In this issue: 1) Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah 2) Mideast Fight Enters 17th Day as Rice Vows to Return 3) Bush Sees a Chance for Change to Sweep Mideast 4) Israel Approves Call-Up, but Sets No Deployment 5) Sergeant Tells of Plot to Kill Iraqi Detainees 6) Israeli Attacks Kill Up to 12 in Lebanon 7) Series of Woes Mar Iraq Project Hailed as Model 8) Europe May Be Drawn Into Mideast Conflict 9) Hizbollah Fires Long - Range Rocket Into Israel 10) In Israel's Sights, Lebanon Truckers Face Death 11) Blair to Press Bush for UN Resolution on Lebanon 12) Iran: Hezbollah Got No Military Support 13) Rice on the Defensive After Rome Summit 14) Key UN Members Said to Reach Informal Deal on Iran 15) China Links US Mideast Stance to Iran Measure 16) Bolton's U.N. Post Sparks Partisan Debate 17) Is Iran Behind the War in Lebanon? 18) On Israel, We Must Never Be Silent 19) Down the Memory Hole
Summary: At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments like Saudi Arabia criticized Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the US and Israel took as a green light to continue the fight, the New York Times notes. Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group's leader into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements. The Saudis and Jordan are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington. An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the US and Secretary of State Rice for trumpeting American plans for a "new Middle East" that they say has led only to violence and repression. American officials say that while the Arab leaders need to take a harder line publicly for domestic political reasons, what matters more is what they tell the US in private, which the Americans still see as a wink and a nod.
In a multinational conference on the Middle East crisis in Rome on Wednesday, Rice had successfully argued for language in a joint communique calling for a "sustainable" cease-fire including political elements, rather than an immediate one, a stance that had the effect of buying time for Israel to pursue its military campaign against Hezbollah. Israeli officials said later that in fact, the declaration gave Israel the world's permission to continue strikes in Lebanon against Hezbollah targets. But a State Department spokesman said that such an interpretation of the Rome declaration was "outrageous," and that the United States was working for a durable end to the conflict.
President Bush said today that Secretary of State Rice would be dispatched to the Middle East on Saturday with a plan for a multinational force that would help Lebanon's army take over from Hezbollah in the southern part of the country. Bush spoke this afternoon at a press conference with Prime Minister Blair of Britain. Both leaders called for the need to impose United Nations resolution 1559, which calls for disarming Hezbollah and deploying the Lebanese Army to the border. Blair said the plan includes bringing forward a United Nations meeting to Monday about an international stabilization force that will allow Lebanon's government to deploy its own army in the south.
A United Nations official said there would be an investigation into why four UN observers were killed on Tuesday despite repeated warnings that the firing was coming too close to the observation post. "Why did they go on firing?" said the deputy secretary general at the United Nations, Mark Malloch Brown, on CNN. At the United Nations on Thursday, the Security Council adopted a statement that expressed shock and distress at the killings of the observers but avoided the direct criticism of Israel and its motives that had been in earlier drafts. The statement underlined "the importance of insuring that U.N. personnel are not the object of attack," but it turned aside Mr. Annan's request that the United Nations be permitted to join in the Israeli investigation of the incident.
China on Thursday warned the United States that its opposition to a statement condemning a deadly attack on a U.N. post in Lebanon could jeopardize U.N. negotiations on Iran's nuclear ambitions. The United States was blocking a U.N. Security Council statement on Israel's attack on the outpost in southern Lebanon, despite what council diplomats called many compromises by Beijing. "This is a serious matter,'' China's U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, told reporters. "It is an attack on the U.N. peacekeepers.'' Wang said nearly every delegation in the council was frustrated over the U.S. position. "Definitely this frustration will have its negative impact,'' Wang said. "I believe it will affect it negatively.''
The Israeli government on Thursday approved call-ups for as many as 30,000 reserve troops, suggesting that it may be gearing up for a protracted battle. The security cabinet nonetheless ruled out a major military escalation for now, opting to maintain a focus on wide-ranging airstrikes and limited ground incursions along the border.
At least 10 people were reported killed today in villages near the coastal town of Tyre in southern Lebanon, where Israeli airstrikes were most intense. Israeli jets also hit several buildings near the town of Nabatiyeh, killing three people and wounding nine, according to Lebanese security officials cited by the Associated Press.
Hospitals in Lebanon have received the bodies of more than 400 people killed in the fighting, and the country's health minister, Muhammad Khalifeh, said an estimated 150 to 200 bodies were still under the rubble. "We have not been able to pull them out because the areas they died in are still under fire," Mr. Khalifeh told Reuters.
The Israeli military said it has killed more than 200 Hezbollah militants since the fighting began with a cross-border raid on July 12. Hezbollah has given only occasional figures, putting the number at around 30.
Hezbollah maintained its rocket fire on northern Israel today. About 50 rockets hit northern Israel as of the afternoon, though only a few minor injuries were reported. Fifty-two Israelis have been killed in fighting so far, including 19 civilians who died in rocket attacks.
Food and other aid continued to trickle into Lebanon. While supplies are beginning to arrive, some foreign truck drivers have refused to travel to areas being bombed. At the Arida border crossing with Syria in northern Lebanon, Turkish trucks bringing food stopped to transfer their supplies to Lebanese-owned trucks in a laborious process that took more than an hour a truck.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, told Prime Minister Romano Prodi of Italy on Thursday that he believed a solution could soon be reached in the case involving the Israeli soldier who was kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip by Palestinian militants on June 25. However, Palestinian factions said they were not aware of an imminent deal. In Gaza, where 23 Palestinians were killed Wednesday, Israeli troops and Palestinian militants again clashed along the eastern edge of Gaza City on Thursday, but on a smaller scale. Still, four Palestinians were killed, including an elderly woman, Palestinian medical workers said. Nearly 150 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its offensive a month ago to retrieve its captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire. The death toll includes a large number of militants and civilians, according to Palestinian monitoring groups.
In a sworn statement, Sgt. Lemuel Lemus said he had witnessed a deliberate plot by his fellow soldiers to kill three handcuffed Iraqi prisoners and a cover-up in which one soldier cut another to bolster their story, the New York Times reports. The squad leader threatened to kill anyone who talked. As with similar cases being investigated in Iraq, Sergeant Lemus's narrative has raised questions about the rules under which American troops operate and the possible culpability of commanders. Four soldiers have been charged with premeditated murder in the case. Lawyers for two of them, who dispute Sergeant Lemus's account, say the soldiers were given an order by a decorated colonel on the day in question to "kill all military-age men" they encountered. The colonel, Michael Steele, led the 1993 mission in Somalia made famous by the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."
U.S. allies pressed Washington to speed efforts to secure a cease-fire in the Lebanon crisis, AP reports. In France, President Jacques Chirac said his country will press for the rapid adoption of a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, his office said.
The United States is dropping Bechtel, the American construction giant, from a project to build a high-tech children's hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Basra after the project fell nearly a year behind schedule and exceeded its expected cost by as much as 150 percent, the New York Times reports. Called the Basra Children's Hospital, the project has been consistently championed by the first lady and Secretary of State Rice, and was designed to house sophisticated equipment for treating childhood cancer. Now it becomes the latest in a series of American taxpayer-financed health projects in Iraq to face overruns, delays and cancellations. David Snider, a spokesman for the United States Agency for International Development, the State Department agency in charge of the project, said that technically, Bechtel's contract was not being terminated because the contract did not actually require the company to complete the hospital. "They are under a 'term contract,' which means their job is over when their money ends," Mr. Snider said. So despite not finishing the hospital, he said, "they did complete the contract."
Europe may be drawn into a big role in the proposed multinational force for south Lebanon, AP reports. But with troops already stretched from Afghanistan to Congo, Europeans are hardly clamoring for another Mideast entanglement. Along with the promise of a stronger European military profile, any involvement in the fight between Israel and Hezbollah militants holds the danger of a blow to the continent's credibility. The former colonial powers of Europe have a troubled history in the region.
Trucks, vans and cars have been a daily target for the Israeli military in its war with Hizbollah, killing dozens on the roads and hindering delivery of food supplies to villages in need of replenishment, Reuters reports. Israel says it hits vehicles carrying Hizbollah weapons. Many drivers have stopped working. An aid agency offered one driver $1,000 to take food to the southern city of Tyre, which has been heavily pounded in the war which began on July 12. He refused despite the financial hardship caused by losing his source of income. "I said no way. I'm not taking the truck out. A colleague did that and they incinerated his truck and killed him.'' The United Nations has said targeting of commercial trucks, together with destruction of roads and bridges, has seriously hampered relief operations for 750,000 displaced people.
Iran's foreign ministry on Friday denied allegations that Tehran has provided military support to Hezbollah in its fight against Israel, a day after President Bush sharply criticized Iran's role in the bloody fighting. ''Our support has been spiritual. If we had military support, we would announce it. ... We don't have any hidden business,'' ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.
For the past year, Secretary of State Rice has worked assiduously to resurrect the importance of traditional diplomacy and building consensus among world leaders after America's go-it-alone approach to Iraq, the New York Times reports. She has managed to hold together a fragile coalition of countries seeking to curb Iran's nuclear program by offering to end America's three-decade-long refusal to talk to Tehran if it suspends its uranium-enrichment program. But in the space of one hour in Rome on Wednesday, the public rewards of that hard work — the view around the world that the United States may now be more willing to play nice with others — may have been undone. Once again, it seemed, the United States had reverted to its my-way-or-the-highway approach, and Rice was on the defensive. Reports of the Rome meeting uniformly painted her as isolated in one corner, refusing to yield to impassioned calls for an immediate cease-fire to end mounting civilian casualties in Lebanon.
Key U.N. Security Council members agreed informally on Thursday on a resolution demanding Iran suspend nuclear enrichment and reprocessing work and threatening to consider sanctions if it refuses, Reuters reported. The draft text must first be approved by governments of the five Security Council members with veto power as well as Germany. But on Thursday, two diplomats close to the negotiations told Reuters there was "provisional agreement'' among the six. If true, a vote could be scheduled for Monday after the full Security Council receives the draft.
The Bush administration and GOP leaders on Thursday renewed their push for Senate approval of John Bolton as U.N. ambassador. Democrats maintained he is too brash and ineffective to be confirmed. The sharp division all but guaranteed that lawmakers were headed toward another partisan showdown in the full Senate, although Democrats would not say whether their opposition would amount to a filibuster, as it did last year.
An issue brief by Trita Parsi and Gareth Porter for the National Iranian American Council casts doubts on the claims by neoconservatives in Washington that Iran was behind the Hezbollah capture two Israeli soldiers that provided the trigger for Israel's assault on Lebanon. They argue that the new escalation will likely damage Iran's interests by degrading Hezbollah's military capabilities and by increasing the threat from the United States.
Responding to the contoversy around his criticism of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians, New York Senate candidate Jonathan Tasini writes that there are a growing number of people in the Jewish community who are willing to speak up, out of love for Israel, about the occupation. Tasini notes that his father fought in the Israeli war of independence and that several of his close relatives have been killed in Israel's wars or in terror attacks. He reaffirms his support for a two-state solution and reiterates his concern that Israel has engaged in torture and war crimes. A friend of Israel, he writes, would understand that employing collective punishment against people in Lebanon only embitters a population, possibly for generations, and that even a short-term military victory will be empty if it leaves behind a shattered country.
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting takes the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times to task for editorializing that Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were solely responsible for sparking violence, and that the Israeli military response was predictable and unavoidable. FAIR notes that this overlooks key events, such as the kidnapping of two Palestinians in Gaza by the IDF the day before the Hamas raid, or the assassination of a Palestinian leader in Lebanon in May, attributed by Lebanese authories to Israel. These incidents went largely unreported in the U.S. FAIR notes that with the exception of the San Fransisco Chronicle, which reported on July 21 that Israel's campaign in Lebanon has been planned for more than a year, the U.S. media have largely promoted the view that the conflict started on July 12.
Articles: 1) Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah Neil MacFarquhar New York Times July 28, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28arabs.html
2) Mideast Fight Enters 17th Day as Rice Vows to Return Greg Myre And Christine Hauser New York Times July 28, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/28cnd-mideast.html
3) Bush Sees a Chance for Change to Sweep Mideast Christine Hauser New York Times July 28, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28cnd-mideast.html
4) Israel Approves Call-Up, but Sets No Deployment Greg Myre New York Times July 28, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html
5) Sergeant Tells of Plot to Kill Iraqi Detainees Robert F. Worth New York Times July 28, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28abuse.html
6) Israeli Attacks Kill Up to 12 in Lebanon Associated Press July 28, 2006 Filed at 1:49 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Lebanon-Israel.html
7) Series of Woes Mar Iraq Project Hailed as Model James Glanz New York Times July 28, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28basra.html
8) Europe May Be Drawn Into Mideast Conflict Associated Press July 27, 2006 Filed at 4:45 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mideast-Fighting-Drawing-in-Europe-LH1.html
9) Hizbollah Fires Long - Range Rocket Into Israel Reuters July 28, 2006 Filed at 12:32 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-rockets.html
10) In Israel's Sights, Lebanon Truckers Face Death Reuters July 28, 2006 Filed at 8:45 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-lebanon-truckers.html
11) Blair to Press Bush for UN Resolution on Lebanon Reuters July 28, 2006 Filed at 5:52 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-britain-usa.html
12) Iran: Hezbollah Got No Military Support Associated Press July 28, 2006 Filed at 7:00 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mideast-Fighting-Iran.html
13) Rice on the Defensive After Rome Summit Helene Cooper New York Times July 28, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/29ricecnd.html
14) Key UN Members Said to Reach Informal Deal on Iran Reuters July 27, 2006 Filed at 6:50 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-nuclear-iran-un.html
15) China Links US Mideast Stance to Iran Measure Reuters July 27, 2006 Filed at 2:35 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-un-council.html
16) Bolton's U.N. Post Sparks Partisan Debate Associated Press July 28, 2006 Filed at 8:26 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-UN-Ambassador.html
17) Is Iran Behind the War in Lebanon? Dr. Trita Parsi and Dr. Gareth Porter National Iranian American Council website July 24, 2006 http://www.niacouncil.org/pressreleases/press399.asp
18) On Israel, We Must Never Be Silent Jonathan Tasini Thursday, July 27, 2006 CommonDreams.org http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0727-22.htm
19) Down the Memory Hole Israeli contribution to conflict is forgotten by leading papers Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting July 28, 2006 http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2928
-------- Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org