Cloudy with a chance of rockets

The weather in has been cloudy during the past couple of days, and we've been all wondering what these clouds are going to bring, is it a new government? Probably not as Ex-designated prime minister Saad Hariri has quit trying to form a government, be it of unity or anything else.

On the other side of the country, this afternoon 3 rockets were fired from Kleile village (Tyr) towards Israel, and only minutes later Israel has responded.

Words on the virtual street (twitter) say there is a possibility of an up-coming war. However this is not only the result of what happened today in the skies of South Lebanon, but a dish that has been in the process of cooking for a while now, Sheikh Nasrallah says something here, Israel responds with more sever words, and so on.

Lebanese people may joke about it and say: "At least the summer is over, tourists have left, the economy better, what better time for war then now!" But deep inside every Lebanese is scared from another war. I personally am not looking forward for another one. The first thoughts on our minds are the checklist that every Lebanese resident has memorized for ever and it's about storing food, filling up the cars with gaz, saving money, withdrawing as much cash as you can...

Most probably nothing will happen this weekend, nothing will happen before Ramadan month is over at least. However all this makes you wonder, why do rockets get fired from South Lebanon from time to time?

Ehtnic cleansing of the Palestinians, who to blame

For a good round up and detailed background that will help understand the current situation between Israel and Gaza, I recommend reading this article "Who to blame for this Ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians" by my fellow blogger Marxist From Lebanon. Click here to read the article.

Peace in Lebanon, or Hell on Earth

"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding." Albert Einstein (1979-1955)

This is actually the proverb that I have had as "Quote of the week" for the past year I think, and everytime I decide to put a new proverb, I just can't find anything that describes our needs in Lebanon better.

As simple and straight to the point this quote is, as perfect as it describes what's happening now.

While listening to Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the general secretary of Hezbollah political party, and military leader of the Lebanese Islamic resistence against any foreign insurgence, i.e. ISRAEL, I can't help but think how much this person is logical and convincing, nevertheless, this man's press conference had some flaws in it.

He did say, that anyone who tries to put his hands on Hezbollah's weapons, will be answered by the weapons, even if it is his dad. Hezbollah have a firm belief that Israel are their ennemies and are trying with the US to take over, more like, erase the Middle East. They strongly believe that they should and will react against their own brothers and sisters for the greater goal. I sometimes see where they are coming from, but I am also torn to think and ask myself: "Do I want to be terrorized by a very strong and powerful group". This is their beliefs, as we say in Lebanese "Yesteflo", this is their own war, and they are willing to kill and cause much distress, chaos and death in their own country just so they can achieve their own goal, which I don't necessarily believe is righteous myself. But if all your life you have been raised to think something, do you think anyone can come and change your mind? If anything, it is definitely not by weapons and stuborness.

The government knew better, and this is why for the past 26 years no one dared to criticize Hezbollah, not only the past 2 years or so, and this is when General Aoun signed on the Agreement form with Hezbollah. And FPMers wonder why some people went crazy over this step. Aoun did it because he felt that he was thrown out of the government, and Aoun, believing (maybe he does) of having a large audience in Lebanon who love him, wants to be a President. This is not the history of Lebanon, the history of Lebanon can have thousands of versions and stories and this is not what I intend to do. At this point, I am just trying to roughly see where each faction comes from and how it is IMPOSSIBLE for us Lebanese to ever agree on something.

Lebanese history cannot be written.

Is it wrong to not take Life to seriously spending all the time fighting for something, that most probably is not that important? What is life really, and what is our mission? Shouldn't just we live well and let others live well? Yes, naive thought.

I personally do not want to spend my life worried about people I know and love, thinking at any moment, they can be near an explosion, near a clash, and so on. Is this what Lebanon is? Will it ever be a normal country? This small country has so many differences, and what confuses me the most, is that politics aside, the majority wants to just lead a normal life in Lebanon. We all praise Lebanon, and how beautiful it is, a heaven on earth, sea near the mountains, partying and clubbing, activities, fun, music, great food.

Is it really? Most of the time it is, but the couple of months per year, in which we are blessed to have, a war with Israel, a war with Shaker el Absi and his crew, and now once again a war between each other! Only brings me back to feel like I am in Hell, and Lebanon is nothing but Hell on Earth.

There is no way, we will ever agree on something, if we do, it's only temporary.

Hariri threw back the ball to Hezbollah`s court

In summary, the speech that Hariri gave tonight at 8:10 pm, in response to Nasrallah's press conference this afternoon, concluded in 4 main points which Hariri believes if Nasrallah complies by them, then he does mean well.
1- Within the army regime, there will be ones assigned to investigate the Chief Shoukair issue
2- Reopen the road to the airport and free Beirut from its siege
3- Elect General Michel Sleiman as President
4- Sit together and try to talk things thru led by the newly elected president.

Hariri also highly insisted that he does not want a war and turmoil erupting between sunnist and chiite, and their sole enemy is Israel, and that the airport will not become a base for CIA, FBI and Mossad, and the issue with the communication was not a problem if it is about 3, 4 or 5000 lines, but when it reached 99000 and 999000 then it is a threatening issue for the government and they need to maintain national security.

Now, this kinds of seems like the government is willing to give and take, they did not exactly answer Nasrallah's two demands to make things better, but I believe this is how negotiations go.

Let's cross our fingers.

Nasrallah threw the ball in the government`s court

Or at least, this is how he made it appear. No one denies the power of convincing this man has, but there were a lot of flaws in his press conference. I will get into them later.

But in a summary, he spoke about 3 main points:
1- The private communications central
2- The airport and Chief Wafik Shoukair
3- The crisis

The major points were the following:
1- Sheik Nasrallah explained that a major part of a resistance or army's weapons are the communications, and they need a safe one as unwired and mobile phones are breached and will allow Israel to know their tactics.
2- He called this government to be Walid Jumblat's government, whom is an employee working for Condoleeza Rice
3- The airport step, is to prevent from any clashes in the future with the army and national security, because Hezbollah has no desire in clashing with the army, showing much respect to them
4- Nasrallah threatened anyone who approaches their weapons, will get his hand cut off. Even though he promised before that Hezbollah's weapons won't be used inside Lebanon, he said when the government crossed the line and declared war by taking the decision that Hezbolla's communications are illegal and a national threat
5- Narallah said that they have no interest in taking over the country, the government or any political stand.
6- The don't want Chief Wafik Shoukair to be removed, because they don't want the airport to become an FBI, CIA and Mossad base, which is near their homes.
7- Nasrallah told others to stop using the "Civil war erupting between sunnist and chiite" anymore, as it will not happen!
8- He finally said that there are two things the government can do that will solve the recent issues in Lebanon, which is taking back the decisions in confiscating Hezbolla's communication (which is a big part of their weapons), and answering Berri's call for dialog.

There has been heard some gun shooting as a joyful response to Nasrallah's press conference once it finished, which later led to armed clashes in the streets of Beirut, in principal in Kornishe Al Mazraa, Ras Al Nabaa, Aisha Bakkar, Karakol el Druze.



It has moved from just burning tires, throwing rocks, blocking roads and occasional gun fire in the air, it is now officially a battle between members from Hezbollah and members from the Future Movement, using AK47, RPGs, B7 and Bombs...

Some minutes pass by when it is relatively calm, and only after a couple of minutes to reintiate the gunfire between the two groups. Some persons are wearing masks, and hiding behind buildings, and stealing a moment every minute to shoot at the others, and at buildings. Smoke can be seen from as far as Mount Lebanon.

The party has just begun, Saad Hariri will have another press conference tonight, and now that the ball is in the government's court, I do not see any atom of hope that they will calm things down, as a matter of fact, there is a high probablity that they will only escalate things. Which will translate into the streets as more shootings, bombs and rockets.

The army at this point is not getting involved, I believe they cannot do anything right now, due to the fact that the leaders of both parties did not try to halt anything. The army gave a statement that things cannot be solved by guns, but only by dialog.

Armed clashes for now are between Sunni members and Shiite members, no christian existence yet. If by any shroud of bad luck, christians do get involve, there is a risk that the clashes will reach christian regions, which then officially declares a civil war in Lebanon.

We hope, by a miracle from God, that everything stops today.

For a minute to minute update, check Tayyar.org.
For Sheik Nasrallah's today's press conference in English, check this article on NowLebanon.com

Update: There is a fire in one of the residential areas, and they're shooting at the fire department so they do not put the fire down!

2008, rough start, 2007 bad year

It isn't completely surprising that another year in Lebanon starts out very defectively. Needless to try to go back in time and state history, it is utterly perplexing to decide whether the civil war days, the syrian presence days or the post-hariri assassination days are the worst.
It's a rough start with 2008 beginning by an explosion (January 15, 2008) mainly targetting a US embassy convoy taking the American Ambassador from the airport to celebrate his last days in Lebanon, which turned out to be a decoy, nonetheless resulting with 4 casualties and more than 20 wounded in Karantina Bridge, near Dora Highway.

What happened in 2007 really that is so different than 2006 and worth mentioning? Let us try to recap!


The year 2007, and most probably predicted by Michel Hayek, our 21st century Nostradamus, started out violently specifically on January 23 when a general strike by the opposition took place, leading to burning tires, conflicts between opposing parties, closing roads, traffic and pollution!

Two days later on January 25, a riot, a result to a clash between students in Arab University (most probably a quarrel concerning who's right and who's wrong for what happened two days before), erupted between residents of the surrounding area to the University in beirut, calling for reinforcements from the Lebanese Army to calm things down and call for a curfew.


In response to all this, many non sectarian, non political, non religious movements appeared, far from any color and only embracing the black, white or grey, to call upon the Lebanese to stop being sheep and followers and start working for the better of this country, they were against the pathetic bipolarism in Lebanon.

To save you the suspense, almost a year later, I can tell you the end of this movie. They did not succeed.

If you think this movie started out strong, wait for the next unfortunate event, which I naively recollected that it happened in 2006, but no, it was on 13 February the explosion and sad death of 3 and a number of casualties in Ain Alak.

The reason behind my weak memory is far from it being weak than for the fact that too much is occuring in this damned country that we think it is taking placing during a long period of time.

14 February, once a Valentine's day a celebration of Love, now...


A short while later, a war of Billboards splashed across the nation with the famous "I Heart Life", then "I heart Life with dignity", etc.. etc.. leading to many shops and companies taking advantage of it for their own good.

Despite it all, Lebanese still have their humour.

Throughout the year we hear politicians and political leaders (most of whom were once warlords) give speeches, in general they are all bad at it except one, whom I don't support or agree with most of the time, however acknowledge his articulate way of giving a speech, Hizbollah general secretary, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.

Nevertheless, what is beautiful about Lebanon, remains beautiful, and this is why:


Lebanon at one point had two presidents representing it in the Arab Summit.


May 20 to May 27 in 2007 was undoubtedly one of the worst weeks of the year when clashes between the Lebanese Army and Fatah Al Islam started in the Palestinian Nahr el Bared camp in North Lebanon, leading the the infamous war with Fatah Al Islam, resulting with many martyrs and casualties from the Lebanese Army.
Also on Sunday May 20, an explosion killed a woman in Ashrafieh (Beirut).
Monday May 21 recorded an Explosion in Verdun (Beirut).
Wednesday Mar 23, an explosion in Alay (Mount Lebanon).

Meanwhile, Draft resolution 1757 was adopted by the Security Council, declaring a decision in forming an international tribunal under the 7th chapter in order to investigate the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.

A while later, and as the Lebanese always cope with the horrible situations that Lebanon goes through with jokes, a long line of jokes started spreading and what better than in a Facebook group.

Another Explosion in Sid El Bouchrieh on June 4 (Eastern Beirut Suburb).
And another in Zouk Mosbeh (Mount Lebanon), three days later.

Due to all the saddening and agonizing events that occured, School year ended early.

The 7th explosion in 2007 took place on June 13 in Al-Manara (Beirut) and this time it was a direct hit and unfortunately a successful attempt of assassination of MP Walid Eido.

As a consequence to the series of unfortunate occurences, festivities in Lebanon were cancelled.

On June 25, UNIFIL troops have taken their share of the explosion where a car bomb killed 6.

As a replacement to the late MP Sheikh Pierre Gemayel, there was elections in Mount Lebanon, where Former President Amine Gemayel ran against Kamil Khoury from the opposition's FPM. The outcome of this elections although at one point both were winners, turned out in favor for Kamil Khoury.


September 2007, started out a bit more positif than the previous months where the Naher AL Bared's war ended, with the Lebanese Army rising victorious.

Yet, it did not continue well when on September 19 a bomb in Horsh Tabet exploded killing MP Antoine Ghanem and 6 other casualties, including the young Charles Chikhani.


As not to leave things metaphorical such as Lebanon being on fire, a fire did happen across most of the forests of mountains in the country.

Jealous for not breaking a record, Lebanon broke its own record, reaching the highest number yet of car accidents. 830 casualties and more than 10000 wounded.

While preparing for the presidential elections, which (to also save you the suspense) have been delayed 12 times by this date, people were not coping so well, delaying big purchases and trying to put some money on the side, especially that everything was getting more expensive.


Emile Lahoud leaves Baabda, becoming a former president, assigning no one behind him, making Lebanon presidentless during the holidays.

At the final days of the year and on the same day Gibran Tueni died 2 years ago, there was an explosion in Baabda (South Metn) on 12/12/2007 killing the Head of Operations in the Lebanese Army Francois AL Hajj with 4 others, making it the 10th explosion this year.

2007
830 car accidents casualties
100+ casualties and injured from explosions
10 Explosions
3 Assassinations
1 Draft Resolution
1 war
0 President

The End.

The long wait has finished

Lebanon's army crushed the last remnants of a militant group in a ferocious gunbattle Sunday that killed 39 of the fighters, ending a bloody three-month siege at a Palestinian refugee camp that was the country's worst internal violence in years. Nearby villages celebrated with fireworks, drumming and dancing after the government declared victory.

[...]

The army said three soldiers were killed in Sunday's fighting and two on Saturday, raising to 158 the number of troops who have died in the conflict — Lebanon's worst internal fighting since the 1975-90 civil war. More than 20 civilians and more than 60 militants have also been killed.

Reactions:

Prime Minister Fuad Saniora called Sunday's final battle the "greatest national victory for Lebanon over the terrorists in Nahr el-Bared."

President Emile Lahoud said the army "has achieved what superpowers could not in confronting terrorism."

Continue reading here.

What happened since July 12, 2006?

A year since the damned July war between Israel and Hezbollah (although some prefer to say between Israel and Lebanon, however last time I checked for a country to be in war, it should've at least had an opinion or known about it), anyway things have only got worse since.

Political conflicts, a new war between the Lebanese Army and the Islamic Militants Fatah Al Islam in Naher el Bared palestinian camp in North Lebanon (started on 20 May, and is still on going), a lot of martyrs (RIP) civilians, red cross and soldiers, a lot of tension, two UN resolutions, the 1701 to end the July 2006 war and 1757 declaring the decision to hold an international tribunal to investigate the Hariri assassination, one camping of Lebanese opposition (Hezbollah, FPM, Marada and others) in Downtown Beirut since December 1, 2006 in order to topple the Saniora government, another two assassinations of MP Pierre Gemayel in November 2006 and MP Walid Eido in June 2007, several explosions occured in many regions, in Ain Alak, Verdun, Ashrafieh, Alay, Sid El Bouchrieh and Zouk Mousbeh, more and more division among the Lebanese politicians, more and more groups having no color trying to bring the Lebanese together such as March 11 and other.

Tourism is almost dead, schools ended early this summer, some Lebanese are here for a vacation, great weather, people are starting to go out again, but you can still feel the tension as we know that this time a year traffic would be much more severe (yes we measure life in Lebanon by traffic). Usually in summer the prices of prepaid lines, clothes, shoes, luxury items go up, however this year they barely went up (prepaid lines prices did double, but usually their price reach an increase by 80% taking advantage of our fellow Arab Tourists, who by the way, did not come this year, how do we know? well they usually come to Lebanon by land using their cars, therefore we can see the plate numbers of these many cars on which is written Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, UAE...), I can also see discounts on clothes and shoes just about everywhere (Reminder to self, should go shopping, take advantage of bad situation in Lebanon).

Bashar Al Assad, Syrian President, has demanded from all syrian workers to go back to Syria before July 15 as he expects the situation to get worse.

Lebanese presidency election is right around the corner, scheduled to take place in September 2007.

And of course, immigration of Lebanese youth increased even more. Prices of houses (due to increase in cost of building materials) have also increased. In general, there are a lot of weddings in Lebanon during the summer, however, and this is measured by how much honking we hear on Saturdays and Sundays afternoon, this year seems less. Why? Still asking Why?

P.S. For more details, check the archive of this blog.

Update on the two Israeli held soldiers

By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Sunday there has been progress in negotiations to free two Israeli soldiers whose abduction by the militant group sparked a 34-day war in Lebanon last summer.

[...]Last month, Nasrallah's deputy said there were "serious" U.N.-mediated negotiations to secure a prisoner swap involving the captive Israeli soldiers. But so far there have been no results.

"It is on the way to be solved," Nasrallah said in the interview. "It's just a matter of time."

Click here for full article.

Well well well, if it isn't the two Israel captive soldiers residing at the Hezbollah hotel... It's been 9 months, a child should be born by now! No information have been provided about those two soldiers, until now, and the information aren't still that clear. They have been even thought to be dead! A war has been started to retrieve those two soldiers back, so I am crossing my fingers for the prisoners swap to work out, because we'll at least have a slight reason to give some sort of an excuse for that bloody (to be remembered but no repeated) war that happened between Hezbollah and Israel during July 2006.

13 April 1975 Lebanon`s Civil War

As they say in arabic "Tenzakar w ma ten3ed", in english, not to forget but not to repeat.

Cartoon courtesy of Al Balad Newspaper, 13 April 2007

Whatever happened to the two Israeli soldiers?

Israel claimed the reason behind the July war in 2006 on Lebanon was because Hezbollah had kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. The resistance kidnapped them as a way of bargaining in order to retrieve their prisoners from Israeli jails. More than 1000 civilians in Lebanon died, infrustructure, homes and entire cities were bombed to ashes, for those two Israeli soldiers.

Where are they now? Are they returned? Neither Israel is trying to bring this subject up anymore nor is Hezbollah mentioning anything about them. Are they dead? Are they still emprisoned? Or are they in Hawaii?

Wel3aneh... bhannikoun ya 7adarat al zou3ama

First of all, I would like to congratulate all journalists who report in Lebanon, I think over the past decades they have been the most to report from a recurring dangerous zone than any other journalist in the world.

Second of all, congratulations to our politicians who have been attacking each other for the past years, until finally the people - their supporters - are no longer listening to them. It is easy to get people to the street, but difficult to get them out of it.

Third, congratulations to the media who has been despicably distorting the truth, moreover loyal viewers of their channels have thought a war has been already happening for the past year, inticing them to hate the others.

And finally, congratulations to our ennemies, who we once stood against believing that they will never be able to fire up a war amongst the Lebanese, alas they are starting to succeed.

However, if and only if the politicians call for an urgent meeting where cessation of war of words on TV and agreeing on finding a mid-solution by compromising a bit, then there will not be a war in Lebanon.

It is not too late to have control over things yet!

Pressure mounts on Olmert to resign

After Israeli Lieutenant General Dan Halutz Halutz's resignation, public and political pressure continues to mount on PM Ehud Olmert.

When asked whether Olmert, his ratings approaching single digits and facing a criminal corruption probe, would follow Lieutenant General Dan Halutz's example and quit, a senior aide told AFP Thursday: "No, he has no such intention." Source: AFP

Reaction in Lebanon was a sky lit up with fireworks, as Hezbollah celebrated the resignation of Halutz "after allegations of mismanaging the summer war between Israel and the Shiite group" (Source: Naharnet).

A little bit too late taking responsibility of the allegations of the failure in war between Israel and Hezbollah last July, however in the right timing to lift Hezbollah's moral.

This act looked at in a certain ways, and written with selective words would implicate that Hezbollah had succeeded in the last war.

However, if the failure that Halutz took responsibility for was not being able to stop Hezbollah Rockets from landing in Israel, than Hezbollah has failed too, as they did not stop rockets, soldiers, merkavas, aeral and naval equipments from entering and landing in Lebanon.

Democrats to Bush: Time to end Iraq war

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Congress's new Democratic leaders warned President George W. Bush that surging more troops into Iraq would fail and it was time to end the war, days before his expected unveiling of a new US strategy.

[...]

Pelosi and Reid called on Bush to start a phased redeployment of US forces within four to six months.

"After nearly four years of combat, tens of thousands of US casualties and over 300 billion dollars, it is time to bring the war to a close," the two leaders wrote.

Click here to read full article.

Apparently, and preventing to call this war a failure, it still had become a failure. It seemed from the first moment that it's a war only promising more deaths and battles, yet which war doesn't? But to keep investing in this war as Bush continues doing is a hopeless decision, moreover the Bush administration has squeezed themselves in one crazy situation, if they leave, a sectarian war will prevail and if they stay, well the same thing will and is happening.

Eventually, another solution should be found for Iraq, probably UN Peacekeepers with authorities will be sent to Iraq to maintain "Peace", the US troops to redeploy, with time end their presence in Iraq and to finally end their extravagant spending which they can probably use in a more useful way.

بتتذكر - btetzakkar iyyem el 7arb?

بتتذكر ايام لي كنا نتخبّى بالملجأ أوّل ما الأصف يبلّش؟
بتتذكر ايام لي ما كنا نلحئ نروح على ملجأ البناية لي بوجنا لأنو باغتونا بوقت الأصف؟
بتتذكر لمّا نزلٍت الراجمة بالبناية وكنا كل الجيران بالطابق الأول؟ أول قذيفة والتانيي، شي تمانة. قول مين كان عم بعدّ؟ وترجّ هالبناية وحجار توقع وقزاز يتكسر و تاني يوم تنزل تلاقي السيارة مطحبشي؟
بتتذكر وقتا كان يبلش الأصف ونكون بعدنا بالمدرسة؟ ويبلّش الركض...
ايه وعا

Mother and baby die in destroyed Lebanon bridge plunge

BEIRUT (AFP) - A young Lebanese mother and her one-year-old baby son have been killed when their car plunged off a Bekaa Valley bridge that was badly damaged by Israeli bombardment during the summer war, police said.

[...]

Since the war ended on August 14 at least five people have been killed in similar accidents as drivers tried to negotiate part of the bridge that is still intact, sandwiched between the crater and the Berdawni river.

During the month-long conflict, 70 bridges in Lebanon were either destroyed or damaged in Israeli attacks.

Click here to read more