An American who taught in Lebanon reviews the current disaster
The cost of Israel’s attack on Lebanon, to the Lebanese people and to America, is much greater than the president or the media seem to understand.
My wife and I worked as educators in Lebanon from 2002 to 2004, and this past May we spent a week with our friends, colleagues, and former students in Beirut, prior to the current crisis.
In emails and phone calls, my friends are now calling desperately for help and are describing a city and countryside I have grown to love brought to its knees. The situation that is now nearly apocalyptic for the Lebanese people threatens to become apocalyptic for the entire region and possibly the entire planet.
The lighthouse on the Mediterranean coast, in whose shadow I dined on Arabic mezze and tea just a few weeks ago, and the residential community around it, has been targeted by Israeli bombs. The Beqa’a Valley orchard where my wife and I gathered mulberries in 2004 has been destroyed. The girl’s school behind our apartment, where scarved and un-scarved adolescents woke me each Saturday with their basketball games and cheers down below, is now filled with refugees from the South. The boulevards of south Beirut, thickly populated with Shi’as who had been driven from the South by the first Israeli invasion of 1978, is now a scene of flattened apartments and carnage. Many people are living in the streets and parks without water and other necessities. Our friends hide in the mountains, wondering how long food supplies may last and dreading that the social order in the cities below may collapse in a storm of looting and panic. An economy crawling back after a fratricidal civil war, an oppressive Israeli occupation, and a recent series of political assassinations is now devastated and at a standstill. A thousand bonds of friendship and interdependence fostered by American educators, businesspeople, aid workers, NGO representatives, and tourists in a land where generous hospitality is the common language, has been shattered by American bombs and rockets delivered by Israeli jets.
As of this writing, at least 230 Lebanese have been killed, almost all civilians, while Israel has suffered 31 dead, about half of them civilians. Hundreds of thousands are displaced. The economic infrastructure—roads, bridges, waterworks, power plants, airports, and seaports—has been systematically devastated. 25,000 Americans, along with tens of thousand of other foreigners, languish in harm’s way, many clamoring to escape. Given the true scope of the catastrophe and the danger it provides to the world, it is no exaggeration to say that Israel has wildly and disproportionately reacted to Hezbollah’s recent hostage taking.
Furthermore, Israel’s objective of smashing Hezbollah, of isolating it from the rest of the country, or of forcing it to disarm is doomed and can only lead to a greater disaster for all. Hezbollah is highly respected by most Lebanese, and revered by many, since only Hezbollah was capable of whittling away at the hated Israeli occupation that lasted from 1978 to 2000. Hezbollah also fills a social vacuum, providing, with Syrian and Iranian assistance, necessary social services among the disadvantaged Shi’a population in a country dominated by neoliberal economic policies and afflicted with clientelism and corruption. Hezbollah has a twenty-four year history in Lebanon, born as an Iranian-inspired Shi’a militia that fought the Israelis and evolved into an established political party with a broad spectrum of allies and a reputation for honest governance.
There are many distinct world views represented among the Lebanese, largely along religious lines, but that would be an oversimplification. Some oppose Hezbollah vehemently. Some support the Iraq war. Some support the Syrian influence, some oppose, and some say the Syrians have left, so Syria is a non-issue. Some believe European colonialism brought parliamentary democracy to the benighted Arab world. Some revere Generalissimo Franco and the Crusaders. Some revere Ayatolla Khomeini. Some operated under Israeli tutelage when they massacred the Palestinians of the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, nestled in the Shi’a neighborhoods of south Beirut. But these disparate views obscure the fact that most are good people, dedicated to their families, struggling with life’s vicissitudes in their individual ways, vulnerable as human beings to terror and hysteria, but open to a reasonable resolution of their conflicts if it respects their dignity and rights. And in spite of their differences, right now they are all victims of Israeli violence and an American President who has abandoned his responsibility to use diplomacy to restore peace. When American forces were sent to Beirut in 1983 by an administration ignorant of Lebanese realities, 241 marines, soldiers, and sailors paid the price. Today, the price may be immensely higher.
The only other insight I can provide given our recent visit is regarding Hezbollah’s motivation for a violent and irresponsible escalation for which all Lebanese are paying a bloody price. The role of Iran or Syria in prodding Hezbollah to raise the stakes with a cross-border action can only be speculated. It was clear as we rode through the Shi’a neighborhoods in the south of Beirut in late May of this year that Hezbollah was in a heightened state of solidarity with the embargoed Hamas-led government in Palestine. Hezbollah activists with their yellow and green flags collected funds for Palestine at stoplights. Furthermore, Hezbollah has attempted at least two similar incursions, one in November of 2005 and one that failed a few months ago with the lost of three Hezbollah soldiers. Israel’s response at that time was no more than the tit-for-tat dance that has gone on for years with its tacit limits and only occasional fatalities, but that was before Israel’s current punitive expedition into Gaza. Robert Fisk, the premier journalist writing for the British Independent—generally unflinching in reporting unpleasant truths about Israeli policy and not given to speculation—puts much of the blame on Syria and its leader Bashar Assad, a pale shadow of his ruthless but wiser father, Hafez. Unfortunately, the U. S. has not had open channels of communication with Syria since the extraordinary rendition of Maher Arar, the Canadian national seized in New York by American officials and abused for a year in a Syrian grave-sized dungeon. There are a number of issues afflicting Lebanon and motivating Hezbollah that are generally below the American radar screen, but these must be discussed in any negotiations leading to a lasting settlement: remaining hostages, hundreds of Lebanese missing since the Israeli occupation, 140,000 Israeli landmines left in Lebanon, Litani River water rights, Israeli overflights by supersonic jets, and disputed territories such as the Sheba’a Farms.
We must demand that President Bush join the call for an unconditional cease-fire between Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel. If any truce or cease-fire is to lead to peace, negotiations that follow should be open to all outstanding issues. If there is to be a multinational force inserted in southern Lebanon, it must be acceptable to the Lebanese. Of course, any ultimate resolution would include Israel’s compliance with U. N. resolution 242, a return to its 1967 borders, and its acceptance of the government of Palestine, but this crisis transcends competing viewpoints about that root conflict.
So, my friends, write, march, plead and demand. Recently Representative Denise Kucinich introduced H. Con. Res. 450, calling on the president to promote and immediate, unconditional cease-fire. You can urge your representative to sign on at http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=8919726&type=CO. To reiterate and suggest talking points:
- The catastrophe to the Lebanese People is incalculable: hundreds killed, hundreds of thousands displaced, the economy devastated, and society on the verge of chaos.
- Tens of thousands of Americans and other foreign nationals are in grave danger of Israeli bombs, Lebanese retaliation, and social chaos.
- The country is rapidly approaching a point of no return, and the world cannot wait for the conflict to play itself out.
- American influence, the development of democracy, and respect for human rights are likely to be the victims of Israel’s actions.
- Israel’s use of American weapons to inflict almost entirely civilian casualties and to destroy the civilian infrastructure violates Section 4 of the (U.S.) Arms Export Control Act and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
- The region and the world are endangered by a spreading conflict.
- Hezbollah is too entrenched, too popular, and too well-armed to be crushed without a totally unacceptable loss of life on all sides.
- Hezbollah has a stake in the democratic and peaceful development of Lebanon.
- Lebanese society is too complex for simplistic attempts at re-engineering by violence.
- The Lebanese people can resolve their differences with support, not interference by their neighbors.
- Given the scale of the disaster and the danger to the world, the Israeli reaction to Hezbollah’s hostage taking is wildly disproportionate and irresponsible.
- President Bush must support a cease-fire without conditions for either side. Hezbollah stops its missile attacks on Israel and Israel ends all missile attacks, shelling, and bombing of Lebanon.
Diplomacy and negotiations are superior to missiles and bombs.
I have left out volumes here about the current conflict that I believe the reader can find elsewhere, especially concerning the whole history and analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is of course the context for almost everything in the Middle East, not to mention the complicated history of Lebanon. However, if you wish to delve deeper into the subject, there is a subscription information service designed for journalists and other professionals for 12 bucks a month, very up to date and objective at www.lebanonwire.com.
Sala’am, Paix, Shalom
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