[LCM Articles] Robert Fisk's articles in the Independent

Mon Jul 17 15:42:51 EDT 2006

Here it is. By the way, you can get it for free from Lexis Nexis if you are  
affiliated with any university or academic institution.

Hala

Copyright 2006 Newspaper Publishing PLC
All Rights Reserved 
The Independent (London)

July 17, 2006 Monday 
First  Edition 

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 1178 words

HEADLINE: Two  nations: divided by war but united by fear; 
'If our Prime Minister  is crying, what are we to do?'

BYLINE: ROBERT  FISK in Beirut

BODY:

You could see the Israeli missiles coming through the  clouds of smoke, 
hurtling like thunderbolts into the apartment blocks of  Ghobeiri, the crack of the 
explosions so loud that my ears are still singing  hours later as I write 
this report.

Yes, I suppose you  could call this a "terrorist" target, for here in these 
mean, fearful streets is  - or rather was - the Hizbollah headquarters. Even 
the movement's propaganda  television station, Al-Manar, lay apancaked ruin in 
the street, its broadcasts  still being transmitted from the station's bunker 
beneath the rubble. But what  of the tens of thousands of people who live here? 

The  few who were not lying in their basements ran shrieking through the 
streets -  not gunmen, but women with screaming children, families holding 
suit-cases,  desperate to leave the heaps of broken buildings, entire apartment 
blocks  smashed to bits, the roadways covered in smashed balconies and torn 
electrical  wires. "You don't have to help the resistance," Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, 
the  Hizbollah leader, told the Lebanese on television last night. "The 
resistance is  on the front line and the Lebanese are behind them."

Untrue, of course. It is the Lebanese - and their 130 dead, almost all  
civilians - who are also on the front line. In Israel, 24 have been killed, 15  of 
them civilians. So the exchange rate for death in this filthy war is now  
approximately one Israeli to five Lebanese. So many Lebanese have now fled  Beirut 
for Tripoli in the north of Lebanon, or for the Bekaa Valley in the east  - 
or to Syria - that Beirut, where one and a half million people live, is a  
ghost city, its remaining residents sitting in their homes amid the hopelessness  
of all those who believed that this country was at last emerging from the  
shadows of its 15-year civil war. It was Nasrallah who said that there are "more  
surprises to come", and the Lebanese fear that the Israelis, too, have some 
more  surprises for them.

I watched one of these from my  sea-front balcony at dusk on Saturday, an 
American-made Apache helicopter  turning three times over the Mediterranean 
before firing a single missile -  perfectly visible, with smoke pouring from the 
tail - that smacked into Beirut's  brand new lighthouse on the Corniche in a 
cloud of brown muck. So what was this  for? Another "terrorist" target, I 
suppose. Like the gas stations bombed in the  Bekaa Valley. Like the convoy of 20 
civilians incinerated in an Israeli airraid  on Saturday after being or dered by 
the Israelis themselves to leave their home  village on the border.

Last night, Hizbollah's missiles  after killing 10 Israelis in Haifa were 
falling on the occupied Syrian Golan  Heights, setting the forests alight, and on 
the Israeli city of Acre. The  Syrians warned of an "unlimited" response if 
Israel attacked them - the Israelis  have been saying, untruthfully, that 
Syrian troops and Iranians are present in  Lebanon, helping Hizbollah in their 
battle and the preposterous response of the  G8 summit was greeted with despair. 
Tony Blair, who is now also, it seems, the  Minister of Root Causes, believes 
Syria and Iran are behind the original  Hizbollah attack. He is right. But it 
is to Damascus that the West will have to  go to switch this dirty war off.

Certainly, the  powerless Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, cannot do 
so. With his  government accused by Israel of responsibility for Wednesday's 
capture of two  Israeli soldiers - a claim as preposterous as it is wrong - he 
went on  television in tears to appeal to the United Nations to arrange a 
ceasefire for  his "disaster-stricken nation". The Lebanese appreciated the tears, 
but those  tears are unlikely to have had President Bush shaking in his boots. 
Churchill in  1940, Siniora-asincereand good man, uncorrupted by Lebanese 
politics - is not.  "If our Prime Minister is crying," one Lebanese woman 
astutely pointed out to me  yesterday, "what is the civilian population of our 
country supposed to do?"

But where are the other sup-posed political titans of  Lebanon? What is Saad 
Hariri, son of the assassinated ex-prime minister Rafiq  Hariri - who rebuilt 
the Lebanon which Israel is now destroying - doing in  Kuwait, chatting to the 
Kuwaitis about his country's predicament? The Kuwaiti  army is scarcely going 
to come to defend Lebanon. Why isn't Hariri the son on  his private jet to 
the G8 summit in St Petersburg to demand of President Bush  that he protect the 
democratically-elected government and the nation he praised  for its "cedar 
revolution" last year? Or doesn't democracy matter when Israel is  smashing 
Lebanon? Answer: no, it doesn't.

UN Security  Council Resolution 1559 demanded a Syrian retreat from Lebanon - 
which was  accomplished - but it also demanded the disarming of Hizbollah, 
which was  definitely not accomplished. Many here suspected that 1559, designed 
by the  French and the Americans, was intended to weaken Lebanon and prepare 
it for a  peace treaty with Israel. Well, not any more. It was the Lebanese 
President,  Emile Lahoud, who still cravenly follows Syria's line - he is, after 
all,  Syria's man - who said yesterday that Lebanon "will never surrender". 
Lahoud as  Churchill. There is something obscene here

Nasrallah,  meanwhile, told the Israelis that: "If you do not want to play by 
rules, we can  do the same." It was a grim little threat that was obviously 
meant to counter  Ehud Olmert's equally grim little threat that there would be 
"far-reaching  consequences" for the missile attack on Haifa. Nasrallah's 
televised argument -  that Hizbollah originally wished to confine all casualties 
to the military -  will not wash with Israel, but may encourage those many 
Lebanese who were  originally outraged by Hizbollah's attack across the border on 
Wednesday, only  to be silenced by the cruelty of Israel's response

"This is the last struggle of the 'umma'," Nasrallah said, the "umma"  being 
the Arab "homeland". Alas, that is what the Arab leaders said when they  
joined Lawrence of Arabia's battle against the Ottoman empire in the First World  
War. It is always the "last struggle".

D The weapons of  war

Fajr-3 missile

An  Iranian-built rocket with range of 45km which can carry a 45kg warhead. 
Israel  accused Hizbolah of firing 240mm Fajr-3 missiles against Haifa. Iran 
denies  supplying the missiles to Hizbolah

Fajr-5 rocket

Longer-range version of Fajr-3 that can strike targets up  to 72km away

Raad missile

Iranian-built missile with range of 120km. Could reach central Israel.  
Israelis accused Hizbolah of firing Raad ("Thunder") missiles yesterday.  Hizbolah 
said last week it had fired Raad for the first time

Katyusha

Previously the Hizbolah missile of  choice, the Russian-designed Katyushas 
have a range of 22km and variable  accuracy. Israel accused Syria of supplying 
Hizbollah with a longer-range  model

Kassem

Rockets with  range of up to 10km, used by Hamas guerrilas in 
Palestinian-ruled Gaza. Israeli  town of Sderot has been a frequent target of the notoriously 
inaccurate  missiles

F-16 fighter

The  US-made "fighting Falcon" is a multi-role fighter which has been 
dropping  quarter-ton bombs on targets in Lebanon

GRAPHIC: Aterrified  Lebanesewoman inNabatiyeh finds her city turned into the 
front line KAMEL JABER  /REUTERS' The fifth day of bombing

LOAD-DATE:  July 17, 2006 

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In a message dated 7/17/2006 3:20:19 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
abdallah.jabbour at gmail.com writes:

Would anybody who has membership in the Independent be willing  to do some 
copying and pasting for the rest of us? 

There are a couple of interesting, unbiased articles by Robert Fisk that  are 
seemimgly worth reading. The latest is here: 
_http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1181622.ece_ 
(http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1181622.ece) ,  and there are links to others at the bottom of the page.

Abdallah

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