If they keep out of the way of the angry Israeli juggernaut – our OFWs will be ‘safe’

There’s no other way to say it: the clash between the attacking Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the defiant Hezbollah has escalated to an all-out war.

Aside from our more than 30,000 Filipinos working in Lebanon being in harm’s way, the crisis has sent world prices of oil skyrocketing to practically $80 a barrel, and the bite of this will be strongly felt in our local economy – as it will around the globe. In short, what many earlier viewed as a vest-pocket war may – if it persists and widens – put everybody on this planet, if they rely on oil and fossil fuel, disastrously out of pocket.

The Hezbollah, which has been styling itself the "Party of God" has been striking back at Israel’s destructive air attacks, artillery barrages, and naval bombardment by raining missiles on the port city of Haifa, and other cities and towns in northern Israel, bringing the battle "home" to the Israelis. It’s almost like London during Adolf Hitler’s blitz and the Battle of Britain, then the later, last-ditch barrage from launching sites on Occupied France of those deadly V-2 rockets.

The Jewish Mossad, their intelligence service, already knew that Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah and his Shia Islamist guerrilla movement – also a political party with 14, not just two seats in the Lebanese Parliament – had a stockpile of over 12,000 Katyusha rockets, acquired from the Syrians, with a range of 10 to 20 miles. They’ve now realized the Hezbollah, which has always been supported and funded by Oil-rich Iran, have perhaps 1,000 more long-range C-802 missiles with a longer reach – 80 to 100 miles. Also FAJR-3 missiles, with a range of 20 to 30 miles.

The Hezbollah, boosted by Iranian missile technology, reputedly are saving missiles capable of blasting as far south as the major city of Tel Aviv for their "Sunday Punch." (In the case of Muslims, it’s the "Friday Punch.") The people of Tel Aviv – the frequent target of suicide-bombings by the Palestinians – must already be bracing for Hezbollah rockets greeting them: "Happy Sabbath – and goodbye!"

The rain on their cities of Hezbollah rockets, sometimes as many as 100 a day, has hardened the resolve of even the most-reluctant Israelis that the IDF must up the ante and finish off the Islamic "terrorists" once and for all – even if it reduces Lebanon to cinders.

It’s the primordial imperative: Win or else be exterminated yourselves or pushed into the sea.

There are no Doves in Israel at this moment: and the IDF would love nothing better than to get the signal to pulverize everything in their path. Poor Lebanon! Scarcely recovering from the blackened ruins and the charnel house which was the 15-year civil war, the Lebanese in despair are seeing what they rebuilt at great cost smashed into rubble once more, their bridges destroyed, their highways pockmarked, their airport riddled with huge craters, their fuel dumps in flames.

They had hopefully expected 1.5 million foreign tourists to visit their beautiful country this summer – instead, everybody’s fleeing in panic, including Lebanese.

The people, ironically are not blaming Hezbollah for provoking the terrible fight by attacking Israel across the border and kidnapping two Israeli soldiers. They’re suffused with hatred, and blaming Israel. The Islamic fanatics knew what they were doing – provoking the Israelis to come roaring across the line into Southern Lebanon which they had abandoned six years ago (the Hezbollah brags that they chased the hated Zionists out in May 2000).

Now the Israelis – suckered in perhaps – are back, punching south to finish the job. Will their offensive falter as they near the Syrian border, or will they yell, what the hell, and go careening all the way across the frontier on the Road to Damascus?

We never imagined when we met with Ehud Olmert – then the mild-mannered Mayor of Jerusalem – in May 1996 that he would turn into a war leader demanding "an eye for an eye." (After all, Olmert – unlike his predecessor and mentor, felled by a stroke, Ariel Sharon, a general and warrior all his life, had never distinguished himself in battle – he had served only briefly as a lieutenant).

Today, Ehud strides into Cabinet meetings like Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Marshal Montgomery and Gen. George Patton rolled into one – heck, like Moshe Dayan minus the eye-patch.

In the years this writer went to Israel many times and talked with David Ben-Gurion from the Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev, the redoubtable Prime Minister Golda Meir (who always beguiled you with her Milwaukee accent and offered to teach you how to cook gefilte fish) – wow, she was called "the only man in the Cabinet", Ehud Barak, and our old friend Shimon Peres (I see that brilliant man is still Vice Premier and a frontliner in making the news), we would drive all over, as far as Haifa and Barsheeva, or fly over the desert to Eilat on the Red Sea. We would stay in Kibbutzim like Ein Gev, Ginosar, or Kibbutz Tel Katsir – fired upon in the Galilee by Syrian snipers up on the Golan Heights – until the Golan was captured by the IDF in 1967 during the Six Day War. They’ll never give it back.

The last time we went up to the Golan Heights in May 1996, with our group of journalists from the IPI, by golly, it started snowing heavily – imagine that. One of us commented, as we peered across the Irbid to the lights of Damascus blinking in the distance, that there must be many American Jews in the IDF – our guide a lady Major spoke perfect "American," without the trace of an accent.

"You bet," a voice suddenly interrupted from almost beside us. It was the sergeant commanding a machine-gun and rocket emplacement to our left. He grinned and remarked: "I’m from Brooklyn."

This is why, quite probably, the Palestinians and Arabs will never trust the Americans as "honest brokers."

Even in St. Petersburg, meeting with his fellow G-8 leaders and with his Russian host, President Vladimir Putin (who got what he wanted out of that three-day clubby meeting of the high and mighty, recognition by his own people as one of the great Movers and Shakers), Dubya Bush’s body language spoke volumes.

He had started earlier that Israel had "the right to defend itself." Then, in an unguarded moment, not noticing the microphone was on, he intimated to his pal, Britain’s Tony Blair, that he was sending his Secretary of State Condi Rice to assess things in Israel and Lebanon.

Bush, if you ask me, not-too-secretly wishes the Israelis to finish off the Hezbollah, the fanatical terrorist group which has long been a thorn, too, in America’s side. Can they do it? Or will the IDF run out of steam.

Iran is actively in the game. The Israelis claim that the shore to ship missile (radar-guided) which had hit an Israeli navy ship and crippled it had been dispatched by Iranian Revolutionary Guards on the ground with the Hezbollah. When the Hezbollah was organizing in 1982, their first echelons had been trained by the Revolutionary Guards. Recruits at the time had been estimated at 7,000.

If things go awry, will Tehran decide to take a more direct hand?

The talk of the United Nations sending in a security force (they’re already calling it a "monitoring" force) is a big joke. The UN has already passed resolutions which have been ignored. The latest was UN Security Council Resolution 1559 that had required the Syrians to pull out after their 22-year "occupation." The same Resolution called for all militias in Lebanon, pointedly referring to the Hezbollah to be disarmed. Nobody went and did it.

The UN has since 2000 maintained a border force in Southern Lebanon named the UNAFIL, did I say "force"? It remains a farce. Toothless and reduced to timid observer status.

A new group of 10,000 UN peacekeepers? Give us a break.

The Israelis are already warning the UN and the European Union to keep out – for the moment. They’ll just, the IDF irritably believes, just get in the way. (How effective were they when hundreds of thousands were being massacred in Rwanda?)

The blue helmets just aren’t welcome – only the blue of the IDFs Star of David, or the blood-red Kalashnikov battle-banner of the Hezbollah. In a fight to the finish, who will prevail?

In beautiful Lebanon, which is the past we much traveled and admired, there may be no winners or losers – only survivors.

* * *

What’s escalated in urgency is the need to get our OFWs – some 90 percent of them domestic helpers – safely to the Catholic churches and other safe havens designated for them. We had earlier hoped the OFWs would be better off, staying with their Lebanese employers, some of them in the pricey Christian section of Beirut. It turns out that many Lebanese, fleeing in panic, had abandoned their domestic helpers, leaving them to fend for themselves.

What can the P45 million in the DFA fund accomplish? The Brits sent in helicopters to pluck out the elderly and sick and fly them to the island of Cyprus – if I remember right from previous flights, just an hour or a bit more by jet over the Mediterranean Sea. Many of the Western refugees are being ferried over to Cyprus – Nicosia, the capital of Greek-Cypriot side must be jampacked by now with "refugees", perhaps even Famagusta on the Turkish-Cypriot side. The hotels and resorts must be full – with more bedraggled people arriving.

The Canadians put in three ships to start evacuating their own. The US Navy and other US merchant vessels are steering in. The British Royal Navy is rushing in. It’s not as simple as that. They still have to get Lebanese government approval.

What have we got? We’re trying to charter vessels. Our lone, C-130 Hercules, even if it left last night, could not make the distance, nor bring out many enough. On the ground, vehicles are in short supply. We’ll end up calling on our nationals to exercise that good old Pinoy improvisation. And pray, too.

Somehow, slaphappy as we are, they usually manage – with much effort, suffering – and still a smile, to make do. Let’s hope this is what happens in Lebanon today.

Sayang. Lebanon is such a lovely country – with less than four million population – with coastal cities on the sparkling sea like Sidon, Byblos and Tyre. You could go swimming in the morning in the old days, then drive up the mountains to go skiing (if one knew how) in the area of the legendary Cedars of Lebanon – where the wood was hewed in ancient times to build the rafters of the Temple of Solomon.

The Lebanese, many of them descended from the ancient seafarers and traders, the Phoenicians, or the people of Carthage who once defied Imperial Rome (with Hannibal crossing the Alps with his elephants to attack Trasimene and try to drive on to Rome), are of courageous stock. But they’ll need all of that courage and cunning now. They are being faced with tragedy, caught between the Hezbollah (and their Syrian and Iranian backers) – and the rampaging, ferocious Israeli Defense Forces.

A fight to the finish? Who knows.