What happened in Nahr al Bared: Smuggled stories from inside the destroyed camp
by Michael Birmingham | 06.11.2007 17:21
ZNet | Mideast
What happened in Nahr Al Bared?
by Michael Birmingham; October 24, 2007
Nahr Al Bared is a Palestinian refugee camp in the north of Lebanon which has been home to about 40,000 Palestinian people, most of whom are the children and grandchildren of those who left Palestine in 1948. Some like Abu Mohammad were born in Palestine. He was ten years old, and next year it will be sixty years since the formation of the State of Israel was achieved through the ethnic cleansing of Abu Mohammad and so many others from their home in Palestine. He told me this as the two of us sat alone in the pitch dark while rats ran around beside our chairs at his house. As I left he went in to sleep alone amongst ashes and rodents, with no neighbours around him, trying to believe that he still has something left to protect.
Between May and September of this year, a ferocious battle took place between the Lebanese Army and a small armed group known as Fatah Al Islam. From the first the day, the Lebanese Army surrounded the camp and fired in artillery, maintaining this course for months. Most of the residents of the camp were forced to leave with the clothes on their backs within the first three days. As the number of young Lebanese soldiers killed and horribly maimed rose through the battle, Lebanon became awash with patriotism and grief, any questioning of the army taboo.
Something terrible has been done to the residents of Nahr al Bared, and the Lebanese people are being spared the details. Over the past two weeks, since the camp was partly reopened to a few of its residents, many of us who have been there have been stunned by a powerful reality. Beyond the massive destruction of the homes from three months of bombing, room after room, house after house have been burned. Burned from the inside. Amongst the ashes on the ground, are the insides of what appear to have been car tyres. The walls have soot dripping down from what seems clearly to have been something flammable sprayed on them. Rooms, houses, shops, garages – all blackened ruins, yet having had no damage from bombing or battle. They were burned deliberately by people entering and torching them.
How many we do not know, it is too large for a few people to comprehensively assess. But finding an un-bombed house or a business that has not been torched is very hard indeed.
Why did this happen? Why have the people whose entire life's work is to be found in ashes on the floor of these burned out homes, not been given any information about this - not a word? Each day new people return to find that this is what has happened to their homes.
It is not just the burning of houses. Cars that residents were ordered to leave behind in the first days of the battle have been smashed up. Mopeds and TVs and all that ordinary people value, also broken up. Fridge after fridge with bullets through them. All of this clearly done from inside the houses, not from any outside battle.
People returning to their homes sit outside alone on the ground. Stunned. When you ask them to bring you into their houses, they tell you, person after person, of how their valuables were stolen. Even where the valuables were well hidden, everything was ransacked and valuables found. Explosives were used to get through locked doors or to open safes. Items that people have had stolen include everything from clothes to cars. That which has not been burned, which was not smashed, which was of value seems to have vanished. Where?
This camp was strictly out of bounds to the Palestinian people. They could not have done this. Who did this and why must surely be investigated before more vital evidence has disappeared. A small amount of this may be attributable to Fatal al-Islam fighters. But there is clear evidence that some elements of the army acted improperly.
On the inside walls of many, many houses, are written slogans. Everything from proud soldiers noting army units, to profoundly racist, offensive slogans against Palestinian people. Many families have found some of their belongings in nearby houses. Faeces are on some mattresses and floors.
Every day that goes by more families return to the camp. Within hours, they have swept up and cleared away ashes and debris, so that they can try to imagine where to begin again. Mattresses with faeces are being burned. Journalists are still prohibited from the camp. Cameras are illegal there. Human rights groups have not entered. Every day that goes by, more evidence is lost.
For those of us who lived in nearby Baddawi refugee camp during the battle, this follows from months of people from Nahr al Bared telling stories of torture and abuse at checkpoints, and in the Lebanese Ministry of Defence at Yarsi. It also follows on peaceful demonstrators from Nahr al Bared who bravely tried to tell the world what was happening being shot dead near Baddawi. The world ignored completely even their deaths.
Amnesty International, the largest human rights organisation in the world was concluding a report on the situation of Palestinians in Lebanon during the past week. It's delegation left Lebanon without seeing Nahr Al Bared – before it left holding a Beirut press conference which was abruptly ended at the first mention of Nahr Al Bared.
The United States Government played a key role in this battle, strongly supporting politically and with munitions the Lebanese government's decision to seek a military solution. The Lebanese offered to Fatah Al Islam simply to surrender or die. The European Union and many Arab countries also clearly supported this approach. The moral and legal imperative to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and not to target civilian communities was not a concern. The Palestinians of Lebanon, the subject of so many crocodile tears from around the world during infamous massacres in the past, once again are without support at the moment when it might actually matter.
What happened in Nahr al Bared? Why does the world not seem to care?
Michael Birmingham is an Irish peace activist who has been mostly based in Lebanon since July 2006. He has formerly worked on human rights and social justice in Ireland and Iraq.
What happened in Nahr Al Bared?
by Michael Birmingham; October 24, 2007
Nahr Al Bared is a Palestinian refugee camp in the north of Lebanon which has been home to about 40,000 Palestinian people, most of whom are the children and grandchildren of those who left Palestine in 1948. Some like Abu Mohammad were born in Palestine. He was ten years old, and next year it will be sixty years since the formation of the State of Israel was achieved through the ethnic cleansing of Abu Mohammad and so many others from their home in Palestine. He told me this as the two of us sat alone in the pitch dark while rats ran around beside our chairs at his house. As I left he went in to sleep alone amongst ashes and rodents, with no neighbours around him, trying to believe that he still has something left to protect.
Between May and September of this year, a ferocious battle took place between the Lebanese Army and a small armed group known as Fatah Al Islam. From the first the day, the Lebanese Army surrounded the camp and fired in artillery, maintaining this course for months. Most of the residents of the camp were forced to leave with the clothes on their backs within the first three days. As the number of young Lebanese soldiers killed and horribly maimed rose through the battle, Lebanon became awash with patriotism and grief, any questioning of the army taboo.
Something terrible has been done to the residents of Nahr al Bared, and the Lebanese people are being spared the details. Over the past two weeks, since the camp was partly reopened to a few of its residents, many of us who have been there have been stunned by a powerful reality. Beyond the massive destruction of the homes from three months of bombing, room after room, house after house have been burned. Burned from the inside. Amongst the ashes on the ground, are the insides of what appear to have been car tyres. The walls have soot dripping down from what seems clearly to have been something flammable sprayed on them. Rooms, houses, shops, garages – all blackened ruins, yet having had no damage from bombing or battle. They were burned deliberately by people entering and torching them.
How many we do not know, it is too large for a few people to comprehensively assess. But finding an un-bombed house or a business that has not been torched is very hard indeed.
Why did this happen? Why have the people whose entire life's work is to be found in ashes on the floor of these burned out homes, not been given any information about this - not a word? Each day new people return to find that this is what has happened to their homes.
It is not just the burning of houses. Cars that residents were ordered to leave behind in the first days of the battle have been smashed up. Mopeds and TVs and all that ordinary people value, also broken up. Fridge after fridge with bullets through them. All of this clearly done from inside the houses, not from any outside battle.
People returning to their homes sit outside alone on the ground. Stunned. When you ask them to bring you into their houses, they tell you, person after person, of how their valuables were stolen. Even where the valuables were well hidden, everything was ransacked and valuables found. Explosives were used to get through locked doors or to open safes. Items that people have had stolen include everything from clothes to cars. That which has not been burned, which was not smashed, which was of value seems to have vanished. Where?
This camp was strictly out of bounds to the Palestinian people. They could not have done this. Who did this and why must surely be investigated before more vital evidence has disappeared. A small amount of this may be attributable to Fatal al-Islam fighters. But there is clear evidence that some elements of the army acted improperly.
On the inside walls of many, many houses, are written slogans. Everything from proud soldiers noting army units, to profoundly racist, offensive slogans against Palestinian people. Many families have found some of their belongings in nearby houses. Faeces are on some mattresses and floors.
Every day that goes by more families return to the camp. Within hours, they have swept up and cleared away ashes and debris, so that they can try to imagine where to begin again. Mattresses with faeces are being burned. Journalists are still prohibited from the camp. Cameras are illegal there. Human rights groups have not entered. Every day that goes by, more evidence is lost.
For those of us who lived in nearby Baddawi refugee camp during the battle, this follows from months of people from Nahr al Bared telling stories of torture and abuse at checkpoints, and in the Lebanese Ministry of Defence at Yarsi. It also follows on peaceful demonstrators from Nahr al Bared who bravely tried to tell the world what was happening being shot dead near Baddawi. The world ignored completely even their deaths.
Amnesty International, the largest human rights organisation in the world was concluding a report on the situation of Palestinians in Lebanon during the past week. It's delegation left Lebanon without seeing Nahr Al Bared – before it left holding a Beirut press conference which was abruptly ended at the first mention of Nahr Al Bared.
The United States Government played a key role in this battle, strongly supporting politically and with munitions the Lebanese government's decision to seek a military solution. The Lebanese offered to Fatah Al Islam simply to surrender or die. The European Union and many Arab countries also clearly supported this approach. The moral and legal imperative to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and not to target civilian communities was not a concern. The Palestinians of Lebanon, the subject of so many crocodile tears from around the world during infamous massacres in the past, once again are without support at the moment when it might actually matter.
What happened in Nahr al Bared? Why does the world not seem to care?
Michael Birmingham is an Irish peace activist who has been mostly based in Lebanon since July 2006. He has formerly worked on human rights and social justice in Ireland and Iraq.
by Michael Birmingham
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Eliot Abrams et al.
08.11.2007 13:30
Premeditated Attack
US Trains "al CIAeda" Terrorists For Use In Lebanon
08.11.2007 23:07
The Phony (Mossad) Al Qaeda Cell in Palestine
US training Sunni extremists to attack Hizbullah; operations to be attributed to Al-Qaeda
Thursday, April 19, 2007
(with an added note)
Issam Naaman is a Lebanese lawyer and writer, former Minister of Telecommunications under one of the governments led by Salim al-Hoss, and a member of a small political group that considers itself a third alternative beween the Hariri-led establishment, and the Hizbullah-led opposition. He wrote on April 18 in Al-Quds al-Arabi about information gleaned from the recent Pelosi delegation, and other US delegations at about the same time, mostly by a friend of his who is a think-tank type and didn't want his name used.
His main points were that Bush seems to be stymied in his desire to attack Iran, both by the political opposition of the Democrats, and the popular revulsion in the US against further military adventures that would be seen as at the expense of things like health insurance and the US standard of living. (By contrast, Bush policy on Palestine will be unchanged, because in the case of Palestine there is no pressure for change from Congress, in fact the Democrats outdo the Republicans in their support for Israel). As a "substitute" for not being able to strike Iran, the Bush administration plans an escalation in Lebanon. And here he mentions two specific points: (1) Tom Lantos said they are convinced Hizbullah is weak and this is the time to step up efforts to disarm it. (2) An airport in northern Lebanon will be used as a base for pressuring Syria, and also as a place for training of groups opposed to Hizbullah and opposed to anti-Abbas elements in Palestine. Then there was this:
It was learned from influential members of the US delegations that the Washington special[-forces] apparatus has begun assembling, arming and training members of Islamic extremist groups to undertake assaults on Hizbullah, in the framework of the conflict that it [the Bush administration] plans between the Sunni and the Shiite population, in districts where the two groups are contiguous. And it will be arranged to camouflage the agents in this by attributing the attacks to AlQaeda.
The writer's conclusion is that these exchanges with the American visitors confirmed that the Bush administration will not allow there to be any compromise in the dispute between the Hizbullah-led opposition and the Hariri administration over power-sharing, new elections and so on. Rather, the US administration will be working hard to promote confrontation, as part of its region-wide policy of fostering Sunni-Shiite conflict. In this context, the writer doesn't seem to regard the covert sponsorship of fake-AlQaeda US agents to be anything but one more ingredient in the overall plan.
This planned use by the Bush administration of Sunni extremists to stir the pot in Lebanon was discussed at length by New Yorker article called "The Redirection" last month, eliciting only an eerie silence from the policy elite. Judging from this Naaman piece, it would appear the scheme is pretty much a bipartisan open secret, which raises the question why no criticism from the Democrats. Or maybe answers the question.
mparent7777.blogspot.com/2007/04/us-training-sunni-extremists-to-attack.
Al Qaeda=PNAC, CIA, Mossad