Mideast crisis--Blog from Jerusalem
July 27
JERUSALEM--Nine on Wednesday, two on Monday, five on Saturday, two last Thursday, and two last Wednesday. These are the numbers of Israeli soldiers killed in battle since Israel began its ground invasion.
One of the most highly trained and best-equipped armies in the world is sustaining what, for this small country, amounts to high casualties from a group of guerrilla fighters who number only a few thousand. And the Israeli Army has just begun its advance into southern Lebanon.
It should come as no surprise. Israeli recruits serve only three years in the Army. The young infantry officers who were killed serve four or five. They are trained and equipped, yes, but they have no experience conducting guerrilla warfare in the Lebanese terrain, fields, caves, and pastures. They have no experience fighting a groupthat has had six long years to quietly and intensively ready itself for this battle.
But Israel knew all along that Hezbollah was training. It has been warning for over a year that Hezbollah was planning to capture Israeli soldiers along the border. Some Israelis are starting to ask, why didn't Israeli forces prepare? The reason, I think, is arrogance. After winning so many wars against the Arabs as well as being an occupying power over the Palestinians, Israelis didn't believe that Arabs could actually surprise them.
But they have. "We have hit their military capabilities very hard," said a senior Israeli military official in a briefing this week. "They now have fewer rockets, launchers, and fighters. But they still continue."
Sitting at the head of a table wearing his military uniform, he hesitated for a moment before continuing. "I admire them," he said. "Their approach is totally combat-oriented."
On Thursday, a day after nine Israeli soldiers were killed, the security cabinet held an emergency meeting to discuss whether it would expand the ground invasion or just rely on aerial, naval, and artillery strikes on Hezbollah. It decided against bringing in more ground forces.
Israeli infantry soldiers are just not prepared for the fight. And neither are Israeli mothers. And right now, Israel needs all the internal support it can get as it sends its sons to war.
July 26
JERUSALEM--Israel wants an international force with teeth to sit in southern Lebanon and prevent Hezbollah from continuing to act as an independent army there. The Lebanese government wants the force to be under the command of the United Nations--which, for Israel, is a a nonstarter, given the history of the U.N.'s Interim Force in Lebanon. UNIFIL, the 1,990-person force that was deployed in 1978 to preserve the peace in southern Lebanon, is considered toothless by Israel. "It's only for looks," said a high-ranking Israeli military officer in a briefing with selected journalists in Tel Aviv.
Israel wants real men. Ones who will arrest Hezbollah fighters transporting weapons from Syria. Ones who will make raids on suspected Hezbollah headquarters in Shiite villages and cities. Ones who will open fire and kill an armed Hezbollah fighter going near the border with Israel, not just observe and take notes for reports to be sent on to officials. "What we want is something that is more like what they have in Afghanistan," said the officer.
Around 9,000 troops from 47 countries roam Afghanistan under NATO command with the goal of "assisting the government of Afghanistan and the international community in maintaining security within the country." (That does not include 19,000 U.S. troops trying to keep the country stable). In practice, the NATO role has turned into a combat role fighting the Taliban to ensure that the elected government stays in power and the country does not fall apart (or back to Taliban hands). Not only is there no foreseeable date for its withdrawal, but NATO also plans on almost doubling the force this year, since resistance has increased in the south.
So how would an international force fare in southern Lebanon? Without Hezbollah's agreement, would the force's very existence only encourage Hezbollah to "resist" a force seen as occupiers? Hezbollah's whole raison d'être is resistance.
Whatever force the world offers up, Israel will be the one to decide whether it will deploy or not. Israel is now slowly and painfully--but surely--fighting its way north through southern Lebanon. If it doesn't trust the international team to do the job it wants done, it won't pull out to let it come in.
July 24
JERUSALEM-Thirteen days into the Lebanese-Israeli conflict (or is it war?), the United States finally decided to do something about it. Or did it? U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice popped into Beirut for a surprise visit today and then over to Jerusalem before continuing to other parts of the world.
But is she just paying a courtesy visit, or is she working toward the cease-fire everyone in the world (except for the two parties actually engaged in shooting at each other) has called for?
The answer is likely to be found in her statement made en route from Washington to Beirut. She said the United States believes "a cease-fire is urgent"--but she added that the United States will work toward brokering a cease-fire only if it is "sustainable."
What makes a truce sustainable? A Lebanese source told Reuters that Rice said that Hezbollah must unconditionally return the two Israeli soldiers it captured and pull back from the border. It's not clear to me if she realizes that is not likely to happen and is saying it to gain more time or because she honestly doesn't understand how things work in the Arab world. Hezbollah would most likely kill the two soldiers rather than be forced to give them up without getting something in return and saving face. Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, of course, knows that and has called for a broad political deal that would include the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails and the Israeli withdrawal from the disputed speck of land known as Shebaa Farms so that he can convince Hezbollah that its goals have been achieved and it is no longer needed in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah still claims Shebaa Farms for Lebanon, though the United Nations does not.
What is most likely is that Rice knows that her conditions are impossible and she is gaining time in order to help Israel create a situation on the ground that Israel and the United States believe will make a "sustainable truce" possible: i.e., cripple Hezbollah so that it can be replaced.
The Israeli generals want another seven to 10 days to "soften up" Hezbollah, to weaken the organization's military capabilities so that another force--international, NATO, Arab, or be what it may--can be put in southern Lebanon to prevent future attacks on Israel. Yes, they said that last week, but Hezbollah is putting up a strong resistance.
Who exactly would be in that force is the $10,000 question. NATO is spread thin around the world. The Arabs would not want to do it; they would not want to be seen defending Israel from what many Arabs perceive as a legitimate resistance movement.
Whether an international force would be able to overpower even a considerably weakened Hezbollah is the $100,000 question. The answer? Hmmm, not for long. Hezbollah will very likely have many more young volunteers join its ranks in the future as a reaction to what they and their families suffered from Israel's military attacks targeting their villages and neighborhoods. Moreover, if Syria does not get some quid pro quo, it won't have an incentive to stop the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah from Iran.
So the $1 million question remains: Is there anything that Hezbollah would find acceptable to give up its arms and go totally political? I cannot answer that question. But some say that changing the Lebanese democracy to "one man, one vote" (and ending the current voting system allocating power according to religious sect) would do it. But that would most likely mean that Hezbollah would become the ruling power of Muslim-majority Lebanon. And that is not exactly what Rice and President George Bush had in mind when they called for democracy in the Middle East.
July 21
JERUSALEM — Israel knows it cannot wipe out Hezbollah, but it does plan to change the military situation on the ground by weakening the militant organization through aerial attacks and by creating a buffer zone extending a half mile into Lebanese territory. The buffer zone will be cleared of everything, "even trees," a security official told me. When I asked him what would happen to any villages that may be in this area, he answered, "Everything will be flattened."
Knowing that it's only a matter of time until a diplomatic solution is reached, the Israeli Army is working fast to try to eliminate as many rocket launchers as it can inside of Lebanon through aerial and naval strikes. Both Defense Minister Amir Peretz and the military brass want to avoid a massive ground invasion, which would cost many soldiers' lives. Remember that in the first hours after two soldiers were captured and eight were killed, the Army sent in a tank to chase the captors. The tank did not get far inside Lebanon before it drove over a road mine, killing four Israeli soldiers. It took two days before the military could retrieve the bodies, as Hezbollah fighters fired on anyone who came near.
Israeli officials know that they can't prevent Hezbollah from firing on Israel except through an agreement, but they also want to prevent Hezbollah from crossing the international border and capturing soldiers in the future. The solution, the generals concluded, is to create a buffer zone in Lebanon a half-mile deep that is "clean of Hezbollah." In other words, a cleared area in which Hezbollah would be unable to re-establish guerrilla posts along the border. Israel would not have to physically occupy the zone with military installations, since it would be able to keep it clear through artillery power from the Israeli side of the border and through air power.
To create the buffer zone, the Israeli Army is moving in special forces to clear the area of mines before bringing in bulldozers, which will "flatten the area and remove any sign of a Hezbollah outpost and even trees so that Hezbollah can't enter again," said an official. On Wednesday, Israeli special forces with mine-sniffing German shepherds crossed into Lebanon to look for road mines before the bulldozers come in to destroy buildings and take down trees. Fighting broke out between the Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters.
The security official said the operation "would only take a few days if no one gets in the way, but it won't take a few days because there are people there" who will resist, referring to Hezbollah fighters. He added that Israel has no intention of setting up permanent Israeli military infrastructure inside the zone, as Israel did in the 1980s. That infrastructure was dismantled when Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.
July 19
JERUSALEM — I got a press release yesterday from AHAVA (a Hebrew acronym for 'People for Saving Animals in the Middle East'). The Kiryat Tivon-based organization knows no borders. Not only are its volunteers distributing dishes of water and food around the streets of the north of Israel for thirsty cats that were left behind by their families who did not expect to be gone so long. Now, they are trying to save dogs in Beirut and cows in Marjayoun in southern Lebanon.
"We got a call from someone in Germany who told us that the owner of a kennel in Beirut is abandoning the city and leaving the dogs behind," said Tamara More, the voluntary CEO of the organization. "We're trying to find a way to evacuate the animals."
Unfortunately, fear of Hezbollah is preventing the rescue operation from taking place. "We told him we'd send a boat to the coast of Beirut," More told me, sounding somewhat harried over the phone. "But the man said he was afraid Hezbollah would kill him if they saw him transferring them [to Israelis]."
While people across northern Israel, southern Lebanon, and Beirut leave their homes for other parts of their country to save their own lives, many are concerned about the animals they left behind during the sweltering heat of a Middle Eastern summer. In Safed, a town in northern Israel that has been hit by Hezbollah's Katyusha rockets, families who are now staying in underground bunkers called the local police station from their cellular phones to ask the policemen to go to their homes and feed their pets. The policemen agreed.
In Haifa, the streets are practically empty. Most of the city's residents are staying in their homes or bunkers. But the employees of the Haifa Educational Zoo continue to go to work to feed the animals, which are now being kept around the clock in their cement sleeping quarters in order to prevent possible injuries from falling rockets.
"We play with them and try to keep them calm," said Etty Ararat, the zoo's director. "But, the baboons are going stir-crazy. They look at us like they are asking 'What is going on?'"
Many Israelis who raise livestock refuse to leave their homes, praying the Katyusha rockets won't fall on them. "We have 150 calves," said Geula Feldinger, a tough mother of four from Sde Yaakov, an Israeli farming community. "One of our neighbors has a dairy farm and another has a chicken coop. No one is leaving. If we do, our animals will die."
In south Lebanon's villages, farmers don't have much choice. The Israeli military has called for them to leave their homes in order not to be injured by the attacks on Hezbollah targets. AHAVA is now asking the Army not to bomb pastures, stables, and dairy farms. "We are very worried; their situation is difficult," More told me.
AHAVA, which has done many cross-border rescues in the past, plans to coordinate with the Israeli Army the transfer of Lebanese animals across the border. "The animals are not terrorists," said the overworked volunteer. "If people will be willing to come to the border to pass their animals to us, we will take them—even the injured ones—and return them whenever they want."
July 18
Jerusalem — Attempting to deny Hezbollah any information useful for better aiming at targets, Israeli authorities have instructed the media not to identify the exact locations where the Katyusha rockets fall.
But driven by competition, ratings, and the Israeli public's appetite for information, TV networks and newspaper photographers are racing to the site of the latest hit. Israel's military censor is aware of the problem. "We are flexible," said Yehezkel, a worker at the censorship headquarters who declined to give his full name.
Part of the reason is that the censors have to be. "If it happened on a city street where people were killed, it's impossible to stop [the media]," Yehezkel told me.
Indeed, Amir Bar Shalom, chief military correspondent for Israel's Channel 1 television, said he got the instructions from the censor, "but I do what I want." Still, he told me, "I don't want to help Hezbollah."
So he's careful. "I show the site where Katyushas fell, I just don't show the long shot."
And he's never had a problem.
Crews for the pan-Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera have.
Israeli police have detained crews of the Qatari-owned network four times in the last two days, taking them three times to a police station and holding them for a few hours. "Then they apologize and let us go," said Al-Jazeera's bureau chief, Walid al-Omary. "They didn't ask anything, they didn't take any equipment. Nothing."
On one occasion, the Al-Jazeera crew members were filming at a point in Haifa where many TV networks line up with their cameras, including the Associated Press, Reuters, Fox News, and the Israeli channels. "The police walked over to us, asked us who we were and told us we had to go with them," al-Omary told me. Another couple of hours at the police station followed. (Al-Jazeera's crew members are all Palestinian citizens of Israel with the exception of one, a Jerusalemite, who carries an Israeli ID.)
It didn't get better. On Tuesday night, al-Omary was taken alone to the police station for six hours of questioning, he said. "They said there were claims that our broadcasts are helping Hezbollah," he said. "That's ridiculous. My work doesn't help Hezbollah. What about the Israeli stations that even name the address of the house [that was hit]? I want them to tell me, what are we broadcasting which is different from the others?" Al-Omary asserted that his network is being harassed for its coverage and because "it's easy to bother the Arabs."
I called Miki Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Israeli police. "[Al-Omary] has the right to say what he wants," he said. The issue is under investigation, he added. Channel 1's Bar Shalom said he did not know the details about the detention of Al-Jazeera's crews, but what's certain, he said, is that "the [authorities] suspect them immediately. They never suspect me."
July 17, 2006
Jerusalem—When Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed seven others in a July 12 cross-border raid, sparking an aggressive Israeli military reaction on Lebanon, a Jordanian friend of mine changed his MSN messenger user name to "F*** Hezbollah."
It stayed like that for three days as Israel pounded the southern neighborhoods of the Lebanese capital and the southern part of the country, where many supporters of Hezbollah live. Hezbollah volleyed Katyusha rockets and longer-range missiles on Israeli villages and towns. "Hezbollah f***ed up big time," he wrote me later, calling the group "pawns in the hands of the Syrians and the Iranians."
Indeed, he was not the only Arab who felt that way. Despite strong criticism of Israel's military operation in Lebanon, many Arabs—from the man in the street to the man on the throne—blamed the Syrian and Iranian-backed Shiite militia for starting the dangerous back-and-forth conflict.
A Bahraini blogger, known for speaking his mind at 'Mahmoud's Den', ridiculed the Lebanese government: " Sorry, how many armies do you actually have, Lebanon?" he wrote Sunday. "Make up your effing mind and either amalgamate all of these "resistance fighters" under your army's banner or disband them. You are a sovereign nation, right? So what the hell are you doing allowing "resistance fighters" to "defend" the South? Isn't that your army's job?"
Some Lebanese criticize their compatriots. Sami Hermez, a Lebanese academic doing research in Ramallah, tried desperately to call his family when the conflict began. Writing on electronicintifada.net, he said that Lebanese are angry at Hezbollah, which claims to be a resistance movement defending Lebanon. "Lebanon was doing just fine before Hezbollah decided to act," screamed his mother, when he was finally able to get through to her on her cell phone.
Arab and Muslim leaders often try to maintain a single stance in regards to Israel. But Hezbollah's act last Wednesday created a crack. Saudi Arabia, for one, lashed out at Hezbollah last Thursday, calling its attack inside the Israeli border "irresponsible adventurism ... that risk[s] putting in danger all the Arab countries and their achievements before these countries have said a word." Egypt and Jordan also expressed implicit criticism of Hezbollah, which gets its backing from Iran and Syria.
But the crack soon revealed itself to be a gorge. Instead of agreeing on a joint statement against Israel, the representatives of unlikely countries such as Kuwait, Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, joined the Egyptians, Jordanians and Saudis against the Lebanese and Syrian foreign ministers in criticizing Hezbollah's actions at an emergency session of the Arab League on Saturday. According to the Lebanese daily An-Nahar, the Kuwaiti foreign minister suggested throwing a glass of water on the Syrian foreign minister "to wake him up."
A few Arab newspaper editors have also dared to blame Hezbollah. "I do not see any reason why the Israeli soldiers have been abducted, in Gaza or in Lebanon," Mohammed Galadari, editor-in-chief of The Khaleej Times, an English-language daily published in Dubai, wrote in his Saturday column.
But as the Israeli military operation continues and the number of killed Lebanese civilians rises complete with ghastly pictures on Arab TV, even those who fault Hezbollah for starting the dangerous back-and-forth lobbying of missiles and rockets are turning their criticism towards their usual foe, Israel.
Yesterday, my Jordanian friend changed his MSN Messenger name again. Now it reads: "F*** Hezbollah and Israel. Long Live Lebanon."
Halpern is a freelance journalist in Jerusalem.