The Empire Leaves Beirut to Burn (Robert Fisk)

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

by Robert Fisk
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Washington)

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0723-27.htm

<snip>

Some cities seem forever doomed. When the Crusaders arrived at Beirut on their way to Jerusalem in the 11th century, they slaughtered everyone in the city. In World War I, Ottoman Beirut suffered a terrible famine; the Turkish army had commandeered all the grain, and the Allied powers blockaded the coast. I still have some ancient postcards I bought here 30 years ago of sticklike children standing in an orphanage, naked and abandoned.

An American woman living in Beirut in 1916 described how she "passed women and children lying by the roadside with closed eyes and ghastly, pale faces. It was a common thing to find people searching the garbage heaps for orange peel, old bones or other refuse, and eating them greedily when found. Everywhere women could be seen seeking eatable weeds among the grass along the roads ... "

How does this happen to Beirut? For 30 years, I've watched this place die and rise from the grave and die again, its apartment blocks pitted with so many bullets they looked like Irish lace.

I lived here through 15 years of civil war that took 150,000 lives, and two Israeli invasions and years of Israeli bombardments that cost the lives of a further 20,000 of its people. I have seen them armless, legless, headless, knifed, bombed and splashed across the walls of houses. Yet they are a fine, educated, moral people whose generosity amazes every foreigner, whose gentleness puts any Westerner to shame, and whose suffering we almost always ignore...

[NNadir]

1. I really feel for Lebanon. War is always an atrocity.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

2. Me too, and yes it certainly is an atrocity. nt.

[Zhade]

3. HUGE K/R.

If one can read this and remain untouched by the Lebanese people's current plight, one has no heart.

EDIT: you should cross-post this in GD, if you haven't already.

[mom cat]

4. The whole article is well worth the read. Fisk usually is.

[MadMaddie]

5. It is an eye opener....Lebanon's history is one of recovery...

even after devastation...I hope they can recover from this....

[axollot]

6. War is always evil. And personally I abore it... However,

Israel has just as long of a history of suffering as Beruit, if not longer. I wish things could be solved more diplomatically - however, Israel stands alone (figuratively speaking) in the Middle East, surrounded by countries that hate them because it is run by Jews.

What is happening in the Middle East - all the countries of the Middle East is completely relative to where you are standing and reporting. There are many lovely people in any country you go to. Many civilians who are no different than civilians anywhere else in the world. Their hurt and pain are the same simply because we are all human.

The people that run these countries, the "diplomats", the heads of state, advisor's and such are those that feel peace can only be obtained by force. That is the sad reality of this world and what needs to change.

No one should be forced out of their homes/homeland through any means, especially not through violence. BUT - Do you honestly believe the Israeli's would be treated any differently if the tables were turned? Israel sadly needs to be strong and ultra violent to keep their homeland, their children and their civilians safe.

We as a nation would be no different if surrounded by hostile countries that did not want to keep peace with us. If Mexico and Canada started taking our soldiers hostage and lobbing bombs AIMED at civilian places such as markets and malls, kust as Hezbollah (and Hamas) has done to Israel that we would act any differently? We (the US) would act exactly as Israel has and considering the strength they (Israel) DO have there could have been a hell of a lot more violence. They have the power to simply wipe Lebanon off the map.

Again, I state my personal opinion that war is evil, in a perfect world all struggles of power would be resolved diplomatically. However, there is to much bitterness and hostility built up, not over a few years but THOUSANDS of years and obtaining peace in the Middle East seems like it will NEVER happen.

**Note, this rant has nothing to do with how I feel about the US invading Iraq without cause. I was against the idea the first time I heard it mentioned in late 2002.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

7. "Israel sadly needs to be...

...strong and ultra violent to keep their homeland, their children and their civilians safe."

No, sadly, Israel has, over the span of several decades, consistently CHOSEN the path of "ultra violence," and in so doing, has very often indiscriminately taken many innocent civilian lives, which not only is immoral and illegal, but also a grave mistake that can ONLY serve to keep their homeland, their children, and their own civilians, less safe well into the future.

[Amonester]

8. The Mohawks have the right to defend themselves! They sadly...

(warning: /insert_a_big_sarcasm_icon_here)



...need to be strong and ultra violent to keep their homeland, their children and their civilians safe.

They've been supplied with tons and tons of Ultra-Decomposing Lazer-Guns, Ionizer Bombs, and Paralyzing Gas by the Klingon Imperial Federation for decades, just to help them claim back hundreds of square miles of their Ancestors' Sacred Land.

But the former inhabitants (the ones the Mohawks successfully chased away ultra violently) who suddenly found themselves dispersed throughout the United States and Canada, have been so desperatate to get their counties back that they've manage to blow-up many Mohawk busses, discos, and shopping malls, killing civilian Mohawks without showing any remorse at all for years and years now. They've even commited the supreme terra-ist act of kidnapping two Warriors, not to mention them continuously firing rockets at Mohawk villages and killing innocents. How dared they??!!

So, of course, since the Klingons declared that the Mohawks have the right to defend themselves, their Warriors were ordered to go destroy both the United States and Canada, because some of their citizens and representatives support the terrorists who constantly attack the Mohawks! Now the Warriors already lazer-gunned down hundreds of innocent women and children, de-ionized thousands of bridges, and paralyzed millions of cows and dogs, while claiming they will continue to do so (with non-stop support from the Klingon Imperial Federation) until the day their two Warriors will be properly released and all terra-ist attacks against their forever expanding country will stop.

(Fiction)

But What If The Tables Had Turned Like That Instead?
And Who Would The Real Terra-Ists Be Then?

OK. Kind Of... War-Of-The-Worlds-Star-Trek-Nemesis-eesh, I admit.

(Sincere apologies to all Members of the Mohawk Nation living in settlements spread throughout New York State and Southeastern Canada. I could have chosen another way of making this small fictive story, but time is something I can't find enough of. Peace to you, Brothers and Sisters of The Mohawk Nation.)

Now: Waiting for the flames to come. (Again, I hope not.) (I'm against all wars also, and I protested in the streets against BushCo's illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq. This is not a critic of your post: the few words I took from it only inspired me to post this small 'explanation' and I thank you for posting.)

Peace

[Bhaisahab]

9. "surrounded by countries that hate them because it is run by Jews"?

Come on mate, that's not the truth and you know it. The main grouse Israel's neighbours have against it is of repressing the Palestianian people.

Peace. Always.

[Douglas Carpenter]

10. to quote Israel's leading historian on the Israel/Arab conflict

Benny Morris -- Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva

"The fear of territorial displacement and dispossession was to be the chief motor of Arab antagonism to Zionism."

Not anti-Semitism, Not hating Jews, Not hating liberal western democracy Not fear of modernity. Not scared the emancipation of woman.

"The fear of territorial displacement and dispossession"


Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001

________________

There is an offer for peace between Arab countries and Israel:

This specific offer was unanimously affirmed by the Arab League and immediately endorsed by the Palestinian leadership in March 2002. However, more or less the same plan has been offered by the Arab League and endorsed enthusiastically by the Palestinian leadership going back much, much longer:

link:

http://www.mideastweb.org/saudipeace.htm

"The Arab Peace Initiative
(translation by Reuters).

The Council of Arab States at the Summit Level at its 14th Ordinary Session, reaffirming the resolution taken in June 1996 at the Cairo Extra-Ordinary Arab Summit that a just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East is the strategic option of the Arab countries, to be achieved in accordance with international legality, and which would require a comparable commitment on the part of the Israeli government.

Having listened to the statement made by his royal highness Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, crown prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in which his highness presented his initiative calling for full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967, in implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, reaffirmed by the Madrid Conference of 1991 and the land-for-peace principle, and Israel's acceptance of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, in return for the establishment of normal relations in the context of a comprehensive peace with Israel.

Emanating from the conviction of the Arab countries that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties, the council:

1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.

2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:

I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:

I- Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region

II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.

4. Assures the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries

5. Calls upon the government of Israel and all Israelis to accept this initiative in order to safeguard the prospects for peace and stop the further shedding of blood, enabling the Arab countries and Israel to live in peace and good neighborliness and provide future generations with security, stability and prosperity

6. Invites the international community and all countries and organizations to support this initiative.

7. Requests the chairman of the summit to form a special committee composed of some of its concerned member states and the secretary general of the League of Arab States to pursue the necessary contacts to gain support for this initiative at all levels, particularly from the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States of America, the Russian Federation, the Muslim states and the European Union."
___________

And this is the offer Israel made at Camp David in 2000:

link:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1113

"The annexations and security arrangements would divide the West Bank into three disconnected cantons. In exchange for taking fertile West Bank lands that happen to contain most of the region’s scarce water aquifers, Israel offered to give up a piece of its own territory in the Negev Desert--about one-tenth the size of the land it would annex--including a former toxic waste dump.

Because of the geographic placement of Israel’s proposed West Bank annexations, Palestinians living in their new “independent state” would be forced to cross Israeli territory every time they traveled or shipped goods from one section of the West Bank to another, and Israel could close those routes at will. Israel would also retain a network of so-called “bypass roads” that would crisscross the Palestinian state while remaining sovereign Israeli territory, further dividing the West Bank.

Israel was also to have kept "security control" for an indefinite period of time over the Jordan Valley, the strip of territory that forms the border between the West Bank and neighboring Jordan. Palestine would not have free access to its own international borders with Jordan and Egypt--putting Palestinian trade, and therefore its economy, at the mercy of the Israeli military.

Had Arafat agreed to these arrangements, the Palestinians would have permanently locked in place many of the worst aspects of the very occupation they were trying to bring to an end. For at Camp David, Israel also demanded that Arafat sign an "end-of-conflict" agreement stating that the decades-old war between Israel and the Palestinians was over and waiving all further claims against Israel"

snip:"In April 2002, the countries of the Arab League--from moderate Jordan to hardline Iraq--unanimously agreed on a Saudi peace plan centering around full peace, recognition and normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders as well as a "just resolution" to the refugee issue. Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha'ath declared himself "delighted" with the plan. "The proposal constitutes the best terms of reference for our political struggle," he told the Jordan Times (3/28/02)."

read full article:

The Myth of the Generous Offer
Distorting the Camp David negotiations

By Seth Ackerman

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1113