By Walden Bello*
BEIRUT, Lebanon – The wounds of war were evident shortly after we crossed
the Syria-Lebanon border at 1130 in the morning on August 12. At Haissa, about
three kilometers from the Dabboussiyeh border crossing, we come across the
ruins of a bridge hit by Israeli war planes just the day before. Villagers tell
us 12 people were killed and 10 wounded, all civilians.
An Anti-Civilian War?
Twenty minutes later, at a place called Abu Shamra, we come across the
remains of a gasoline station and bridge, the targets of an Israeli
airstrike just eight hours earlier. “Now, what was the military logic
behind that?” asks Seema Mustafa, an Indian journalist with our
international peace delegation of 12 people. It is a question shared by the
Lebanese who tell us what happened.
At three other places, Matfoun, Halat, and near the famous Casino du Lebanon
at Jumieh, we have to take detours around bridges and vehicles destroyed by
Israeli attacks. These are sites very far from the front in Southern
Lebanon, in a part of the country where Hezbollah, the movement Israel is
fighting, has very little presence. These very fresh instances of
destruction bring home to us one of the key features of the Israeli
offensive: it has deliberately targeted non-military infrastructure to
raise the costs of the war for the civilian population.
With evidence of Israel’s anti-civilian strategy fresh in our minds, we are
not surprised when we hear, after arriving in Beirut, about the strafing of
a convoy of civilians leaving the town of Marieyoun in the South. On
Friday, several hundred cars left the town, after negotiations between the
Israelis and the non-belligerent Lebanese Army. As it snaked up North, it
came under fire repeatedly from Israeli planes with at least six people
killed and many others wounded. What was the reason for violating the
agreement? The Israeli excuses ranged from “it was a mistake” to “suspicion
that the convoy was carrying Hezbollah guerrillas.” Nahla Chahal, one of
the coordinators of international civil society delegations to Lebanon,
tells us: “The deliberate attacks on civilians is a new element in Israel’s
redrafting of the rules of war. It’s nothing less than a war crime.”
Herbert Docena, one of the members of our delegation who spent time in
occupied Iraq, says, “What is different between Iraq and here is that in
Iraq, the US does seem to have a modicum of concern about international
public opinion. Here, the Israelis simply don’t care about public opinion.
So it’s more dangerous.”
Israel and Hezbollah: Contrasting Strategies
The delegation is told at a briefing on the evening of our arrival by our
Lebanese hosts that the contrast between the war strategies of the Israelis
and the Hezbollah is evident in the nature of the casualties: most of the
more than 1000 Lebanese killed by the Israeli armed forces are civilians,
while most of the more than 100 Israelis who have died in the war so far are
soldiers.
There is, in fact, a strong sense of pride in the Hezbollah’s military
performance that is evident as we are briefed that evening by
representatives of several of Lebanon’s political parties, including the
right-wing Free Lebanon Movement led by Gen. Aoun, the centrist “Third
Force,” the Lebanese Communist Party, and the Hezbollah itself. According
to Dr. Issam Naaman of the Third Force, the war has now lasted 31 days, more
than any of the previous Arab-Israeli wars. “At this point, it is clear that
Israel has lost the war on the ground and is trying to get at the diplomatic
front, with the support of the United States, what it has lost on the
military side.”
A New Nasser?
The destruction of some 34 Israeli Merkava tanks in Friday’s fighting, the
death of some 19 Israeli soldiers—the highest so far in this month-long
war–and the downing of an Israeli helicopter are cited as proof not only of
a victory by the Hezbollah, around whom some 87 per cent of the Lebanese
people, according to the polls, now seemed to have gotten behind in its
resistance to Israel. Equally important, it becomes clear to us at the
briefing that for Arabs, the successful resistance of a few hundred
well-motivated and well trained Hezbollah guerrillas has ended the era of
Arab humiliation by Israel’s military might.
“It’s really quite interesting and exciting,” comments Seema Mustafa, the
Indian journalist, “the way the Arab Street has come behind Hassan
Nasrallah.” Indeed, the man one Hezbollah representative at the briefing
fondly refers to as “our baby faced” leader is achieving a status once
reserved for Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian leader. This point was
brought home to me by Taufik, the driver who ferried us from Damascus to
Beirut, who said as he steered us through the detour around one of the
bombed bridges earlier in the day, “I belong to no party except the one that
can bring food to my family. But I really like this man Nasrallah. He has
brought pride to all of us Lebanese.”
*Walden Bello is a member of the 12-person Civil Society-Parliamentary Peace
Mission that is currently in Lebanon. He is a professor at the University
of the Philippines and the executive director of the research and advocacy
institute Focus on the Global South based in Bangkok, Thailand.
