In 1982, fighting with the PLO in West Beirut was the Shi’ite group Amal, led by Nahib Berri. Amal had not helped the PLO in south Lebanon.

Today, Berri is speaker of the Lebanese parliament and remains leader of Amal. Even today, Amal fights the Israelis. Hizballah started as Islamic Amal, a breakaway faction that wanted closer ties with the Islamic revolution government in Iran, to benefit from its experiences and patronage.

Shades of the l982 US backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon.  That war went on for three months and cost Lebanon about 17,000 lives, half of whom were Lebanese and half were Palestinians.  Israel lost 675 of its soldiers.  More than 100,000 people were displaced.

So far Israel’s invasion hasn’t been quite as bloody since after a week the count is 300 Lebanese and 29 Israeli dead.  Should the war continue at this pace for three months, there’ll be approximately 3600 Lebanese killed compared to .350 Israelis.  This represents a decrease from 30:1 to 10: 1 in the ratio of Lebanese killed to Israelis killed.  This may partially explain why Israel’s army hasn’t started pushing towards Beirut as it did twenty-four years ago.  There was no significant Islamic resistance then, and the settler-state may not be willing to suffer the sort of losses that the U.S armed forces has been taking in Iraq.

Today it was announced that ten U.S. Nacy ships will be sent to Lebanon..  That’s a repeat of ‘82, when this observer happened upon a US navy ship while crossing from Larnica (Cyprus) to Junei.  Our ferryboat was stopped by a ship,  from which over a loud speaker a naval officer kept repeating, “This is the U.S.S. Winston”  {might have been Winslow),  Do you have any ammunition or ammunition casing aboard?”  This is how this observer found out that her country was involved in the Israeli war against Lebanon.  Our navy had been participating in a blockade of Lebanese ports and blockades are considered to be acts of aggression, if not war. 

Upon arriving in Juneir this observer took a taxi to the Green line, where, with adrenalin flowing,  she then walked across it into West Beirut.  There she would come upon additional evidence of US complicity in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon,  in the form of unexploded ordinance, such as unexploded bombs stamped with “Made in the USA.”

The fresh reports of apartment buildings being bombed in Beirut bring back memories of an eleven story apartment building in Beirut that was flattened in the ‘82 war by some sort of new fangled Israeli weapon which was referred to then as a vacuum bomb. .  The entire building was reduced .to nothing more than a fifteen foot pile of debris. 

The next day this observer would meet Jusuf,  the sole survivor from a family of eleven Palestinians who had been living in that flattened apartment building.  He seemed in a daze.  The only thing he said (in Arabic) was, “I’m the only one left, everyone is gone.”  Everyone included his wife, mother, children, aunt and uncle.

Up until the IDF reached W. Beirut it moved as if it was cutting though soft cheese.  Once they reached the Green LIne, however, the story suddenly changed, as resistance to the invaders not only tightened, it became ferocious.  For three days Israeli tanks tried to break through the green line into West Beirut.
Each time Lebanese and Palestinian soldiers, armed with anti-tank weapons, held them back, knocking out Israeli tanks as they attempted to advance.  While it wasn’t exactly a victory, up to that moment there’d been almost nothing to shout about.  Somehow,  holding back the heretofore invincible israeli army changed that, if but for an instant. 

The celebrating didn’t last long because,  while the IDF gave up on breaking into W. Beirut, a truce soon was brokered by American and other negotiators and within a couple of days, the Palestinian soldiers together with their leader, Yasser Arafat, were on their way by ship to a new home in Tunis.

This observer’s peak experience that summer took place on an afternoon in July at a student dormitoray at the American University in W. Beirut.  The dorm had been converted into a burn center.  Inside it there were two very seriously burned young Palestinian men.  The skin of the first was an eery orange from some sort of antiseptic.  His back was arched as if he were staring intensely out the front door transom,  through which a cone of light passed directly to the young man as if it had been in waiting.  Later, indeed, this observer would wonder if she had witnessed that young man’s exitus from this world.

The other young Palestinian had suffered at least a ninety percent burn, mostly second and third degree.  Somehow his face was spared.  He, too, wasn’t long for this world.  Then, all of a sudden, to everyone’s surprise and concern, he got on his feet.  “What are you doing”, someone asked.  “Got to get up and help my people.”  was his reply. Somehow the nurse coaxed him back to bed.

For this observer it was an unbelievable experience.  Here was this young man with, according to his nurse, maybe a day or two left on earth,  and all he could think of was helping his people.  What an act of selflessness that was   He didn’t have anything material to offer his people,  other than the ongoing value of the corpse that he was about to become, and corpses are a greatly depreciated commodity in a war zone.  No, it wasn’t anything of material value that he was offering.  It was his spirit.   

Wow!

Bolton said that he couldn’t see what would be accomplished by a U.N. ceasefire declaration.

I do.

People would stop dying.

Prime Minister Fuad Siniora should give the Western world 24 hours to order the Israelis to stop and an additional 24 hours for the Israelis to actually stop.

Refusal to comply would be punished with his resignation.

He should give a speech where he would tell everyone that the Cedar Revolutionaries were deluded into thinking the West was their friend, that in fact, Lebanon’s only state friends are Iran and Syria. Those who said this all along, he should say, were right and should take power at once.

He should declare the immediate death of the Cedar Revolution and its policies should be compared with those of Neville Chamberlain, who resigned when it was clear that his policies failed.

As George Bush the Lesser says that the preservation of this Lebanese government is vital, that Lebanon can die but this government must survive, the Lebanese prime minister must do the right thing and deny Bush this particular want.

Unless he fears assassination or being taken to some village, the prime minister should not fear resigning in defiance of Bush and the Israelis.