06/27/06 "The Independent" — – Qlaya, Southern Lebanon — Is it possible - is it conceivable - that Israel is losing its war in Lebanon?
From this hill village in the south of the country, I am watching the clouds of brown and black smoke rising from its latest disaster in the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil: up to 13 Israeli soldiers dead, and others surrounded, after a devastating ambush by Hizbollah guerrillas in what was supposed to be a successful Israeli military advance against a "terrorist centre".
To my left smoke rises too, over the town of Khiam, where a smashed United Nations outpost remains the only memorial to the four UN soldiers - most of them decapitated by an American-made missile on Tuesday - killed by the Israeli air force.
Indian soldiers of the UN army in southern Lebanon, visibly moved by the horror of bringing their Canadian, Fijian, Chinese and Austrian comrades back in at least 20 pieces from the clearly marked UN post next to Khiam prison, left their remains at Marjayoun hospital yesterday.
In past years, I have spent hours with their comrades in this UN position, which is clearly marked in white and blue paint, with the UN’s pale blue flag opposite the Israeli frontier. Their duty was to report on all they saw: the ruthless Hizbollah missile fire out of Khiam and the brutal Israeli response against the civilians of Lebanon.
Is this why they had to die, after being targeted by the Israelis for eight hours, their officers pleading to the Israeli Defence Forces that they cease fire? An American-made Israeli helicopter saw to that
In Bint Jbeil, meanwhile, another bloodbath was taking place. Claiming to "control" this southern Lebanese town, the Israelis chose to walk into a Hizbollah trap. The moment they reached the deserted marketplace, they were ambushed from three sides, their soldiers falling to the ground under sustained rifle fire. The remaining Israeli troops - surrounded by the "terrorists" they were supposed to liquidate - desperately appealed for help, but an Israeli Merkava tank and other vehicles sent to help them were also attacked and set on fire. Up to 17 Israeli soldiers may have died so far in this disastrous operation. During their occupation of Lebanon in 1983 more than 50 Israeli soldiers were killed in just one suicide attack.
The battle for southern Lebanon is on an epic scale but, from the heights above Khiam, the Israelis appear to be in deep trouble. Their F-16s turn in the high bright sun - small, silver fish whose whispers gain in volume as they dive - and their bombs burst over the old prison, where the Hizbollah are still holding out; beyond the frontier, I can see livid fires burning across the Israeli hillsides and the Jewish settlement of Metullah billowing smoke.
It was not meant to be like this, 15 days into Israel’s assault on Lebanon. The Katyushas still streak in pairs out of southern Lebanon, clearly visible to the naked eye, white contrails that thump into Israeli’s hillsides and border towns.
So is it frustration or revenge that keeps Israel’s bombs falling on the innocent? In the early hours two days ago, a tremendous explosion woke me up, rattling the windows and shaking the trees outside, and a single flash suffused the western sky over Nabatiyeh.
The lives of an entire family of seven had just been extinguished.
And how come - since this now obsesses the humanitarian organisations working in Lebanon - that the Israelis bombed two ambulances in Qana, killing two of the three wounded inside. All the crews were injured - one with a piece of shrapnel in his neck - but what worried the Lebanese Red Cross was that the Israeli missiles had pierced the very centre of the red cross painted on the roof of each vehicle. Did the pious use the cross as their aiming point?
The bombardment of Khiam has set off its own brush fires on the hillsides below Qlaya, whose Maronite Christian inhabitants now stand on the high road above like spectators at a 19th century battle. Khiam is - or was - a pretty village of cut-stone doorways and tracery windows, but Israel’s target, apart from the obviously marked UN position whose inhabitants they massacred, is the notorious prison in which - before its retreat from Lebanon in 2000 - hundreds of Hizbollah members and, in some cases, their families, were held and tortured with electricity by Israel’s proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army.
This was the same prison complex - turned into a "museum of torture" by the Hizbollah after the Israeli retreat - that was visited by the late Edward Said shortly before his death. More important, however, is that many of the Hizbollah men originally held prisoner here were captives in cells deep underground the old French mandate fort. These same men are now fighting the Israelis, almost certainly sheltering from their fire in the same underground cells in which they languished, perhaps even storing some of their missiles there.
In Marjayoun, next to Qlaya, once the SLA’s headquarters, Lebanese troops are trying to prevent Hizbollah guerrillas using the streets of the Greek Catholic town to fire yet more missiles at Israel. Seven-man Lebanese army patrols are moving through the darkened roads of both towns at night in case the Hizbollah brings yet more Israeli bombs down on our heads.
In Beirut, one observes the folly of Western nations with amusement as well as horror, but, sitting in these hill villages and listening to how the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, plans to reshape Lebanon is clearly a lesson in human self-delusion. According to US correspondents accompanying Ms Rice on her visit to the Middle East, she is proposing the intervention of a Nato-led force along the Lebanese-Israeli border for between 60 and 90 days to assure that a ceasefire exists, the deployment of an enlarged Nato force throughout Lebanon to disarm Hizbollah and then the retraining of the Lebanese army before its own deployment to the border.
This plan - which, like all American proposals on Lebanon, is exactly the same as Israel’s demands - carries the same depth of conceit as that of the Israeli consul general in New York, who said last week that "most Lebanese appreciate what we are doing".
Does Ms Rice think the Hizbollah want to be disarmed? By Nato? Wasn’t there a Nato force in Beirut which fled Lebanon after a group close to the Hizbollah bombed the US Marine base at Beirut airport in 1983, killing 241 US servicemen and dozens more French troops a few seconds later? Does anyone believe that Shia Muslim forces will not do the same again to any Nato "intervention" force? The Americans are talking about Egyptian and Turkish troops in southern Lebanon; Sunni Muslims ruling Shia territory.
The Hizbollah has been waiting and training and dreaming of this new war for years, however ruthless we may regard the actions. They are not going to surrender the territory they liberated from the Israeli army in an 18-year guerrilla war, least of all to Nato at Israel’s bidding.
Yesterday’s assault on the Israeli army in Bint Jbeil proved that. The problem is that the US sees this slaughterhouse as an "opportunity" rather than a tragedy, a chance to humble Hizbollah supporters in Tehran and help to shape the "new Middle East" of which Ms Rice spoke so blithely this week.
It is Israel which is running out of time in southern Lebanon. Its attacks have for the fifth time in 30 years placed it in the dock for war crimes in Lebanon. The toll of Lebanon’s civilian casualties has reached 400. And still the US will not intervene to prevent the carnage, even to call for a 24-hour ceasefire to allow the 3,000 civilians still trapped between Qlaya and Bint Jbeil - who include a number of foreign nationals - to flee.
The only civilian walking those frightening roads to Qlaya was a goatherd, guiding his animals around the huge bomb craters in the tarmac. Talking to him, it emerged that he was almost stone deaf and obviously could not hear the bombs. In this, it seemed, he has a lot in common with Condoleezza Rice.
The names of the soldiers killed in the first battle are:
The victim of the second battle:
An IDF officer and a soldier were killed in fierce battles in Bint Jbail on Monday morning, the IDF announced Monday night.
St.-Sgt. Kobi Smilg, 20, of Rehovot died after his tank rode over a large explosive device. A battalion commander was also wounded in the attack.
Friendly Fire A few hours later, another tank was hit - this time by an anti-tank missile - killing an officer.
The army also revealed that five Golani brigade soldiers were struck by friendly fire on Monday.
Maj.-Gen. Gadi Eizencott said that the troops were operating near Bint Jbail when an IAF helicopter fired on them accidentally.
"We will learn our lessons... War is a complicated event, and it's impossible to prevent mistakes," Eizencott said.
The soldiers were wounded lightly to moderately.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1153291980546&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Israel pounded 10 buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut following a Hizbullah salvo of rockets on Haifa Tuesday, as an Israeli Army statement claimed the fall of the largest border town, Bint Jbeil.
After two days of relative calm, Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hizbullah stronghold, were once again targeted by Israel in an attack which destroyed 10 buildings.
Further south, heavy clashes between Israel and Hizbullah fighters continued in the village of Maroun al-Ras and the outskirts of Bint Jbeil.
Claiming that Bint Jbeil is a major Hizbullah center, Israel's army said tanks and troops had sealed off the town and were engaged in sporadic firefights with its defenders.
"The intention is not to occupy Bint Jbeil, it's a limited operation," Brigadier-General Ido Nehushtan told Reuters. "In the last 24 hours we killed roughly 20 to 30 terrorists."
Hizbullah said five of its fighters had been killed over the past day, but did not say where. The group said in a statement that fighting with Israeli forces continued on Bint Jbeil's outskirts and in the surrounding area.
The Israelis said they secured the town by nightfall.
"Beit Jbeil is in our hands," General Alon Friedman, one of Israel's top commanders for its northern region, told Army Radio. The claim could not be independently confirmed.
Sources in the foreign observer force UNIFIL said it was difficult to know which side controlled which parts of the town and that some civilians were feared trapped by the crossfire.
An Israeli Army spokesperson said Tuesday that an Israeli soldier died in clashes in Maroun al-Ras.
Hizbullah had issued a statement late Monday saying that its fighters managed to stand in the face of more than 350 Israeli soldiers from an elite unit, warplanes and tanks for the past five days.
The statement added that the Israeli Army lost a helicopter, five Merkava tanks; four soldiers and nine others were wounded, it said.
The Israelis said they believe that up to 200 Hizbullah fighters were believed to be defending Bint Jbeil, which lies about 4 kilometers north of the border.
Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, Israeli military chief of operations, said between 100 and 200 Hizbullah fighters were fortified inside the town, while much of the civilian population had fled.
Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV reported Monday that the fighters were mounting a strong defense against elite Israeli troops who were trying to advance under "heavy bombardment."
EARLIER this week, Israeli officers along the border were saying that they were in control of Bint Jbeil, the biggest Hezbollah stronghold within easy striking distance across the border and an important symbolic target.
Hezbollah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, celebrated Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon with a parade there six years ago.
But when Israel sent in its elite Golani Infantry Brigade to secure the town before dawn on Wednesday, hundreds of soldiers were quickly pinned down by a Hezbollah ambush.
Eight soldiers were killed almost immediately, and it took until early afternoon to move the dead and wounded three kilometres under heavy fire to a safe spot where they were picked up by helicopter.
The details of the battle, drawn from discussions with several officers with knowledge of the fight, show how far Israel has to go in driving Hezbollah from the hills and valleys of southern Lebanon.
Given the difficulties encountered in Bint Jbeil, clearing border villages of elaborate bunker networks, weapons caches and fighting cells that Hezbollah has built over the past six years now seems a gargantuan task without occupying the territory again, which Israel has vowed not to do.
Good description Bint Jbeil, which means "daughter of the mountain" in Arabic, had already been pounded with artillery and two days of fighting by the 7th Armoured Brigade.
An engineering brigade had cleared away bunkers and mines and other explosive devices, and a brigade of paratroopers had already killed many Hezbollah fighters in the town.
The infantry were meant to secure the territory and expand the offensive, officers said.
According to the intelligence that the troops were operating on, they expected that they would encounter about 30 or 40 Hezbollah fighters, the officers said. But apparently Hezbollah had reinforced its fighters overnight.
"They doubled or tripled their numbers," said a lieutenant, who spoke anonymously. By late Wednesday, Israeli radio, citing military officials, was reporting that there were 200 Hezbollah fighters in the town.
About 100 of those fighters were waiting when the Israeli infantry, hundreds strong, walked into town before dawn on Wednesday, the officers said.
"They were just getting into the town when they received fire from buildings all around them," explained a major.
He said the attack included small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and mortar rounds. The foot soldiers took cover and were quickly pinned down.
The major and lieutenant said it took nearly an hour for the trapped soldiers in Bint Jbeil to return fire, because they had trouble identifying where the shooting was coming from in the multistorey buildings around them.Helicopter land
Reinforcing the men and retrieving the dead and wounded took up much of Wednesday.
The closest a helicopter could land without being in Hezbollah's line of fire was three kilometres away, between Bint Jbeil and the village of Maroun al-Ras.
BEIRUT (Reuters) -
An Israeli tank shell hit a position run by U.N. peacekeepers in south Lebanon on Monday, wounding four Ghanaian soldiers, a spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said.The four soldiers were evacuated to a UNIFIL hospital at the border town of Naqoura, Milos Strugar said in a statement. The shell also caused extensive damage to the position near the village of Rmeish, he said.
Israel's
13-day war in retaliation to Hizbollah's attacks has killed 377 Lebanese, mostly
civilians. The Lebanese guerrilla group's attacks killed 39 Israelis.
Shrapnel from tank shells fired from the Israeli side seriously wounded an Indian soldier last week. Hizbollah fire wounded an Italian U.N. observer on the border on Sunday.
In 1996, during Israel's Grapes of Wrath campaign in Lebanon, an Israeli jet bombed a UNIFIL compound in the southern village of Qana, killing 106 civilians sheltering inside.
UNIFIL was created in 1978 after Israel's first major incursion into southern Lebanon and has been there ever since. The United Nations has called for a bigger, better armed and more robust international force in the area.
The U.N. official said the facility was severely damaged but none of the Ghanian troops inside the bomb shelters inside were injured.
BEIRUT, Lebanon - A U.N.-run observation post near the border was struck during fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants on Friday, while Israel pushed ahead with airstrikes on Lebanon and warned people in the south to flee as it prepared for a likely ground invasion to set up a deep buffer zone.
The Israeli army said Hezbollah rockets hit the U.N. post near Zarit, just inside Israel, but a U.N. officer said it was an artillery shell fired by the Israeli Defense Force. The facility was severely damaged, but nobody was injured as the Ghanian troops manning the post were inside bomb shelters at the time of the strike, the U.N. official said.
Two Apache attack helicopters collided in northern Israel near the Lebanon border early Friday, killing one air force officer and injuring three others, two seriously, Israeli officials said. Al-Jazeera reported that four soldiers were killed in the crash, but did not give a source. The commander of Israel's air force appointed an inquiry team to determine the cause.
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The observer is the second member of the UN monitoring team injured in 12 days of fighting. Several UN positions on the border have taken hits from Israeli shells, and Israel said earlier this week that a UN post on its side was hit by a Hizbullah missile - though the observer team said it was a stray Israeli shell. |
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UNIFIL Says Israel's Onslaught is Endangering its
Soldiers
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Beirut, 17 Jul 06, 16:28
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