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3 Aug 2006 @ 18:54, by spells
WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East
US-Israeli onslaught on Lebanon intensifies
By Mike Head
3 August 2006
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Backed by the Bush administration, Israel has poured thousands more troops into Lebanon and escalated its aerial bombardment in its bid to crush all resistance and take control of the south of the country. With the US blocking all calls for an immediate ceasefire—to give the Israeli military more time to complete the job—Israeli leaders have openly declared that the offensive will continue for weeks.
Aided by the lack of any opposition from the UN and the European Union, the objectives set by the US and Israel from the outset of the war are being pursued methodically and with barbaric devastation. Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers has been used as a pretext to attempt to kill or drive out the population of south Lebanon and bring the entire country under its political sway.
Up to 20,000 IDF troops have invaded Lebanon on multiple fronts, backed by tanks, military bulldozers and ferocious air power. There is no indication that the offensive will necessarily stop at the Litani River, the northern border of Israel’s self-proclaimed “security zone”. IDF infantry have already crossed the river in several places, going beyond the territory that Israel occupied for 18 years from 1982 to 2000.
Throughout southern Lebanon, south Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley, the IDF is pursuing a scorched earth policy, reducing towns and villages to rubble, leaving the remaining residents—those too old or weak to escape—without water and food. Far from “surgical incursions” to dismantle Hezbollah command posts, as claimed by Israel, the operation is systematically blowing up and bulldozing houses, apartment buildings, community facilities and essential services to make whole areas uninhabitable.
Following the end of the 48-hour cessation of air strikes, Israeli war planes carried out a wave of bombings throughout Lebanon on Wednesday. Air strikes resumed in the battered outskirts of Beirut in the early hours of today. Residents heard the impact of large explosions about every five minutes starting at 2.30 a.m. as missiles hit Dahieh, a Shiite Muslim suburb that has been repeatedly shelled by Israel since fighting began three weeks ago.
Yesterday IDF commandos provocatively landed near the eastern city of Baalbeck, 100 kilometres into Lebanon and close to the Syrian border. Seizing a Hezbollah-run hospital, they captured several alleged Hezbollah militants under the cover of an Israeli bombardment that killed at least 19 civilians, including five children. Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the IDF chief of staff, told reporters at a briefing that the raid was intended to show that Israel could strike anywhere in Lebanon.
There is open speculation in the US media that the ground war will not be limited to the south but could lead to a wider military operation if Israel decides to push toward Beirut. Brigadier General Shuki Shahar, the deputy chief of the military’s Northern Command, was quoted saying: “The farther north we can push them, the fewer Israeli citizens they can put under threat with these rockets.”
Further south, in Tyre, the mass burial planned for 90 victims of the Qana massacre and other atrocities had to be postponed because of the intensity of the Israeli missile barrage. Tens of thousands of people are streaming out of the ancient Mediterranean city. In recent days, its population had swollen to 100,000 because of the influx of refugees from villages inland. By Tuesday, only about 15,000 remained.
It is now obvious that the slaughter of innocents at Qana was part of a wider plan to terrorise and force people to flee. With the official Lebanese civilian death toll already nearing 1,000 and the number of displaced people one million—a quarter of the country’s population—Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday boasted that this was a mark of success in the war. “All the population, which is the power base of the Hezbollah in Lebanon, was displaced,” he declared.
In other words, the strategy—agreed with Washington from the start—is the systematic de-population of south Lebanon, where the three-week onslaught has only increased popular support for Hezbollah as a national resistance movement. With IDF troops meeting further fierce opposition and Hezbollah firing more rockets into Israel on Wednesday than on any previous day of the 22-day-old war, Olmert declared that the army would not stop fighting or withdraw until a “robust” international force moved into southern Lebanon on Israel’s terms.
His government is confident that this could take weeks or more because of the insistence of the US, joined by Britain and Germany, that no truce be permitted until Israel has conquered the area. A cabinet minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, said on army radio he expected the offensive to take up to two weeks. Israeli generals are publicly predicting an even longer war. Brigadier General Alon Friedman of Israel’s Northern Command said seizing control of south Lebanon could take a week, and securing it “could take from three to eight weeks, depending on the size of the area.”
Israel is intent on retaining a free hand to carry out military operations throughout Lebanon even after a peace-keeping force is put in place. Writing in Haaretz today, Israeli military analyst Ze’ev Schiff commented: “Meanwhile, there is a delicate situation emerging over the mandate of the future multinational force... The danger is that sanctions will apply to both sides. This may make it very difficult for Israel to defend itself, even if it argues self-defence.”
Whatever tactical differences exist with France over the timing and composition of the planned international “stabilisation force,” there is no disagreement over its basic function, which will be to obliterate all opposition to Lebanon being reduced to a protectorate, completely subservient to US and Israeli interests.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon was not on the agenda, and downplayed differences with France on the urgency of ending the fighting. “An immediate ceasefire is something that at this point doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Neither side is headed that way,” he told a press briefing.
The truth is that Washington is urging the Israelis to get on with the slaughter as quickly as possible, as Schiff alluded to in his Haaretz comment yesterday. A fervent advocate of the war, he complained that the Olmert government had not yet provided the US with the “military cards” it needed to ensure the permanent eradication of Hezbollah.
“US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the figure leading the strategy of changing the situation in Lebanon, not Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or Defense Minister Amir Peretz. She has so far managed to withstand international pressure in favor of a ceasefire,” he wrote.
The Lebanese government has continued to denounce Israel’s war crimes. Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh called Tuesday for an immediate ceasefire and the creation of an international tribunal to try the Israeli officials. Speaking of Qana, Justice Minister Charles Rizk said: “Israel committed a hideous crime against children, women and elderly and [there should be] an international and independent committee to probe the crime.”
In Beirut, Lebanon’s High Relief Committee (HRC) said it had counted 828 people killed and 3,200 wounded so far. “These are identified bodies, and the toll does not count the people still believed to be under the rubble,” an HRC spokesman said. The number of displaced has reached 913,760. Economic losses caused by the destruction of the country’s infrastructure are now estimated at $4 billion.
Such is the “new Middle East” promised by the White House. The barbaric war on Lebanon, alongside the worsening bloodletting in US-occupied Iraq, are the product of a neo-colonial policy directed at suppressing all resistance to American dominance of the region’s massive oil and gas reserves and US imperialism’s wider goal of achieving unchallenged global hegemony.
See Also:
Slaughter in Lebanon enters fourth week
What way forward in the struggle against war?
[2 August 2006]
Following Qana massacre
Israel escalates Lebanon offensive with US backing
[1 August 2006]
The Qana massacre: Slaughter of innocents in Lebanon
[31 July 2006]
Rice leaves bloody footprints in Lebanon
[26 July 2006]
The real aims of the US-backed Israeli war against Lebanon
[21 July 2006]
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Category: Violence, War
6 comments
4 Aug 2006 @ 18:36 by gabacho : Islam v. Christians and Jews
Here's a little reality-check for you:
Lebanon has no one to blame but itself for the current invasion of their South. Israel was no threat to Lebanon or any other Middle-eastern nation until Lebananese muslims illegaly entered Israel, kidnapped Israeli citizens, and then began fierce rocket attacks on northern Israel's civilian population, attacks which have continued to this very hour.
Now Israel is working to clear a security zone across southern Lebanon along the Israeli northern border to regain their security and sovereignty. Who can blame them. Hezbollah is an official part of the Lebanese government. Thus Lebanon, as a nation, is directly responsible for the war in their country, having started the whole thing.
I feel no sympathy whatever for these murderous Muslim perpetrators. Let them die like the filthy dogs that they are. If I had my way, I'd nuke Iran and Syria right back to the stone age, and put the rest of the Muslim world on notice to shut up and get the hell out of our faces.
Hot and bothered in California
8 Aug 2006 @ 08:03 by : Fighting for Peace
We knew when 'Conning' Conni Rice went on a 'Peace Mission' that there was no longer any hope of sanity or humanity in this situation, and that before we witnessed George stumbling down the ladder. If it were not so tragic this would be high farce worthy of Mark Twain or Shakespeare even.
Prayers for peace in the USA are now part of a daily ritual for many on this planet, for surely there the Karma of this current course of action will soon be noticed. Glad to be so far away!!!
The solution is to get beyond the duality and over the dis-ease of separation.
Having visited Israel in the late 80’s; this current course of action is as sensed (seen) then. There will be no peace in the mid east (and the human ‘civilization’ therefore) until God/Jehovah and Allah have ‘had it out’.
Divine life pulses through us all and we are all in this together even if/when we feel alone or disempowered.
All life is ONE, this is the knowing of the Galactic Underworld* which will be anchored in the Universal Underworld* that sees the end of evolution as we know it and the return of our conscious free will choice to embrace a unity consciousness and at oneness with the divine creator.
I hope beyond hope that my vision of a nuclear solution to this deep division in Jerusalem does not come to pass. We hold the energy for a coming to the senses of all involved. We seek to practice the way of the peaceful heart warrior and forgive all for their ignorant acts which are so destructive of our global peace of mind and being. They say the darkest hour is just before the dawn. May the light of the Risen SON (solar logos) shine through the hearts of all involved in the human dance of awakening to the full romance of co creation with the divine (Mother/Father/All that is)
Blessings to All; especially those who seem so hurting at this time by observations such as mine!
**{link:www.breakthroughcelebration.com|more info on the patterns of divine evolution} Sorry folks dont see whats not right here will look more deeply at this later so www.breakthroughcelebration.com is the link intended for your use.
8 Aug 2006 @ 16:38 by : Max,
I so like your comment! But this link you gave....????.... Is this what the website you intended to give us? This is what opens up when I klick on your link; "more info on the patterns...."
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/#Talks
is this correct??? ( i can't really grasp the "divine evolution" in this link that I get up.... Heeeeelp! *!*....
8 Aug 2006 @ 17:42 by : No
This is the link he was trying to put up, {http://www.breakthroughcelebration.com} he just had 2 http//, if you had looked at the address bb. I don't see how you could get the link you put there, bb, from the link Max posted.
14 Aug 2006 @ 03:16 by enora : One sided, as usual
250 Hezbollah rockets hit Israel today. Israel is defending itself against terrorists, murderers. When will you understand, and is it even possible for you to feel the same about the carnage Israel has had to deal with for years?!
29 Apr 2016 @ 08:13 by @103.12.162.4 : brilliant! I would like to share this ar
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