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Stop carnage in Lebanon
2006-07-19 09:22:06
By Editor
It’s a pity that human beings have very short memories. Or that they have become very unsympathetic to human suffering, if not insensitive.
For nearly 15 years since mid-70s, Lebanon, a tiny Middle East nation was in a bitter civil war.
Truly, it was the bitterest civil conflict that very few people ever thought that peace would one day see the light of the day in that country – because it was a religious conflict.
The Middle East conflict pitted Christians against Muslims. Underhand politics serving big power interests played a significant role in that war.
However, peace was ultimately achieved in 1989 following the Taif Agreement, brokered by the efforts of the Arab League of which Lebanon is a member.
Syria, another Arab League country, was given the mandate by the Arab League of peace-keeping in Lebanon.
Its troops performed the task decisively such that harmony returned and the country started to reconstruct. Beirut, the capital, started regaining its lost status as the financial hub of the Middle East.
Syria was in the end viewed by some big powers as an occupying force in Lebanon and was accused of wanting to destabilize the country.
It obediently removed its forces from the country in 2003 just about the time some super powers were engaged in forceful occupation of another country in the region - Iraq. Lest we forget, another armed occupier (of other people’s lands), namely Israel has been around for over 50 years. These are mere historical facts.
However, all that was achieved in Lebanon is going down the drain because big powers politics is again raising its ugly head. For the past one week, the country has been shelled by Israel jets and its nearby naval ships.
Of course, as is always in such incidents, reasons are quickly advanced to justify the bloodletting, mostly of innocent people that include women and children.
The reason this time around is that the Palestinians, the majority of whom, for over two generations now have been living as refugees in camps in Southern Lebanon, Gaza, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, have captured an Israeli soldier in Gaza. Israel wants the soldier back, or else…
Perhaps the world has forgotten that hundreds of Palestinian freedom fighters have been captured by Israel forces from Gaza, Southern Lebanon and elsewhere in the occupied Palestinian territories and are in Israeli jails.
Israel air strikes against Lebanon is therefore only part of the whole problem, perhaps it may be a reminder to the world that it should do something in helping to solve it.
Lebanon is being bombed because it hosts thousands of Palestinian refugees who live in camps and who have organised a resistance movement called Hizbollah to fight for the land that was taken from them by Israel in 1948.
However, it’s encouraging to see that moves are underway to stop the ongoing bloodletting.
France, a western country, appears to have broken ranks from the stand of the mainstream western powers with its Prime Minister, Dominique Vellapin stating that his country will defend Lebanon’s sovereignty.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has proposed for a UN peace-keeping force in southern Lebanon to act as a buffer zone between Israeli forces and those of the Palestinians under Hizbollah.
However the UN move, if it materializes, will only be of short term measure, as the core issue, that of having Palestinians have their own land will not have been solved.
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