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.

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Manifestation pour dénoncer les actionnaires majoritaires de « Indigo Books » et leur appui aux forces de défenses israéliennes.

Samedi, le 23 décembre 2006 à 12 h
Devant la librairie Indigo, 1500 rue McGill College
(Entrée sur Sainte-Catherine à l’ouest de la rue McGill College)

Cette manifestation est initiée par la Coalition contre l’apartheid israélien (CAIA) et appuyée par Pas en notre nom ! Juifs contre les guerres d’Israël  («Not In Our Name : Jews Against Israel’s Wars»).

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Toronto Sun Friday, December 15th, 2006, By Sid Ryan

I think I know what the messages on Jimmy Carter’s voice mail sound like.

Last month, the former U.S. President released his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. And I bet he’s getting an earful.

Last spring, 900 delegates to the Canadian Union of Public Employees [CUPE] Ontario convention overwhelmingly passed a resolution expressing support for the global campaign against Israeli apartheid. (Lire la suite…)

From Kosovo to Lebanon, cluster bomb casualties continue to mount

By Frida Berrigan – IN THESE TIMES

In just one week in October, a series of bomb scares swept across Germany. Outside of Hannover, 22,000 people were evacuated when three bombs were discovered. A few days later in the same city, a weapons removal squad defused a 500-pound bomb found near the highway. Finally, a highway worker was killed when his cutting machine hit a buried bomb on the main highway into Frankfurt.

The bombs hadn’t been planted by terrorists, and they weren’t the opening salvos of the next war. The culprit was unexploded ordnance left over from a war fought more than 60 years ago. “We’ll have enough work to keep us busy for the next 100 to 120 years,” the owner of a bomb-defusing company told the New York Times.

The submunitions dispersed by cluster bombs are a lot smaller than 500 pounds, but their use in every major conflict since World War II ensures that bomb clearers the world over will have work for decades—even centuries—to come. From Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, to the countries of the former Yugoslavia, and onto Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, modern battlefields are littered with bombs that continue to kill long after wars have ended. Ninety-eight percent of those killed or injured by cluster bombs are civilians. And yet international efforts to restrict the use of cluster bombs—modeled after landmine treaties of previous years—are being undermined by lack of U.S. participation. Worse, instead of destroying old cluster bomb stockpiles, the United States is exporting them to allies around the world. (Lire la suite…)

Montreal Mirror: by Stefan Christoff

Almost four months have passed since Montrealer Hassan El Akhras lost 11 family members to an Israeli air strike in the south Lebanese village of Aitaroun. Currently, legal representatives of the family are pressing the Conservative government for action on the case.

Despite existing legal efforts, Hassan El Akhras holds little faith in the current government. “The government has done nothing,” says El Akhras. “Our family wants the Canadian government to launch an international investigation on the war crime committed against my family, but we have gotten no phone call, nothing.”
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UN estimates Israel war cost to agriculture industry some US $280 million, farmers left in debt, poverty.

BEIRUT – Desperate Lebanese farmers are urging their government to do more to help them recover from a war that the United Nations estimates has cost the vital agriculture industry some US $280 million and left them facing “a downward spiral of debt and poverty”.

“I personally lost over 50 million Lebanese pounds [$35,000],” said Mohammed Mokahhal, a farmer from the eastern Bekaa Valley, describing his losses in the month-long summer war between Israel and militants from the Lebanese Hezbollah political party.

“I couldn’t harvest my potatoes or tend to vegetables like lettuces and peas which I had planted a week before the Israeli attacks began,” said the father of two. “And even when I managed to pick some I couldn’t transport them to the market because of the threatening situation.” (Lire la suite…)

Quatre démineurs ont été blessés par des mines antipersonnel au Liban sud posé par Israël lors du dernier conflit.

BEYROUTH (AP) — Une agence des Nations unies a accusé samedi Israël d’avoir posé des mines antipersonnel au Liban durant le conflit entre Tsahal et le Hezbollah cet été. L’ONU affirme que l’Etat hébreu a usé d’armes à sous-munitions durant ce conflit, mais il s’agit de la première accusation concernant des mines.
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Ain Rummaneh bus, the flame that started the civil war in 1975

By Anthony Shadid-Washington Post Foreign Service

BEIRUT, Nov. 22 — The neighborhood of Ain Rummaneh was quiet Wednesday, its shops shuttered and streets empty a day after the assassination of an anti-Syrian politician from one of Lebanon’s most prominent Christian families. Nayef Mazraani took a break from washing his car and pointed down a shaded street.

There, he said, was where Lebanon’s civil war began in 1975, when Christian militiamen massacred 27 Palestinians on a bus after an attack on a church. He gestured in another direction. There, he said, was that war’s front line, which remains a barrier of sorts between two Beiruts and two Lebanons, pulling ever further apart.

“The war has never stopped,” he said. “It started here, in 1975, in Ain Rummaneh, and until now, it hasn’t finished.” (Lire la suite…)

The latest assassination in Lebanon has bolstered the US-backed government and weakened Hizbullah and the opposition

Charles Harb
Thursday November 23, 2006
The Guardian

The assassination of Pierre Gemayel, a Lebanese cabinet minister and scion of a ruling Christian Maronite family, in Beirut on Tuesday has sent shockwaves through the country’s establishment and is shaping the political feud raging throughout the country. Given the timing, location and method of the killing – a sophisticated shooting in the heart of Christian east Beirut at the height of a political crisis – there is already rampant speculation as to the identity and sponsors of the assassins. That will doubtless remain the case even after the criminal investigation is complete. The consequences of this for Lebanon and the wider Middle East are already starting to become clear.

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Beirut, 20 November – Even as the country prepared for mass street protests aimed at changing the composition of the government, activists in Beirut held a spirited protest in solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza and against the presence of UNIFIL troops in southern Lebanon.

Around 30 people staged the sit-in outside the headquarters of the European Union (EU), many of whose countries have contributed troops to the enlarged UNIFIL presence in southern Lebanon.

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