Mideast crisis--Blog from Jerusalem
"We want the military to coordinate the cleanup and allow it to take place with some measure of guarantee that volunteers that offer to clean up will not get bombed," said Bromberg, adding, "They never guarantee anything, but they are willing to coordinate."
A recent satellite photo of the disaster can be found here.
August 4
JERUSALEM-Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah promised Israelison Thursday that "if you bomb Beirut, we'll hit Tel- Aviv." Israelis don't like being threatened. It makes their blood boil. Especially coming from an enemy they consider inferior--militarily, morally, and culturally.
Nasrallah's words were followed within minutes by Israeli warplanes hitting targets in and around Beirut. The Israeli message was clear: You will not threaten us. But Israelis--citizens, military leaders, and government officials-- do take Nasrallah very seriously. They now listen closely to his speeches, which are translated into Hebrew on Israeli television. No wonder this morning Tel Aviv residents found a surprise in their mailboxes:a seven-page pamphlet titled "For every question an answer" published by the Army. It directs civilians on how to act if a long-range missile falls in the city, how to prepare the underground bomb shelter, and whom to speak with when feeling psychological stress, among other things.
One irony of this war is that Nasrallah is killing the very people he claims to support. He would like the Israeli state to cease to exist to enable Palestinians to rule the territory of Israel. But of the Israeli civilians killed by Hezbollah's Katyushas rockets, at least nine were Arab Israelis, also referred to as Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Besides being unfamiliar with the Lebanese terrain and under prepared for the guerrilla--warfare tactics of Hezbollah, young Israeli soldiers are facing another major challenge: getting by without their cell phones. After learning that Hezbollah has high-tech equipment for intercepting such conversations, Israeli soldiers were prohibited from bringing their personal phones into the battle zone. "This is very unusual and not easy for Israelis." said Maj. Gen. Miki Adelstein, commander of the Nahal Brigade.
August 2
HAIFA, ISRAEL--Israel, asserts Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, has "changed the face of the Middle East." In a speech Tuesday, Olmert went on to imply that Israel had defeated Hezbollah and that the organization was no longer a threat to Israel--even as thousands of Israeli soldiers pressed their fight deeper into Lebanon.
A number of Arab leaders are hoping Olmert is right. Indeed, they think that the Israelis did not do the job fast enough. The leaders of so-called moderate Arab states--notably Sunni Muslim Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia--barely hid their disdain for Shiite Hezbollah, even as the Arab "street" instinctively rallied behind whomever would dare to take on the Jewish state. The Israelis, one Arab diplomat told me,"should have finished off Hezbollah in one or two days...Instead, this has dragged on for weeks, and our citizens are very angry. It's causing a lot of tension in the region."
For my part, I thought it would mean that I wouldn't have to worry about Katyusha rockets hitting me when I headed back up to northern Israel today to do interviews for a story for the magazine.
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