english & general Franchu on 04 Sep 2006 09:27 pm
Thoughts about Lebanon
I have been thinking for a while at what has happened in Lebanon two months ago and I still cannot believe that Israel will get out from it as the victim of the conflict.
I am not going to get into who is right or wrong because I understand that the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier by Hezbollah was a non justified action, but the response for such an action by the Israel military has been without any logic nor proportional to the damage Hezbollah might have inferred to Israel.
I don’t want to be frivolous, but if we simplify what has happened it would go as follows:
- Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hezbollah
- Israel responds by giving a deadline for the return
- Deadline passes without any action from Hezbollah
So far things were more or less rational, but from now on the whole situation went into an spiral of increased violence that just created more violence and pain for both sides.
- Israel bombs Beirut paying special attention to civil infrastructures such as the airport, the port is also bombed and lots of bridges are bombed, effectively isolating Lebanon from the outside world and difficulting the evacuation of civilians from the cities and possible Israeli objectives.
- Hezbollah answers by launching rockets into Israel
And you can iterate over these two items for 32 days! The balance of deaths is horrible on both sides as every life is important on its own, but the figures on the Lebanese side are specially dramatic.
Now it seems things are more quiet after a UN resolution has been passed to try to stop the conflict but nevertheless the situation in the area is very tense and I think more conflicts will arise specially after seeing how things went on this ocasion.
Nevertheless, the things that has shocked me the most is that:
- There was not an official declaration of war… so technically Israel was attacking a foreign country without being at war! It seems that in the so called war on terror everything is allowed.
- Israel had the tacit support of the US, so they could do whatever they wanted as the US holds veto power in the Security Council of the UN.
- Now that things are more quiet with an estimated damage to Lebanon of $3.6bn, several countries have donated around $1bn in a conference in Stockholm, but Israel being the sole responsible for this non-sensical destruction is not among the big donnors. It seems like Israel breaks thinngs and daddy US pays for it. Really really sad
And last but not least, when we talk about the Middle East we have the tendency to feel it distant and it is difficult to put it into perspective. Therefore, let’s make a little exercise to bring it closer to our reality.
Take any European terror organization… I will do my reasoning with ETA terror group that demands the independence of the spanish region called “Basque Country” from Spain. The conflict has lasted for more than 50 years now and they are also demaning some territories in France.
So imagine that ETA kidnaps a french soldier, or kills someone in France. And France makes the following reasoning: “They are a terrorist organization operating in Spain, then Spain is responsible for this, let’s bomb Spain… ” and starting from Madrid they bomb the airport runways, bridges around the cities and continue with undiscriminated destruction of the civil infrastructure of the country bringing the whole society 50 years into the past. In this context it seems totally crazy and stupid scenario, but if you analise it for a while it is what happened not even two months ago 3 hours by plane from any European city.
Let’s hope all this craziness is over for good and that the Middle East can have some quiet time for a while… They ALL deserve it!