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Eyewitness Reports From Israel's Assault On Lebanon


17 July, 2006
Socialist Worker


Latest situation in Lebanon


Around 60,000 refugees from the south of Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut have arrived in the capital. Schools have been opened for them to shelter in and activists are organising relief. Many schools are now full and refugees are gathering in Sanayeh Park and other open-air sites around Beirut. There are reports that schools in the Christian areas of Keserwan and Metn are opening for the refugees.

Many of these refugees have said that the villages in the south of Lebanon are full of people who are unable to leave as roads are being bombed and bus convoys attacked.


Terror in Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps
17 July, 2006

Alaa, a Palestinian refugee living in the Sabra and Chatilla


“The camps are almost completely empty. There is a fear that the Israelis will return and finish what they did during the massacre in 1982. Some have gone to Syria, others have taken to the shelters.”

“There is not enough food. We fear the worst, we have nowhere to hide. We are preparing for an Israeli attack on our camp.”


Refugees in the schools

16 July 2006
Rafael Greenblatt, a US socialist living in Beirut

“The bombs have been getting closer. There are a lot of refugees coming into central Beirut from the southern part of the country and also from the southern suburbs of Beirut. We went to a park were people are coming in and being directed to places they can stay longer. People are mostly sleeping in schools. Some were opened on the initiative of their staff immediately, but it took the government until today to open them all.

“On top of that, people don't necessarily want to go to the schools which are pretty spartan and where they are stuck in a pretty small space with their kids. We then

went to one of the schools where there are about 20 families staying and spoke to some people. The government emergency department hadn't delivered food since yesterday. The only medical help is coming from volunteers, and that's minimal.

“In the areas we've been the volunteers are being coordinated by the Leftist Assembly for Change, NGOs including Helem (a gay and lesbian rights group), and other parties. We hear the groups around the Lebanese Communist Party are handling things further east, and Hezbollah further south. The main government parties are mainly posing for the cameras - it seems like as far as they are concerned it's not really their people who are suffering.”

'Our neighbours called out to each other, detailing which buildings were still standing'

16 July 2006
Sonya Knox, UN worker, Beirut

My neighbourhood, near the American University of Beirut in west Beirut and therefore traditionally a safe place during times of crisis, is filling up with refugees. First they came from the Dahieh, Beirut’s Shia Muslim southern suburbs and one of Israel’s main targets. They came with their TVs and spare mattresses, moving in with friends or family, and into the spare apartments lent out by absent owners.

The parking situation here, typically a source of much drama, has luckily eased because so many residents here have left for their villages. “It’s always like this,” a neighbour tells me, a suitcase in each hand. “Israel bombs. We move out, they move in…” When Israel’s initial barrage began on the Dahieh, our new neighbours called out to each other from the balconies, detailing which streets were hit, which buildings were still standing. Not all of their old neighbours got out in time.

A second wave of refugees recently arrived, from the South. They came with cars filled to bursting, with large, extended families. I tried to buy small-sized bread from the local bakery, but they’ve stopped baking it. “No one’s going to buy it,” I was told. A friend recently told me about his family in South Lebanon. Before the bombing had intensified, five households nominally related had gathered together. “There’s easily 50 children under one roof,” he said, “all under 10 years old.” “Don’t worry,” another friend said, “this is how the next generation of resistance fighters gets trained.”

Lebanon has experienced its most intense night of bombardment so far
15 July 2006

Christian Henderson, a Scottish journalist based in Beirut

Since midnight on Saturday there have been scores of powerful explosions in the southern suburbs. Hizbollah’s Al-Manar TV station building has been seriously damaged, but the station has continued to broadcast. In the southern Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik area a number of civilian buildings have been hit. Many refugees from the southern suburbs and the south Lebanon have moved to schools in Beirut. Many of them are short of food and blankets.

Infrastructure across the country has been hit. The Jiyeh power station has been hit. Masnaa border crossing to Syria has been hit. A Lebanese army base in the northern city of Batroun was attacked last night. The port in the Christian area of Jounieh was attacked. The grain silos at Beirut port were reportedly attacked. The Beirut lighthouse has been destroyed.

There are some roads open to Syria the cost of a taxi to Damascus from Beirut is reportedly $1000. The journey back is $500.

Israel has dropped various propaganda leaflets on Beirut.

The Israeli attacks on Lebanon are now extending to all parts of the country. As well as the continuous attacks on the south and the southern suburbs of Beirut the strikes have now spread to central Beirut, north and east Lebanon. Over 100 Lebanese have been killed and the country is almost completely cut of from the outside world as Israeli bombing has cut main roads. The siege on Lebanon looks set to continue.


Israel re-enters Lebanese politics
15 July 2006


Jim Quilty, a Canadian journalist based in Beirut

Over the last couple of days Israel has particularly punished the people of south Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs, including the airport. Today it's broadened the focus of its attacks to include Beirut port, Jounieh port (in the Christian area north of Beirut), the summer resort of Broummana, the port in the northern city of Tripoli, and various other infrastructure and Lebanese military targets.

So far we reckon they've hit the Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik more than ten times. The Israelis say Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah secretary-general, is hidden in a tunnel beneath the base that they have so incessantly bombed. Absurd as this claim is, the invocation of Saddam Hussein - America's previous public enemy number one, who was also said to have been found hiding in a tunnel - is all too transparent.

On Friday night Hizbollah severely damaged an Israeli warship - sending four sailors into the abyss. It seems they did this with an unmanned drone usually used for surveillance but in this case packed with high explosives. Early Saturday, the Israeli military command offered a corrective, claiming that the weapon had been an Iranian-made missile. invoking Washington's current public enemy number - Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - one is equally transparent.

Such transparency is admirable, since it underlines the fact that what Lebanon is suffering at present is not so much an act of war as an effort to enforce US foreign policy by proxy.

For all the destruction that has been rained down on the major infrastructure, the strikes - at least the strikes that haven't targeted Hizbollah supporters - are remarkable for their relative reserve.

A case in point is the sparkling new bridge just east of Beirut - former prime minister Rafiq Hariri's contribution to expediting the drive from Beirut to the Syrian capital Damascus - which has been disabled [a couple of holes got punched in it] but it hasn't been brought down the way that it might have been.

The Israelis are reining themselves in because they don't want to destroy this country, they just want to help Washington and Lebanon's 14 March government disarm Hizbollah. UN Security Council resolution 1559 was the appropriate means to send Syria's occupying army packing, but it's too blunt an instrument to disarm a homegrown force like Hizbollah. The Hiwar al-Watani - the 14 March government's efforts to tame Hizbollah through negotiation - simply verifies how ineffectual the instrument is.

The prevailing discourse amongst approximately half of Lebanon's population is that Hizbollah is responsible for this attack, so it's pretty clear that the object of this siege is to further alienate Lebanese from Hizbollah.

The slow strangulation of Beirut - as the power plants run out of fuel and houses go dark, as the shops shut for want of goods - is Israel's way of arousing domestic hostility against Hizbollah, in embedding Israeli-US policy interests within the Lebanese public.

“The resistance”, as Hizbollah terms itself, has done a grave disservice to the well being of the people of this country by launching this attack at this time. The resistance, however, is a legitimate expression of the frustrations of the most marginalised segment of Lebanese society - which happens to be Shia Muslim.

Hizbollah may instrumentalise the alienation of their constituency, but it speaks to their frustrated hopes and prevailing fears more utterly than the neo-liberal vision proposed by this government.

The plaintive cries from the hoteliers of Beirut that Hizbollah has destroyed what was shaping up to be a bumper tourism season has utterly no resonance among the poor of Beirut's southern suburbs.

Washington, that self-proclaimed doyen of democratic change in the Middle East, has allowed - perhaps requested - that Israel punish Hizbollah's supporters for choosing to support the resistance. It precisely replicates the manner in which Washington and Tel Aviv are punishing the Palestinians for voting for Hamas in the last Palestinian elections.

It is punishing the rest of Lebanon to expedite efforts to neuter the resistance. This business has nothing to do with two Israeli prisoners of war held by Hizbollah.

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