“Israel’s” dreadful legacy in Lebanon

Source: Gulf News, 14-10-2006
The last of the invading "Israeli" soldiers may have left Lebanon, the guns may have fallen silent and all may now be quiet on the southern front.
But what seems to pass largely unnoticed by observers is that in reality the war in the south of Lebanon is still being fought, and will continue to claim victims for many, many years to come, this time poor farmers, along with their womenfolk and children who traditionally till the land alongside them.
Sure, it is not news that the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have promised to offer financial help to meet the needs of Lebanon`s army, whose stated goal is to stabilise the south needs that include a shopping list of helicopters, tanks and missiles, all designed for defensive purposes.
These states have equally promised to offer financial aid to help in the reconstruction of the country`s devastated infrastructure. All well and good.
Mayhem
But what about those unexploded cluster bombs "Israel" blanketed the south of Lebanon with, less than 48 hours before the war ended in August, when it had been clear that a cease fire was about to be declared?
These cluster bombs, which upon detonation let off well over a million "bomblets" that spread like buckshot over wide areas, now litter the region and kill or maim on average three people a day.
Since the end of September alone, according to Lebanese officials, cluster bombs have "severely wounded" 109 people and killed 18 others.
Michael Slackman, in a report he filed from Beirut for The New York Times last Friday, writes of these bomblets: "They are stuck in the branches of olive trees and the broad leaves of banana trees. They are on rooftops, mixed in with rubble and littered across fields, farms, driveways, roads and outside schools."
In his report, he describes the gut-wrenching fate of one casualty, by no means atypical, of these dreadful weapons of mass destruction: "Mohammad Hassan Sultan, a slender brown-haired 12-year-old, became a postwar casualty when the shrapnel from a cluster bomb cut into his head and neck. He was from Sawane, a hillside village with a panoramic view of terraced olive farms and rolling hills.
"Mohammad was sitting on a hip-high wall, watching a bulldozer clear rubble, when the machine bumped into a tree. A flash of a second later he was fatally injured when a cluster bomblet dropped from the branches."
Clearly by dropping these bombs, "Israel" is not only in violation of international law, but may very well be guilty of a war crime. That it dropped them at a time when the United Nations Security Council was a day or two short of negotiating a resolution to end the war is morally repugnant.
Not unexpectedly, UN officials, along with human rights organisations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have subjected the "Israel" to heavy criticism for its reprehensible action.
Cold comfort
All of which, to be sure, is cold comfort to the Lebanese victims and their families. There are currently 300 Lebanese Army soldiers working alongside 30 other clearance teams, with each team comprising up to 30 experts, working on the problem in 745 locations across the south. Of the million or so bomblets that litter the region, only 4,500 have been found and disposed of so far.
Spokesmen for the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Centre in southern Lebanon estimate that it would take roughly 15 months to clear the area if they are lucky and if "money from international donors does not run out".
Effectively then, the people of the south of Lebanon, returning home, will return to till lands and live in towns that are booby-trapped.
As the last "Israeli" soldier left Lebanon last week, one wonders if he knew of the legacy of hatred he and his fellow soldiers left behind.
Franklin Lamb, of the online publication Punchline, reported a Hizbullah commander telling him: "The brothers can`t wait for `Israeli` troops to enter Lebanon again. We`re eager to hit them harder next time. The Zionists` training is put to using tanks against stone-throwing children and harassing pregnant women at checkpoints .... We don`t respect them either as men or as soldiers."
That is the legacy of "Israel's" ferocious war in Lebanon. And what is this entity`s rationale for what it has wrought? "Israel", its spokesmen keep repeating, has done nothing that did not "conform" with international law, and that it was "fighting terrorists who used civilians as human shields".
That`s what happens when language is turned on its head, when it is severed from the roots of moral and emotional life, when it has become ossified with cliches and left-over words.
To have blanketed Lebanon with these cluster bombs is as vindictive as it is barbarous. It is, in short, no less than an act of profound evil.
Fawaz Turki is a veteran journalist, lecturer and author of several books, including The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile. He lives in Washington D.C.