in the first place. that's why when the palestinians finally saw through arafat, to them he was an asshole but israel was still the enemy.
now as for lebanon, these same arabic rulers lack the same enthusiasm for lebanon and don't feel they owe lebanon like they did palestine. so again, i can understand israel not wanting to have HA on its borders in case a USA-Iran war erupted. why would Iran push HA to do something like that now? they know they won't get the arabic support so what's the point?
also sagi, why the touristic ports, why a hospital, why the wheat reserves?
eran, i think the qana "mistake" was already done in marwa7een. "mistake" meaning not media friendly story, if not committing a mistake meaning strategic hits sparing civilians i think a lot of mistakes have been done already.
Good afternoon everyone,
Lots of interesting discussions going on here. I am afraid I have work to do, so hope to catch up with it later.
I just found a few blows aimed at me in my absence in the last post ;)
Shmulik, I am sorry if I offended you. I did not mean to. It is striking though, that you justify everything the IDF does when we on the receiving end see all the mistakes it makes.
Regarding attacking army posts, I stick to my position. There were lots of misunderstandings in the discussion in the last post, and I thank Jad for clearing up some of the points in my absence. I was mainly saying that the army does not cooperate with Hizballah (as Jad pointed out, Hizballah are better equipped than the army). There are different ways to employ RADAR. As for the C-802, Shmulik, ya Shmulik, it is indeed RADAR guided as you say. But it is itself equipped with an inertial and terminal active RADAR. i.e.
When entering the terminal phase of flight, the missile switches on its terminal guidance radar to search for the target.
I have found this information on Wikipedia then double checked it on strategycenter.net (if you find info to the contrary, please share). If true, I am sure IDF knows that. I am of the opinion that targeting army posts is of no strategic importance. It is a demoralizing campaign and an attempt to further justify the attack on Lebanon (Look! The army is helping them!). It might also be designed to force the Lebanese army into one position or the other. Whichever it is, it is a grave mistake.
It can be a drone. Then the heavy bombing of this place is understandable as ours would like to destroy it. Still (10 minutes ago) IDF denies it.
Eran,
I think it was you asking about location of things in Lebanon. Check this out. We try our best to keep it updated, but it is such a whirlwind of events!
* If you have google earth, you can also just open the part of the link beginning with "http" in Add... Network link.
soha, i think it's another way to force our army to work against HA. same strategy used with the civilians, help us kill them or we kill you, which is most of the commentators are surprisingly supporting "we have to do it"
sub rosa says, we don't want to punish the lebanese as funny as that is, then says in her cute words "slap you and shake you over"
as in murder you and your children.
Nothing on Future TV reagarding the fallen object (aliens?). Just reports from different places in the south, including Marji'youn and the refugees it is taking. I have family there...
Hope no casualties in Haifa.
Eran,
Funny, you have a Hebrew/Arabic smile (from right to left). It is sad.
Salam Alekom
I hope this cycle will end soon with minimal casualties and Lebanon will re-build. I really hope that Building of Lebanon will be in a stage that Israel can support it .
Jad my question to you is :
What do you think are the conditions that we, the people, can cooperate and combine our vision into a safer place to our children?
I wish to know how much the Lebanonize can imagine economic cooperation combined with social and educational development with us the Israelis. What are the Israel behaviors that can make the Israeli existence appealing to the Lebanonize. After all, we can expect this round to end, I do not know if Israel will win all its objectives but it made clear that Lebanon should not enable aggression from its border.
I can say that the Israelis in general are seeking such relationship. But we can not understand the aggression (We are thought in our schools that the Arabs were against our "just" idea to create Jewish state, but in our books it not clears why, beside assumption of inherent hatred).
What do not understand what symbolize in our existence that makes the situation irresolvable? ( I can take harsh words, I want to see the deep causes and it not need to be pleasant to me as Israeli)
I think that we may need to adjust our "Zionist" vision. We showed a unique talent to create a modern stable state (Just notice that Arik Sharon's power transition was simple even when he got into comma). We have one of the most efficient army in the world (I know that we build it on top our war with the Palestinian and Arabs with support of the US, but we knew how to do it), and our economy is relatively better then the Arab world economies. I think our new vision should be to share it with our neighbors and the Palestinians and put the safety and prosperity of the whole region on higher level then the ethno-centric idea of Jewish state. There is no danger to jews today beside the enemies created by establishing Israel.
But at these circumstances I cannot see many Israelis joining me to create such new vision because we feel that we are surrounded by Arab enemies who will take our knowledge and abilities and use them against us. The current attack is highly supported by the Israeli public because we see it as a long term message to secure our citizens hence it preserve for us an ethno-centric world view.
Peace,
Neri Bar-On
Tel-Aviv
6 wounded in Haifa, one seriously.
neri
i am sorry to tell you that is peace for the future of your children and ours is what you have in mind, this just ruined all these chances.
as i mentioned before, a big portion of the population was against HA before these events.
Israel's punishment of lebanon left the lebanese forgetting about HA and just focusing on their hate to israel for what they're doing.
you even put us at a place where we cannot object to HA right now, after all they ae fighting from this side of the border.
again big mistake for all of us regardless of who started it. the escessive use of force just made us unanymously announce one ennemy in this war.
i am projecting the lebanese opinion and feeling. our news channels report the strikes from the ennemy period.