{"article":{"id":173598,"heading":"The refugees' fury will be felt for generations to come","author":"Karma Nabulsi","created":"2006-08-11 22:21:49","modified":"2006-08-11 22:22:54","last_modified":"Sat, 12 Aug 2006 05:22:54","article":"

The refugees' fury will be felt for generations to come

Karma Nabulsi, The Electronic Intifada, 7 August 2006

Lebanon 1982: Bullet and bomb-damaged buildings visible symbols of lives again torn apart by war. Heavy fighting in the vicinity of Beirut during the invasion prompted many people to flee for safety.

Lebanon 2006: A general view of damaged buildings after Israeli warplanes targeted residential areas in Beirut on July 21, 2006. (Haitham Moussawi\/IRIN)



People walk the dusty, broken roads in scorching summer heat, taking shelter in the basements of empty buildings. In Gaza and Lebanon, in the refugee camps of Khan Younis, Rafah and Jabaliya, in Tyre and Beirut, in Nabatiyeh and Sidon, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children seek refuge. As they flee, they risk the indiscriminate wrath of an enemy driven by an existential mania that can not be assuaged, only stopped. Ambulances are struck, humanitarian relief convoys are struck, UN observers are struck. Warning leaflets are dropped from the sky urging people to abandon their homes, just as they were in 1996, 1982, 1978, 1967 and 1948. The ultimately impossible decision in Gaza and Lebanon today is: where does a refugee go?

In Beirut in July 1982, after surviving a bomb that destroyed a seven-floor apartment block next door to me, burying alive more than 40 people taking refuge in its cellar, some of us began to sleep on the roof; there is no refuge from this terror, there is only resistance. Fifteen of the 37 children killed in Qana on Sunday were disabled; their families could take them no further north, according to the Lebanese MP Bahia Hariri. From June to August 1982, Israeli aircraft flying over Lebanon dropped \"smart bombs\" on children's hospitals in Shatila camp, Gaza hospital, Acre hospital and 11 of the country's orphanages, killing dozens of disabled children. They had nowhere else to shelter. The roofs had been painted with huge white crosses visible from the sky.

That war did not give Israel the security it claims to seek, and nor will this one. In 1948 Palestinians fled after hearing news of the massacres in villages by Haganah forces and receiving leaflets dropped from the sky telling them to run for their lives. This week their grandchildren and great-grandchildren are being killed with impunity in the refugee camps of Gaza, where they are trapped. Last Friday alone more than 30 Palestinians were killed, with no international condemnation and barely a mention in the press. In Qana they were also trapped. \"We couldn't get out of our neighbourhood because there are only two roads leading out and the Israelis bombed them both several days ago,\" said Mohammad Shalhoub, a disabled 41-year-old survivor.

The US and Britain are claiming that no ceasefire is possible until there is an international force that will implement United Nations resolution 1559. Yet the Lebanese prime minister issued a seven-point plan in Rome last week, consistent with international law and agreed by all elected parties in Lebanon (including Hizbullah), that had as its first requirement an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. It is implementation of the dozens of UN resolutions that Israel has flouted for more than 50 years with protection from the US - and now from Britain - that will stop this conflict.

The ultimately impossible decision in Gaza and Lebanon today is: where does a refugee go?

The capture of a soldier from an occupying army in Gaza, and of two soldiers on the Lebanese border by local resistance, in an attempt to force the release of thousands of illegally detained Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, should have been dealt with by Israel in the framework of the laws of war and with a proportional response. Instead, by launching this massive attack, Israel has destroyed the social and economic infrastructure of a sovereign nation, Lebanon, just as it is destroying the infrastructure of a democratically elected administration in occupied Palestine.

It is producing generations of refugees who will also resist. Power stations, bridges, key manufacturing and food factories in Lebanon are ruined, the entire industrial estate of Gaza pulverised. The ancient city centre of Nablus has been demolished. Whole villages in south Lebanon and sections of refugee camps in Gaza have been obliterated. These too are war crimes. If Britain will not stop Israel, nor condemn it, then under the Geneva conventions it is complicit in those crimes.

Before seeking the implementation of UN resolution 1559, which calls for the disarmament of Hizbullah, Britain must seek with more sincerity the implementation of UN security council resolutions 242 and 338, which demand the immediate withdrawal of Israel from lands illegally occupied in the 1967 war, including the Golan Heights, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. There is hardly a statesman or citizen in the world today who cannot see that it will take outside intervention to stop Israel inflicting this terror. Calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, and working towards the implementation of all UN resolutions addressing this conflict, will restore to the international community - and Britain in particular - the legitimacy it has squandered by allowing months of war crimes to go by, witnessed but uncondemned and unconstrained.

Israel has failed to understand that it cannot expel a people and call itself the victim; that it cannot conquer its neighbours and treat any and all resistance to that conquest as terrorism; that it cannot arm itself as a regional superpower and annihilate the institutional fabric of two peoples without incurring the fury of their children in the years that follow.

Karma Nabulsi teaches politics and international relations at Oxford University. She is the author of Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance and the Law. This article was first published in The Guardian on August 2, 2006 and reprinted on EI with permission.

<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"Israel has failed to understand that it cannot expel a people and call itself the victim; that it cannot conquer its neighbours and treat any and all resistance to that conquest as terrorism; that it cannot arm itself as a regional superpower and annihilate the institutional fabric of two peoples without incurring the fury of their children in the years that follow.","numcomment":1,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2006\/08\/173598.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":173599,"heading":"The End of Lebanon?","article":"The End of Lebanon?\r\nRan HaCohen, Electronic Lebanon, 10 August 2006\r\n\r\nAn Israeli reserve soldiers fires a mortar shells towards southern Lebanon from a military position in the northern of Israel, 10 August 2006. (MaanImages\/Moti Milrod)\r\n\r\nThe UN Security Council resolution draft on Lebanon reflects a new stage of Western colonialism in the Middle East, and perhaps a historic precedent: for the first time, the UN Security Council - should the resolution draft be endorsed - breaches the fundamental principle of the right of people under occupation to resist, and in fact legitimizes the violent partition of the sovereign state of Lebanon.\r\n\r\nThe American-French draft reflects the interests of three central colonial powers in the region: the U.S., the main colonial power in Iraq and Afghanistan; its client and proxy Israel, which is occupying the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza as well as part of Syria, and occupied south Lebanon for 22 years (1978-2000); and France, the former colonial empire in Lebanon after WWI. No wonder that the draft, which pays lip-service to Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity, in fact suggests a partition of this small land.\r\n\r\nChallenged Sovereignty\r\n\r\nLebanon's sovereignty has always been challenged. France and Great Britain did not end their colonialism until after WWII. Syria considered Lebanon one of its provinces. Israel's first leader, David Ben-Gurion, believed the natural border of the Jewish state should be Lebanon's Litani River, and this legacy has apparently guided the Israeli army ever since.\r\n\r\nUp to the last half decade, Lebanon was in fact partitioned into two power spheres: the Israeli-occupied south, and the Syrian-occupied rest of the country. Both countries used each other's occupation of Lebanon as an excuse not to end their own. Finally, Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, but it has not respected Lebanon's sovereignty for a single day since. As every UN report for the years 2000-2006 stresses, Israeli jets have violated Lebanese air space by daily overflights, sowing anxiety by sonic booms over populated areas. At the same time, pressure grew on Syria to end its occupation. At last, the international - mainly Western - community made president Assad Jr. withdraw the Syrian forces from Lebanon in 2005.\r\n\r\nThese developments, which looked like the rehabilitation of Lebanon's sovereignty, now seem to lead to the very opposite: a renewed Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, supported by the U.S. and France and backed by a UN Security Council resolution.\r\n\r\nIsrael's Return\r\n\r\nWith strong American backing, Israel is at present in a four-week effort to reoccupy south Lebanon.\r\n\r\nThe decisive player in Israeli politics - the military - is aware of the painful memories many Israeli families still have from 22 years in the so-called "Lebanese mud." Therefore, the reoccupation has been carried out in what the Israeli army jargon calls "a rolling operation." At first, the public and the cabinet were assured that only the air force would be used. A few days into the war, with dozens of Hezbollah missiles reaching as far as Haifa, military sources started to indicate that "Israel cannot win by using air force alone." Ground forces were sent into Lebanon, first in what was described as limited commando operations, then to take over small enclaves close to the border and "cleanse the Hezbollah front line." Four weeks into the war, Israel is seeking to reoccupy the "security zone" it abandoned six years ago, with indications that the Israeli-held area might stretch north to the Litani River and perhaps even further.\r\n\r\nLeaflets and heavy fire directed indiscriminately at civilians have driven out most of the population of south Lebanon; many have no houses to return to. The purpose of this ethnic cleansing - similar to that carried out in Palestine in 1948 and in the occupied Palestinian territories in 1967 - is to facilitate the Israeli occupation in the future.\r\n\r\nIsrael's Occupation Legitimized\r\n\r\nThe U.S. has so far blocked any attempt to make Israel cease its fire. Now that Israel is about to reach its desired territorial aims, the U.S. deems it the right time to anchor Israel's occupation in a UN Security Council resolution.\r\n\r\nAccording to the current resolution draft, the UN Security Council "calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations." Note the asymmetry, as well as the term "immediate." While Israel is occupying Lebanon, Hezbollah - or, as it is often called in Lebanon, "the resistance" (al-muqawama) - is not allowed to take any military action against this occupation. If it does, the resolution draft allows Israel to defend its occupation militarily, as long as it uses "non-offensive" means. Thus the UN SC, perhaps for the first time, waives the moral and internationally accepted legal principle of the right of occupied peoples to resist occupation. The resolution draft not only forbids Hezbollah resistance to the occupation, but also legitimizes Israel's right to defend its occupying forces against any Lebanese resistance.\r\n\r\nNo "International Force"\r\n\r\nThis immediate, interim phase should end when a new UN-mandated international force is formed and deployed to Lebanon. This seems to be the American concession to France. In order to win the past colonizer's consent, the U.S. offered France a military foothold in the form of an international force that would consist mainly of French troops. The French, however, have been fooled: having betrayed Lebanon for the sweet smell of a colonial foothold, they will get none. The resolution draft sets no timetable for the creation of this new force, which at any rate needs to be authorized in a further UN SC resolution before it is constituted.\r\n\r\nFurthermore, this second, future UNSC resolution is made dependent on a "confirmation to the Security Council that the Government of Lebanon and the Government of Israel have agreed in principle to the principles and elements for a long-term solution as set forth in paragraph 6 above, and subject to their approval." As any experienced observer of Middle Eastern diplomacy knows, this condition can be endlessly abused to gain time, just as we witnessed in the Oslo process with the Palestinians, and Israel has a clear interest in procrastination. As long as the two governments have not agreed - and this may take years - Israel can stay in Lebanon as an occupying force protected by a UNSC resolution.\r\n\r\nNot surprisingly, then, a senior Israeli official has already said that "there would be no international force, because no agreement about it would be reached." (Ha'aretz, Aug. 7, 2006, Hebrew only; omitted in the English version, and not without reason.)\r\n\r\nVae Victis\r\n\r\nLebanon cannot but object to the proposed resolution, which in fact legalizes its partition. Indeed Lebanon does object. This objection must have been anticipated by the colonial powers. Therefore the mechanism set to implement Lebanon's partition is deliberately bypassing its government. Since a new international force cannot be deployed in Lebanon without its consent, the resolution draft uses UNIFIL instead: UNIFIL is already on the ground in Lebanon, so it doesn't need any further Lebanese consent. For this reason, Israel's request to get rid of UNIFIL had to be rejected; this was portrayed in the Israeli press as a great concession (Ha'aretz's top headline, Aug. 6, 2006: "Israel Backs Down: UNIFIL Stays").\r\n\r\nThe Israeli plans to make Lebanon understand its role in the new regional order - that is, to submit to Israel's superiority and give up its South - were hinted at briefly at the outset of the war in the words of Israel's chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz: "we will turn Lebanon's clock back 20 years." By now, we have a more detailed plan:\r\n\r\n "A senior General Staff officer told Ha'aretz that for the first time since the fighting began, Israel plans to attack strategic infrastructure targets and symbols of the Lebanese government [...] 'we are now in a process of renewed escalation. We will continue hitting everything that moves in Hezbollah - but we will also hit strategic civilian infrastructure.' [...] IDF will recommend an additional significant expansion of the operation, including the conquest of most of Lebanon south of the Litani River, including the area around Tyre, and a significant increase in air strikes on infrastructure targets. 'It could be that at the end of the story, Lebanon will be dark for a few years,' said one." (Ha'aretz, Aug. 7, 2006)\r\n\r\nIn order to preclude any resistance to its partition, then, Lebanon should be devastated.\r\n\r\nThe Alternatives\r\n\r\nThe resolution draft has not been endorsed yet. If endorsed and imposed on Lebanon, it will undoubtedly be good news for the weapons industry: Lebanon will unite behind Hezbollah as the only effective force fighting its partition. Syria will support Hezbollah, being doubly humiliated both by the enduring Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and by being kicked out of Lebanon just in order to let Israel reoccupy it. Half of Israel, perhaps more, will remain a frontier zone, constantly under the threat of rockets and missiles from Lebanon. And this is just the optimistic scenario, in which a regional war is avoided.\r\n\r\nAnother option is for the UN to demand immediate Israeli withdrawal to the international border with Lebanon and Syria (!), urge all parties involved to respect each other's sovereignty, and help Lebanon follow its own interest by disarming Hezbollah or incorporating it into its regular army. This might be bad news for the weapons industry, but good news for millions of Lebanese and Israelis who are now under mutual fire.","author":"Not a Dhimmi No More!","parent_id":173598,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2006-08-11 22:22:54","modified":"2006-08-11 22:22:54","fileurl":""}]}