A
Terrible Thought Occurs To Me - That There Will Be Another 9/11
By Robert Fisk
05 August 2006
The
Independent
The
room shook. Not since the 1983 earthquake has my apartment rocked from
side to side. That was the force of the Israeli explosions in the southern
suburbs of Beirut - three miles from my home - and the air pressure
changed in the house yesterday morning and outside in the street the
palm trees moved.
Is it to be like this every
day? How many civilians can you make homeless before you start a revolution?
And what is next? Are the Israelis to bomb the centre of Beirut? The
Corniche? Is this why all the foreign warships came and took their citizens
away, to make Beirut safe to destroy?
Yesterday, needless to say,
was another day of massacres, great and small. The largest appeared
to be 40 farm workers in northern Lebanon, some of them Kurds - a people
who do not even have a country. An Israeli missile was reported to have
exploded among them as they loaded vegetables on to a refrigerated truck
near Al-Qaa, a small village east of Hermel in the far north. The wounded
were taken to hospital in Syria because the roads of Lebanon have now
all been cratered by Israeli bomb-bursts. Later we learnt that an air
strike on a house in the village of Taibeh in the south had killed seven
civilians and wounded 10 seeking shelter from attack.
In Israel two civilians were
killed by Hizbollah missiles but, as usual, Lebanon bore the brunt of
the day's attacks which centred - incredibly - on the Christian heartland
that has traditionally shown great sympathy towards Israel. It was the
Christian Maronite community whose Phalangist militiamen were Israel's
closest allies in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon yet Israel's air force
yesterday attacked three highway bridges north of Beirut and - again
as usual - it was the little people who died.
One of them was Joseph Bassil,
65, a Christian man who had gone out on his daily jogging exercise with
four friends north of Jounieh. "His friends packed up after four
rounds of the bridge because it was hot," a member of his family
told us later. "Joseph decided to do one more jog on the bridge.
That was what killed him." The Israelis gave no reason for the
attacks - no Hizbollah fighters would ever enter this Christian Maronite
stronghold and the only hindrance was caused to humanitarian convoys
- and there were growing fears in Lebanon that the latest air raids
were a sign of Israel's frustration rather any serious military planning.
Indeed, as the Lebanon war
continues to destroy innocent lives - most of them Lebanese - the conflict
seems to be increasingly aimless. The Israeli air force has succeeded
in killing perhaps 50 Hizbollah members and 600 civilians and has destroyed
bridges, milk factories, gas stations, fuel storage depots, airport
runways and thousands of homes. But to what purpose?
Does the United States any
longer believe Israel's claims that it will destroy Hizbollah when its
army clearly cannot do anything of the kind? Does Washington not realise
that when Israel grows tired of this war, it will plead for a ceasefire
- which only Washington can deliver by doing what it most loathes to
do: by taking the road to Damascus and asking for help from President
Bashar al-Assad of Syria?
What in the meanwhile is
happening to Lebanon? Bridges and buildings can be reconstructed - with
European Union loans, no doubt - but many Lebanese are now questioning
the institutions of the democracy for which the US was itself so full
of praise last year. What is the point of a democratically elected Lebanese
government which cannot protect its people? What is the point of a 75,000-member
Lebanese army which cannot protect its nation, which cannot be sent
to the border, which does not fire on Lebanon's enemies and which cannot
disarm Hizbollah? Indeed, for many Lebanese Shias, Hizbollah is now
the Lebanese army.
So fierce has been Hizbollah's
resistance - and so determined its attacks on Israeli ground troops
in Lebanon - that many people here no longer recall that it was Hizbollah
which provoked this latest war by crossing the border on 12 July, killing
three Israeli soldiers and capturing two others. Israel's threats of
enlarging the conflict even further are now met with amusement rather
than horror by a Lebanese population which has been listening to Israel's
warnings for 30 years with ever greater weariness. And yet they fear
for their lives. If Tel Aviv is hit, will Beirut be spared. Or if central
Beirut is hit, will Tel Aviv be spared? Hizbollah now uses Israel's
language of an eye for an eye. Every Israeli taunt is met by a Hizbollah
taunt.
And do the Israelis realise
that they are legitimising Hizbollah, that a rag-tag army of guerrillas
is winning its spurs against an Israeli army and air force whose targets
- if intended - prove them to be war criminals and if unintended suggest
that they are a rif-raff little better than the Arab armies they have
been fighting, on and off, for more than half a century? Extraordinary
precedents are being set in this Lebanon war.
In fact, one of the most
profound changes in the region these past three decades has been the
growing unwillingness of Arabs to be afraid. Their leaders - our "moderate"
pro-Western Arab leaders such as King Abdullah of Jordan and President
Mubarak of Egypt - may be afraid. But their peoples are not. And once
a people have lost their terror, they cannot be re-injected with fear.
Thus Israel's consistent policy of smashing Arabs into submission no
longer works. It is a policy whose bankruptcy the Americans are now
discovering in Iraq.
And all across the Muslim
world, "we" - the West, America, Israel - are fighting not
nationalists but Islamists. And watching the martyrdom of Lebanon this
week - its slaughtered children in Qana packed into plastic bags until
the bags ran out and their corpses had to be wrapped in carpets - a
terrible and daunting thought occurs to me, day by day. That there will
be another 9/11.
The room shook. Not since
the 1983 earthquake has my apartment rocked from side to side. That
was the force of the Israeli explosions in the southern suburbs of Beirut
- three miles from my home - and the air pressure changed in the house
yesterday morning and outside in the street the palm trees moved.
Is it to be like this every
day? How many civilians can you make homeless before you start a revolution?
And what is next? Are the Israelis to bomb the centre of Beirut? The
Corniche? Is this why all the foreign warships came and took their citizens
away, to make Beirut safe to destroy?
Yesterday, needless to say,
was another day of massacres, great and small. The largest appeared
to be 40 farm workers in northern Lebanon, some of them Kurds - a people
who do not even have a country. An Israeli missile was reported to have
exploded among them as they loaded vegetables on to a refrigerated truck
near Al-Qaa, a small village east of Hermel in the far north. The wounded
were taken to hospital in Syria because the roads of Lebanon have now
all been cratered by Israeli bomb-bursts. Later we learnt that an air
strike on a house in the village of Taibeh in the south had killed seven
civilians and wounded 10 seeking shelter from attack.
In Israel two civilians were
killed by Hizbollah missiles but, as usual, Lebanon bore the brunt of
the day's attacks which centred - incredibly - on the Christian heartland
that has traditionally shown great sympathy towards Israel. It was the
Christian Maronite community whose Phalangist militiamen were Israel's
closest allies in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon yet Israel's air force
yesterday attacked three highway bridges north of Beirut and - again
as usual - it was the little people who died.
One of them was Joseph Bassil,
65, a Christian man who had gone out on his daily jogging exercise with
four friends north of Jounieh. "His friends packed up after four
rounds of the bridge because it was hot," a member of his family
told us later. "Joseph decided to do one more jog on the bridge.
That was what killed him." The Israelis gave no reason for the
attacks - no Hizbollah fighters would ever enter this Christian Maronite
stronghold and the only hindrance was caused to humanitarian convoys
- and there were growing fears in Lebanon that the latest air raids
were a sign of Israel's frustration rather any serious military planning.
Indeed, as the Lebanon war
continues to destroy innocent lives - most of them Lebanese - the conflict
seems to be increasingly aimless. The Israeli air force has succeeded
in killing perhaps 50 Hizbollah members and 600 civilians and has destroyed
bridges, milk factories, gas stations, fuel storage depots, airport
runways and thousands of homes. But to what purpose?
Does the United States any
longer believe Israel's claims that it will destroy Hizbollah when its
army clearly cannot do anything of the kind? Does Washington not realise
that when Israel grows tired of this war, it will plead for a ceasefire
- which only Washington can deliver by doing what it most loathes to
do: by taking the road to Damascus and asking for help from President
Bashar al-Assad of Syria?
What in the meanwhile is happening to Lebanon? Bridges and buildings
can be reconstructed - with European Union loans, no doubt - but many
Lebanese are now questioning the institutions of the democracy for which
the US was itself so full of praise last year. What is the point of
a democratically elected Lebanese government which cannot protect its
people? What is the point of a 75,000-member Lebanese army which cannot
protect its nation, which cannot be sent to the border, which does not
fire on Lebanon's enemies and which cannot disarm Hizbollah? Indeed,
for many Lebanese Shias, Hizbollah is now the Lebanese army.
So fierce has been Hizbollah's
resistance - and so determined its attacks on Israeli ground troops
in Lebanon - that many people here no longer recall that it was Hizbollah
which provoked this latest war by crossing the border on 12 July, killing
three Israeli soldiers and capturing two others. Israel's threats of
enlarging the conflict even further are now met with amusement rather
than horror by a Lebanese population which has been listening to Israel's
warnings for 30 years with ever greater weariness. And yet they fear
for their lives. If Tel Aviv is hit, will Beirut be spared. Or if central
Beirut is hit, will Tel Aviv be spared? Hizbollah now uses Israel's
language of an eye for an eye. Every Israeli taunt is met by a Hizbollah
taunt.
And do the Israelis realise
that they are legitimising Hizbollah, that a rag-tag army of guerrillas
is winning its spurs against an Israeli army and air force whose targets
- if intended - prove them to be war criminals and if unintended suggest
that they are a rif-raff little better than the Arab armies they have
been fighting, on and off, for more than half a century? Extraordinary
precedents are being set in this Lebanon war.
In fact, one of the most
profound changes in the region these past three decades has been the
growing unwillingness of Arabs to be afraid. Their leaders - our "moderate"
pro-Western Arab leaders such as King Abdullah of Jordan and President
Mubarak of Egypt - may be afraid. But their peoples are not. And once
a people have lost their terror, they cannot be re-injected with fear.
Thus Israel's consistent policy of smashing Arabs into submission no
longer works. It is a policy whose bankruptcy the Americans are now
discovering in Iraq.
And all across the Muslim
world, "we" - the West, America, Israel - are fighting not
nationalists but Islamists. And watching the martyrdom of Lebanon this
week - its slaughtered children in Qana packed into plastic bags until
the bags ran out and their corpses had to be wrapped in carpets - a
terrible and daunting thought occurs to me, day by day. That there will
be another 9/11.
© 2006 Independent News
and Media Limited