ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

According to what I've been reading on Lebanese forums Nasrallah and Hez are losing more support everyday with the wider population. They resent what Hez has brought on their country.

They are ready to elect new leaders who are not under the thumb of Syria and are seeking help to reconstruct...then they want to be left alone to live in peace.

If the shi'ah have no other choice other than to be represented by Hez, that is an extremely sad position, and needs to be changed....legitimately, not by a group that are manipulating the community into believing that they are doing them a justice, when they are serving the intrests of their foreign investors.... using the people as pawns, and are willing to destroy the nation for the achievements of their individual aims.

The poor peolple in the south depend on Hez for basic needs, if that can be corrected then Hez will have no support except from Syria/Iran.

It's going to have to start at the upper echelons of Lebanese gov't to do what is right for it's people. New leadership is definitely in order.

The PM, president will not denounce Hez and last nite in an interview on CNN the Lebanese diplomat to the US, Carla Jazzara, was asked if Hez was a terrorist organization...she said NO!

This is not the opinion of the larger poplulation of Lebanese citizens at all. They feel all western media(including europe) are biased and are not telling what the Lebanese are truly feeling, they don't want to support Hez.

Many feel that they will have to rise up and drive Hez out as the only solution. They don't trust anyone else will set things right in Lebanon for a lasting peace.

ELECTRONIC LEBANON

It came shortly after Hezbollah fighters launched rockets from a garden area near her house. Ms. Hassrouni did not see them, but she knew they were there. She said she could hear their voices as she hid in a street-level basement with sandbags near the windows.

"I don't know where it came from," she said, standing in an empty room near where the shell came through. "We were sleeping down there. We went up and found this bomb."

The shell was Israeli. It was fired, apparently, in an attempt to hit the Hezbollah fighters, who were working not far from Ms. Hassrouni's olive grove.

In this Christian village deep in southern Lebanon, residents witnessed ferocious battles between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters last week. In their push toward the Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbail, less than a mile away, Israeli forces shelled the town for several days.

Lebanon's Christians are stuck in the middle of a war with which they do not identify. Long distrustful of Hezbollah, they talk angrily about the militia's incursion into Israel, and its habit of launching missiles from their orchards. Nor do they appreciate Israel's response, which lobs rockets into their houses and keeps their hilltop town shut tight.

"Look here and here," said Georgette Hassrouni, an elfin woman, pointing to holes in walls. "All these from bombs."

But compared with people in some of the more devastated southern towns, the Christians in Ain Ebel live well, reflecting their relative privilege in Lebanese society and the fact that Hezbollah fighters, while present, do not run the town as they do some of the neighboring ones.

On Tuesday morning, about 15 residents who had been living in one basement room came up to have grapes, plums and Arabic coffee with guests in a living room. Bottles of water were stockpiled in a kitchen. Aita al Shaab, a village on the neighboring ridge, was being heavily shelled. The plumes of smoke and dust were visible through their living-room window.

Even so, the shelling in Aita al Shaab continued, and rescue workers across the south continued to dig bodies out of rubble. According to the main government hospital in Tyre, the town that receives most of the bodies, 88 have been pulled out in two days.

The people here were angry with their government but wanted nothing from it. Said Hassrouni, a man in his 40's with an animated face, walked up from the garden area with freshly picked cucumbers. Another offered plums and grapes.

"We don't want their money," Mr. Hassrouni said. "We don't want them to build our houses again. We just want them to put an end to Iran and Syria."

Beyond the pause in the airstrikes, Tuesday was a lucky day. The Maronite archbishop of Tyre had arrived for a visit, offering words of comfort, smiles and kisses to weathered cheeks.

Archbishop Nabil Hage strode in his light robes into the Hassrouni house, surveying the damage in a front room, which had been punctured four times by artillery shells. The walls of the house were singed black from smoke. Inside, it smelled like a campfire.

"The people here are lost," the archbishop said. "They don't know what to do. On the one hand, they hope that the fighting stops. On the other, they fear the worst."

Hezbollah, their biggest headache, is everywhere but nowhere. None of the people gathered had actually seen a fighter, though many said they heard them moving around and setting off rockets near an olive grove below their houses.

The grove itself was a casualty: Israelis returned fire where the rockets were being launched, burning down the grove.

During the battle last week, Charbil Ghannam, a 54-year-old aluminum worker, said fighters launched rockets from the valley, drawing Israeli fire. Tanks and artillery would fire after three minutes, he said, and planes after about 10 minutes.

Later, when people started to leave, two young men were stopped by armed men in masks, Mr. Ghannam said. The masked men, who Mr. Ghannam said were Hezbollah fighters, refused to let the young men leave, even shooting at one of them.

The first bread in 20 days arrived on Tuesday: 16 packages of flat brown pancakes. The man who delivered it had to fight off a woman who was suspicious that he was taking it for himself.

An old man wearing a pressed blue shirt and belted slacks and walking with a cane said he had become separated from his wife, who went to Beirut two days before the conflict began to help their daughter plan her wedding. He has not spoken to them in weeks, and pressed a telephone number into a visitor's hand, asking that his wife be called and reassured.

"That is what makes us scared, because we see that all the roads here are blocked," Archbishop Hage said, describing the geography around Ain Ebel and Lebanon's current state of mind. "There is just one little road that led us to here. And today, tomorrow, will there still be a road?"

That is the elephant in the room here. How long can you pretend it isn't there?

ABOUT EI

The Electronic Intifada (EI) is a not-for-profit, independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 39-year occupation of Palestinian territories. EI provides a needed supplement to mainstream commercial media representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Visit EI at http://electronicIntifada.net

"The Palestinian CNN" - The Jerusalem Post

"[EI is]... something quite spectacular ...a highly professional site." -- David Bowden, The Financial Times (U.K.)

"The Electronic Intifada is trusted" -- Alexander Cockburn, The Nation (U.S.)

"[EI is] a democratic bombshell, a fascinating look between and behind the lines." -- The Web Review, ITV (UK)

"Making the pro-Palestinian cause more prominent with the media in recent years." -- Newsday (U.S.)

"Intended as a news source, the site has slowly been transforming into a work of art..." -- The Daily Star (Lebanon)

"Hezbollah came to Ain Ebel to shoot its rockets," said Fayad Hanna Amar, a young Christian man, referring to his village. "They are shooting from between our houses."

"Please,'' he added, "write that in your newspaper."Many Christians from Ramesh and Ain Ebel considered Hezbollah's fighting methods as much of an outrage as the Israeli strikes. Mr. Amar said Hezbollah fighters in groups of two and three had come into Ain Ebel, less than a mile from Bint Jbail, where most of the fighting has occurred. They were using it as a base to shoot rockets, he said, and the Israelis fired back.

One woman, who would not give her name because she had a government job and feared retribution, said Hezbollah fighters had killed a man who was trying to leave Bint Jbail.

"This is what's happening, but no one wants to say it" for fear of Hezbollah, she said.

American citizens remain in some southern villages. Mohamed Elreda, a father of three from New Jersey, was visiting relatives in Yaroun with his family when two missiles narrowly missed his car, while he was parking it in front of his family's house. His 16-year-old son Ali was sprayed with shrapnel and is now in a hospital in Tyre.

"I have never seen anything like this in my life," said Mr. Elreda, who arrived here on Thursday morning. "They see civilians, they bomb them," he said, referring to the Israelis.

"We had to move underground like raccoons."

He said a person affiliated with the United States Embassy arrived in Yaroun and shouted for everyone to join a convoy that the Israelis had promised safe passage.

He left in such haste, he said, that he had pulled on his wife's sweatpants (they had a pink stripe running down the length of each leg). His son's blood still stained his shoes.

He said Yaroun had been without electricity and clean water for more than a week, and he had stirred dirty clothes in a pail of water and bleach to make bandages for his son's wounds.

The village is largely Christian, but has Muslim pockets, and Mr. Elreda said he walked at night among houses to the Christian section, where a friend risked his life to drive his son to Tyre, while Mr. Elreda stayed with the rest of the family.

On Thursday he joined his son at the hospital.

"He's my son," he said, standing at the foot of the boy's bed. "I just can't see him like this."

The Electronic Intifada

ABOUT EI.....

The Electronic Intifada

... i.e. are you willing to swear that terms such as "kaffer" ...

Israel occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years, and far from eradicating opposition, it managed the feat of spawning Hezbollah. The civilian casualties caused by Israeli bombs are likely to increase support for the group, just as its rockets have rallied Israelis behind their government. As we've found in Iraq, you can end up creating terrorists faster than you can kill them.

I don't get what you ask there, gunga, especially your reference to an South-African tribe is something I don't get in this context.

gungasnake wrote:

... i.e. are you willing to swear that terms such as "kaffer" ...

Preconditions for Peace
Terrorists and their sponsors in the Middle East must reform, or be vanquished.
By Mohamed Eljahmi
National Review Online -

[Eljahmi is a Boston-based Libyan American activist whose brother, Fathi Eljahmi, is imprisoned in Libya for speaking out for political reform. KMJ]

On June 25, Hamas ambushed an Israeli military post outside of Gaza, kidnapping Cpl. Gilad Shalit and demanding the release of terrorists in Israeli prisons. On July 12, Hezbollah followed suit, abducting two Israeli soldiers and killing eight others. Israel, exercising its right to self-defense, has countered with military operations in Gaza and Lebanon.

It is no secret that Iran and Syria use Hezbollah and Hamas as proxies. The kidnapping operations in Israel would not have transpired without a green light from Tehran and Damascus. Further, the rise of Hezbollah and Hamas reflects a growing alliance between autocrats and theocrats. The autocrats want to rule, and the theocrats employ religious means to impose their authority. Both are unified in their opposition to Israel.

Refusal to accept Israel's right to exist is the root of conflict in the Middle East. Arab governments view Israel as a threat, because it is a democratic and modern state. Under genuine peace, secular authocratic regimes like that of Syria will not survive, because citizens will shift their attention inward and demand viable services like education, healthcare, and a social safety net. Such governments, whose budgets are allocated for security and the foreign bank accounts of the elite, cannot perform these basic functions.

The theocrats oppose the existence of Israel because they fear that the spread of secular rule would end their control. In a televised address on July 16, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nassrallah said, "A Hamas and Hezbollah defeat means greater influence for the Zionists and their American masters, the theft of our resources and defacement of our culture and civilization."

As the United States watches the alliance grow; Iran and Syria formally announced their strategic ties in February 2005; it has failed to nurture a democratic counterweight in the Arab street. U.S. support for Arab democrats has been wishy-washy. Diplomacy has failed.

Today, the Assad regime in Syria offers itself as a mediator for a ceasefire. The Syrians feel emboldened because Washington lacks resolve. While a U.N. investigation has implicated Syrian leadership in last year's assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, Assad's meddling in Lebanon and crackdown on liberal dissent continues unabated. Syria understands that paying lip service to Washington's war on terror means its sins at home and abroad will be excused.

In the past, U.S. shuttle diplomacy lent greater focus to appeasing dictators and treating symptoms rather than solving problems. But where the State department once was eager to restrain Israel and find quick fixes, it now claims to seek "sustainable solutions." That State has repeatedly rejected calls for an immediate ceasefire appears to underscore this.

Washington realizes that a quick resolution to the current conflict will only produce cosmetic change. An immediate and unconditional ceasefire; one which fails to disarm Hezbollah; would not solve the crisis, but prolong it. Such a ceasefire would further bolster the Shiite militia's prestige in the Arab street and allow them to regroup. Security for Israel and Lebanon will only be achieved if the Lebanese government exerts full control over Lebanon's territory. A just and lasting peace should not permit perpetrators of violence to save face and live to fight another day.

A permanent solution can be either political or military. A political solution requires a genuine desire to solve problems between the two sides. On the Arab side there are no legitimate and visionary leaders who are willing to take the risk. The Israelis, conversely, have the legitimate leaders; because they were elected by the people and are now expected to serve their people.

The military solution is costly, but it may create the foundation for an eventual political solution. Massive military defeats for militant organizations like Hezbollah would remove significant tools from the hands of Arab rulers. Combine the military solution with genuine pressure on Arab governments to reform, and we can begin to build the basis for peaceful societies. The Arab street will then look inward rather than outward. And local political issues will trump regional ones.

At the moment, Arab rulers are at a crossroad. They can move beyond past failures by choosing a peaceful and realistic political solution. This would require genuine reform at home. The international community and Israel are prepared to extend a sincere hand toward reconciliation, just as soon as there is a real chance for permanent peace. Prosperity would be the result. But so long as terrorist groups and their sponsors continue to thwart the peace process, stability and democracy in the Middle East will remain a distant hope.

CLEARLY THE ISRAELIS ARE TO BLAME

They have failed to turn their other cheeks again.

They have failed to give up Israel to the arabs.

Despite their well known inventiveness, the Israelis have utterly failed to invent a scanner that can determine exactly where Hezbollah ordnance is stashed and where it is not.

But worst of all, Israelis, unlike the rest of us, were originally scheduled to be perfect by next Tuesday and they are way, way, ... way behind schedule.

Hezbollah members, poor babies, on the otherhand, are well known to be suffering serious mental illness not of their own making, and in dire need of love, sympathy, understanding, counseling, and treatment.