Israel expands major offensive in Lebanon

As many as 8,000 Israeli troops invaded Lebanon on Aug. 2 in a continuation of their long-range assault which began 21 days ago against Hezbollah militants. Israel's war campaign to free two of their soldiers captured by Hezbollah has devastated its Middle Eastern neighbor with sustained bombings of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure, while displacing at least 907,000 Lebanese citizens. An additional 100,000 are still unable to get out of combat zones, said United Nations relief coordinator for Lebanon Mona Hammam. The Lebanese government said that of the 828 of its civilians killed in the conflict so far, around 35 percent have been children– approximately 290. Fifty-one Israelis have been confirmed dead from the fighting and up to 330,000 displaced in the north of their country. Israeli leaders said they plan to "expand and strengthen" its military operations in Lebanon, despite the growing international calls for a cease-fire and its own agreement to a 48-hour halt to bombing after killing 60 civilians, predominantly children, in Qana. "Every additional day is a day that drains the strength of this cruel enemy," said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "There is no cease-fire, and there will not be a cease-fire in the upcoming days." On July 31, the Israeli cabinet approved a major expansion of its ground offensive. The decision followed Israel's agreement the day before to suspend air attacks on south Lebanon for 48 hours. About 12 hours after the suspension took effect, Israeli planes launched strikes in support of ground operations near Taibe. Olmert said the military offensive would end when rockets fired by Hezbollah on northern Israel had ceased and the two soldiers seized on July 12 were freed. "Many days of fighting still await us," he said. "We are paying a very precious and almost unbearable price in terms of loss of life, major damage to public and private property and tranquillity–and we're not prepared to give up our right to live perfectly ordinary lives, which are not subject to terrorism and hate and fanaticism." Amir Peretz, the Israeli Defense Minister, told a heated session of the Knesset, that "it is forbidden to agree to an immediate cease-fire." Four Arab Knesset members were ordered out of the chamber for heckling angrily in protest at the bombing of Qana. One Knesset member called Peretz a "child murderer." "We have to finish the operation, and I will do it," Peretz declared. True to his word, Israeli forces attacked the village of Adessa, as well as near Baalbek where air strikes killed 19 civilians, including four children. One family was wiped out when a missile hit their garden, while a Bedouin women and five of her children were gunned down by Israeli commandos when they were frightened by an Israeli helicopter landing nearby and ran out of their tent, neighbors claimed. More fighting was concentrated near the Lebanese villages of Taibe and Aita Al-Shaab further west. The UN Interim Force in Lebanon also reported intensive Israeli shelling in the villages of Ramia, Dibil and Qawzah on July 31 and Aug. 1. East of Taibe, Israeli forces heavily shelled the town of Kfar Kela a day after pounding it with air strikes, according to UN observers. Israel also launched air strikes against the southern Lebanese border villages of Bayyada and Mansoureh. Israeli jet fighters struck deep in-side Lebanese territory, hitting Hermel, 70 miles north of the Israeli border, as well. In the west, Israeli warships offshore in the Mediterranean sent artillery into the villages of Shamaa and Teir Harfan. "Let's be clear about this.... We don't have a cessation of hostilities and we don't have a cessation of aerial bombardments," said UN spokesperson Khaled Mansour. In response to the Israeli assault, Hezbollah fired a barrage of more than 100 rockets at northern Israel, killing an Israeli man at a kibbutz and wounding 19. Mohammed al-Safadi, the Lebanese Transport and Public Works Minister, said that three weeks of Israeli bombardment had so far inflicted $2 billion of damage on his country's infrastructure. Roads and bridges have been destroyed in the south and east, and the country's only international airport and ports have been bombed. On Aug. 2, a UN aid convoy to the southern war zone bringing much-needed supplies to a country fast running out of essentials had to be canceled as Israel denied security clearance. Each convoy heading for south Lebanon must still negotiate with Israeli military authorities for permission, UN officials said. One concern for relief officials is Lebanon's dwindling fuel supplies, since the country's electricity generating plants all operate on diesel, which has been kept from entering the country. The government has said that only a few more days' supply remains. "If we run out of fuel, everything will come to a standstill," said Amer Daoudi of the World Food Program. Mona Hammam, the UN relief coordinator for Lebanon, said the damage to Lebanon's civilian infrastructure has stopped the country's economy in its tracks and raised the prospect of another long, expensive rebuilding effort for a nation still recovering from the ruinous 1975-90 civil war. Bint Jbeil's center is a forsaken panorama of destruction and devastation, nothing untouched. Charred carcasses of cars were tossed in deep craters along entire blocks that were pulverized. Two ambulances were hurled on their sides, as was a burned firetruck. "What's it going to take to bring this back?" asked Ali Hakim, an 80-year-old resident, emerging from rubble that was once his house, where 70 people had taken shelter during fierce bombing. "It's a nightmare. It's been literally taken back to zero.... Just because of a certain group of people, do the Israelis have to destroy everyone and everything?" "Everyone's leaving," said Ali Bazzi, one of those fleeing. "Bint Jbeil is all destroyed. No one can go back. The whole village is destroyed." Lebanese President Emile Lahoud lashed out at the United States, saying that if it was "serious, it can make Israel cease firing.... They are still giving the green light to Israel to continue its aggression against Lebanon." President Bush said on Aug. 1 there could be no cease-fire until Hezbollah was reined in and international borders respected, reiterating the official US stance on the conflict. "As we work with friends and allies, it's important to remember this crisis began with Hezbollah's unprovoked attacks against Israel. Israel is exercising its right to defend itself," Bush said. EU rejects cease-fire call, UN fails to act Efforts to secure an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon collapsed again on Aug. 1 after a divided European Union issued a watered-down statement and the United Nations postponed a full Security Council discussion promised by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. EU foreign ministers rejected a draft statement that would have called for an immediate cease-fire and would have branded Israel's bombardment as "a severe breach of international humanitarian law." In a semantic bow to Washington and Tel Aviv, they called instead "for an immediate cessation of hostilities to be followed by a sustainable cease-fire." Germany and four other countries joined Britain in opposing the tougher language that had been urged by France. In EU parlance, a "cessation" now appears to mean a temporary pause, whereas a "cease-fire" implies a more permanent arrangement. The United Nations has indefinitely postponed a meeting on deploying a peacekeeping force for southern Lebanon. 'No Hezbollah rockets fired from Qana' Red Cross workers and residents of Qana, where Israeli bombing killed at least 60 civilians, have said that no Hezbollah rockets were launched from the city before the Israeli air strike. The Israeli military said it bombed a building in which several people had taken shelter, more than half of them children, because their army had faced rocket fire from Qana. The Israeli military has said that Hezbollah was therefore responsible for the deaths. "There were no Hezbollah rockets fired from here," said Ali Abdel, 32, who found his 70-year-old father and 64-year-old mother both dead inside. "Anyone in this village will tell you this, because it is the truth." Masen Hashen, 30, a construction worker from Qana who lost several family members in the air strike on the shelter, also said there were no Hezbollah rockets fired from his village. "Because if they had done that now, or in the past, all of us would have left. Because we know we would be bombed." Qana had been a shelter because no rockets were being fired from there, survivors said. "When Hezbollah fires their rockets, everyone runs away because they know an Israeli bombardment will come soon," Abdel said. "That is why everyone stayed in the shelter and nearby homes, because we all thought we'd be all right since there were no Hezbollah fighters in Qana." While defending the Israeli air strike on Qana, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, told the UN Security Council that the village was "a hub for Hezbollah." Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres said that the bombing was "totally, totally [Hezbollah's] fault." Lebanese Red Cross workers said that there was no basis for these claims. "We found no evidence of Hezbollah fighters in Qana," said Kassem Shaulan, a 28-year-old medic and training manager for the Red Cross in Tyre. "When we rescue people or recover bodies from villages, we usually see rocket launchers or Hezbollah fighters if they are there, but in Qana I can say that the village was 100 percent clear of either of those." UNICEF says that 37 of the dead were children. Human Rights Watch said the Israeli air raid was the result of indiscriminate bombing which amounted to a war crime. "The Israeli military seems to consider anyone left in the area a combatant who is fair game for attack," executive director Kenneth Roth said in a statement. Israel later expressed "deep sorrow" for the attack but still insisted Hezbollah rockets were being fired from the area. Government officials also said that civilians had been warned to leave southern Lebanon. "Liars! Liars!" cried survivor Zeinab Ahmed Shalhoub from her hospital bed. "Every time there is a massacre they lie and make up an excuse." "America is sending the best of its bombs to Israel," muttered a nearby nurse, Chadi Hassan. "This is the most horrible thing I've seen," said Red Cross volunteer Mohammed Zaatar. "It's small babies. Mohammed Ismael, 38, was one of the first to arrive after the attack. "Let America know," Ismael said, "that from now on, if a kid is one-year-old, we'll teach him how to fight America and fight Israel." Fouad Siniora, Lebanon's Prime Minister, also accused Israel of war crimes and almost broke down as he told the diplomatic corps that one of the Qana victims was a one-day-old baby. Mahmoud Shalhoub, originally from Qana, and now a restaurateur in Troy, Michigan, lost 43 of his family members in the air strike. "My cousin and his entire family were murdered. Only his wife survived. How can she continue her life? This is very difficult to handle. I can't handle it," he said. Israel later claimed the bombing had been an accident caused by old maps and poor calculations. But a UN report noted many inconsistencies in the Israeli account and said it was "unlikely" the deaths were the result of technical errors. The European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, issued a statement saying that "nothing can justify" the air strike. "The Israeli people and American people did this to us," said Mohammed Hashem, 30, another survivor. Reflecting on the Qana massacre, President Bush said at the start of a children's baseball game at the White House that "today's actions remind us that friends and allies must work together for a sustainable peace, particularly for the sake of children." Qana–claimed by some to be the site of biblical Cana, where Jesus performed his first miracle, turning water into wine at a wedding–had already been the site of a high civilian death toll in 1996, when Israel shelled a UN compound full of refugees, killing 106. Red Cross repeatedly targeted Israeli warplanes are attacking the Lebanese Red Cross repeatedly, members of the medical aid group say. Shaulan, who has worked with the Lebanese Red Cross for 13 years, said his headquarters had received calls from Qana pleading for rescue assistance. "Immediately after we got the call we took three ambulances and headed to Qana," he said. "But three bombs nearly hit our first ambulance, so we turned back." They attempted to head out to Qana a second time, but again their ambulances were attacked, and they returned to base. They succeeded a third time. Mohammad Zatar, 32, who has been working for the Lebanese Red Cross in Tyre since 1993, said he had never before seen attacks on rescue workers. "As a Red Cross volunteer I need to be very clear that we are not political–we rescue anyone who needs help," he said. "Whether they are civilian, a resistance fighter or an Israeli soldier, our policy is to help any human who needs help. But the Israelis seem to be attacking us now." Zatar said that most of the bodies they were picking up were of women and children. "Sometimes we pick younger or middle-aged men, but that is uncommon." 'If you haven't left, you're Hezbollah' The attack on Qana has taken a sizeable toll of the war, but it is only one of countless lethal attacks on civilians in Lebanon. Large numbers fled the south after Israelis dropped leaflets warning of attacks. Others have been unable to leave, often because they have not found the means. The Israelis have taken that to mean that they are therefore members of Hezbollah. Israeli justice minister Haim Ramon announced on Israeli army radio on July 27 that "all those in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah." Justifying the collective punishment of people in southern Lebanon, Ramon added, "In order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air force before ground troops move in." Wounded people from southern Lebanon narrate countless instances of indiscriminate attacks by the Israeli military. Thirty-six-year-old Khuder Gazali, an ambulance driver whose arm was blown off by an Israeli rocket, said that his ambulance was hit while trying to rescue civilians whose home had just been bombed. "So then another ambulance tried to reach us to rescue us, but it too was bombed by an Apache, killing everyone inside it," he said. "Then it was a third ambulance which finally managed to rescue us." Gazali, who had shrapnel wounds all over his body, said: "This is a crime, and I want people in the West to know the Israelis do not differentiate between innocent people and fighters. They are committing acts of evil. They are attacking civilians, and they are criminals." Ghadeer Shayto, a 15-year-old girl being treated at the Beirut hospital for wounds she suffered during an Israeli rocket attack while fleeing her village Kafra near Bint Jbail, said she had seen many dead on her way to Beirut. "On our way out we passed so many civilian cars which had burnt bodies in them," she said, weeping. She said the bus in which they were leaving had hoisted white flags, but it was hit by a rocket. "My brother and cousin were killed, and the rest of us are wounded." "The overwhelming impression is that time and time and again civilians are attacked and only civilian infrastructure is targeted," said Lucy Mair, a field researcher for Human Rights Watch. "In cases of civilian casualties our investigators have studied, they have not been able to find the presence of Hezbollah rockets or launchers–only civilian targets." At the United Nations, humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland was blunt in his criticism of the civilian casualties. "There is something fundamentally wrong when there are more dead children than armed men," he said. Protesters sabotage UN headquarters in Beirut Roiled by weeks of fear and anger, Beirut erupted into enraged demonstrations and rioting at the news of the Qana assault. As the televised images of children's bodies were played and replayed on news stations, dozens of young men crashed into the United Nations building early on July 30, lashing out at an accessible symbol of international inaction. The mob hurled stones at the glass-fronted tower and tore up metal railings to use as battering rams to break down fortified doors. The men broke windows and ransacked some floors of the building, burning a US flag and raising a Hezbollah flag in its place. Riot police and Lebanese Army troops circled the area, but soon there were thousands of protesters. Many demonstrators took pains to underscore their support for Lebanon, not Hezbollah. "They're killing our children, and we cannot stay quiet any more!" said Karim Qubaisi, who held a sign that read "Bush Terrorist." He joined the crowd in shouting, "We are the people of Lebanon, not of Syria or Iran!" "This is not civilization, it is terrorism," Qubaisi said of Israel's bombardment of the country. "But we all know that even if Israel wanted to stop, the Americans will say no." Many in the crowd were refugees who had fled southern Lebanon. Some demonstrators carried signs that declared "Death to America," "The missiles come from Israel, but they're made in America" and "American-made bombs, dropped by Israeli planes, with Arab cover." "There is no UN, no conscience in this war," said Ali Mustapha, who fled his home in the south with his family last week. "What the US wants, it gets. And it wants to build a 'new Middle East' on the rubble of our homes and our children," he said, bitterly echoing the words of Condoleezza Rice during her visit to Beirut last week. Bush's bigger picture: a back door to Iran To the Bush administration, the conflict in Lebanon is more than a campaign by Israel to protect its citizens from Hezbollah missiles. Instead, it is "a moment of opportunity" for the United States–with the most important target not Hezbollah or even neighboring Syria, but distant Iran. The United States and Israel accuse Syria and Iran of supporting Hezbollah. When President Bush talks publicly about Israel's campaign in Lebanon, he often makes the point of blaming Iran. Aides say that's a reflection of what he has said in private: that Israel's battle with Hezbollah is merely part of a larger struggle between the US and Iran for influence across the Middle East. "The stakes are larger than just Lebanon," the president told reporters on July 28. "The root cause of the problem is you've got Hezbollah that is armed and willing to fire rockets into Israel; a Hezbollah... that I firmly believe is backed by Iran and encouraged by Iran." He added: "I also believe that Iran would like to exert additional influence in the region. A theocracy would like to spread its influence, using surrogates…. And so, for the sake of long-term stability, we've got to deal with this issue now." The White House has decided that the United States' strategic objective is the same as Israel's–a decisive defeat for Hezbollah and, by extension, Iran. "This is a moment of intense conflict... yet our aim is to turn it into a moment of opportunity and a chance for broader change in the region," Bush said. A day after the Qana bombing, Bush summed up the situation by describing Israel's battle with Hezbollah as part of a much wider struggle against terrorism. "The current crisis is part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East," Bush said in a speech at the Coast Guard command center in Miami. "For decades, the status quo in the Middle East permitted tyranny and terror to thrive," the president said. "And as we saw on Sept. 11, the status quo in the Middle East led to death and destruction in the United States, and it had to change." Bush described the conflict as "the calling of the 21st century." "Iran must end its financial support and supply of weapons to terrorist groups like Hezbollah," Bush demanded. "Syria must end its support for terror and respect the sovereignty of Lebanon." In concert with Bush's remarks, Olmert's deputy, Shimon Peres, said Israel's problem is with Hezbollah's Syrian and Iranian backers, not Lebanon. "Though Hezbollah is a Lebanese body, they don't serve any Lebanese purpose," he said. Their purpose, he said, is to "make Lebanon part of the sphere of influence of Iran." "The transportation of American weapons to Israel is a blatant scandal of America's full involvement in the battle," countered Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's second in command. "Instead of working on solving the continuous conflicts in the Middle East, the powerful nations are participating in intensifying and complicating the issues. This is dangerous for peace, and for future relationships between this region and these countries." Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also held the US and Britain responsible for the bloodshed in Lebanon. "The US and Britain are accomplices in all crimes committed by the occupying Zionist regime," he said in a speech. Iran's ambassador to Britain, Rasoul Movahedian denied that Iran had the power to halt the fighting. "People... think that Hezbollah is like a machine with a switch in Tehran that we can turn off. This is not the case. At the moment we do not support it financially or militarily," he insisted. On Aug. 2, British Prime Minister Tony Blair had sharp words for Iran and Syria. "We need to make it clear to Syria and Iran that there is a choice: Come into the international community and play by the same rules as the rest of us, or be confronted," he said. Meanwhile Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told his military to raise its readiness, pledging not to abandon support for Lebanese resistance against Israel. Assad called on Syria's military to "work on more preparedness and raise readiness of all units."