Rafferty’s rules
Having been a de facto free-fire zone for the best part of week, it now looks like southern Lebanon is about to become the formalised, real deal:
Israel drops leaflets warning any civilians remaining in southern Lebanon to leave immediately
It’s a technique the American’s used disastrously on a city-wide scale in Falluja in Iraq last year:
Warnings of the onslaught prompted the vast majority of Falluja’s 300,000 people to flee. The city was then declared a free-fire zone on the grounds that the only people left behind must be “terrorists”.
Three weeks after the attack was launched last November, the Americans claimed victory. They say they killed about 1,300 people; one week into the siege, a BBC reporter put the unofficial death toll at 2,000. But details of what happened and who the dead were remain obscure. Were many unarmed civilians, as Baghdad-based human rights groups report? Even if they were trying to defend their homes by fighting the Americans, does that make them “terrorists”?
It looks like we’re about to see the experiment repeated in a wider theatre; expanded by an order of magnitude. If, as seems to have happened in Fallujah, many people chose to ignore the warnings, underestimated the danger or stayed to defend their homes and possessions, things can only get much, much worse. They’re already filling mass graves in Tyre. In the same report, we have:
“May God destroy Israel,” said Kamel Abdallah, 35, whose pregnant wife, five children and father were killed in an air strike on the border village of Marwaheen.
And so it goes. Will that grief fuel some counter-atrocity? What about the grief being stockpiled in Haifa?
Posted on July 21st, 2006 at 12:44 pm
This seems to have escalated dizzyingly fast. Neither side is backing down, and it’s like being transported back to the bad old days of the 60’s and 70’s when Israel fought pitched battles for territory with every Arab country going. What a mess.
1: How many people actually live in southern Lebanon?
2: How will they be able to get out if roads and bridges have been bombed?
3: What is the Lebanese government going to do about an Israeli invasion?
4: What will Blair’s excuse(s) be if an ground invasion does happen?
Don’t worry, Justin - I’m not expecting you to have the answers, just commenting how much worse things could get.
I wonder if there’s something significant about the complete absence of the Lebanese government and (official) military in this. It does seem a bit odd. I almost always avoid getting involved in debates such as this, as my knowledge isn’t as good as it ought to be, but that single fact stands out for me.
It is odd, isn’t it? “The Lebanese defence minister said the army was ready to defend the country…” according to the Guardian but that’s pretty much the first word, I think. That being the case, why are the Israelis concentrating on civilian infrastructure rather than military installations? I don’t remember any reports of significant attacks on the Lebanese army. Maybe it’s just the way it’s been reported, who knows.
Unless the thinking is that the way to apply pressure to Hezbollah is to squeeze the civilian population?
“I wonder if there’s something significant about the complete absence of the Lebanese government and (official) military in this.”
The Lebanese military is a joke. Its doubtful anyone would actually notice if they did get involved. There have been a few attacks on the military by Israel, but then Israel is pretty much blowing up everything now (including Christian Maronite villages of all things. That’s like blowing up prod areas in N. Ireland to get revenge on the IRA).
It all sounds horribly familiar. Even the tactics are identical.
Horribly familiar indeed.
1) Start a war in Lebanon to ’stop terrorist attacks’.
2) Create more terrorists in the process.
3) Wait a few years and do it again.
So what you’re saying, Rochenko is:
If Hezbollah were formed in 1982 to beat off the Israeli invasion of that year, that means we can expect to see a new outfit forming to beat off this year’s invasion which is intent on wiping out the outfit formed to beat off the previous invasion.
Have we discovered a perpetual motion machine here?
(Wasn’t there a UN resolution telling Hezbollah to pack it in?)
Why bother with all the administrative hassle of starting a new Terrrr group? Just wait for kids who’ve seen their brothers, sisters, and parents killed and/or had their homes destroyed to swell the numbers of the current lot.
Maybe the IDF are dropping special bombs that, as well as blowing stuff up, also release magic pixie dust that somehow changes the usual patterns of human psychological response to being on the receiving end of violence.
The Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon in ‘82 was nominally to drive out PLO, a Palestinian resistance movement/terror group (your choice), to grind them into dust. In the process of occupying Lebanon over 18 years, Hezbollah, another resistance movement/terrorist group was created.
The number of civilian deaths in Fallujah was much higher than the 2,000 you quoted Justin. For more information on the true extent see Dahr Jamail
In adition, a big question remains.
If, and its a big if, (as laid out by redpesto) civilians can escape, how do they ever return if one of the stated Israeli aims of the invasion/occupation was about separating civilians from terrorists?
Enter another dimension of Fallujah. There, once the indiscriminate targeting and destruction of approx 80% of building had slowed down, all civilians trying to re-enter were mandated to have, and carry at all times, a biometric ID card.
Yes siree, our Dear Leader had his trial of biometric ID cards in Fallujah, and it is being rolled out elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem is that only those who:
1) are accepted by whoever is in charge to be who they say they are;
2)have any documents to prove who they are (having had their everything they own blown to smitherines);
3) are liked by the victors/officials or have the right status or caste or tribe;
4) have the cash to bribe the right people;
are ever able to get the damned ID cards and re-enter their hometowns and neighbourhoods. Thus lower caste groups/those not liked/no documents/no money to bribe, etc, are never able to return home. Got a pesky ethnic problem? Want to change the ethnic make-up of a population centre? Create a reason to compell the entire population shift elsewhere and control who returns.
It is a form of ethnically cleansing an area, without the need to kill anyone else. Also see Hurricane Katrina and the changing ethnic make up of New Orleans.
As with US/UK destruction Fallujah, white phosphorous is being used in Lebanon as a chemical weapon in built up residential areas. For pix of the destruction of white phosphorous on children’s bodies, and to sign the petition to Save the Lebanese Civilians
Another thing, has any UK media outlet embedded a reporter in Palestine to show what is happening in the newly re-occupied Gaza? Never forget, under International laws now being cited by Israeli officials about Hezbollah, Israel has a duty of care to look after any occupied people on it’s land. Last I heard over 100 civilains had died in Gaza, and the place had been flattened with 1 tonne bombs in the most crowded area on earth. Now that is ethnic cleansing in anyone’s book.