Neither ‘birth pangs’, nor death rattle – the old hatreds erupt anew

Yesterday’s significant developments occurred thousands of miles away, but they will affect all of us – not just our OFWs and their anxious families here. The government in Beirut rejected the coming there of United States Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to continue negotiations for a peace formula. Prime Minister Siniora flatly said "no" to a Condi visit, and Lebanese President Emile Lahoud (long a pro-Syrian stalwart) openly assailed the US, virtually accusing it of being the sponsor and supplier of the Israeli war effort.

What triggered their rage, probably, was the latest Israeli air-strike in Qana, a town in Southern Lebanon, where bombs destroyed a four storey-building packed with refugees. The blood-drenched spectacle of the mangled bodies of dozens of men, women and children, some of them babies, have indeed impacted all over the Arab world.

In vain, the Israelis insists – probably the truth, knowing the way the Shiite "Hezbollah" fight – that the area all around the doomed building was a launching site for Hezbollah missiles being launched to bombard Israeli towns and cities, particularly the third largest city, Haifa, both a port and industrial-technological center with a population of half a million within its radius.

Israeli Defense Forces spokesmen have been saying that 2,000 missiles thus far have rained on Israeli communities, killing and wounding scores of civilians and bringing life and work to a standstill in the bracketed areas.

"We are only defending our people from such attacks," the Israeli Defense Forces spokemen have been insisting. But the images of hundreds of thousands panic-stricken, weeping Lebanese families fleeing, and the daily scenes of the dead, wounded and dying (a third of the fatalities children) are doing Israel no good. Hezbollah’s fanatical and charismatic leader, Shaykh Hasan Nasrallah, is emerging as a "hero", not a terrorist, and not just in Lebanon but in surrounding Arab countries. Hezbollah, the jihadist "Party of God" – funded by Iran and backed by Syria – has transmogrified from a terrorist guerrilla (cum political) movement into the valiant "defender" of the war-torn country from the hated, "murdering" Israelis.

Even moderate Arab leaders like Jordan’s King Abdullah, who earlier condemned the Hezbollah have been compelled by the reaction to the Israeli raids and "invasion" of their own people, to shift tack. Yesterday, the King, who had tried to broker peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis, angrily condemned the Qana "massacre" as "an ugly thing."

America is, of course, the big loser on the tumultuous, seething "Arab street" throughout the region, since the US has long been perceived as the chief backer of Israel – come what may. In a sense, this cannot be denied. From the inception of the state of Israel, the US has given that tiny nation no less than $1-billion in loans and aid. Washington DC grants Israel the equivalent of about $3-billion annually. Lebanon’s cities and towns, its roads, bridges, and power facilities are being attacked from the air by US-supplied F-16s and other warplanes, helicopter gunships, while the bombs falling, and artillery shells exploding also come from the good old USA.

In short, Condi Rice has an impossible job to do – try to broker a deal involving an eventual ceasefire when the "other side" (the Lebanese and other Muslims) cannot regard America as an honest broker.

After all, Jewish influence in the USA, including the administration of President George W. Bush is visible for any eye to see. In the 1960s, when I first went there to write about Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt (I did a stint in Cairo, too, writing about the contrast between ancient Egypt and the present), the joke used to be – noting then the tiny Israeli population of only 4 million. "Why are there so few Israelis? Because all the f__king Jews are in New York."

Sus, I even used to write for the New York Times.

Hollywood, Wall Street, the legal profession – all these sum up part of the voter and power base in America. The so-called "Zionist connection" is inescapable.

Anyway, America was never loved on the "Arab Street." Now, for better or worse, the US is struck with Israel.

* * *

How does the worsening of the situation, the escalating bitterness of the conflict affect us in the Philippines? The immediate answer would be the 30,000 of our OFWs still trapped in Lebanon – some of them almost penniless and sleeping fitfully on the hard ground. It is next to impossible, at this time to move most of them anywhere – but we must ceasely try to get them to safer areas, if not out of that dangerous country.

The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), alas, have destroyed highways and bridges leading to the Syrian border – the escape route taken by hundreds of thousands of fleeing Lebanese and other nationalities. This is explained by the IDF owing to their apprehension Syria which gifted the Hezbollah with those 12,000 deadly Katusha rockets dozens to a hundred being launched daily against Northern Israel, might resupply the guerrilla army by these routes. The Hezbollah have already started using longer-range missiles like the Khaibar 1 which hit Afula deep in Israel, some 50 km. from the Lebanese border.

The other day, the Lebanese Consul in Manila, our old friend Joseph Assad, sensibly remarked (as quoted in another newspaper) that our government could give Filipinos within Lebanon financial assistance, but that not many of them might really wish to leave despite the perils of a widening war.

To begin with, any traffic on the roads (I essay to add) are regarded by the Israel aircraft as moving targets and occasionally zapped from the air. The Israelis have not only blasted bridges but petrol stations, thus gasoline and other fuel are in short supply. Sadly, in search of Hezbollah rockets-launchers who make it a point to mix in with the general population, firing off their missiles from alleys and roads next to civilian homes (indeed, concealing many of them in civilian buildings), the Israelis are pounding entire city blocks to rubble.

The current shocking events, despite the out-of-breath, nonstop, dramatic television coverage, are not new to blood-drenched Lebanon. Violence has for generations stalked this lovely, tragic land – including a 15-year Civil War much fiercer and more destructive than the present mini-war. It raged from 1976 to 1990, and killed 150,000 Lebanese.

The four million Lebanese are composed of 16 (yes, sixteen) officially recognized sects, living together in mutual dislike in a country the size of Connecticut. One of the most knowledgeable correspondents, Jonathan Randall of the Washington Post (who covered that Civil War and has covered wars in the Congo, Algiers, Eastern Europe, Eritrea, and elsewhere in the Middle East – and now lives in Paris – in his unforgettable 1983 book, updated in 1990, "The Tragedy of Lebanon," said these often contending sects – Shiite Muslim, Sunni Muslim, Maronite Christian, Druze, etc. – are "at times held together only in their paranoid fear and hatred for each other."

For that matter, for decades, Israel – which occupied southern Lebanon for 22 years and Syria which occupied Northern and central Lebanon, including the Bekaa Valley and, in reality, Beirut itself, for 33 years until the Syrians were expelled last year by United Nations Resolution 1559 (implicated in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a devout Muslim whose crime was to demand the end of Syrian bullying and imposition) – both have meddled shamelessly in Lebanon.

The Israelis, indeed, invaded Lebanon in 1982 – remember – under the direction of Ariel Sharon, with more than 30,000 deaths resulting. America, as well, has been meddling over the decades as well.

The Iranians have long been in the game, too. Who has kept his fingers off that land? It is the cockpit of conspiracies and the confluence of tragic events.

If you’ll recall, a Lebanese President-elect, a Maronite Christian chieftain named Bashir Gemayel, was blown up in his own headquarters in 1982, just a week, I think, before he was slated to take office! Who did it? The Israelis, who had been his allies – but had soured on him? The Syrians? Some bitter enemies from other sects (the pious Gemayel had clawed and murdered his way to the top, until he assumed the sweet new image of a Lebanon "united" with all sects living in amity and joy)? Boom! Exit Gemayel, and the hopes of the Christians to dominate a majority Muslim population. That’s Lebanon for you.

This helps explain, but doesn’t forgive the violent confusion now ongoing. The price the world is paying is in terms of the cost of oil. The upsurge in fuel costs has already cost our country dearly – and this will grow worse in the months to come.

Can there be a happy ending? There is never a happy ending in that corner of our planet.

Condi Rice, for all her brilliance, doesn’t understand that region, seething with ancient enmities and intrigues, and betrayals, very much it seems. (Shucks, nobody does, particularly those who inhabit it).

Her unfortunate statement at the outset of her shuttle-diplomacy to attempt to mend the crisis will haunt her for a lifetime and sour her earnest initiatives. The crisis had begun when Hezbollah fighters crossed the border and attacked an Israeli outpost last July 12, killing eight IDF soldiers and kidnapping two. The Israelis reacted in full force, sending their F-16s to cut a swathe of destruction through towns and cities, pounding suspected Hezbollah strongholds with artillery, then sending the famed elite Golani brigade to winkle out Hezbollah (who counter-ambushed the surprised IDF in Southern Lebanon).

Speeding to the scene, Rice had commented that the crisis might only be "the birth pangs of a new Middle East." Wrong. There is and cannot be a new Middle East. It will be the old Middle East, again and again. The guises may be different, but the feudal elements (despite super-modern armaments brought into play, and pretensions to "democracy") will remain in play, as they have been for generations.

There is always hope. But hope is quickly dashed in that arid hemisphere, where everything dries up, human compassion the first of all to evaporate. It is a despairing portrait. But unless a miracle occurs, it is the only as accurate if painful one.