'If
Our Prime Minister Is Crying,
What Are We To Do?'
By Robert Fisk in
Beirut
17 July, 2006
The Independent
You
could see the Israeli missiles coming through the clouds of smoke, hurtling
like thunderbolts into the apartment blocks of Ghobeiri, the crack of
the explosions so loud that my ears are still singing hours later as
I write this report.
Yes, I suppose you could
call this a "terrorist" target, for here in these mean, fearful
streets is - or rather was - the Hizbollah headquarters. Even the movement's
propaganda television station, Al-Manar, lay a pancaked ruin in the
street, its broadcasts still being transmitted from the station's bunker
beneath the rubble. But what of the tens of thousands of people who
live here?
The few who were not lying
in their basements ran shrieking through the streets - not gunmen, but
women with screaming children, families holding suitcases, desperate
to leave the heaps of broken buildings, entire apartment blocks smashed
to bits, the roadways covered in smashed balconies and torn electrical
wires. "You don't have to help the resistance," Sayed Hassan
Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, told the Lebanese on television last
night. "The resistance is on the front line and the Lebanese are
behind them."
Untrue, of course. It is
the Lebanese - and their 140 dead, almost all civilians - who are also
on the front line. In Israel, 24 have been killed, 15 of them civilians.
So the exchange rate for death in this filthy war is now approximately
one Israeli to five Lebanese. So many Lebanese have now fled Beirut
for Tripoli in the north of Lebanon, or for the Bekaa Valley in the
east - or to Syria - that Beirut, where one and a half million people
live, is a ghost city, its remaining residents sitting in their homes
amid the hopelessness of all those who believed that this country was
at last emerging from the shadows of its 15-year civil war. It was Nasrallah
who said that there are "more surprises to come", and the
Lebanese fear that the Israelis, too, have some more surprises for them.
I watched one of these from
my sea-front balcony at dusk on Saturday, an American-made Apache helicopter
turning three times over the Mediterranean before firing a single missile
- perfectly visible, with smoke pouring from the tail - that smacked
into Beirut's brand new lighthouse on the Corniche in a cloud of brown
muck. So what was this for? Another "terrorist" target, I
suppose. Like the gas stations bombed in the Bekaa Valley. Like the
convoy of 20 civilians incinerated in an Israeli air-raid on Saturday
after being ordered - by the Israelis themselves - to leave their home
village on the border.
Last night, Hizbollah's missiles
- after killing 10 Israelis in Haifa - were falling on the occupied
Syrian Golan Heights, setting the forests alight, and on the Israeli
city of Acre. The Syrians warned of an "unlimited" response
if Israel attacked them - the Israelis have been saying, untruthfully,
that Syrian troops and Iranians are present in Lebanon, helping Hizbollah
in their battle - and the preposterous response of the G8 summit was
greeted with despair. Tony Blair, who is now also, it seems, the Minister
of Root Causes, believes Syria and Iran are behind the original Hizbollah
attack. He is right. But it is to Damascus that the West will have to
go to switch this dirty war off.
Certainly, the powerless
Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, cannot do so. With his government
accused by Israel of responsibility for Wednesday's capture of two Israeli
soldiers - a claim as preposterous as it is wrong - he went on television
in tears to appeal to the United Nations to arrange a ceasefire for
his "disaster-stricken nation". The Lebanese appreciated the
tears, but those tears are unlikely to have had President Bush shaking
in his boots. Churchill in 1940, Siniora - a sincere and good man, uncorrupted
by Lebanese politics - is not. "If our Prime Minister is crying,"
one Lebanese woman astutely pointed out to me yesterday, " what
is the civilian population of our country supposed to do?"
But where are the other supposed
political titans of Lebanon? What is Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated
ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri - who rebuilt the Lebanon which Israel
is now destroying - doing in Kuwait, chatting to the Kuwaitis about
his country's predicament? The Kuwaiti army is scarcely going to come
to defend Lebanon. Why isn't Hariri the son on his private jet to the
G8 summit in St Petersburg to demand of President Bush that he protect
the democratically-elected government and the nation he praised for
its "cedar revolution" last year? Or doesn't democracy matter
when Israel is smashing Lebanon? Answer: no, it doesn't.
UN Security Council Resolution
1559 demanded a Syrian retreat from Lebanon - which was accomplished
- but it also demanded the disarming of Hizbollah, which was definitely
not accomplished. Many here suspected that 1559, designed by the French
and the Americans, was intended to weaken Lebanon and prepare it for
a peace treaty with Israel. Well, not any more. It was the Lebanese
President, Emile Lahoud, who still cravenly follows Syria's line - he
is, after all, Syria's man - who said yesterday that Lebanon "will
never surrender". Lahoud as Churchill. There is something obscene
here.
Nasrallah, meanwhile, told
the Israelis that: "If you do not want to play by rules, we can
do the same." It was a grim little threat that was obviously meant
to counter Ehud Olmert's equally grim little threat that there would
be "far-reaching consequences" for the missile attack on Haifa.
Nasrallah's televised argument - that Hizbollah originally wished to
confine all casualties to the military - will not wash with Israel,
but may encourage those many Lebanese who were originally outraged by
Hizbollah's attack across the border on Wednesday, only to be silenced
by the cruelty of Israel's response.
"This is the last struggle
of the 'umma'," Nasrallah said, the " umma" being the
Arab "homeland". Alas, that is what the Arab leaders said
when they joined Lawrence of Arabia's battle against the Ottoman empire
in the First World War. It is always the "last struggle" .
The weapons of war
Fajr-3 missile
An Iranian-built rocket with
range of 45km which can carry a 45kg warhead. Israel accused Hizbollah
of firing 240mm Fajr-3 missiles against Haifa. Iran denies supplying
the missiles to Hizbollah
Fajr-5 rocket
Longer-range version of Fajr-3
that can strike targets up to 72km away
Raad missile
Iranian-built missile with
range of 120km. Could reach central Israel. Israelis accused Hizbollah
of firing Raad ("Thunder") missiles yesterday. Hizbollah said
last week it had fired Raad for the first time
Katyusha
Previously the Hizbollah
missile of choice, the Russian-designed Katyushas have a range of 22km
and variable accuracy. Israel accused Syria of supplying Hizbollah with
a longer-range model
Kassem
Rockets with range of up
to 10km, used by Hamas guerrillas in Palestinian-ruled Gaza. Israeli
town of Sderot has been a frequent target of the notoriously inaccurate
missiles
F-16 fighter
The US-made "fighting
Falcon" is a multi-role fighter which has been dropping quarter-ton
bombs on targets in Lebanon
© 2006 Independent News
and Media Limited