LCCC ENGLISH NEWS BULLETIN
August 8/2006

Latest New from miscellaneous sources for August 08/2006
LEBANON: Laughter amid the bombs-Reuters
Bush cautions on Lebanon cease-fire-AP
Israel intensifies airstrikes in Lebanon-AP
Lebanon: Resolution won't end fighting-AP
Lebanon says to deploy army to south-Reuters - USA
Hizbollah fighter tells Israel he trained in Iran-Washington Post
Lebanon: Resolution Won't End Fighting-Washington Post
Lebanon demands Israeli withdrawal-Daily Telegraph
Latest New from miscellaneous sources for August 7/2006
Lebanon snubs UN truce draft-Times of India
Israel could widen offensive in revenge for deadly attack Times Online
Bombing of Lebanese harbor sinks fishermen's hope for the future-Boston Globe 
Middle East in crisis War without end-Toronto Star 
White House pushes for U.N. resolution AP
Can a Multinational Force Be Deployed in Lebanon?-Middle East Online
Nasrallah CDs, mementos sell like hot cakes in Syria-Washington Post
Israel demands changes to UN draft resolution on Lebanon-Ha'aretz
Lebanon says 1,000 dead or missing-Reuters.uk
Even Russia agrees with US-French draft resolution-Ynetnews
Israel Tells Army to Push Deeper Into South Lebanon -Bloomberg
ICRC president visits Lebanon-ICRC (press release) - Geneva,Switzerland
Draft UN ceasefire resolution splits Lebanese leaders-Canada.com
Hezbollah, Iran, Syria vow to bow Israel-International Reporter
Syria Transfers Deadly Russian Weapons to Hezbollah-MOSNEWS
Parliament speaker: Lebanon nixes draft UN truce-Ha'aretz
Israel slams Iran, Syria-NEWS.com.au
IDF plans attacks on key infrastructure in Lebanon-Ha'aretz
A Truce for Lebanon-New York Times
SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH LEBANON'S FOUAD SINIORA-Spiegel Online

Latest New from miscellaneous sources for August 7/2006
Thank You Hezbollah!Global Politician
Israeli, Hezbollah Attacks Escalate, UN Prepares Resolution-Bloomberg 
Lebanese Premier Seeking Changes to UN Proposal-Washington Post
Israel: UN deal must disarm Hezbollah-Houston Chronicle 
Israeli planes strike deep into Lebanon-AP
Israeli troops prepare drive for control of south Lebanon-San Jose Mercury News
Syria, Lebanon Slam Proposed UN Resolution-Arutz Sheva
LEBANON: Camps to address housing shortage-Reuters
Deadly Hezbollah attacks kill 15 people in Israel-CTV.ca - Canada
Lebanon's choice in French-US peace plan-Christian Science Monitor
Lebanon asks UN to demand pullout-International Herald Tribune
Chilling threat as Syria offer to join with Hezbollah-Scotsman - United Kingdom
Olmert Gains Voter Support as War Against Hezbollah Widens-Bloomberg
A Disciplined Hezbollah Surprises Israel With Its Training-New York Times
Arab World Finds Icon in Leader of Hezbollah-New York Times
Israel captures Hezbollah militant who seized soldiers-People's Daily Online

Latest New from miscellaneous sources for August 7/2006
 

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Public Statement
AI Index: MDE 02/006/2006 (Public)
News Service No: 205
6 August 2006
Lebanon/Israel: Urgent need for ceasefire and investigation of war crimes
Amnesty International reiterates its call for an immediate, full and effective ceasefire after civilian death highs. On Friday 5 August, at least 23 Syrian agricultural workers were killed by Israeli forces on a farm in the village of al-Qaa on the Lebanese-Syrian border according to various reports. This was the highest number of fatalities recorded so far in a single incident together with the attack on a building in Qana on 30 July. Over the past four days, rockets fired by Hizbullah from southern Lebanon at Israel are also said to have killed at least 14 civilians. These kinds of attacks by both sides have become part of an increasingly entrenched pattern which includes war crimes.
Such attacks also make it urgent and imperative that Israel and Lebanon consent to an investigation -- of the pattern of attacks by both Israel and Hizbullah -- by an independent and impartial body like the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC). The Israeli investigation into the killings of civilians in Qana, where at least 28 people sheltering in a building were killed in an Israeli strike, lacked any credibility.
According to an eye-witness who was interviewed by Amnesty International delegates in Lebanon, the Israeli forces launched two air strikes against a farm in al-Qaa on Friday. The workers, most of them Syrian Kurds and who included at least five women, packed and processed fruits for export on the farm. The witness said he saw the first explosion from the roof of his church compound. As he prepared to go and help, another explosion followed five to seven minutes later. He said he saw 22 bodies being pulled out.
An Israeli army spokesperson said the attack was directed at the suspected transfer of weapons by Hizbullah from Syria. The information gathered from Amnesty International delegates from eye witnesses and footage of the scene show no evidence supporting the Israeli army allegations. The attack appears to have been indiscriminate or disproportionate and as such a war crime.
Since Friday, Israeli forces have again pounded civilian infrastructure in Lebanon, cutting off one of the last remaining vital routes for international humanitarian aid. At least 45 civilians are reported to have died in the attacks, including those killed in al-Qaa raid. Israel warned residents in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon to evacuate the city ahead of planned air strikes on Hizbullah targets by the Israeli army. The Israeli army dropped leaflets around the city warning all residents to leave.
Repeated Israeli strikes against the civilian infrastructure have forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians, and are threatening to displace other tens of thousands in Sidon who have been forcibly displaced from villages in the region. This new call for evacuation cannot mean that Sidon should be regarded by Israeli forces as a "free-fire" zone or a military objective. Along with the pattern of warnings to civilians in the south Israeli forces are making it difficult for such civilians to leave by destroying roads and bridges and targeting convoys. Such actions result in the spreading of panic and terror rather than increasing the protection of civilians.
Hizbullah officials have described the group's rocket attacks against Israel as reprisals for Israeli attacks on civilians. Amnesty International considers these attacks unlawful, and constituting direct attacks on civilians and as such war crimes.
Amnesty International urges the United Nations Security Council which is currently debating a draft resolution on the crisis to call for an immediate, full and effective ceasefire to protect civilians in Lebanon and Israel. The Council must also demand that the parties to the conflict immediately take all measures necessary to allow delivery of humanitarian aid to persons affected by the hostilities. As it deliberates on its next steps, the Council should address the failure of the parties to the conflict to respect their obligations under international law and how to establish accountability for that failure.
-------------------------------------
East Mediterranean Team
Amnesty International, International Secretariat
Peter Benenson House, 1 Easton Street
London WC1X 0DW
United Kingdom
E-mail: Eastmed@amnesty.org
Tel: +44 (0)20 7413 5500
Fax: +44 (0)20 7413 5719

Hezbollah fighters resume Beirut patrols
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer
Mon Aug 7, 3:35 AM ET
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah operatives emerged onto the smoke-filled streets soon after an Israeli airstrike leveled a building in their urban stronghold, walkie-talkies tucked unobtrusively under their black T-shirts.
The calm demeanor of the militants, who exuded low-key discipline despite their casual, civilian clothes and no display of weapons, contrasted Sunday with the images of chaos and destruction lacing neighborhoods just outside Beirut's southern boundary: crumpled buildings, incinerated cars, shattered glass.
On a day when Hezbollah rockets killed 12 Israeli soldiers in the single deadliest attack for Israel since violence broke out on July 12, the militant group appeared determined not to leave positions near the Lebanese capital that have endured heavy bombardment by the Israeli military.
Most apartment blocks, some pockmarked by shrapnel from conflicts far older than the current one, were abandoned soon after Israeli airstrikes and shelling began last month. The streets were virtually empty, the air hazy with dust. The sense of danger and vulnerability was strong.
Yet Hezbollah militants projected order amid Sunday's mayhem. They sat on stoops, but quickly stepped into the street to flag down cars carrying strangers. They loitered near barricades of tires and oil drums painted green and black, colors associated with the Shiite Muslim group.
On Sunday afternoon, a series of detonations echoed across Beirut, and smoke billowed across the southern skyline. At least one building was destroyed, but it was not clear what was in the structure. A sign advertising the Korean carmaker Kia stood in front of the rubble.
Less than an hour after the blast, the area was clear and there was no sign of casualties. Several dozen men, including Hezbollah militants, walked or rode on motorcycles nearby.
Israel has largely spared Christian neighborhoods surrounding Beirut in deference to its old allies during Lebanon's civil war in the 1980s. From a hilltop in a Christian area, residents surveyed smoke drifting across the Hezbollah stronghold below as the sun set over the Mediterranean.
Some showed little interest in a city accustomed to decades of conflict, though recent years of relative peace and economic stability had stirred hopes that Lebanon was on the verge of a new era.
An old man in a sleeveless T-shirt washed his car. A woman folded laundry in an open window. A child loaded his plastic ray-gun and other toys into a box on the instructions of his mother. Church bells tolled.
Israel has focused its heaviest bombing on Hezbollah positions near the border with Lebanon, and has also bombarded bridges and roads on main arteries leading to Syria, some of them in Christian areas north of Beirut. The attacks disrupted efforts to ferry truckloads of humanitarian supplies, but it's questionable whether they will sharply curb movements of Hezbollah, a resourceful enemy.
A circuitous drive to Beirut from the Syrian capital of Damascus on Sunday took more than five hours, about double the time it took when all roads were intact. A Lebanese immigration official flashed a big smile at a visitor.
"Be careful of bombs," he said.

ICRC chief visits Lebanon 9 minutes ago
BEIRUT (AFP) - The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross Jakob Kellenberger has arrived in Lebanon to meet government leaders including President Emile Lahoud and Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. Their discussions are due to focus on "the humanitarian situation in Lebanon, ways of providing assistance and protection for those most affected by the armed conflict," the ICRC said in a statement on Monday.Kellenberger will also meet Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri and local Red Cross chief Samy Dahdah, it added. The number of ICRC expatriates working alongside Lebanese staff has been bolstered from two to 59 since the outbreak of the fighting between Israel and the Shiite group Hezbollah last month. War-wracked Lebanon is now the scene of one of the largest operations in the world for the Geneva-based humanitarian agency. On top of its role in providing relief aid, the ICRC is also the internationally-recognised guardian of the Geneva conventions, which ensure protection for civilians, wounded combatants and prisoners in conflicts. In a newspaper interview published on Friday, Kellenberger reiterated that the toll in the conflict showed that the question of the use of disproportionate force was still valid.
"The horror of Qana shows the importance of international humanitarian law and the respect of rules on the conduct of hostilities," he told the Swiss newspaper Le Temps."The rockets fired at Israel are aimed at and reach civilians. That is not allowed by humanitarian law," he also said in the interview.
The ICRC has asked to visit the two Israeli soldiers who were seized by Hezbollah in a border attack on July 12, sparking the conflict.
"We have not been able to meet these detainees and I regret that. We do also visit 11,000 prisoners in Israel," Kellenberger said.

White House pushes for U.N. resolution
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
CRAWFORD, Texas - The Bush administration is pushing for approval of a Mideast cease-fire resolution from the U.N. Security Council, but is warning the action is unlikely to put an immediate stop to the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. U.S. officials had hoped to the council would vote as early as Monday on the resolution designed to stop the major military operations that have been disrupting life in Lebanon and Israel for more than three weeks. But the proposal ran into opposition over the weekend, as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon intensified. Heavy fighting continued Monday in the Mideast despite efforts for a cease-fire, with an Israeli attack on a Lebanese border village killing more than 40 people. At the United Nations, Lebanon and Qatar, the council's only Arab member, proposed many amendments to the draft — first and foremost demanding that Israel pull its forces out of Lebanon once the hostilities end.
President Bush, on a 10-day vacation at his ranch, left the negotiations to his diplomatic aides. His secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, spent the weekend on the president's grounds and kept him updated.
Bush stayed in seclusion and has not yet commented publicly about the draft, reached through negotiations between the U.S. and France and announced at the United Nations early Saturday. But he planned to speak to reporters about the developments later Monday, with Rice at his side.
The draft calls for Hezbollah to stop all military operations and for Israel to stop its offensive military drive into Lebanon. The proposal would allow Israel to strike back if Hezbollah were to break a cease-fire. The draft made no mention of an Israeli withdrawal. The council was scheduled to meet Monday when the United States and France are likely to present a revised text, taking into account some of the Arab concerns, with a view to a possible Security Council vote on Tuesday, council diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because negotiations have been closed.
The United States wants a second resolution that would form an international force that would move into Lebanon and help take control of the southern part of the country, where the militant Islamic group Hezbollah has been operating and based its fight against Israel. "We're trying to deal with a problem that has been festering and brewing in Lebanon now for years and years and years," Rice said Sunday. "And so it's not going to be solved by one resolution in the Security Council.
"I can't say that you should rule out that there could be skirmishes of some kind for some time to come," she said.
The Lebanese parliamentary speaker, a prominent Shiite who has been negotiating on behalf of Hezbollah, rejected the U.S.-French plan because it did not include an immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of Israeli troops. U.S. officials seemed to acknowledge that they don't expect Hezbollah to comply with the resolution, if it is approved. Rice said that once the resolution passes, "then we'll see who is for peace and who isn't."
Hadley said Hezbollah's response to an approved resolution would be a "clarifying moment." "I don't think you'll see an instantaneous end to the violence," Hadley said. "As you know, historically, these cease-fires take some time to go into effect, particularly if, unfortunately, Hezbollah were to reject it."

Israel slams Iran, Syria From correspondents in Jerusalem
August 07, 2006 07:46am
Article from: Agence France-PresseFont size: + -
ISRAEL has accused Iran of "stoking instability in the region" and also slammed Syria, after a barrage of Hezbollah rocket fire killed 15 people in northern Israel.
"Hezbollah is making an enormous effort to increase Israeli losses, with the support of Syria and Iran, because it fears the UN resolution which is on the horizon," government spokesman Avi Pazner said. "Iran, through its proxy Hezbollah, is continuing to stoke instability in the region," Mr Pazner said, noting that Sunday had been a "very hard day for Israel". Israel yesterday suffered its bloodiest day on the home front since it launched its devastating offensive in Lebanon after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12. Twelve soldiers were killed by a Hezbollah rocket attack on northern Israel, while at least three civilians died and 120 were wounded in a salvo against the country's third largest city of Haifa. Israel regularly accuses Iran and Syria of backing Hezbollah and feeding the Lebanese Shiite militia's arsenal. Tehran and Damascus reject this, saying they only offer moral support. The UN Security Council text, which is currently under discussion, calls for a halt to hostilities by Israel and Hezbollah. The next step, it said, would be a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution to the conflict, including the deployment of an international force in south Lebanon, an area which has been under Hezbollah's effective control for years.
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SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH LEBANON'S FOUAD SINIORA
"I Have Held Israel Responsible From the Very Beginning"
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, 63, discusses steps toward peace and his relationship with Hezbollah amid the Israeli military campaing against the Islamic exremists.
AP
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
SPIEGEL: Do you expect to see a cease-fire soon?
Siniora: We are working intensively to bring it about, but it will take a while longer, possibly until the middle of the week. Perhaps even longer. I don't want to encourage any false hopes.
SPIEGEL: The cease-fire is the first of seven items you have called for in your peace initiative. Do you continue to stand behind this program?
Siniora: Yes, we want a lasting solution, especially now that Israel has attacked our country for the seventh time in three decades. The current offensive is the worst of them all in terms of civilian casualties and economic damage. Lebanon has now been torn to pieces.
SPIEGEL: Who should pay for the damage, fellow Arab countries?
Siniora: Israel must pay, because it is currently depriving Lebanon of its ability to survive. Israel continues to occupy part of our country and has even held onto the maps that show where the minefields are located. I have held Israel responsible for this from the very beginning.
SPIEGEL: What are the other main items in your plan?
Siniora: First of all, our territory and our prisoners must be returned to us. Then the government should patrol our borders, to which no one but our own army is entitled. In addition, the United Nations should provide us with an international peacekeeping force.
SPIEGEL: Would you also accept NATO members?
Siniora: Absolutely not. We have had bad experiences with the troops of former colonial and mandate powers in this part of the world. We Lebanese insist on the unrestricted reestablishment of our sovereignty, and under no circumstances do we want a return to the situation that prevailed before the crisis erupted. We would most prefer to see a revival of the cease-fire agreement that was put in place in 1949. All parliamentary groups have signed this plan.
SPIEGEL: Including Hezbollah?
Siniora: Certainly. The two Hezbollah cabinet ministers in my government have agreed.
SPIEGEL: What would you have to provide in return?
Siniora: Hezbollah is satisfied with the core elements of the seven-point plan, such the return of the Shabaa Farms and the release of the prisoners. If Israel is truly interested in peace, it should take our concept seriously. After all, what has been the ultimate result of almost 60 years of Israel's readiness for war?
SPIEGEL: But Hezbollah has been a threat to Israel for years.
Siniora: Hezbollah is a product of the 1982 Israeli invasion. The occupation and constant degradation allowed a feeling of humiliation and helplessness to develop in the Arab world, which turned into despair and made terrorism possible in the first place.
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SPIEGEL: In order to settle the crisis, the captured Israeli soldiers and the Lebanese imprisoned in Israel would have to be exchanged. How are the negotiations going?
Siniora: I'll tell you quite frankly: Neither I nor my colleagues in the cabinet knew anything about Hezbollah's kidnapping plans. This is why we take no responsibility.
SPIEGEL: Hezbollah leader (Hassan) Nasrallah claims to have notified your government.
Siniora: That isn't true.
SPIEGEL: Hasn't Hezbollah at least told you where the prisoners are being held?
Siniora: We know absolutely nothing. We remain completely in the dark. We also have no idea where Hezbollah's fighters and its weapons are located. Within the framework of a national dialogue, Nasrallah merely informed us that military operations were underway. That's all.
SPIEGEL: Hasn't Germany offered to help negotiate the prisoner exchange?
Siniora: No, no one has contacted us.
SPIEGEL: Will Lebanon sign a peace treaty with Israel?
Siniora: We can only do that once Syria and the other Arab countries have signed peace treaties with Israel on the basis of mutual respect and within the framework of the terms agreed to at the 2002 Arab summit in Beirut.
SPIEGEL: You are referring to the demand that Israel withdraw to the 1967 borders...
Siniora: Until then, however, we can certainly live with a credible peace agreement.
Interview conducted by DANIEL STEINVORTH and VOLKHARD WINDFUHR.



Actualité L'événement
TESTIMONIAL
Hostages of the Culture of Death
‎[As the President of the French Association of International Solidarity (AFSI; (Association ‎française de solidarité interna¬tionale, located ‎‏9‏‎, rue de Dantzig, ‎‏75015‏‎ Paris), Marie-‎Sylvie Buisson has been living in Lebanon for ‎‏20‏‎ years. The following is an excerpt of ‎her eyewitness testimonial about the people of South Lebanon.]‎
‎…Last week, the people of the southern [Lebanese] villages gathered in Remeish – roughly ‎‏25,000‏‎ people. Up until July ‎‏26‏‎, as they were caught in the crossfire, they could not evacuate ‎their villages. In fact, there have been reports that the Israeli army had fired on civilian vehicles ‎attempting to leave by way of the roads, covered with white sheets to signal their neutrality. The ‎Lebanese press has related the case of a car which was pursued on July ‎‏28‏‎ by a firing Israeli ‎combat helicopter. The Christian family, including its children in the car, was burned alive.‎
On July ‎‏28‏‎, under a ‎‏72‏‎-hour truce obtained by the UN, a first convoy by the brave Red Cross ‎ventured in to retrieve ‎‏600‏‎ Christians from the south to Beirut. They made it in Beirut, after ‎‏14‏‎ ‎hours of an arduous journey and the foot-crossing of close to ‎‏30‏‎ destroyed bridges, completely ‎exhausted. We welcomed them in the Maronite parish of St. Joseph in the Bourj-Hammoud ‎neighborhood. The parish families are the ones who received them, sheltering them – sometimes ‎at ‎‏4‏‎ families per apartment. I joined the relief effort, along with the entire staff of Radio MBS.‎
A young woman delivered a little baby girl upon her arrival, which she did in one corner of the ‎parish hall. We brought her rags, water and baby clothes. The urgency is now to buy food, basic ‎hygiene products and milk for the babies.‎
Before receiving the Christians from the south, we had welcomed Shiite refugees. My ‎conversations with them taught me a number of interesting facts: Each woman, including little ‎girls, receives per month from Iran – via Hezbollah – ‎‏250‏‎ dollars to wear a veil, and ‎‏500‏‎ dollars ‎to wear the black “Abaya” [long garment] that covers the entire body. Each man receives ‎‏500‏‎ ‎dollars per month to grown an Islamic beard, such that a “bearded” man with four wives and ‎eight daughters therefore makes ‎‏3,500‏‎ dollars a month to disguise himself as an Iranian. This is ‎not in any way the custom of the Lebanese Shiites. This is simply a strategy to “Iranize” the ‎Lebanese landscape and to make people used to dress according to Islamic fashion. Moreover, a ‎Hezbollah militant is paid ‎‏4,000‏‎ dollars a month, in a country where the minimum monthly ‎wage is about ‎‏300‏‎ dollars.‎
Also, we learned that the arming of Hezbollah had been piling up for years. The Israeli army is ‎discovering bunkers and underground tunnels, dug and built with North Korean materials and ‎financed by Iran, which explains the difficulties the Israeli army is encountering on the ground. ‎Hezbollah fighters take the advancing Israeli soldiers by surprise as they emerge from these ‎underground bunkers.‎
In addition, it is reported that Jihadists from all places are converging on Lebanon: Afghanis, ‎Palestinians, Iraqis, and other veterans of similar wars, including a few hoodlums from the ‎French suburbs who are happy to come and “beat up Israelis” in the flesh! They, obviously, will ‎all get killed, convinced that they will go straight to Heaven. This Culture of Death is ‎disseminated by some officials who, literally, play with people’s lives. In the Christian quarters ‎‎[of the city], people are beginning to retrieve their weapons and organize watch groups to protect ‎their lives and possessions. ‎
Marie-Sylvie Buisson
‎ [Translated from the French magazine “Famille Chrétienne, No. ‎‏1490‏‎, August ‎‏5-11‏‎, ‎‏2006‏‎]‎

Message from the Lebanese Information Centre
We would like to send this appeal to all Lebanese regardless of their sectarian or political affiliations.
You are bearing the brunt of this calamity . Anyone who have seen Lebanon before July 12th would have thought that war and destruction were gone forever. You went about your daily lives, in your recently freed country, believing that whatever remaining issues would be solved on the table of dialogue. You were wrong. A Lebanese party, Hezbollah, has chosen to follow and execute a different agenda. While you were building your homes, planning for your future, they were building bunkers and planning for war. While they were affirming to their counterparts that their weapons are only to “Deter” and that they will not initiate any fights, their men were preparing for a major breach of the international laws on the Israeli borders, providing a pretext for Israel to retaliate.
One would wonder why did they do that. They obviously had no internal motives to explode the situation. By threatening to "cut the arms and necks of those who dared to touch the weapons of the resistance" they intimidated political leaders and warranted the acceptance of their presence pending further political negotiations. Only the regional allegiances of Hezbollah caused to deflagrate the situation with Israel. Iran was searching for a diversion from the climaxing pressure over its nuclear programs and Syria wanted to cause the destruction of Lebanon and to explore the ensuing disorder to reenter and influence the Lebanese scene again.
In every country there is a silent majority. They are citizens who go about their daily lives without direct involvement in any political activities. This appeal is especially for you, this silent majority . Your silence was interpreted by Hezbollah as an approval of its false claims of “Resistance” and “Liberation”. For sectarian and economic reasons , Hezbollah has undeniably some hardcore supporters. You should not allow yourselves to be bunched up with those. Supporting the adventures of Hezbollah for the sake of Iran and Syria has proven to be deadly. Hezbollah drafted you to become martyrs of its “ Islamic revolution”. If you do not speak up now your blood will be spilled for the wrong cause. The future of Lebanon depends on you solely. Like you made your voice heard during the “cedar revolution” you should do it now. Then, you were outraged by the loss of a great political leader, now , all of Lebanon could be lost.
Hezbollah is presenting itself as an achiever of a miracle. It wants us to admire and applaud its feats. Granted it has some devoted and ideologically motivated fighters but what good are they doing for Lebanon. Do you believe, as Hezbollah does, that the destruction of your homes and neighborhoods is a necessary price to pay to cure the inferiority complex of the UMMA?. Did you need to be displaced, watch friends and family killed and all your dreams and aspirations destroyed so Hezbollah can prove to the world that it could Lob rockets on Israel or it could kill a few soldiers? Do you accept the winning theory of Hezbollah? If this is “Victory” how does defeat look like?
You, this silent majority, should raise your voices against being deprived from your rights and safety for an ideological fanaticism foreign to you and your culture. You have to act now to dismantle the moral pedestal over which Hezbollah claims to stand. You have to unravel the cloak of patriotism under which Hezbollah pretends to operate. No single party should be allowed to decide the fate of Lebanon. The catastrophe will be a lot more devastating if you remain morally confused or unaware of who is your true enemy. While the fighters of Hezbollah are bunkered and prepared you are there left helpless under the rain of fire.
Our hearts and minds are with you. May God save Lebanon.

Why a Multinational Force is Essential in Lebanon
By Robert Rabil
Washington Institute For Near East Policy
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2502
August 4, 2006
As Lebanon plunges deeper into ruin and chaos as a result of Hizballah’s “gang war” tactics against Israel’s expanded military campaign to degrade the power of the Islamist party, Hizballah, Syria, and its allies in Lebanon are devising plans to subvert an international agreement on a multinational force to guard the Israel-Lebanon border. They are also preparing for a political comeback in a postconflict Lebanon by riding the wave of the victory Hizballah is sure to claim whatever the outcome—a supposed triumph that in reality will be at best a Pyrrhic victory.
Hizballah’s Political Offensive
From the time the hostilities erupted between Hizballah and Israel on July 12, following a cross-border Hizballah attack on Israeli soldiers, Lebanon’s political parties have attempted to sound out a reformed relationship between Hizballah and the state. Hizballah leaders brushed aside these concerns as untimely and divisive at a time when the country is under attack. But as the government of Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora tried to come up with a ceasefire plan, these concerns evolved into sharp disputes threatening the collapse of the government. At the heart of these concerns are interconnected questions about the nature and mission of the international force that would police the Lebanon-Israel border pursuant to a diplomatic resolution of the conflict and whether Hizballah would employ its “projected victory” in a postconflict Lebanon to change the political equation.
Sensing the charged political atmosphere, Hizballah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah tried to allay the concerns of the anti-Syrian March 14 coalition. In a calculated gesture he signed off on Siniora’s plan to help bring about a ceasefire, which included provisions to extend the authority of the Lebanese state throughout the country and to strengthen and expand the role and mission of UN forces along the Lebanon-Israel border. In a televised speech, Nasrallah appealed to all Lebanese “not to be afraid from the victory of the resistance.” This prompted Druze and March 14 coalition leader Walid Jumblat to ask “to whom Hizballah would give its victory,” an implicit reference to pro-Syrian forces in Lebanon.
Though Hizballah had signed off on Siniora’s plan, it expressed reservations about expanding the mission of the UN forces and it rejected out of hand an international force with power to intervene. Simultaneously, Syria also rejected the idea, depicting the prospective force as an occupation force. Syria’s foreign minister, Walid Mouallem, predicted that Lebanon could become another Iraq, “attracting the al-Qaeda organization to fight the occupation forces (international force) in the event they were deployed without a consensus from all Lebanese parties.” He also forewarned that the fighting could spread and involve Syria.
This coincided with a flurry of activities apparently designed by some Lebanese parties to undermine Siniora’s plan and thus potentially lead to the collapse of Siniora’s government. At a time when France has been trying to help set up an international force, which some countries have already expressed reservations to join, President Emile Lahoud lambasted the idea as a “new French Mandate over Lebanon.” He also implied that French and American troops could become targets by stating that “he does not want to see the 1982 bombings repeated,” a reference to suicide bombings against the French and American troops who were then part of a multinational force to pacify Beirut. At the same time, Aounist leader Michel Aoun called for an emergency government to replace Siniora’s government, and pro-Syrian leader Suleiman Franjieh announced that the March 14 coalition had been defeated and called upon them to recognize their defeat. He also supported Aoun’s call for an emergency government.
All these activities are related to Hizballah’s plan to capitalize on its Pyrrhic victory in postconflict Lebanon; Hizballah seeks to change the country’s political equation by strengthening its pro-Syrian allies and depriving the March 14 coalition of the political capital it needs to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559. Not surprisingly, Muoallem’s statements show that Syria has never given up on Lebanon, nor it has accepted Resolution 1559, which calls for Syria’s complete withdrawal from Lebanon and Hizballah’s disarmament. In fact, one cannot rule out a plan by Iran, Syria, and Hizballah to provoke this conflict to help each party achieve its strategic objectives. The Syrian regime has historically relied on its strident nationalist discourse and regional confrontation with Israel to buttress its rule at home and silence its opposition. With its regional role reduced to insignificance following the loss of Iraq as a strategic partner and its humiliating evacuation from Lebanon, Damascus has been trying to reclaim its regional role, especially in Lebanon. In fact, prior to the eruption of hostilities on July 12, a series of subversive activities, bearing the fingerprints of Syrian intelligence, almost plunged Lebanon into chaos.
The Cedar Revolution in Jeopardy
Notwithstanding that the UN accused Syria of smuggling weapons into Lebanon, “unidentified” rockets were launched in early 2006 into Israel. All fingers pointed to the pro-Syrian Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), which has a presence in south Lebanon. Moreover, in January 2006, members of PFLP-GC shot two Lebanese municipal workers outside the Palestinian base in Naameh. In May, the pro-Syrian Fatah-Intifada attacked a Lebanese patrol unit in the area of Eita al-Fakhar-Yanta near the Syrian border. All of this coincided with heated debate in Lebanon about disarming Hizballah and Palestinians outside of their refugee camps. Meanwhile, Hizballah extended its initial assertion that it would keep its arms until all Lebanese territories are liberated from Israel’s occupation to an insistence on keeping its arms to defend Lebanon’s sovereignty against Israeli aggression.
Taking all this under consideration, it becomes clear that Syria has been trying to instigate a crisis to revive its regional role. However, all these plans and activities could hardly be achieved with an international force with the power to intervene, strengthening the political will of the March 14 coalition to disarm Hizballah.
Therefore, it is safe to argue that Hizballah, which has emerged as a champion in the Muslim world, will have little incentive to disarm or to incorporate its armed wing into the Lebanese army if a ceasefire is reached without an international force strong enough to keep the peace. In fact, Hizballah may ride the wave of its Pyrrhic victory not only to impose its will on Lebanon and cement the Iran-Syria-Lebanon axis but also to reverse the progress of democracy in the region in the interest of safeguarding the Syrian and Iranian regimes. Similarly, by reclaiming its role in Lebanon, Damascus and its pro-Syrian allies would have returned Lebanon to Syria’s “trusteeship” and put the final nail in the coffin of the Cedar Revolution, which many Lebanese celebrated as a democratic rebirth for Lebanon.
Commenting on Hizballah’s role in the ongoing developments in Lebanon, Jumblat said, “We will be a weak state next to a very strong militia. Our government will be like the government of Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] next to Hamas—or maybe worse, like the government of [Nouri al-] Maliki in Iraq.”
As U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice speaks of a “new Middle East,” the reactionary forces there are planning their own dark vision of the region’s future. This is why an international force strong and committed enough to deny Hizballah the freedom to operate militarily and to prevent rearmament from Syria or Iran is essential to protect the peace for both Israelis and Lebanese.
**Robert Rabil, an adjunct scholar of The Washington Institute, is an assistant professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University and the author most recently of Syria, the United States, and the War on Terror in the Middle East.
© 2006 The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

"It's Not Syria's Problem Anymore," by Robert Baer
Appointment In Damascus
In March I asked an old friend what he though would happen in Lebanon. 'It's not Syria's problem anymore,' he told me. 'We gave Lebanon to Iran.'
By Robert Baer
Newsweek International
Aug. 14, 2006
In March I ran into an old friend in Damascus, a Syrian businessman close to President Bashar al-Assad. I asked him what he thought would happen in Lebanon. "It's not Syria's problem anymore," he told me. "You threw us out. We gave Lebanon to Iran."
I never thought forcing Syria out of Lebanon had been a good idea. The Lebanese government left in charge was weaker than the one that
had been powerless to stop the civil war in 1975. Brutal as its rule had been, it was Syria that put an end to that war with the 1989 Taif accord. Syria kept Hizbullah in check, limiting its parliamentary representation in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 elections. With the Syrian Army gone, I feared, Lebanon would again become a divided and dangerous country.
To be sure, Damascus is hardly a benign influence. It arms Hizbullah and harbors violent Palestinian groups. Still, when Syria controlled Lebanon, Damascus was the closest thing America had to a return address for Hizbullah's terrorists. This was never clearer than during the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847. When passengers were about to be executed on the tarmac of Beirut International Airport, President Ronald Reagan appealed to Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, who ordered his commanders in Lebanon to gas up their tanks and prepare to crush the militia. Hizbullah released the hostages.
There were other occasions. In 1987, after Hizbullah kidnapped ABC correspondent Charles Glass within sight of a Syrian checkpoint, the Syrian Army pulled Hizbullah members out of their cars and beat them. Glass was soon free. When the group kidnapped two U.N. employees in 1988, along with others, Assad threatened to arrest Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, a cleric close to Hizbullah, and hang him. Hizbullah quickly let the captives go. In July 1982, a Lebanese Christian militia kidnapped the Iranian chargé d'affaires, two other Iranian diplomats and a Leba-nese journalist. In hopes of an exchange, Iran's Republican Guards arranged to kidnap David Dodge, the acting president of the American University of Beirut, and smuggle him across the border to Syria and thence to Tehran. Washington protested to Assad, who was furious. Unless Iranian authorities freed Dodge, he told Tehran, Syria would expel the Republican Guards from Lebanon. Needless to say, Dodge soon arrived unharmed in Damascus.
As I say, like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, it was the Syrians who kept the lid on Lebanon. So the idea of Damascus's handing its Lebanon portfolio to Tehran sounded like trouble. What happens next, I asked my Syrian contact. He shrugged, then dropped a bombshell. During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Damascus in January, he claimed, the Iranian president had met a shadowy figure in the terrorist world named Imad Mughniyah, the man widely suspected of kidnapping Dodge and killing U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem during the TWA hijacking, among other bloody episodes.
I'd heard this story before. The Mossad was big on it, but I've never quite believed it. The point is that my source did. Essentially, he was telling me he feared that Lebanon was spinning out of control—with dangerous consequences for everyone, including his own country. Freed from Syria's restraint, Hizbullah might soon be hijacking planes and kidnapping people again. If backed by Iranian radicals, it could go even further.
At the time I didn't imagine the full-scale war that has since erupted. But in retrospect, it's hardly surprising. Western diplomats may now seek a ceasefire and send in international peacekeepers. Israel may create an ethnically clean "buffer zone" along its northern border. But does anyone really believe the violence will stop? Will Iran prove a better safety valve than Syria? Not likely.
When the last Syrian tank rattled across the border last year, Syria fell back on a policy of trying to seal itself off from the chaos it could see building around it in Iraq and Lebanon. Bashar al-Assad especially fears the sort of crisis his father confronted in February 1982, when an insurrection backed by the Muslim Brotherhood broke out in Hamah. Assad senior contained it by flattening the town with heavy artillery. Combing through the rubble, the Syrians were astonished to find that the rebels' weapons had come from Lebanon. With no strong central government, it had become a failed state, an open arms bazaar and a haven for terrorists the world over. Today Syria sees history repeating itself, only worse.
**Baer, a former CIA officer, is author of "Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude."

Israeli planes strike deep into Lebanon
By ARON HELLER, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago
A defiant Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with rockets Sunday after rejecting a U.S.-French truce proposal, killing at least 15 people. Israel also struck hard, killing at least 14 in Lebanon as both sides tried to take advantage of the days before a U.N. resolution is put to a vote.
Israeli warplanes struck deep in Lebanon early Monday, targeting the northeastern Bekaa Valley, a symbol of Hezbollah power. At least four explosions were heard around the city of Baalbek, witnesses said. There was no immediate word on casualties. Hezbollah has many bases in the Baalbek region, 63 miles north of Israel's border.
Also Monday, Israeli warplanes attacked Beirut's southern suburbs at daybreak. It was not clear what was hit in the four air strikes.
In the deadliest attack on Israelis in this war, a rocket landed Sunday among reservists near the entrance to the communal farm of Kfar Giladi on the Lebanese border. It killed 12 soldiers heading for battle in Lebanon and wounded five, hospital officials said.
Hezbollah rockets also hit Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, killing three civilians and wounding dozens. Flames shot from damaged homes as firefighters tried to rescue panicked residents.
In Lebanon, the dead included five members of one family crushed in their home by an Israeli air strike. Warplanes attacked near Beirut and in the south, where some villages were bombed continually for a half-hour, security officials said.
The Israeli Haaretz daily, quoting an unnamed general, said Monday that Israel might hit Lebanese infrastructure and symbols of government in response to the Haifa barrage.
Arab leaders were considering holding an emergency summit on Lebanon in Saudi Arabia later this week, two Lebanese media outlets reported Monday.
The fighting has intensified since the U.S. and France proposed a cease-fire resolution on Saturday which could soon be put to a vote in the U.N. Security Council. Both sides seem intent on inflicting maximum damage on each other before the vote.
Hezbollah and its chief allies, Iran and Syria, rejected the draft resolution because it does not call for an immediate Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and does not address other Lebanese demands.
Mohammed Fneish, one of two Hezbollah members of the Lebanese Cabinet, said Saturday the militant group would not abide by a cease-fire resolution while Israeli troops remain on Lebanese territory.
Some 10,000 Israeli soldiers are fighting several hundred Hezbollah gunmen in that area, trying to track and destroy rocket launchers. Israel says it won't leave until a multinational force has been deployed.
Israel has refused to comment on the draft. But Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev told Associated Press Television News, "We have to make sure that what will be negotiated at the United Nations ensures that Hezbollah will not be allowed to be resupplied by Iran or Syria."
The U.S.-French plan envisions a second resolution in a week or two that would authorize an international military force and create a buffer zone in south Lebanon.
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the measure "the first step, not the only step."
The proposed resolution says the two Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah should be released unconditionally. The soldiers' capture July 12 triggered the war.
Hezbollah has fired more than 3,000 rockets at Israel since the fighting began and dozens hit on Sunday, Israeli officials said. Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes have struck hundreds of targets across Lebanon.
The attack on Kfar Giladi was "a direct hit on a vehicle where there was a crowd. They were all wounded and scattered in every direction, some of them were in very bad condition," said Eli Peretz, a medic. "It was a very, very difficult scene. I have never seen anything like it."
Bloodied army boots were placed on a stone wall. The rocket scorched two parked cars.
Hearing of the slain reservists, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a Cabinet meeting, "Lucky that we are dealing with Hezbollah today, and not in another two or three years," according to a participant.
Later Sunday, a rocket barrage hit the northern port city of Haifa, killing three civilians, injuring more than 40 and bringing down two buildings. A crowded residential district took five or six hits.
Three hours later, Israeli warplanes attacked the Lebanese town of Qana and near the port of Tyre and destroyed the launchers that fired rockets on Haifa, the army said. An Israeli attack on Qana last week had killed 29 civilians. At the time, Israel said the attack was a mistake but accused Hezbollah of shielding launching sites behind civilians.
Also, Israeli ground forces destroyed seven long-range rocket launchers in the area of Tyre, the military said. They encountered Hezbollah guerrillas and killed three. There were no Israeli casualties.
Sunday's deaths brought to 93 the number of Israelis killed, including 45 soldiers, the 12 reservists and 36 civilians. Israel's attacks on Lebanon have killed at least 591 people, including 509 civilians, 29 Lebanese soldiers and at least 53 Hezbollah guerrillas.
Israeli air strikes killed 14 Lebanese on Sunday, including 12 civilians, a Lebanese soldier and a Palestinian militant. In the southern town of Naqoura and several villages near Tyre, residents called rescue officials to report more people trapped under the rubble of crushed buildings, but crews could not retrieve the dead because of continued bombardment.
Explosions rang across Beirut as warplanes fired more than six missiles into Hezbollah strongholds in districts just south of the capital.
Hezbollah announced the deaths of three of its fighters, but did not say when they died. That would bring Hezbollah's total of fighters killed to 53. But Israeli officials said they have confirmed 165 dead guerrillas — and even have their names — and estimated that another 200 had been killed. Israel said some 300 Hezbollah fighters remained in the area Israel was occupying in south Lebanon.
One air strike hit south Beirut just minutes after Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa touched down at a nearby airport. Missiles also struck in that area as Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem stood next to his Lebanese counterpart and declared Israel would never defeat the hardened guerrilla force.
Arab League foreign ministers were to meet in Beirut on Monday for a hastily convened session.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, speaking in Cairo, said the gathering "is a clear message to the world to show the Arab solidarity with the Lebanese people and in support of their demands."
Moallem said the cease-fire draft resolution "adopted Israel's point of view only."
"As Syria's foreign minister I hope to be a soldier in the resistance," said Moallem, the first top Syrian official to visit Lebanon since Damascus ended a 29-year military presence in Lebanon last year.
Lebanon's parliament speaker and Hezbollah's negotiator, Nabih Berri, said the plan was unacceptable because it would leave Israeli troops in Lebanon and does not deal with Beirut's key demands — a release of prisoners held by Israel and moves to resolve a dispute over the Chebaa Farms border area.
"If Israel has not won the war but still gets all this, what would have happened had they won?" Berri said. "Lebanon, all of Lebanon, rejects any talks and any draft resolution" that do not address the Lebanese demands, he said.
The Lebanese government on Sunday asked the U.N. to revise the draft, demanding that Israel pull its forces out immediately with the end of hostilities.
AP correspondents Lauren Frayer in Beirut and Delphine Matth

Eye for an Eye
Israel shadow-boxes with a surprisingly high-tech foe. Inside the new Hizbullah.
By Kevin Peraino, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Aug. 14, 2006 issue - Hizbullah's fighters were as elusive last week as they were deadly. Thousands of them were dug in around southern Lebanon, and yet encounters with the hundreds of journalists also in the area were rare, and furtive. Like Hussein, as he chose to call himself, who popped out of the rubble in the blasted town of Bint Jbeil, site of what Hizbullah is calling its Great Victory, to crow a little. He was in civvies, the only way the Hizbullah fighters appear in public, but the walkie-talkie under his loose shirt was a giveaway. The hillside nearby glittered with metal in the bright sun. Here and there lay shell casings, mortar tubes, mangled shrapnel from artillery and bombs. Thousands of cartridges, the gold ones from Israeli M-16s, the duller brown from Hizbullah's AK-47s, all mixed together. This was asymmetrical warfare with a fearful symmetry. Hussein picked up a handful of empty brass. "Very close-range fighting," he said, jingling them in his palm. "You can imagine what weapons we have and what weapons they have."
In an olive grove about five miles away, it wasn't necessary to imagine. Under camo netting, half-covered with the broad-leafed branches of a fig tree, was a GMC truck with a rocket-launching platform, probably for the 122mm Katyusha, fired wildly into Israel. It was untouched, unlike its twin a football field away, which lay mangled in an Israeli counterstrike. There was no sign
of Hizbullah fighters, though, and locals spoke of seeing little kids running like mad from the rocket batteries after they fired. In Khiam, a teenager on a motor scooter rolled through town, apparently minding his own business—except that the ear bud of the walkie-talkie hidden under his shirt identified him as one of Hizbullah's many scouts. They were hard to find—until they wanted to be found.
Hizbullah is proving to be something altogether new, an Arab guerrilla army with sophisticated weaponry and remarkable discipline. Its soldiers have the jihadist rhetoric of fighting to the death, but wear body armor and use satcoms to coordinate their attacks. Their tactics may be from Che, but their arms are from Iran, and not just AK-47s and RPGs. They've reportedly destroyed three of Israel's advanced Merkava tanks with wire-guided missiles and powerful mines, crippled an Israeli warship with a surface-to-sea missile, sent up drones on reconnaissance missions, implanted listening devices along the border and set up their ambushes using night-vision goggles. NEWSWEEK has learned from a source briefed in recent weeks by Israel's top leaders and military brass that Hizbullah even managed to eavesdrop successfully on Israel's military communications as its Lebanese incursion began. When Lt. Eli Kahn, commander of an elite Israeli parachutists outfit, turned a corner in the southern Lebanese village of Maroun al-Ras early in the month-old war, he came face to face with this new enemy. "He had sophisticated equipment like mine and looked more like a commando," he recalled. Lieutenant Kahn ducked back around the corner and reached for a grenade, but before he could pull the pin, the Hizbullah fighter had tossed one around the corner himself. The Israeli picked it up and threw it back, just in time. "They didn't retreat," says Danny Yatom, a former director of the Mossad. "They continued to fight until the death."
That combination of modern lethality and Old World fanaticism has taken a deadly toll. By the end of last week, 45 Israeli soldiers had died, and as many as 250 Hizbullah fighters had perished. Thirty-three Israeli civilians had been killed in the rocket barrages, while more than 480 Lebanese had died. But Hizbullah was boasting of its success. As Israel continued to push its ground offensive, progress was painfully slow, one small Lebanese village at a time. Diplomacy was stalled, too, despite agreement on a U.N. ceasefire resolution expected to pass early this week. By Saturday the Israeli Defense Forces, with six brigades—close to 7,000 soldiers—could claim only to have subdued half a dozen villages, a long way from their goal of establishing a secure buffer zone, possibly as far north as the Litani River. Israel's cabinet approved the ground campaign after its air war had failed to suppress Hizbullah's fire. On Wednesday the Israelis declared they'd destroyed two thirds of Hizbullah's missile arsenal, but on Thursday Hizbullah launched more than 200, with almost as many on Friday. Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed to strike Tel Aviv if Israel bombed Beirut again, and some thought he might be able to.
The whole calculus of this sort of warfare has changed, as even the Israelis gave grudging high marks to their opponents. The sort of weaponry Hizbullah is deploying is normally associated with a state, and states can be easily deterred by a superior military force like Israel's. They have cities to protect, vital infrastructure. Hizbullah depends to some extent on supplies coming from Iran via Damascus, and last week Israel bombed the last roads from Syria into its neighbor. But the organization is believed to have laid in supplies for at least another month, and when it suits, the Hizbullah fighters can disappear into the population. "We live on onions and tomatoes," said Hussein in Bint Jbeil, as he pulled one off a vine in an abandoned garden.
Last week, when Sheik Ahmed Murad, a Hizbullah spokesman, showed up at the Tyre Hospital to rant against the civilian casualties Israel had inflicted, he was in his Shiite cleric's turban and robes. After the press conference, Murad was escorted away by three bodyguards, then reappeared on the street in untucked shirt and slacks, apparently just another civilian. "Their strategy is a strategy of disappearance," says one Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was talking about operations. "They are well prepared for this kind of invasion. [But] we are much stronger than them. We can bring a much greater force than they can deal with."
But the Hizbullah guerrillas are well aware of that, too, and they know how averse the Israeli military and public have always been to taking casualties. "The strategy is to make them lose as many [soldiers] as possible," said Hussein, on the cartridge-strewn hillside at Bint Jbeil. "Israel doesn't care about the [loss of a] tank. They care about the people." As the prospect of a quick victory faded from Israeli view, Israel's military tried to regain the initiative, raiding a Hizbullah safe house in Tyre on Saturday, killing at least three militants in a ferocious shoot-out. Earlier in the week it took five Hizbullah prisoners in a raid on a hospital in Baalbek, in Hizbullah's Bekaa Valley heartland. "It was an attempt to re-create the days of Entebbe," said a senior Israeli security source who is not authorized to speak on the record.
How did Hizbullah morph from its terrorist roots 20 years ago to the formidably organized force of today? The short answer is: experience, leadership and Iran. The group was first pulled together in 1982 by members of Ayatollah Khomeini's Revolutionary Guards as a way to spread Tehran's influence while fighting against Israeli forces that had laid siege to Beirut. The following year the organization became infamous for the suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut that cost 241 Americans their lives, and a simultaneous attack on French forces that killed 56. Soon, Hizbullah added airline hijackings and the taking of American and European hostages to its repertoire.
In 1992, Israeli helicopters blew up the then leader of Hizbullah, Abbas al-Musawi, along with his wife and son. His successor was Hassan Nasrallah, who set a new course for the organization. Under Nasrallah, the militia grew quickly into the single most disciplined and powerful political force in the country. It built schools, hospitals, provided social services and got its members elected to Parliament. At the same time, its soldiers honed their skills at guerrilla warfare battling against Israeli troops still occupying southern Lebanon, studying their tactics, learning their weak points.
All this cost money, but there was plenty to be had. By Israeli estimates Iran has underwritten Hizbullah with $100 million a year. But Hizbullah also gets contributions and "tax" payments from wealthy Shiites in Lebanon and abroad, and revenues from both legal and illegal businesses worldwide. According to a recent study by terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp at the Swedish National Defense College, its shopping list included night-vision goggles, Global Positioning Systems, advanced software for aircraft design, stun guns, nitrogen cutters, naval equipment, laser range finders and even ultrasonic dog repellers.
Over the years, Nasrallah has dressed like a cleric, but talked like a clear-eyed politician, reciting facts that suited him, cracking jokes and vowing to keep his promises. Cool and charismatic, he broadcast his message not only to all of Lebanon, but to much of the Arab and Muslim world over Hizbullah's Al-Manar satellite television station. The organization's purpose, Nasrallah said, was to fight Israeli occupation. When that ended with an Israeli pullout from South Lebanon in 2000, he argued that Hizbullah must keep its arms and build up its arsenal. The reason: "deterrence."
The effects of Hizbullah's buildup were a dismaying surprise to the Israelis from almost the first day of fighting, when Israel launched a massive retaliation for a Hizbullah raid across the border that had cost them eight soldiers killed and two captured. "The Iranians invested far more than people thought," said the source, who had been briefed by Israel's most senior leaders. "The command and control centers were state of the art. They built a whole network of underground tunnels that enabled them to trap Israeli soldiers ... They were eavesdropping on Israeli military communications with the equipment they received." Hizbullah's high-tech communications heighten its classic advantage as a guerrilla force fighting on home turf. "The plan was to go deep, but we didn't finish it," said 19-year-old Nahum Fowler, a corporal in Israel's Nahal Brigade who fought in South Lebanon last week. "They know what they're doing. They know their villages really well." His unit never saw the enemy, he said. "We mostly heard them."
A diplomatic end to the fighting may be just as hard to find as Hizbullah's rocket launchers. By last weekend the French and Americans finally agreed on a draft U.N. Security Council resolution calling for "a full cessation of hostilities." But diplomats cautioned this is the beginning of a process, not the end of it. Hizbullah quickly said it would keep fighting as long as Israeli troops were left on Lebanese territory. And Israeli Ambassador to Washington Daniel Ayalon told NEWSWEEK on Saturday that Israel expects Hizbullah to do more now than just hold its fire. "What is important to us is not just that Hizbullah's operations end but also the arms shipments from Iran and Syria. And first they must release the two abducted soldiers." In that case, countries like France and Italy would be reluctant to honor pledges to send peacekeeping troops. "An international force arriving in Lebanon without the war having been stopped ... would be exposed to Iraq-style risks," said Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema. Worse, they would be up against Hizbullah.
With Richard Wolffe, Michael Hirsh, Dan Ephron and John Barry In Washington And Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14208412/

Nasrallah's Men Inside America
Prosecutors suspect Hizbullah has fund-raising cells in the United States, but not terrorists—so far, that is.
By Dan Ephron and Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Aug. 14, 2006 issue - It began, as the Feds tell the tale, with a run-of-the-mill tax-fraud scheme. Imad Hammoud and his ring of Lebanese Americans from the Detroit area would buy boxes of cigarettes in North Carolina, where the state tax on smokes is among the lowest in the country, allegedly truck the goods back to Michigan and sell them at a profit of more than $10 a carton. Hammoud, an immigrant with ties to Hizbullah, according to an indictment filed with a U.S. district court in Michigan earlier this year, would then wire a portion of the earnings to a member of the group in Lebanon. By 2002, Hammoud and some of his colleagues were believed to be running $500,000 worth of cigarettes a week across state lines and expanding into stolen contraband and counterfeit goods, including Viagra tablets. During a three-month period that year, authorities allege, more than 90,000 Viagra knockoffs were purchased, with a plan to sell them as the real thing. "They're small, they're high in demand and they're easily transportable," says Bob Clifford, a senior FBI agent. "They're the perfect medium."
The Hammoud case is among a handful of money scams uncovered across the country in recent years bearing Hizbullah's fingerprints. Though the revenues are not huge, the cases together underscore a daunting reality: one of the most proficient terrorist groups in the world has at least a small web of operatives in America who, prosecutors believe, are loyal to Hassan Nasrallah. Hizbullah has not targeted Americans since the 1980s, when attacks on a Marine barracks in Lebanon and on the U.S. Embassy there killed more than 300 people. Sometime later, the group apparently made a strategic decision not to tweak the world's only superpower. Law enforcers say there's been no sign the fighting between Israel and Hizbullah, with all the Arab anger it stirs against America, will goad the group into action against the United States. Still, security officials worry that if Hizbullah does one day decide to strike, it can exploit an already-existing network in this country. "You often see in these groups that people who deal in finances also have military backgrounds," says Chris Hamilton, who was the FBI's unit chief for Palestinian investigations until last year. "The fact is, they have the ability [to attack] in the United States."
The FBI has made Hizbullah a central target of its counterterrorism efforts, setting up a unit dedicated to tracking the group and assigning agents to develop sources in Lebanese and other Middle Eastern communities across the country. Clifford, who once headed the unit on Hizbullah and Iran, made his biggest Hizbullah bust six years ago, cracking a North Carolina ring that forged credit cards and laundered money, using some of the profits to buy gear for Hizbullah. The ringleader, Mohammed Hammoud (no relation to Imad), was convicted of providing "material support" for terrorism and sentenced to 155 years in prison. Although he and his followers were not linked to actual terror attacks, the FBI found evidence they did engage in "tactical" arms training and would have been ready to strike if told to do so. "If they were given an order to conduct an operation in the United States, they would have found a way to do it," Clifford says.
What might prompt Hizbullah to issue such an order? American screw-tightening on Iran over its nuclear program, for one. Iran is Hizbullah's main political and financial backer. Some analysts believe the group's deadliest terrorist attacks, including bombings at Israel's Argentine Embassy in 1992 and at a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, were ordered up by Iranian handlers. "It would be enough for the Iranian leadership to say the word for Hizbullah to launch an attack," says Congressman Ed Royce, a Republican from California who chairs the House subcommittee on international terrorism and nonproliferation.
But Hamilton, who is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, says Hizbullah would be more likely to attack Americans abroad. "They would go for soft targets in places where they have lots of resources," such as South America or Turkey. Other experts believe Hizbullah would have too much to lose from an attack on American soil. "Their fund-raising activities have been very fruitful in the United States," says Dennis Lormel, who was the FBI's section chief for terrorist financing until 2003. "With Israel clamping down on their other sources of revenue, it wouldn't make sense for them to wreck their own ability to continue making money here."
Support for Nasrallah runs high in Lebanese communities across the country, and it spikes when Israel's war with Hizbullah or with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza heats up. When Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy Lt. John Stedman searched the home of a Lebanese immigrant in Los Angeles two years ago, he found Hizbullah flags decorating the walls, along with pictures of Nasrallah and audiotapes of his speeches. "We love him," Stedman quotes a resident of the home as saying, "because he protects us from the Jews." In a case against a Lebanese immigrant in Dearborn, Mich., who is suspected of tax fraud, prosecutors have showcased pictures of the suspect seated alongside Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Hizbullah's spiritual leader, at a 2002 fund-raiser in Lebanon.
But Arab-American leaders complain law enforcers are too quick to equate the pride some ex-patriates take in Hizbullah's stand against Israel—or even just the sympathy they feel for the Lebanese people—with support for terrorism. "Any time somebody sends money to somebody in Lebanon, they [prosecutors] say it's for Hizbullah," says Maurice Herskovic, who initially represented one of the defendants in the Detroit case. Last month two of the defendants reached a plea bargain with prosecutors, admitting to several fraud charges that carry a penalty of up to 30 months in prison, but they were not charged with terrorism. Hammoud was not among them. Though three of his brothers entered not-guilty pleas in the case, prosecutors say Hammoud slipped out of the United States and is probably back in Lebanon, where Hizbullah gunmen are waging bloody street battles with Israeli troops. "This is a new organization [compared with what it was years ago]," says Bob Baer, a retired CIA agent who spent years in the Middle East. "It's fighting a conventional war." Yet it also has the capacity to carry out devastating terrorist attacks. In Europe and South America, and possibly in the United States as well, that's a threat law enforcers must take seriously.
With Jamie Reno in San Diego, John Sparks in New York and Mark Hosenball in Paris
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14208386/


REUTERS' HIJACKING LEBANON'S ANSWER TO THE UN?
August 6th, 2006
Walid Phares
Few hours after a Franco-American draft for a UN Security Council resolution was released, pro-Hezbollah lobbies and allies launched a campaign to hijack the response of Lebanon to the United Nations. As noted by seasoned observers the campaign started at the top with an alert release by News Agency Reuters written by Lin Noueihed. The article, put out early Sunday has reached the four corners of the Globe and its title has framed the position of the Lebanese people in a "no" to the UN expected resolution. Amazingly enough, Lin Noueihid titles her release "Lebanon rejects draft UN resolution." But when you read the release you realize that the "representative" of all of Lebanon in the eyes of the Reuters reporter is no one other than pro-Syrian, Hezbollah ally, Nabih Berri, the leader of Shiite Movement Amal.
Noueihid wrote that "Lebanon rejects a draft U.N. Security Council resolution to end 26 days of fighting because it would allow Israeli forces to remain on Lebanese soil, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said on Sunday." Basing her entire report on one of the most powerful supporters of the Syrian occupation and who heads a militia allied to Hezbollah, Noueihid gives Berri the full power of the credibility of Reuters. This title will find itself printed from Yahoo to the last local newsletter in the Fidji islands. Evidently, local editors around the world trust Reuters as they trust the Red Cross, and will conclude that indeed "Lebanon" has rejected a UN resolution, while in reality, it is Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis that rejected it, and unfortunately a Reuters writer framed it otherwise.
Noueihid wrote "Slamming the French-U.S. draft as biased, Berri said it ignored a seven-point plan presented by Lebanon that calls for an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the return of all displaced civilians among other things." He added that ""Lebanon, and all of Lebanon, rejects any resolution that is outside these seven points," said Berri, who has been negotiating on behalf of Hizbollah guerrillas. But leaders of the civil society, NGOs, members of Parliament and cadres from the Cedars Revolution said just the opposite. "The people of Lebanon, those who marched in downtown Beirut on March 14, 2005 are with this resolution" said Toni Nissi, coordinator for UNSCR 1559 in Beirut. "Who represent Lebanon more than the one million and a half Lebanese who demonstrated against the Syrian occupation, for Hezbollah disarming and against the regime of Lahoud and Berri," said Youssef Douiahi, President of the World Council for the Cedars Revolution from Sydney. "We've been on the phones with heads of municipalities and MPs in Lebanon and no one accepts Reuters assumption that war lord Nabih Berri represents Lebanon's response to the UN," said Tom Harb, secretary general of the Committee 1559 . "M Berri's legislative bloc is in the minority. He was unfortunately reelected at the position of the speaker of the house by the legislative majority headed by M Saad Hariri. Surely that was a political mistake but this doesn't give Reuters to frame Lebanon's will and reduce the popular majority of the country to be represented against its will by a militia leader, who by the way was responsible for the hijacking of the TWA airliner in 1985."
Reuter quotes Berri stating that "heir resolution will either drop Lebanon into internal strife or will be impossible to implement," which in fact reveals his intents and those of Hezbollah: If the UN resolution is voted Hezbollah and its allies will attack the Lebanese Government and the Cedars Revolution
Reuters wrote that Berri considered the wording of the resolution was loaded against Lebanon. He complained that an international force that would be established by a second U.N. resolution, following an initial resolution establishing a truce, would come under Chapter Seven of the U.N. charter, which authorizes the use of force, but would not necessarily be answerable to the world body. Analysis which confirms reports that Syria, Iran and Hezbollah are poised to take the fight against the United Nations and any international force.
Commenting from Beirut, Human Rights activist and Cedars Revolution Human Rights officer Kamal Batal said the "Reuters framing of Lebanon's answer to the UN is a hijacking of the opinions of millions of Lebanese. The popular majority in Lebanon wants to end the War now and the disbanding of all militias," he said. Analyzing Reuters' release closely George Chaya, Director for the Lebanese Information Office for Latin America in Buenos Aires said "it is not really a coincidence that Lin Nouaihid twisted realities and induced millions of readers around the world into error in perception. From a thorough review of Nouaihid's previous campaigns through Reuters and other media, you can easily see her framings in the Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Koran affairs in addition to her postings on radical web sites. Nouaihid has all the freedom to express her ideological positions but Reuters credibility as a fair and professional news agency are now damaged."
In fact the Lebanese Government of Fouad Seniora has stated that the UN draft doesn't meet their requirements of a real solution. He told CNN that this draft "is not really adequate and does not really achieve the objective that they have set for themselves." Seniora and his colleagues wanted a stronger UN resolution that would help Lebanon regain its control of its land. Berri's position is different: he is opposed to any UN resolution that would give Lebanon's army an international support to disarm the militia.
As I argued in my book Future Jihad, the war of ideas has been raging for years in the media and academia. Lebanon's framing is not new. During the long and terrible wars of Lebanon from 1975 till 2000, writers in news agencies and journalists such as Jonathan Randall, Thierry DesJardins, Robert Fisk and others sculpted the perception of Lebanon at their discretion and often against the thinking process of Lebanon's popular majority.
**Dr Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a Visiting Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracies.