UNIFIL commander: Israel violating 1701

Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Aug 15, 2008

Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Maj.-Gen. Claudio Graziano on Thursday accused Israel of violating UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that brought an end to the Second Lebanon War.

During a press conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Graziano cited the IAF forays over Lebanon and the village of Ghajar, which he called "a permanent violation of 1701" and "a permanent area under occupation."

A further violation, according to Graziano, was Israel's failure to provide maps of all the locations where it dropped cluster bombs during the 2006 war.

In contrast, he said that the UN enjoyed excellent cooperation with Hizbullah and with the local Lebanese people.

"At this moment Hizbullah is one of [the] parties that agrees with 1701," he stressed.

Graziano asserted that apart from UN troops, Lebanese soldiers and hunters, no one was armed south of the Litani River.

"We have seen hunters, we saw somebody moving with one weapon and he was arrested, but we never met anybody [else] moving with weapons," he said.

He conceded that his soldiers were not trying to prevent weapons smuggling from Syria as demanded by the UNSC because the Lebanese government had not requested such action.

The UNIFIL commander emphasized that Israel's numerous allegations regarding violations of the UN resolution were being investigated.

Israeli in Lebanon under investigation in muder case and on espionage charges

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 22/09/2007
By Yoav Stern,

An dual citizen of Israel and Germany has been arrested in Lebanon on charges of espionage, a Lebanese judicial source said on Saturday. Security officials said the man, Daniel Sharon, has been handed over to military intelligence for questioning. According to Lebanese publication Al-Akhbar Wa-Sapir, Sharon was arrested on Thursday during an investigation into the murder of a Lebanese citizen.

During questioning, it emerged that Sharon had visited Lebanon 11 times on his German passport over the last two years. He denied allegations he was on an espionage mission and said he was in Lebanon for leisure purposes, according to the source.

Media reports said that police in the Merje area, a hotbed of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement in Beirut's southern suburbs, were investigating the killing of Moussa al-Shalaani when the probe led them to Sharon.

Al-Shalaani had been shot with a gun belonging to a security officer who had been his roommate. The roommate was summoned for questioning, and maintained that he had lost his gun.

The roommate also said that during the time of the murder, he had been with his German friend who was residing at the Four Points Sheraton hotel in Beirut's luxurious Verdun neighbourhood.

A hotel employee told the police that Sharon had paid him to not write his full name on any documents.

"His conflicting testimonies led the authorities to arrest him, and further investigations are underway in a murder case and espionage," the judicial source said.

"He is denying charges of espionage and insists that he is gay and he likes to have sexual relations with Lebanese men and that is why his visits to Lebanon were frequent," the source said.

"But further investigations into the case showed that Sharon had a friend in the Lebanese security offices who used to facilitate his entries to Lebanon and with the help of a hotel clerk he managed to hide his real name," the source added.

A Lebanese security agent was also held for questioning about his relations with the Israeli man after the two maintained contacts through the Internet, said officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Lebanon forbids any contacts or dealings with Israel.

Lebanon's General Prosecutor Saeed Mirza said investigations were underway into how the story was leaked to the press.

During questioning, it emerged that Sharon is well-versed regarding Lebanon, speaks Arabic well and knows how to use he language's many idioms. According to reports, Sharon learned Arabic in the United Arab Emirates from a teacher of Bahraini citizenship. The Lebanese media reported that Sharon kept his cool during questioning and denied accusations that he was a spy.

The media also reported that Sharon had visited Lebanon 11 times since 2005, once immediately prior to the Second Lebanon War with Israel last summer. His last visit was four days prior to his arrest, and he was scheduled to leave on the day of his arrest.

It later emerged that Sharon had sent his security officer friend on trips abroad on several occasions, and in exchange the man helped Sharon within Lebanon.

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It does beg to question who is stiring up trouble in Lebanon and who was behind the recent assassinations (or the finiancing of it).

Recalled: The Sabra Shatila Massacre

Well, I waited a few days for the world media to recall the massacre that took place at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps 25 years ago, and you guessed it - little or no coverage at all. So I had to rely on the Arab media...

Sabra Shatila recalled

Taken from Al-Jazeera news Agency, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2007
By Iman Azzi in Beirut, Lebanon

Twenty-five years after surviving the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, Jamila Khalife still mourns family members who were killed at the hands of Phalangist Lebanese forces.




Lebanon is marking the 25th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre [AFP]

Her life since then, she says, has been a daily reminder of the horrors she witnessed as a 16-year-old Palestinian refugee from Jaffa living in the camps at the height of the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war.

"This was my father," said Khalife, pointing to a black and white photo of a man lying face down in a narrow street.

"They shot him in the head."

Three of her relatives were also killed.

"After it was over, on the way to find my mother at the nearby hospital, I saw a woman on the street, her intestines were spilling out. She died holding her baby," Khalife recounted as her own daughter, Ghram (Arabic for Love), sat on her lap.


Dusk massacre
In September 1982, Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) fighters, evacuated from their Beirut barracks and the Israeli army, surrounded the refugee camps.


About 2,000 civilians were killed over the course of three days [AFP]

On the afternoon of September 16, Israeli forces allowed members of the Lebanese Forces (LF) - an offshoot of the Phalange party - into the camps allegedly to search for suspects in the slaying of Bashir Gemayel, then Lebanese president.



Gemayel, who also headed the LF, had been killed by a car bomb outside his office a day earlier, angering many of his supporters and plunging war-torn Lebanon into further chaos. Palestinian forces quickly distanced themselves from Gemayel's death, but it did not save the camps from reprisals.

Khalife says she remembers seeing both Israelis and Phalange party members inside the camps that day.

"The Israelis were wearing military uniforms. The Phalange wore jeans, normal clothes and military arm bands. They swore at us in Lebanese Arabic," she said.

Most aid organisations working in the camps in 1982 say around 2,000 civilians were killed over the course of three days.

Feigning death
Nabil Mohammad, a Palestinian refugee who lost all but one of his six siblings, said: "The Israeli military were bombing the camps and the worst case scenario was that the Israelis would come in and collect the young men so my uncle sent me away, thinking it would be safer."

Mohammad, his cousin and his cousin's wife dodged snipers as they made their way to a retirement home where his aunt worked. When the fighting had subsided and they returned to their home, they discovered that five of his siblings and his mother had been killed.

His younger brother Munir survived by feigning his death a few feet away from his mother's body.

Mohammad was only 19 when the killings took place, but every year since then he tries to keep the memories of his loved ones alive by returning to the camps, now home to 45,000 Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians.

He remains bitter that fellow Arabs would commit what he called atrocities.

Avenging Gemayel?
But a former LF fighter, who spoke to Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity, insisted that the Israeli military, and not the Lebanese, should shoulder full responsibility for the killings.

He said: "After Bashir Gemayel was killed, Lebanon was at a boiling state. We were angry, we were lost. We knew that something was going to happen but didn't know what."

He admitted that the LF was angered by the assassination of Gemayel but had no idea what was planned at Sabra and Shatila. The soldier, who began fighting with the LF when he was 13 in 1979, said his unit had been confined to barracks at the Beirut airport and not allowed to leave after Gemayel's murder until they were deployed around Sabra and Shatila.

"It was not the LF [who were responsible for the killings]. It was the Israeli soldiers who went inside those camps," he said.

Where is Sabra and Shatila?

But 25 years later, some Lebanese are unfamiliar with the events of Sabra and Shatila.

Elias, 20, said he had never heard of Sabra and Shatila.

"Where are Sabra and Shatila?" he asked turning to his friend. "Iraq? They never mentioned it in school."

George Hanna, 43, a resident of East Beirut, said: "It was between Christians and Palestinians during the war. I've never been there. What would I do there if I went?

"I never gave Sabra and Shatila any thought."




A quarter of a century later, some Lebanese are still unfamiliar with the massacre [AFP]

Nevertheless, Palestinians in Lebanon are determined to keep the history of the camps alive, at least for their community.

Kassem Aina, a co-ordinator for the 'Never forget Sabra and Shatila' campaign, told Al Jazeera: "We tell the children not only about the massacre of Sabra and Shatila. We tell them about all massacres from Deir Yassin to Tel Zaatar to Sabra and Shatila. I feel sad we have so many massacres in our history."

Never forget Sabra and Shatila was founded by Stefano Chiarini, an Italian journalist and activist, who passed away last February.

To mark the 25th anniversary this year, delegations from Italy, France, Spain and other nations will join Palestinian and Lebanese memorials planned for the week.

Seeking justice
The memorials mark the events at the camps, but also push for bringing perpetrators to justice.
To this day, there has been no direct accountability for the killings.

Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister, was forced to resign as defence minister after he was found both "indirectly" and "personally" responsible by the 1982 Kahane Commission of inquiry which investigated Israeli culpability in Sabra and Shatila.

LF commander Elie Hobeika, who led the incursion into the camps, received amnesty like all militia leaders following the Lebanese civil war, and went on to become a member of parliament.
He claimed he had evidence that would prove his innocence and directly implicate the Israelis, but was killed one month before he was to testify against Sharon in a case brought by camp survivors in Belgium in 2001.

This weekend, the streets of Sabra and Shatila remain densely packed with people struggling to live normally at the scene of one of Lebanon's worst modern tragedies.

Legal resolution may arrive later but on this year's anniversary the families of the victims are working to balance memories of their loved ones with the ability to move beyond the tragedy.
"You can forgive but you can never forget," said Aina.

Amnesty Faults Israel, Lebanon On War

Taken from Yahoo News, Wed Jul 11
By Associated Press

JERUSALEM - Neither Israel nor Lebanon has investigated allegations of war crimes from last year's conflict between the Jewish state and Hezbollah guerillas, Amnesty International charged Thursday.

The human rights group has harshly criticized the Hezbollah militant movement for firing nearly 4,000 rockets at Israeli cities and towns, and Israel for bombing civilian areas and using cluster bombs in south Lebanon.

Amnesty said more than 1,000 civilians were killed in the 34-day war. Since then, 24 more people have been killed in south Lebanon by explosions of cluster munitions fired by Israel during the war, the group said in a statement.

"Without a full, impartial U.N.-led inquiry that includes provision for reparations to the victims, there is a real danger of history repeating itself," warned Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa program.

"The Security Council should declare and enforce an arms embargo on both Israel and Hezbollah until effective mechanisms are in place to ensure that weapons will not be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law," Smart said.

In response, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said, "The Israeli system of justice is independent, professional and transparent. Allegations of inappropriate behavior by Israeli military personal have been thoroughly investigated."

No comment was immediately available from the Lebanese government.

Amnesty urged Israel to turn over maps of areas targeted with cluster bombs in south Lebanon, and it called on Hezbollah to provide information about the two Israeli soldiers it captured a year ago in a cross-border raid, setting off the war.

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Israel needs to provid ethe maps to the Cluster boms it planted in the Lebanon. Over time these bombs get embedded into the soil and slowly move, and can get lost. Cluster bombs from the first Lebanon war are still killing innocent children who mistake them for toys. Last year a few Israeli soldiers got killed in the borders of Lebanon by cluster bombs planted by the IDF, this was due to them not properly reading the maps. Israel is amongst a few countries that withdrew from a treaty to stop using cluste bombs. How many more innocent people need to be killed? With regards to the Lebanon - it needs to try and address the issues regarding the two captured soldiers, whom should be rightfully released, but at the same time Isreal needs to release thousands of Lebanese people it captured (whilst occupying Lebanon in the 1980's). These pople are innocent and were abducted for defending their countries, some were abducted for no apparent reason other than being in the way of the IDF. They possess no security threat and have no access to a fair trial, in fact Israel has not given permission to human rights agencies to assess their condition or speak to them. The UN needs to take greater action instead of flapping around like an ostrich with its hand stuck in the sand.

UN Chief Raps IAF Lebanon Overflights

In Washington, former U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton stated that the US encouraged Isreal to continue it's bombing of Lebanon to eliminate Hezbollah. He defended the war with Hezbollah as a legitimate act of self-defense. At the same time Israeli Vice-Premier Shimon Peres told a panel investigating the government's handling of last year's war in Lebanon that Israel' decision to invade was a mistake and the military was unprepared, according to testimony made public. Peres also said Hezbollah did a better job of handling media coverage than the Israelis did. The 15-page transcript of his appearance before the commission last November has large swathes deleted by Israel's military censors on security grounds, but nevertheless provides insights into the veteran statesman's thinking. "The greatest mistake is the very fact of war," he told the commission. "If it had been up to me, I would not have gone into this war." Israel has now given a name to the failed war in the Lebanon. It has now been called 'Second Lebanon War'. Other contenders for the name included "Operation Peace of the Galilee 2" and "The Northern War." The war has long been over, it is time to discuss peace but this still happens...

Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Mar. 17, 2007
By YAAKOV KATZ
Herb Keinon and AP contributed to this report

Citing continued violations of the Blue Line international border between Israel and Lebanon, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon slammed Israel in a report he submitted to the Security Council last week on the implementation of Resolution 1701 that ended the Lebanon war last summer.

Contradicting claims by high-ranking IAF officers that Israel had dramatically reduced the number of flights over Lebanon, Ban claimed the opposite saying that UNIFIL had reported an increase in overflights in February and March. On some days, the report claimed, Israel violated Lebanese airspace more than 10 times with flights by fighter jets, intelligence-gathering planes and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

In response, a high-ranking IAF officer told The Jerusalem Post that Israel planned to continue flying over Lebanon until the Lebanese fully implemented 1701, which included the return of abducted reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, and put an end to the arms smuggling to Hizbullah across the Syrian border.

Ban noted reports by UNIFIL of increased tensions between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and IDF along the Blue Line, citing a number of cases in which soldiers from both militaries pointed their weapons at one another.

Ban also took Israel to task on its repeated refusal to transfer data related to the use of cluster bombs by the IDF during the Lebanon war. The report revealed the extent of the use of cluster bombs, claiming that Israel had dropped them on 854 targets covering more than 34 million square meters.

According to the report, each strike location contains hundreds of individual bomblets or sub-munitions and as of February 22, the bomblets have caused 22 civilian deaths and 159 injuries.

"I call on the government of Israel, once again, to review its policy of overflights through Lebanese airspace, which are a continuing violation of Resolution 1701 (2006), and most urgently to provide the UN with all information on cluster munitions fired during the 2006 conflict," Ban wrote in the report.

In response, a senior government official said that Israel's use of cluster bombs was in "complete compliance with international law" and came in the face of "overwhelming attacks" against Israeli civilian targets.

Regarding Israeli claims that Syria was smuggling weapons into Lebanon, Ban suggested that Security Council members weigh supporting an "independent assessment mission to consider the monitoring of the border."

He said the authentication of detailed information from Israel about alleged breaches of the arms embargo across the Lebanese-Syrian border would require independent military assessment.

In the report, Ban warned that without progress on "core issues" including the abducted soldiers and Lebanese prisoners as well as the disputed Sheba Farms and Israeli overflights, "progress on 1701 could be severely tested in the months to come."

Ban said he was nonetheless pleased that the overall commitment of the governments of Israel and Lebanon to the resolution "remains strong."

Israel: Olmert Primed For War Before A Pretext Came

At last Prime Minister Olmert admits what we all have known...

Taken from The Sydney Morning Heraldm March 10, 2007
By Conal Urquhart in Tel Aviv

PREPARATIONS for Israel's war in Lebanon last July were drawn up at least four months before two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah in July, the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has admitted.

His submission to a commission of inquiry, leaked on Thursday, contradicted the impression at the time that Israel had been provoked into a battle for which it was ill-prepared.

Mr Olmert told the Winograd commission, a panel of judges investigating Israel's perceived defeat in the 34-day war, that he first discussed the possibility of war in January last year and asked to see military plans in March.

According to the Ha'aretz daily, which obtained details of Mr Olmert's testimony, the Prime Minister chose a strategy of air attacks on Lebanon and a limited ground operation to be implemented in the event of an abduction by Hezbollah, which had made several attempts to capture Israeli soldiers on the border since Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000.

Israeli commentators believed that Mr Olmert and his Defence Minister, Amir Peretz, took the opportunity of the kidnapping to show they could manage a war in spite of their limited military experience. But the outcome seemed to highlight their lack of experience, as well as deficiencies in Israel's military planning.

The commission's interim report is expected by the end of the month. Although the commission was appointed by the Government, Mr Olmert's continuation in office would be unlikely if its report criticises him.

One political analyst, Shmuel Sandler, said it seemed that people close to Mr Olmert had leaked his submission, made on February 1, in an attempt to increase his popularity. In an opinion poll published this week, only 3 per cent of Israeli voters said they would vote for Mr Olmert, while 72 per cent said he should resign.

Zalman Shoval, of the Likud party, said Mr Olmert's testimony cast his decisions in a worse light than before. "If he had prepared plans, then to any objective commentator, this makes the situation worse," he said.

"Why were the plans not carried out? It all also places a darker complexion on his decision to expand ground operations, which led to the loss of 33 more Israeli lives."

On July 12 Hezbollah fighters abducted Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, Israeli reservists, in an incident on the Israel-Lebanon border. Israel then launched air strikes on southern Lebanon before attacking other areas. Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into Israel.

Mr Olmert said at the time that Israel went to war to force the return of the soldiers, eliminate Hezbollah's rocket supplies and push the militia north of the Litani River in southern Lebanon.

Israeli forces launched several ground operations which met strong resistance. It was difficult to move supplies and troops around the battlefield because of Hezbollah's anti-tank weapons.
After a final offensive in which Israel lost 33 soldiers, the Government agreed on a ceasefire without having achieved its objectives. In the fighting, 1200 Lebanese and 158 Israelis were killed. Of the dead almost 1000 Lebanese and 41 Israelis were civilians.