In this issue: 1) Just Foreign Policy Pacifica "The Monitor" Interview on Uniting for Peace 2) Cease-Fire Draft at U.N. Falters Amid Arab Criticism 3) Lebanese Premier Seeking Changes to U.N. Proposal 4) Editorial: A Truce for Lebanon 5) Israel threatens to expand Lebanon ground offensive 6) In Southern Lebanon, Weary Resignation: Many See Lives Caught Up in Long War 7) The Militia: A Disciplined Hezbollah Surprises Israel With Its Training, Tactics and Weapons 8) Arab World Finds Icon in Leader of Hezbollah 9) As Shelling Continues, Few Residents Remain in Towns That Once Took Refugees 10) Reuters drops Lebanese photographer over doctored image 11) L.A. Mayor Apologizes to Muslim Leaders 12) Iran Says It Will Ignore U.N. Deadline on Uranium Program 13) Lamont Leads Lieberman 51 - 45 In Dem Primary 14) MoveOn Seeking 1st 2006 Election Victory 15) Iraqi Woman's Blog Taken on Stage 16) Iraqi Medic Describes Carnage: Testimony Begins in Hearing for U.S. Soldiers Accused of Rape 17) Mexican Candidate Says Civil Disobedience Will Continue
Contents: 1) Just Foreign Policy Pacifica "The Monitor" Interview on Uniting for Peace http://archive.kpft.org/mp3/060806_180001monitor.MP3 Show information: http://themonitor.wordpress.com/2006/08/06/show-details-for-august-6th-2006/ Just Foreign Policy emphasized that pressure is still urgently needed for the UN General Assembly to act for an immediate ceasefire. Please post and forward our petition: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/justforeignpolicy.org/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=325. The Irish Labor Party has joined the call: "'Uniting for Peace' mechanism can be used to achieve an immediate ceasefire" http://www.labour.ie/press/listing/20060804152344.html
2) Cease-Fire Draft at U.N. Falters Amid Arab Criticism Warren Hoge and Neil MacFarquhar New York Times August 7, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/world/middleeast/07diplo.html Efforts to adopt a draft resolution to halt the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah faltered at the UN Sunday amid sharp criticism from the Middle East. France and the US, which announced agreement on the draft Saturday, renewed negotiations to meet objections to the proposal offered in amendments by Lebanon and by Qatar, the Arab representative on the Council. The turn of events reflected an outpouring of condemnation across the Middle East that the proposed resolution spoke to Israel's demands, backed by the US, without addressing those of Lebanon and Hezbollah. The resolution calls for a truce, asks the current UN peacekeeping force to monitor the border area and lays out a plan for a permanent cease-fire and political settlement. But while it called for immediate cessations of "all attacks" by Hezbollah and "offensive military operations" by Israel, it did not require Israeli troops to leave southern Lebanon. In Lebanon, speaker of Parliament Berri said Lebanon rejected the resolution because it did not call for the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops and an exchange of prisoners. Arab diplomats were skeptical about the resolution having any chance of halting the fighting. "They are attempting to gain diplomatically what they failed to achieve militarily," one said. "I expect the cease-fire to be rammed through, but it will turn into a war of attrition." Iran and Syria rejected the resolution. The resolution was being viewed in the region as more a vehicle to calm Western public opinion than one that would actually address the problems on the ground. The principal amendment introduced by Lebanese Foreign Ministry official Nouhad Mahmoud would require Israel to hand over its positions in Lebanon to Unifil, the UN peacekeeping force, and withdraw its troops from the country "forthwith." A second amendment asked for an Israeli withdrawal from the Shebaa Farms area that Israel seized in the 1967 war.
3) Lebanese Premier Seeking Changes to U.N. Proposal Nora Boustany and Edward Cody Washington Post Monday, August 7, 2006; A10 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/06/AR2006080600786.html Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Sunday he is seeking amendments to a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that would combine the dispatch of UN and Lebanese army peacekeepers with the immediate pullout of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon. Siniora, in an interview, said his suggestions were an attempt to meet the interests of Israel as well as Lebanon and its Hezbollah movement in seeking an end to the fighting. The resolution proposed by the US and France, he said, is "impractical" because it would leave Israeli occupation troops and Hezbollah militiamen face to face in the border hills, virtually certain to keep fighting. He said Lebanon stands ready to deploy 15,000 soldiers and accept a 2,000-member international force led by the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, until a political settlement can be worked out and a more permanent international peacekeeping force can be assembled and deployed to Lebanon.
4) Editorial: A Truce for Lebanon New York Times August 7, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/opinion/07mon1.html It is now 26 days since Hezbollah and Israel began their latest combat, a very long time for the world to allow such a deadly conflict to rage in the Middle East powder keg. Yet the fighting still continues. Diplomats still dither over cease-fire details. Innocent people still keep dying. Enough. This is the week that the international community must impose a truce, to be followed, in short order, by a political settlement and the dispatch of a robust international force to patrol Lebanon's oft-violated border with Israel…The first resolution, as it currently stands, would permit Israeli forces to remain in Lebanon, at least until the second resolution is approved and the new international force put in place. That provision has sparked sharp opposition in the Arab world. The longer Israeli troops remain on Lebanese soil, the more likely they are to become a magnet for renewed Hezbollah attacks. Israel would, of course, respond, and that would be the end of any truce.
5) Israel threatens to expand Lebanon ground offensive Reuters Monday, August 7, 2006; 10:28 AM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/07/AR2006080700354.html Israel will broaden its ground offensive in Lebanon within days if diplomatic efforts to end the fighting fail to make progress, Defense Minister Amir Peretz said on Monday. "I gave an order that, if within the coming days the diplomatic process does not reach a (successful) conclusion, Israeli forces will carry out the operations necessary to take control of Katyusha rocket launching sites in every location," Peretz told a parliamentary committee in broadcast remarks.
6) In Southern Lebanon, Weary Resignation: Many See Lives Caught Up in Long War Anthony Shadid Washington Post Monday, August 7, 2006; A09 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/06/AR2006080600902.html The US and France have agreed on a draft U.N. resolution calling for a cease-fire in the nearly four-week-old war, but already Sunday, U.S. officials were saying that it was only a first step and that it would take a while to end the fighting. Few appeared to disagree in beleaguered southern Lebanon, where weary residents began settling in for the long wait across a terrain more battered by fighting than at any time in the country's modern history.With a sense that both Israel and Hezbollah have the stamina and endurance to fight on, many in southern Lebanon have started to think of their futures placed within a long-running war: Doctors talk about leaving the country for good; some of the hundreds of thousands of displaced within Lebanon have simply come back to their homes in places such as Tyre, fearful the temporary was becoming permanent. "Brother, you try living in a school," said Khodr al-Ruz, who returned two days ago to Tyre after spending three weeks sharing a classroom with 15 other displaced Lebanese.
7) A Disciplined Hezbollah Surprises Israel With Its Training, Tactics and Weapons Steven Erlanger And Richard A. Oppel Jr. New York Times August 7, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/world/middleeast/07hezbollah.html Hezbollah has sharply improved its arsenal and strategies in the six years since Israel abruptly ended its occupation of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah is a militia trained like an army and equipped like a state, and its fighters "are nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians," said an Israeli soldier who just returned from Lebanon. "They are trained and highly qualified," he said, equipped with flak jackets, night-vision goggles, good communications and sometimes Israeli uniforms and ammunition. "All of us were kind of surprised."
8) Arab World Finds Icon in Leader of Hezbollah Neil MacFarquhar New York Times August 7, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/world/middleeast/07nasrallah.html The success or failure of any cease-fire in Lebanon will largely hinge on the opinion of one figure: Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, who has seen his own aura and that of his party enhanced immeasurably by battling the Israeli Army for nearly four weeks. With Israeli troops operating in southern Lebanon, Sheik Nasrallah can continue fighting on the grounds that he seeks to expel an occupier, much as he did in the years preceding Israel's withdrawal in 2000. Or he can accept a cease-fire, perhaps to try to rearm, and earn the gratitude of Lebanon and much of the world. Analysts expect some kind of middle outcome, with the large-scale rocket attacks stopping but Hezbollah guerrillas still attacking soldiers so that Israel still feels pain. In any case, the Arab world has a new icon.
9) As Shelling Continues, Few Residents Remain in Towns That Once Took Refugees Jad Mouawad New York Times August 7, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/world/middleeast/07lebanon.html It took weeks of continuous shelling in southern Lebanon and one long sleepless night for Sheik Naim Hazir to admit it was time to leave. What forced his decision was the death of five of his next-door neighbors, three of them children, as a rocket flattened their two-story home in a raid overnight Saturday. But getting out of Insar with his 90-year-old father and 82-year-old mother was tricky.
10) Reuters drops Lebanese photographer over doctored image Reuters Sun Aug 6, 5:46 PM ET http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060806/ts_nm/mideast_reuters_dc_1 Reuters told a freelance Lebanese photographer on Sunday it would not use any more of his pictures after he doctored an image of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Beirut. The photograph by Adnan Hajj, which was published on news Web sites on Saturday, showed thick black smoke rising above buildings in the Lebanese capital after an Israeli air raid in the war with the Shi'ite Islamic group Hizbollah, now in its fourth week. Reuters withdrew the doctored image on Sunday and replaced it with the unaltered photograph after several news blogs said it had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more smoke. He was among several photographers from the main international news agencies whose images of a dead child being held up by a rescuer in the village of Qana, south Lebanon, after an Israeli air strike on July 30 have been challenged by blogs critical of the mainstream media's coverage of the Middle East conflict. Reuters and other news organizations reviewed those images and have all rejected allegations that the photographs were staged.
11) L.A. Mayor Apologizes to Muslim Leaders Associated Press August 7, 2006 Filed at 9:22 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Mayor-Muslims.html Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has apologized to Muslim leaders who accused him of taking Israel's side in the violence in Lebanon by going to a pro-Israel rally and ignoring their invitations to interfaith peace vigils. Villaraigosa met with Muslim leaders Sunday and said a mix-up by his staff had prevented him from seeing their invitations. Villaraigosa called the meeting after the Muslim leaders held a news conference Friday accusing him of not representing all groups touched by the conflict. They noted that he attended a July 23 rally by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, at which he condemned Hezbollah guerrilla rocket attacks on Israel, but failed to respond to repeated invitations to interfaith vigils for people killed on both sides in Lebanon. ''It was gracious of him to say 'I apologize for the lack of communications,''' said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Shura Council of Southern California. The mayor pledged to visit mosques and attend events in the city's Islamic communities, and assigned one of his senior advisors as liaison to Muslim groups.
12) Iran Says It Will Ignore U.N. Deadline on Uranium Program Michael Slackman New York Times August 7, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/world/middleeast/07iran.html Iran's chief national security official said Sunday that Iran would defy the UN Security Council by refusing to halt enrichment of uranium by the end of the month. During a news conference in Iran, Ali Larijani, the country's security chief and top nuclear negotiator, condemned the West. He said it had engaged in double-dealing, by first offering a package of incentives in exchange for suspension of its nuclear-enrichment program, and then by issuing a threat. In remarks reported by the official Iranian News Agency, Mr. Larijani did not appear to chart new ground, sticking with Iran's position that it would not halt enrichment as a precondition of negotiations. Western diplomats in Iran said in recent interviews that it appeared that Iran's leadership had bet on the notion that it was more likely to get what it wanted if it refused to budge from its position, believing that the Security Council, and the West in particular, would do anything to avoid another ugly confrontation in the Middle East.
13) Lamont Leads Lieberman 51 - 45 In Dem Primary Quinnipiac University Polling Results August 7, 2006 http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x11362.xml?ReleaseID=945 Connecticut likely Democratic primary voters back challenger Ned Lamont 51 - 45 percent over incumbent Sen. Joseph Lieberman in the U.S. Senate race, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. This compares to a 54 - 41 percent Lamont lead among likely Democratic primary voters in an August 3 poll by Quinnipiac University. In this latest survey, 4 percent of likely Democratic primary voters remain undecided, but 90 percent of voters who name a candidate say their mind is made up. Lieberman's support for the war in Iraq is the main reason they are voting for Lamont, 36 percent of Lamont voters say, while 54 percent say it is one of several reasons.
14) MoveOn Seeking 1st 2006 Election Victory Associated Press August 7, 2006 Filed at 7:22 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-MoveOns-Moves.html Other than the candidates, no one has more riding on this week's Connecticut Democratic Senate primary than MoveOn.org, a liberal organization at the edgy intersection of politics and the Internet. With victory for Ned Lamont, the group can claim a role in helping an anti-war challenger dump Sen. Joe Lieberman, who supports President Bush's policy in Iraq and has the backing of the Democratic establishment. A come-from-behind win for Lieberman would mark yet another setback for MoveOn in its parallel campaign -- to strengthen its credentials as a force to be heeded by Democrats as they seek congressional majorities this fall.
15) Iraqi Woman's Blog Taken on Stage Reuters August 7, 2006 Filed at 5:34 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arts-mideast-blog.html "Is it time to wash our hands of the country and find a stable life somewhere else?'' The question in "Girl Blog from Iraq'' was posted last weekend by a young Iraqi woman whose weblog has been adapted into a theatrical documentary at the Edinburgh Fringe arts festival. Played by actresses of Palestinian, Syrian, Iranian and Iraqi origin, she recounts the horrors of abduction, murder and rape alongside her determined efforts to carve out a normal life amid the carnage. Known only as "Riverbend,'' the Iraqi blogger has been providing regular dispatches since August 2003, writing in her first entry: ``I'm female, Iraqi and 24. I survived the war. That is all you need to know. It's all that matters.'' Her online diary on www.riverbendblog.blogspot.com was nominated for a major literary prize in Britain. The tone of the diary has markedly changed since war's end. In March, she wrote: "Even the most cynical war critics couldn't imagine the country being this bad three years after the war.'' In the latest update, Riverbend reflects on the Middle East conflict, especially the Israeli air attack on the Lebanese village of Qana. "I woke up this morning to scenes of carnage and destruction on the television and for the briefest of moments I thought it was footage of Iraq. It took me a few seconds to realize it was actually Qana in Lebanon. I just sat there and cried in front of the television. I didn't know I could feel that sort of sorrow toward what has become a daily reality for Iraqis. It's not Iraq but it might as well be.''
16) Iraqi Medic Describes Carnage: Testimony Begins in Hearing for U.S. Soldiers Accused of Rape Joshua Partlow Washington Post Monday, August 7, 2006; Page A12 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/06/AR2006080600803.html An Iraqi medic who responded to a home where U.S. soldiers allegedly raped and killed a teenage Iraqi girl and murdered her sister and parents described on Sunday a display of carnage so horrific he said it made him sick for two weeks.
17) Mexican Candidate Says Civil Disobedience Will Continue James C. McKinley Jr. New York Times August 7, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/world/americas/07mexico.html Andrés Manuel López Obrador vowed Sunday to take the daily mass demonstrations supporting his demand for a full recount of the results in last month's presidential race to the courthouse where a special electoral court had denied his request. Speaking to thousands of supporters in the capital's central square, the candidate shied away from calling for more confrontational acts of civil disobedience, like seizing the city's international airport or shutting down major highways, as some of his supporters had expected. Instead, he told his supporters to prepare themselves for a long, drawn-out battle with the government, a fight "to defend democracy." He suggested that he would carry on his protest even after the electoral tribunal, which on Saturday turned down the demand for the recount, makes its final decision and certifies the president-elect in September. López Obrador has charged that there were enough irregularities and, in some instances, fraud, to warrant a complete recount. But on Saturday, the seven-member electoral court that must ratify the results said he had not proved widespread fraud. The court rejected his request and instead ordered a partial recount in about 12,000 polling places, fewer than 10 percent of the total, where there were irregularities. With the help of allies in the city government, Mr. López Obrador and his allies have already closed Paseo de la Reforma for several miles, covering it with tents and protest camps.
-- Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org
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