Remnants from the 2006 war (5)

The other day I was walking by the beach and it was so saddening to see thick slicks of fuel oil polluting the coast with fish and see life dead soaked in a black viscous material. In addition to all the human losses and the destruction of infrastructure and buildings and roads, Israel caused a major environmental catastrophe by targeting a power plant by the sea in Jiyye, 30 Km away from Beirut. Now one third of the coast is polluted with more than 10,000 tons of fuel oil and we are simply helpless facing this biggest environmental crisis on the East coast of the Mediterranean.

People living outside the circle of a war cannot grasp its profound impact on humans. The numerous small and big tragedies generated lead me to one strong desire that of seeing an end to hostilities IMMEDIATELY.

For those who read my first piece of writing, I said that Hizbullah started the first sparkle of this war but I repeat it again and again the disproportionate response and the tragic course of events makes it a moral responsibility on people and governments around the world to stop this ongoing absurdity.

I believe that the United States and Israel have the biggest duty with this respect be it in the name of civilization and Human Rights they continuously lecture us on.

If we carefully study the course of events on the 12th of July, the starting date of the conflict, we see that Hizbullah’s operation of kidnapping the two Israeli soldiers was very much contained in the sense that they clearly declared their purpose was to free four Lebanese citizens who had been held in Israeli jails for a very long time.

On that same day, Hizbullah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah eloquently declared that he did not want to kill any Israeli civilians and that he only wanted to swap prisoners.

Of course there were underlying regional tactics in the operation - I am not trying to portray a naïf picture here - Israel’s violent response, however, did not nothing but confirm that it had premeditated objectives to wage its war.

Hizbullah’s launching rockets on northern Israel only came in retaliation to Israel’s systematic destruction of infrastructure and civilians.

Can we really talk here about self-defense? Israel could have dealt with Hizbullah’s operation in a military way sparing the death of civilian casualties; instead, it is continuing its war calling the hundreds of civilians dying “collateral damage.”

The western world saw the 12th of July as the beginning of provocation by Hizbullah but nobody there was told really about the countless violations of the Lebanese air by Israel in the past years. Also, just few weeks before the war started, a network of Israeli spies carrying targeted killings in Lebanon was dismantled, isn’t this provocation?

What is more tragic is that Israel is destroying Lebanon for nothing really. Hizbullah cannot be routed out by a military operation. Hizbullah is not an obscure group hiding in caves. It is a political party with a very big popular base. They have seats in Parliament. They fund many social projects, they operate schools and hospitals.

And the Lebanese had been debating about the disarmament of Hizbullah in an atmosphere of tolerance and freedom of speech. What was going on is one of the most vibrant democratic processes in the whole Arab region. Since Lebanon is a democracy, it was not simply possible for the majority to disarm Hizbullah by force!

This unique democratic model is now threatened under Israeli bombs. Even those who were the fiercest political opponents to Hizbullah’s arms see the current course of events as disastrously leading away from any hope for the group’s disbanding.

*This entry was published in a blog on Beirut during the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel published by the website of the german newspaper, Die Zeit.