about Lebanon
The latest Israeli-American war against Lebanon is now history. At the time of writing, and despite Israel's angry and frustrated chipping at the ceasefire, it seems unlikely that heavy fighting will recommence there soon.
The aim at the start was to dismantle Lebanon. The nation of Lebanon, not Israel in its delusions, has faced and overcome an 'existential' threat. The Hezbollah army defeated an all out attack by one of the most powerful armies on earth.
It is not a Hezbollah victory; it is a Lebanese victory. Hezbollah held up because the Lebanese state and its people held together. Given the history of Lebanon, this is remarkable. We can sense a turning point in the long war to try to impose the aims of zionism on the populations of the middle east.
Being there
Getting the truth out to the world was critical to restricting Israeli aggression and forcing a cease fire. The Israeli propaganda machine was partly countered by excellent independent journalists on the ground as well as ordinary Lebanese bloggers.
Robert Fisk has lived in lebanon for thirty years, throughout the civil war of 1975 to 1991, and wrote a book about it; 'Pity the Nation; Lebanon at war'.
He was there throughout this latest war. He made it clear that the civilian casualties and civil infrastructure damage was not due to the aim of Israeli pilots but the aims of the Israeli and American governments.
Jonathan Cook remained in his home in the Arab-Israeli community of Nazareth in northern Israel. He was able to get out, past the Israeli military censors, a sense of what the Hezbollah rocket teams were gunning for; 'something' was on the outskirts of Nazareth, 'something' abutted an Arab-Israeli high school.
We know that in that last two days before the ceasefire took effect that the Israeli ground force was not storming to the Litani river in order to finish with as much territory as possible. Israel suddenly dropped objections to the ceasefire because many of its forward units were trapped, facing surrender or death otherwise.
Lebanon
The cedar tree is on its flag; the cedar beams for Solomon's temple came from it's mountains. Its history is as old as civilisation and from its coasts, trade and civilisation spread throughout the Mediterranean.
Its mountains have been the last refuge of persecuted minorities from all over the middle east; the Maronite Christians, the Shia sect of Islam, the mysterious Druze subsect of Shiism.
Lebanon has always been a contact point between the middle east and western lands. It has long been a source of emigrants; many Lebanese have arrived in Canada and the United States in the past century.
Sultans of the Mountain
In Ottoman Turkish times, Lebanon was a wealth generating trade link into Europe. It was advantageous to the Ottoman government to let Maronite warlords control this trade, giving them the title "Sultans of the mountain".
As the Ottoman empire declined, Lebanon came under French influence. Wealthy Lebanese sent their sons to France for education and considered themselves European in culture.
The 'national covenant'
Lebanon suffered terribly in world war one. Syria and Lebanon came under direct French rule by the Sikes-Picot treaty dividing the Ottoman empire among the victors.
The Lebanese economy had been controlled by wealthy Maronite families referred to as the zaim or as zuama. French rule interfered with their power and control.
The zaim insisted that Lebanon be separated from Syria so that they would be a majority in their own country. The Druze, Sunni moslems, and especially the exploited Shia moslems, were given no share of power.
In the 1930's, some sons of the zaim became interested in fascism. Pierre Gemayal founded the Lebanese Phalange party, modelled after fascist Phalange groups in Europe.
By 1943, the zaim wanted to declare independence. Their problem was the minority groups who resented Maronite domination and wanted to reunite with Syria.
A 'compromise' was reached in which the president of Lebanon would always be Christian, the prime minister would always be Sunni, and the speaker of the house a Shia. This 'national covenant' is held up by some as an example of the wonders of 'reason' and 'compromise'. It fixed the Maronites on top and the Shia on the bottom.
Israel and Palestine
Zionism is the belief that the solution for the 'Jewish problem' in Europe, for both the Jews and the Jew haters, is for the Jews to go back to the biblical land of Palestine. This has condemned the middle east's people to untold generations of war.
Britain got the land of Palestine and it's people by Sikes-Picot. By the Balfour declaration, Britain opened up Palestine to Jewish settlement. After the second world war, the Jewish zionist settlers turned savagely on the British. In 1948 the British threw up their hands and left Palestine.
The Jews founded the state of Israel. Most Palestinians fled to avoid being killed by zionist murder squads. Israel in the 1948 war had aimed to take south Lebanon, making the Litani river its northern frontier.
Golden age
The Lebanese state worked until 1975. Outwardly it seemed a model of stability and prosperity. It accommodated the largest contingent of Palestinian refugees among the Arab states. Beirut was called 'the Paris of the middle east' and was a major seaport, banking centre, and tourist destination.
Lebanon was also the world's main supplier of Heroin during this period. Power was tightly held by a few powerful Maronite zuama families who, despite their outward sophistication, acted like a cross between mafiosi and feudal lords.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) moved their base to Beirut after their defeat by the Jordanian army in 1970. It used south Lebanon as a base to carry on its attacks on Israel. The faction ridden PLO tended to act as though it ran the country.
Civil war; beginning
In 1975 Bashir Gemayal, son of Pierre and successor as head of the Phalange movement, decided Yassir Arafat and his PLO were insulting him and launched a war with them. Soon he was losing and calling for Syrian help.
It was soon clear the Syrians would not leave and aimed to reintegrate Lebanon into Syria. A three way battle developed between Syria, the PLO, and the Phalange. Beirut was reduced to ruins.
By 1978 Israel was emboldened by its defeat and pacification of Arab states to its south and west, its new strategic alliance with the United States, and its new nuclear arsenal. It invaded south Lebanon and began a long fight with the PLO forces. It recruited an army of thugs to control the populace in its occupation zone.
civil war; climax
In 1982 Israel invaded deeper into Lebanon. It defeated the Syrian army and moved against the PLO in Beirut. They turned the city's ruins into rubble without defeating the PLO.
A United Nations force was sent in to solve Israel's dilemma. Arafat and PLO forces still loyal to him were forced to evacuate Beirut. Other PLO groups remained in Beirut but were temporarily disabled. The UN force then withdrew from Lebanon. The Palestinian refugee camps were unprotected.
Israeli army sealed off the Palestinian camps and bussed their thugs up from south Lebanon to massacre the inhabitants. Then Bashir Gemayal was assassinated by Syrian agents as he was about to sign a peace treaty between Lebanon and Israel. The UN forces hurried back to Beirut.
A new group arose among the downtrodden Shia Muslims of the south, inspired by the 1979 revolution that made Iran a Shiite theocracy. They were called Hezbollah.
They invented suicide bombing when they destroyed an Israeli army Headquarters, killing 100. Hezbollah then destroyed the headquarters of French and American U.N. troops in Lebanon, killing 300, and the U.N. withdrew.
civil war; denouement
The Israelis and their brutal Lebanese auxiliaries were steadily driven out of Lebanon by suicide bomb tactics. By 1985 they controlled a strip along the Israeli border.
The reorganised Palestinian militias became better able to defend their camps. A stalemate called 'the battle of the camps' developed. The Syrian army gradually moved back into Beirut. Peace talks began.
But in 1989 the commander of the new Lebanese army, general Aoun, refused to accept peace proposals. He set up a parallel, Maronites only government and started a battle to drive the Syrians out.
The turn of the mighty Maronites came around, to be besieged, shelled, and starved in their own quarter of Beirut. The rubble of central Beirut was pounded to dust. Aoun surrendered and went into exile.
The Taif agreement ending the war appeared to return everything to the pre war status quo. In fact the dominance of the Maronite zaim was broken.
relative peace
Under the pax Syriana, and against all expectations, the country rebuilt itself. Power was in the hands of an able Sunni prime minister, Hariri. In Beirut, the dust was bulldozed into the harbor, creating new land on which innovative planned neighborhoods were built.
Lebanon gradually regained a degree of economic prosperity. But the country was forced into the International Monetary Fund (IMF) system in order to raise loans to rebuild. It has been given the usual IMF treatment; all 'people services' in the country are reduced or eliminated. The government largely exists to collect taxes for the foreign debt holders.
Mass destitution among the lower strata of Lebanese society has been prevented mainly by Hezbollah and its special relationship with oil-rich Iran. Hezbollah is not a 'state within a state'; it is a state within a non state.
Hezbollah has kept up raids on the Israeli army, often capturing soldiers. The Israelis have traded some of the thousands of Lebanese citizens they are holding without trial in Israel, to get their soldiers back.
In 1996 Israel invaded south Lebanon again, and achieved nothing. In 2000, Hezbollah acquired wire guided missiles and used them to shoot through the window slits of Israeli watch towers, killing the soldiers inside. Israel abandon its border security strip and 'decided unilaterally' to go back across their border.
The war this time
The Americans are now defeated in Iraq. The Shia of south Iraq will create their own state, completing the Shia zone across the middle east. Syria is ruled by the minority Alawite sect, another offshoot of Shia Islam.
The Israelis are fearful of Iran's atomic bomb project. For they and the Americans, an attack on Iran is the last roll of the dice. First, they want to neutralise Iran's allies. The attack on Lebanon was to 'eliminate' Hezbollah and the threat of rocket attack on Israel when the U.S. war on Iran starts.
Popular Prime Minister Hariri had resigned in 2005 in protest over Syrian meddling in Lebanese affairs. The Syrians still assassinated him.
Huge rallies demanded an end to the pax Syriana. Crowds just as large demanded that Syria stay, as it provided protection from Israel. A consensus was reached that it would be better if Syria left, and Syria had no choice but to leave Lebanon. The U.S./ Israel axis wrongly concluded from this that public opinion in Lebanon was moving away from Hezbollah.
The latest war has reaffirmed that popular guerilla movements like Hezbollah, when well prepared in 'Viet Cong style' tunnel defences, are almost impossible to defeat. Hezbollah does not hide among the population of south Lebanon; they are the population.
Lebanon and Hezbollah
Hezbollah has seats in parliament and in the cabinet. It is respected by all sections of Lebanese society as the sole entity which refuses to be involved in sectarian conflict. Even old General Aoun has returned from exile and made his peace with Hezbollah.
Hezbollah focusses on fighting its enemy, the Israeli army, not civilians. It delivers honest administration and efficient social services within its area of control.
Before the Israeli attack, Hezbollah had been in discussions with all other elements of Lebanese society. It was willing to disband its army when the Lebanese army became a true national army, capable of defending the country. A public debate is developing in Lebanon about how to end the sectarian nature of Lebanese society.
Hezbollah is not a creature of Syria or Iran. They are allied by a common religion and common enemies. Iran wanted Hezbollah to fire on Tel Aviv with the longer range missiles it had sent, to test their effectiveness. Instead Hezbollah told Israel that it would not fire on Tel Aviv if Israel did not bomb central Beirut. It protected the Lebanese economy even when Shia neighbourhoods were being flattened.
The Shia are now the largest 'confessional', as they call religious groupings, in Lebanon. The Maronites and other Christians have been a minority for a long time. There is no longer any interest among Lebanese communities in reuniting with Syria.
Through the example of Hezbollah, Lebanese are learning the value of unity, and the futility of an 'us over everybody' attitude. This is important because of its aggressively militaristic neighbours, and because of its foreign debts which are already huge and will increase because of the need for another reconstruction.
the future
Lebanon is the greatest threat to Israel and to the Syrian rulers. It is an example of an Arab people who are learning to resist internal and external hegemony.
Israel is not economically or militarily viable without huge American assistance. When Israel loses American support, it will be time for Israelis to decide if they want to continue following their xenophobic ruling caste or if they wish to survive.
Syria is a dictatorship of a minority religious sect resented by the majority. Any serious blow; a defeat or mass bombing, is likely to bring it down. The Syrians may then experience sectarian conflict themselves, or may choose to learn from Lebanon's experiences.
The Lebanese did not blame Hezbollah for the Israeli bombing, as the U.S. and Israel expected. The U.S. is now trying to regain influence by offering reconstruction loans. But Lebanon needs grants, not interest bearing loans, and seems to be getting them from Iran and elsewhere.
The new Lebanese confidence in the future and in themselves is shown by the way the populace flooded back to their bombed villages and began rebuilding the day the cease fire came into effect.
Opinion polls showed that during this latest war, Israelis believed the pronouncements of the Hezbollah leader, sheikh Nazrallah, more than their own prime minister, Olmert.
"Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is between the sword and the block." -from 'Garden of the Prophet' by Kalil Gibran, Lebanese-American poet and author.