PEACE TO BEIRUT

From the soul of her people she makes wine

From their sweat she makes bread and jasmine

So how did it come to taste of smoke and fire?”

It is from the Lebanese singer Fayrouz

No one believes that the ceasefire which came into force a week or so ago will last. Yes the Hezbollah has gained the principle of a prisoner release, but the reason that they give for keeping their arms is the Lebanese farms that Israel grabbed from Lebanon in 1967.

There is no hint of Israel’s returning these. Yes Israel has withdrawn its troops as the UN and the Lebanese army prepare to move in. But it is easy for the UN troops to find themselves cheered in by Lebanese today and shot at tomorrow. That is what happened last time and that is what happened with British troops in Northern Ireland. No one believes that the Hezbollah can be disarmed whatever the UN Security Council, Israel or the US demands. And the 3,000 fighting men of the Hezbollah can outfight the leaky Lebanese army.

It was taken for granted that France would contribute 3,000 to 5,000 men to the UN Force going into Lebanon in response to Resolution 1701 of the Security Council. After all the resolution had been sponsored by France and the USA. With that size contribution France would be the leader of the UN Force. But by August 16 this was no longer certain, leaving Kofi Annan concerned that French reluctance could become a virus affecting other countries and menacing the entire process.

France was prepared to send a token force but was uncomfortable with more than this. And with good reason. In December 1983 after the Israeli invasion of 1982, a suicide attack against the headquarters of the French troops serving with the UN had killed 58 French soldiers. During the 1980s a number of French civilians living in Lebanon had been kidnapped, with the Hezbollah suspected of carrying out the kidnapping. Beside this France was involved in a quarrel with Syria suspected of being the one behind the assassination of Harriti in Lebanon. It was in a quarrel with Iran over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Both Syria and Iran were allies of the Hezbollah. It would be too easy to target France.

And it was no secret that with Olmert’s government’s popularity plunging, and with Beirut in ruins, Israel and Hezbollah are prepared for a truce. Only a truce.

Signed Israel

Last Monday morning as the ceasefire began Israeli airplanes dropped tracts over Beirut and over Southern Lebanon. “Lebanese, said the tracts, “the Hezbollah who serves the interest of their Iranian and Syrian masters, has brought you death and destruction. Are you ready to pay this price a second time? Know that Israel’s army of defence will come back and will act with whatever force is necessary in the event that there are any new terrorist attacks from Lebanon.” Signed The State of Israel. And as if to emphasise this threat was serious, up to the last minute before the ceasefire began at 7 am Israeli planes pounded Lebanon. Well would Fayrouz sing “so how did it come to taste of smoke and fire?”

It is difficult to know what was worse, the bombing, the State of Israel messages dropped from the sky, or the missiles in which Israeli children had scribbled with felt pens “To Lebanon from Israel” signed from Gabrielle, or to Hassan (leader of the Hezbollah) from Alexandria. These missiles perhaps killed other children. For the horror of this war has been the children killed as buildings collapsed.

It was children who died at Cana. For Lebanese, Cana is where Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding feast. For Palestinians, it is a little village near to Nazareth but Lebanese believe that theirs was the Cana. In this last war it is Cana which became the symbol of Israeli force. Perhaps it was that the bombing of Cana happened when everyone thought that there had been an agreement for a 48 hour truce. There was none. Instead, Tsahal, the Israeli combat forces, hit at 1.30 in the morning. The tall building, where women, the very elderly, above all the children, had fled for safety, crumbled. At that time of morning when it was still dark, no ambulance dared be on the road: it was dangerous enough in daylight.

And so they dug with what they could find. With anything and bare hands trying to disengage bodies from cement stones and twisted iron.

It was not the first time that Israel had thrown Cana into mourning. Only ten years before Israel had shelled the Fijian barracks of the UN Forces stationed in this part of Lebanon. Then too the shelling was, according to the Israelis, aimed at Hezbollah. Operation Grapes of Wrath Israel called it. But the shelling killed, not Hezbollah, rather it burned alive 106 civilians who had taken refuge there. One man who escaped described how he saw his wife, his children and grandchildren spread around him like dead sheep.

Birth pangs of a new Middle East?

This time no one knows exactly how many were buried alive at Cana. Perhaps they know now that there is a sort of peace. The estimate was 50 to 60, mainly children. There was outcry at this massacre. An outcry from everyone with the exception of the USA, and no UN Security Council resolution could be passed without the USA. Fouad Siniroa, Prime Minister of Lebanon, called for an immediate ceasefire. So did Chirac. So did Pope Benedict. It made no difference.

Sometime during the early part of this war, Condoleeza Rice on a visit to see for herself had declared that this was only the birth pangs of a new Middle East. Forgive many for greeting this with cynicism. George Bush had promised that invading Iraq, getting rid of Saddam, democracy would bloom in Iraq and a new era of democracy for the Middle East would be ushered in with American bombs. The rumour went around — or was it news — that the USA had given Israel the green light to pound Lebanon for a fortnight more. Pound they did.

Only a lump of coal

An Irish journalist described it; the bombed roads, the cars with a white flag tied to the antennae or to a stick in the air so that Tsahal would know that they were only refugees fleeing the south. The cars were there smashed, burned out by some Tsahal bomb. The dead were sometimes still in them.

Villagers explained to a journalist from Le Monde that the Israelis had dropped tracts telling them to leave the area. Some had left, in cars, on bicycles, on motorbikes, on anything they could find. Their bodies were found on the road calcified into burnt lumps of coal. It petrified everyone. The old, the handicapped, children, the very poor stayed. But so did those fearful of death on the road. Certain that they would be bombed or shot at, and it was as well to die at home.

There was a viciousness about the bombing. In Shiyyah the bombing one night killed 32 people. According to survivors it was sparked when a man shot at a drone (pilotless and guided by computer) which was following him. Two days after the bombing, at the funeral of the victims, two bombs were dropped near to the cemetery. In Gaziyeh in Southern Lebanon 15 people were killed in a bombing. During the funeral the next day two more buildings were bombed, adding six more deaths to the total.

Galvanising Israelis

How do you explain it? On the face of it Hezbollah had for years fired rockets into Israel, and then about six weeks ago they not only fired rockets, they crossed the border, killed four Israeli soldiers and kidnapped three. This was an attempt to finish with rockets even if they rarely killed anyone, and to finish with Hezbollah.

The question of Hezbollah rockets and kidnapped Israeli soldiers galvanised Israelis around a new government, around the Prime Minister Olmert, around the Minister of Defence Peretz. Before the last election the question had been the uncertainty of an Israel led for the first time by men without military experience. True Olmert had been Sharon’s deputy, some said shadow. But then Sharon was alive and it was Lebanon after Palestine that was key to Sharon’s reputation of military success. Peretz, the new Labour Party leader, was suspected of being peace-leaning. Sharon and then Olmert’s stated policy of final and secure borders for Israel increased Israeli anxiety as to the military quality of those successors of Sharon. These would be required to ensure the solidity of Israel’s future borders. After the incursion into Gaza in search of a kidnapped Israeli soldier, after the strong armed arrest of Hamas ministers and the destruction of Hamas and government buildings, Olmert and Peretz had shown that they could lead Israel into battle, ridding Israelis of the continuing irritation of rockets which fell in fields, dislocating life even if rarely killing. The war against the Hezbollah got unanimous support, not even the Israeli Peace Movement protested. As the war dragged on, questions began to be asked about this war in Lebanon.

Wars in 1967 or in 1973 against the combined Arab armies had been short with a few Israeli lives lost and territory gained. There had been no doubt as to the victor. This time not only was Israel losing soldiers in battle: Hezbollah’s rockets, continued at a rate of 100 a day, reached into Haifa. The writer David Grossman had some time ago, attempted to make sense of what seemed to others to be Israel’s arrogance and capacity to rush to war. The problem, Grossman had written, was that Israelis continued to see themselves as a small defenceless State surrounded by massive armies. They couldn’t understand that they were now the regional power with the best army, an aggressive air force and probably nuclear weapons, Just before the ceasefire Grossman and two other writers published an open letter in the Press doubting the wisdom of the war.

On the night before the ceasefire Grossman’s son was killed in action serving in what was considered the safest unit in the Israeli army: the unit Merkava-4. “They said it was the most secure unit in the world,” his brother Jonathan said at his graveside. “But when one is sent on a suicidal imbecile hopeless mission Merkava-4 does not matter.”

A Parliamentary enquiry

By August 16 the demands for the reasons of Israel’s poor showing — some would say defeat — were growing. A parliamentary enquiry was established. Polls showed that only 30 percent of Israelis thought that Israel had won the war. Fifty-seven percent wanted the resignation of the Minister of Defence Amir Peretz. Forty-two percent wanted the resignation of the Major-General, the General Dan Haloutz. It was another General who summed up what some Israelis were thinking: “This war,” he wrote, “should make our leaders realise that there are limits to force and the necessity to seek for a regional political agreement. Those who have a binary vision, who divide the world into the good and the bad, only know how to sow the seeds of war and how to destabilise the region.”

Many in Lebanon and in Palestine would say yes to that and dream of the days when Lebanon can make wine from the souls of her people and bread from their sweat.