Death Toll in Lebanon Reaches 1000, US Threatens UN Truce

Death Toll in Lebanon Reaches 1000; Humanitarian Crisis Mounts As 1/4th of Lebanese Residents Are Displaced

The Israeli military is reportedly planning to ramp up its attacks on Lebanon by targetting more of the civilian infrastructure as well as symbols of the Lebanese government. One military official told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz "It could be that at the end of the story, Lebanon will be dark for a few years.” We speak to Catholic Relief Services representative Mark Shnellbaecher, who suggests that Lebanon could run out of fuel within the week, leading to a humanitarian catastrophe that will not be easily solved by ceasefire alone. [includes rush transcript]

Overall, the Israeli death toll has risen to about 75 people. The number of Lebanese deaths has reached 1,000 -- more than 90 percent of them have been civilians. Over the weekend Israeli airstrikes continued to pelt Beirut's southern suburbs, as well as Southern Lebanon. Airstrikes also destroyed at least four major bridges on aid routes leading north from Beirut. Dozens of Lebanese civilians were killed in the weekend's attacks. A bomb Friday killed at least 33 Kurdish farm workers. We discuss the humanitarian situation on the ground and the long term effects of war with Mark Shnellbaecher, regional director of Catholic Relief Services in Beirut.

* Mark Shnellbaecher. Regional director of Catholic Relief Services for the Middle East. He is based in Beirut.

 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/07/1436223

United Nations truce plan under threat

07 August 2006 07:24
A United Nations ceasefire initiative for Lebanon ran into almost immediate trouble on Sunday night after it was rejected by key Arab countries and provoked Hezbollah's deadliest strike on Israel so far.

Hours after the draft Security Council ceasefire resolution was published, the United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, also issued a sobering warning that she expected fighting to continue once the text was formally adopted on Monday or Tuesday.

The prediction came as Lebanon and Hezbollah dismissed the deal and Israel, Syria and Iran embarked on a fresh war of words highlighting the potential for the war to turn into a regional conflict.

Within 24 hours of the draft being agreed, Hezbollah launched a rocket barrage that killed 12 Israeli soldiers. They followed up with the heaviest attack yet on the port city of Haifa, with a volley of missiles flattening buildings and pulling down electrical lines. Three were killed and at least 120 injured. Israel responded stepping up its aerial bombardment, with the port of Tyre bearing the brunt.

Rice, speaking at US President's George Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, said she hoped the resolution would reduce violence but warned that no single resolution was going to bring peace overnight. "These things take a while to wind down," she said. "It is certainly not the case that probably all violence is going to stop."

A British Foreign Office source echoed Rice, saying: "No one is naive enough to think there will be peace once the resolution is rubber-stamped by the Security Council."

The draft resolution was agreed between the US, Israel's biggest backer, and France, the former colonial power in Lebanon, at the UN headquarters in New York on Saturday. All 15 members of the council on Sunday night discussed the draft, which calls for "a full cessation of hostilities".

Lebanon, through Qatar, which has a seat on the council, tried unsuccessfully to change the draft, calling for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops rather than having them remain in the country until a UN-backed international force is put in place. The draft allows Israel to continue "defensive operations" in Lebanon after a ceasefire.

Rice said the resolution would provide some clarity this week by showing who obeyed the ceasefire call. "We're going to know who really did want to stop the violence and who didn't," she said.

Lebanon and Hezbollah said the draft offered no timetable for an Israeli troop withdrawal. "If Israel has not won the war, but still gets this, what would have happened had they won?" asked Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese Parliament negotiating on behalf of Hezbollah.

Israel said little in public on Sunday about the draft, but reports in the press suggested political leaders were happy with the result. Key parts of the agreement were seen to be in Israel's favour.

One Israeli political source told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper: "We got what we wanted. The meaning of the decision is that there is no black hole or quiet vacuum. Israel will leave only when someone comes to replace her."

In the most explicit threat yet from Israel to Iran, Dan Gillerman, the ambassador to the UN, said in an interview with the BBC that an attack by Hezbollah on Tel Aviv would be tantamount to an "act of war" and Hezbollah would not make such an attack without an explicit order from Iran. The implication of his words was that Israel would retaliate by attacking Tehran.

Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, said on Friday that any attack on the centre of Beirut would be met with a rocket attack Tel Aviv, which has so far escaped harm. He was speaking just days after Mohsen Rezai, secretary of Iran's expediency council, said Israel should expect "very difficult days in cities such as Tel Aviv" unless it ended the war.

Mark Regev, a spokesperson for Israel's foreign ministry, said: "No one wants to see an expansion of the conflict. But there is no doubt that Hezbollah is the long arm of Iran, that the missiles landing in Israel are not Lebanese missiles, that the fortifications we are dealing with in Lebanon were built with somebody else's money not Lebanese. The idea that Hezbollah is a tool of Iranian foreign policy is correct."

Asked what Israel's reaction would be to a rocket strike on Tel Aviv, he said: "There is nothing I can say about that."

Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran's Foreign Minister, in an interview with The Guardian, described Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as "codefendants" in war crimes and claimed they had foreknowledge of Israeli plans to launch a "campaign of aggression" in Lebanon which he claimed was part of a "war on the whole Middle East". But Iran did not fear an American attack, he said.

Syria, which also backs Hezbollah, rejected the draft resolution. Its Foreign Minister, Walid Moallem, normally one of the more moderate voices in Damascus said on a visit to Beirut that he personally was prepared to volunteer to fight with Hezbollah and described the draft as a "recipe for continuation of the war".

Blair is to remain at Downing Street on Monday delaying his holiday further in a bid to ensure the UN resolution is passed by Tuesday and the ground work is laid for a fresh UN resolution setting out the terms of a multinational force operating in Lebanon. The British Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, left for a carvanning holiday in France at the weekend but the Foreign Office said she would fly to New York if the presence of ministers was required to vote on the resolution. - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

 http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=279948&area=/breaking_news/break/

Odd that only Arab Israeli's are being killed by "Hezbollah" strikes
 http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/onlyarabs.php

John Bolton: Dead Lebanese worth less than dead Israelis
by quaoar
Mon Aug 07, 2006 at 08:37:32 AM PDT

Here is a story you are unlikely to read in an American newspaper -- the story of extraordinary arrogance, naivety, stupidity, recklessness and callous indifference to human life. And it is all being inflicted in our names, on behalf of the people of the United States.

Behind all the happy talk in the U.S. media about the American/French ceasefire resolution on the War in Lebanon is the story of how truly, dangerously incompetent Bush, Rice and Bolton are.

The story by Mark Perry and Alistair Crooke, appears in Asia Times Online and begins with Bolton negotiating with a French diplomat over the terms of the resolution.

* quaoar's diary :: ::
*

Bolton actually insisted that France lead an international peacekeeping force and that this force be deployed before a ceasefire is in place. Yes, that's right, he wanted French troops to jump into Lebanon in the middle of a shooting war.

The position that we're taking in the UN is just nuts," a former White House official close to the US decision-making process said during the negotiations. "The US wants to put international forces on the ground in the middle of the conflict, before there's a ceasefire. The reasoning at the White House is that the international force could weigh on the side of the Israelis - could enforce Hezbollah's disarmament."

This is just stunning in its stupidity. Bolton actually expected the French to send troops to Lebanon to intervene for Israel.

But wait! It gets even worse.

A former US Central Intelligence Agency officer confirmed this view: "I am under the impression that [President] George [W] Bush and [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice were surprised when the Europeans disagreed with the US position - they were running around saying, 'But how can you disagree, don't you understand? Hezbollah is a terrorist organization.'"

So Bolton decides it's time to insult the French.

The normally taciturn La Sabliere was particularly enraged when Bolton indirectly accused him of naivety. Responding to a reporter's question about the French position calling for a ceasefire prior to a troop deployment, Bolton was at his arrogant best: "I think it simplistic, among other things. I want somebody to address the problem on how to get a ceasefire with a terrorist organization."

I'll be happy to address that, Mr. Bolton. Perhaps you have heard of an organization called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil, which has been waging a terror campaign in Sri Lanka for years. In fact, they invented the modern suicide vest, which was then adopted by Palestinian terror groups. The Tamil Tigers currently have a ceasefire agreement in place with the Sri Lankan government, although the ceasefire is in danger of falling apart. There have also been agreements to cease fire and disarm by the IRA and the Basque terror group ETA.

Predictably, Bolton's neocon dog and pony show was as popular as Tennessee Volunteers coach Phillip Fulmer at a Crimson Tide pep rally. Especially after Bolton said that the Lebanese civilians killed in Israeli attacks had it coming.

"The Bush people have never heard a shot fired in anger, and it's apparent," an official in the UN Secretary General's Office noted. "The French were quite fearful that one miscalculation, one stray rocket could set the region on fire. No one in Washington seemed willing to admit that as a possibility."

Bolton's continued "cheerleading for Israel" didn't help, according to this same official. "It's a real row that started with Bolton's statement that you couldn't compare the deaths of Lebanese to the deaths of Israelis," the official said. "He implied that because Lebanon harbored Hezbollah, Lebanese lives were forfeit. It was a stupid thing to say. It tore the scab off the wound."

Has any of this been reported in the American media? I haven't seen it and I read a great deal. That might be because the authors, Perry and Crooke, have been neocon targets. They are part of an organization called Conflicts Forum and Crooke is a former British intelligence official and diplomat.

The US press was quick to pick up on this, parroting the administration's line. Even the venerable Washington Post implied that seven Canadians who had died as a result of Israeli air strikes in the war's first days were of lesser value than other Westerners - since they were "Lebanese holding Canadian passports".

The Post might not have meant to imply that. But the implication is there.

But the coverage over the weekend of the American/French resolution made the whole thing sound like a triumph of diplomacy, as if France was our new best buddy and Bush was a lock for the Nobel Peace Prize.

For now, Condoleezza Rice is hailing the US-French draft as a symbol for US-European cooperation. But for many European diplomats, agreement on the draft resolution has only papered over a deepening rift between the United States and its European partners, with some European diplomats muttering that America's real goal is to induce the Europeans to wade into Lebanon on the side of a defanged and humiliated Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "bragged that Israel would destroy Hezbollah", a French diplomat said in Washington, "and if he can't do it that's his problem. I don't care what the secretary of state says, we're not going to do it for him."

Makes you wonder just how the hell we are going to survive until January 2009.

 http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/7/113732/7369

Israel, not Hizbullah, is putting civilians in danger on both sides of the border
 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14349.htm