By Alan Johnston, BBC News, Gaza
A UN human rights envoy has compared Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories to elements of apartheid.
The UN’s Special Rapporteur, John Dugard, describes the regime as being designed to dominate and systematically oppress the occupied population.
In recent weeks and months Lebanon has faced major political upheaval, marked by massive street demonstrations, international political intervention and a national general strike. Lebanon’s political opposition maintains an ongoing open-air demonstration in central Beirut, which commenced on December 1st, 2006, fueled by popular discontent toward the current national government.
Seven months after Israel bombed the coastal Jiyyeh power plant in the south of Beirut, the Mediterranean Sea still spews oil onto Lebanon’s shores, and beach sand shifts to reveal oil slicks that could not be detected before, fishermen say.
With sparkling waves licking the golden sands, Jiyyeh beach looks pristine at first glance. But fisherman Ahmad Kojok stoops and pulls up the corner of a black slab in the sea. It is solid oil.
“We found another huge patch of oil over there,” said Kojok, waving towards a patch of sea by a rocky shelf that juts out into the bay. “It’s all oil just there.”
An Israeli army patrol has returned fire at Lebanese troops after they shot at an Israeli military bulldozer near the border between the two countries.
A Lebanese army spokesman said the bulldozer, which was searching for explosive devices, had crossed into southern Lebanon but Israel has insisted it was on the Israeli side of the border.
The Lebanese army spokesman said: “An Israeli army bulldozer crossed into south Lebanon tonight. Our forces opened fire at it. It pulled back and there was a brief exchange of fire.”
Reuters, Report:
Beirut & Baghdad – Violence in Iraq and instability in Lebanon are driving hundreds of thousands of people abroad in an upheaval not matched in the Middle East since the exodus of Palestinian refugees when Israel was created in 1948.
While Lebanese usually migrate legally to countries of their choice, Iraqis are fleeing across borders in distress to escape the bombings, death squads and sectarian cleansing that have savaged their country since the US-led invasion in 2003.
Most of the Iraqis are ending up in countries that already host large Palestinian communities drawn from the 4.3 million Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations. The carnage in Iraq has also uprooted about half the 30,000 Palestinian refugees who lived there in Saddam Hussein’s time, forcing them into a second exile or stranding them in limbo.
Globe and Mail coverage of Lebanon suffers from ideological interventions
by Stefan Christoff and Dru Oja Jay
the Dominion
In many cases, unfortunately, other motivations prevail. For the owners and editors of the few papers that shell out for foreign correspondents, the opportunity to shape public opinion seems too tempting to pass up, even if it comes at the expense of insight and accuracy.
The Globe and Mail’s Middle East correspondent Mark MacKinnon has been publishing dispatches on the ongoing political crisis in Lebanon regularly from Beirut. It should be noted that Mackinnon’s reports are often superior to the generic newswire reports carried by many newspapers. Regrettably, this speaks more to the skewed quality of wire reports and less to the Globe’s correspondent’s capacity to promote accurate understanding of events in Lebanon.
(more…)
In the interests of giving a wider range of readers access to commentary and opinion from the Arabic press, especially on current deveopments in Lebanon, Tadamon! Montreal has translated the following article from al-Adab Magazine, published in Beirut.
[Photo: “Because we want to live …” reads a sign on a tent at the sit-in in Beirut, now entering its fourth week.]
by Samah Idriss, al-Adab
“There will be a war next summer. Only the sector has not been chosen yet. The atmosphere in the Israel Defense Forces in the past month [November] has been very pessimistic. The latest rounds in the campaigns on both fronts, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, have left too many issues undecided, too many potential detonators that could cause a new conflagration. The army’s conclusion from this is that a war in the new future is a reasonable possibility. As Amir Oren reported in Haaretz several weeks ago, the IDF’s operative assumption is that during the coming summer months, a war will break out against Hezbollah and perhaps against Syria as well.”
This is what two journalists wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on 4/12/20061.(1) But here, in the heart of Beirut, the atmosphere seems quite different. The Opposition is in the streets, holding a sit-in until the formation of a “national union” or “national unity” government or until Fuad Siniora’s government is toppled. Sunni–Shi’a agitation has reached a peak, despite assurances that Lebanon cannot be “Iraqized” (in the past, we have heard assurances that Iraq cannot be “Lebanonized”). A martyr (whom government supporters described as having been “killed”) has fallen from the opposition ranks. The wounded number in the tens. A Western newspaper talks about new weaponary that has arrived at the Internal Security Forces from an Arab country [United Arab Emirates] in order to counter the influence of “Hezbollah” and Iran. Pictures of Rafiq Hariri are torn apart. Pictures of Hassan Nassrallah are shot at. The student representative in the Socialist Party is beaten up. The Resistance is meant to be in the alleys.
Gen. Michel Aoun, a Christian, has hitched his star to Hezbollah
Megan K. Stack – LA Times
RABIEH, LEBANON — In these days of fear and distrust in Lebanon, there may be no man who inspires more venom than Gen. Michel Aoun.
Flags of different parties – including Hezbollah and FPM’s –
sewn together to show unity at the Beirut sit-in.
Since returning from 15 years of exile to the joyful cheers of his followers last year, the Christian leader known simply as “the General” has frayed this fragile country’s intricate network of allegiances. First he formed a surprising political alliance with Hezbollah. Then he sent his followers into the streets for massive antigovernment demonstrations.
With rising religious and political tensions threatening to pitch the country into fighting, plenty of his embittered fellow Lebanese hold Aoun squarely to blame.
