THE SITUATION UNFOLDS

Hezbollah says no, they were not our weapons.

Israel gives details and even movies of the arrested ship.

UN says it has no evidence of arms smuggling into Lebanon.

Does Israel care? I don't think so. What they are saying through all the footage of the ship and with all the details released to the media (how many rockets, type, how the clues match the type of weaponry used by Hezbollah, and even papers of the ship allegedly headed for Latakia harbor in Syria) say that " Look guys, UN is a tired incompetent organization, Hezbollah is a danger to everybody around here, and we need to do something about Iran before it's too late. Who's gonna do that?"

Who do you think the West is going to believe?
We have a cultural difference here. As one of my professors in political science keeps repeating, the Israelis speak the language of the West: media awareness campaign, transparency, clear information provided in English, clear construction of the arguments and the visual proof provided.

Hezbollah clearly does not speak the language of the West. No clear arguments, no visual proof that Israel is wrong, no arguments. Some say that this is it's charm. But, they barely opened their mouths 24 hours after the whole scandal.

WHAT IS GOING ON OUT THERE FOLKS?

The news of the day:

Israeli special forces on Wednesday seized control of an Iranian vessel carrying arms intended for Hezbollah, in a daring pre-dawn raid not far from the coast of Cyprus.

The ship was believed to have set out from Iran and later docked in Yemen and Sudan before sailing through the Suez Canal. Its final destination was believed to be either Syria or Lebanon.

The Antigua-flagged ship was discovered during routine patrols conducted by the Navy, according to a communiqué from the Israel Defense Forces Spokespersons Unit.

It makes me wonder as my editor has been wondering for a while: what the hell are these guys doing? Last night there was the UN report on how dangerous the Hezbollah weapons are for the region's peace. And here they are: the IDF seizes THE weapons!, coming exactly from Iran and going to, surprise!, Hezbollah.

In the meantime, there is stuff going on behind the closed doors. Two European countries in the UNIFIL are sort of diplomatically, silently quarreling over who's to be in charge of the peace keeping mission. The Italians should leave the command in February 2010 together with some 1000 troops. The Spanish, who have been in charge of the south eastern sector and have been doing quite a good job there (visited their sector several times), are the ones willing to take the leadership. But wait, not so fast.
While the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero had already received congratulations for the move, the little devil's tail had to come in. Netanyahu, the Israeli head of government, has requested most "secretly and personally" to prime minister Berlusconi to keep Claudio Graziano, the present UNIFIL chief, in place. The Spanish were furious. They still are.

The Spanish newspapers are blaming the Italians. The Italians are praising their general telling that it's only because of him that the tripartite meetings with the IDF, LAF and UNIFIL. He is friends with Michel Sleiman, the Lebanese president, and is also very much esteemed by the Israelis.

The Spanish still believe they are getting the command in February, sources from the embassy in Beirut say.

But, why all these games? Why should the Italians stay and what is wrong with the Spanish?

The quarrel helps a bit the Israeli case. The UNIFIL troops are to get fewer and fewer. Germany wants to withdraw, the Italians want to withdraw. Until now the Spanish and the French are the only ones who didn't get bored of this 30 year peace mission.

Meanwhile, the IDF seems to build up a pretext. I have this deja vu about weapons of mass destruction already. UN says Hezbollah has weapons, Iran is busy with its own internal opposition, Israel finds the weapons, makes a big deal out of it, although a month before the Germans found another ship and it didn't get so much publicity. Then there is some rocket fire once in a while in South Lebanon, Israeli planes fly over Beirut, and life goes on.

Or just seems to do so?

The only actor in this show who has not said anything and hasn't even moved a finger is none other than Hezbollah.

BACK TO ENGLISH

I neglected this blog for a long time. But that's because I have been trying to update the Romanian language one and sort of run out of time between work, my studies and blogging and other stuff happening in my new life in a new country with a new job and new dreams.

When I look at my own dreams and views and what I wrote back then when I had just arrived in Lebanon (a year and three months ago) I smile and even giggle. Lebanon changed a lot in me and I had to learn a lot to be able to understand the people around me, my neighbor at the second floor. I am a 30 year old woman doing her Master's degree in a country like Lebanon. Not an easy thing to do, when you have to leave a job and a house back home.

There were a few times I wanted to just pack my bags and run back. But I didn't and I'm glad because I'm gonna make it. So this is a new beginning for me. And my stories in English will be back online.

April's fools, huh? A la libanaise

http://www.lorientlejour.com/news/article.php?id=613462

Oil & Musc? Oil in Bint Jbeil and in full center of Baalbeck? Sweeeeeeeet. Good one.


La nouvelle a fait l'effet d'une bombinette : la très sérieuse compagnie norvégienne Oil & Musc a officiellement annoncé hier les résultats des prospections qu'elle mène depuis février 2008 sur l'ensemble du territoire libanais. Il en ressort, à la surprise générale, que le Liban a bel et bien du pétrole, et pas seulement dans ses eaux territoriales : dans son sous-sol aussi !
Ainsi, pas moins de onze gisements ont été découverts. Le premier, le plus important selon Oil & Musc, se situe à Ajaltoun ; le second à Bab el-Tebbaneh à Tripoli, le troisième dans les environs de Halba au Akkar, le quatrième en plein centre-ville de Baalbeck (heureusement loin des ruines), le cinquième sous les cédraies de Baakline au Chouf, le sixième à Bint-Jbeil, le septième dans les collines autour de Marjeyoun, le huitième à Mhaydsé dans la banlieue de Bickfaya, le neuvième entre Badaro et Sami el-Solh, le dixième à Hay el-Sellom et le onzième sur la route côtière Batroun-Koura.
Ces gisements seront inaugurés en grande pompe avant les législatives prévues le 7 juin prochain. La cantatrice Sabah sera en concert sur le site de Baakline ; Joan Collins, l'ex-star de Dynasty, tiendra une conférence de presse à Hay el-Sellom ; l'architecte Ziad Akl, natif du village, sa consœur irakienne Zaha Hadid et son confrère chinois Li Pei présenteront la maquette de la raffinerie de Mhaydsé, John McEnroe et Jimmy Connors disputeront un match amical dans le temple de Bacchus aménagé en court de tennis, le prince Nayef d'Arabie saoudite se déplacera en personne à Badaro et l'OPEP entend déplacer son siège permanent à Bint-Jbeil, le Liban devenant membre d'honneur de l'organisation.
Le gouvernement libanais ne sera pas en reste : les ministres de l'Énergie (Alain Tabourian), de l'Économie (Mohammad Safadi), du Tourisme (Élie Marouni), de l'Industrie (Ghazi Zeaïter) et de l'Environnement (Tony Karam) multiplieront leurs interventions ensemble sur les onze sites ; CNN, LCI, BBC, Euronews et la télévision vénézuélienne ont d'ores et déjà assuré qu'elles les couvriront toutes en direct.
Et un bonheur n'arrivant jamais seul, Steven Spielberg aurait décidé de réaliser un long-métrage sur cette nouvelle ruée vers l'or (noir). Il serait présent au Liban du 24 au 29 avril pour ses premiers repérages en compagnie de cinq des acteurs principaux de ce futur long-métrage : Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Kiefer Sutherland et Harrison Ford.
Les Libanais en rêvaient, la nature l'a fait...

VANISHED IN SYRIA

Published on Media Line, www.medialine.org, in december 2008


Rana Khawand does not remember her father. She was four years old when he disappeared. Boutros Khawand, a well-known Lebanese Christian politician, is said to have been kidnapped in December 1992 in East Beirut, in an area controlled by the Syrian Army. “Witnesses saw his car intercepted by a squad of 11 gunmen who forced him into a red van and drove away,” his daughter says. “We haven’t seen him since. They say Boutros Khawand is not in Syria. But we know. Other prisoners have said they saw him in prison there,” the girl whispers. Khawand is one of the many Lebanese who vanished into Syria during the 1980s and early 1990s. “We are speaking of hundreds of Lebanese prisoners in Syria. We had a list containing the names of 250–270 Lebanese prisoners before the Syrian withdrawal. From April 2005 until now, the number has risen to 600,” journalist and human rights activist Pierre Atallah says. According to the Damascus government, there are no Lebanese political prisoners in Syrian prisons. The issue has been haunting the nascent diplomatic relations between Damascus and Beirut. “It’s been going on for a while. We say ‘give us our prisoners’ – they say they don’t have any. Then after a while, people show up at home and say they had been detained in Syria,” Atallah says. Ali Abu Dehn is one of the people who came back from the Syrian prisons. He was released in 2000 after former Syrian President Hafez al Assad died and his son and successor, Bashar, pardoned 54 Lebanese political prisoners in honor of his father. Dehn’s nightmare began on December 7, 1987, when the Syrian Intelligence took him from the Australian embassy in Damascus. He was trying to leave Lebanon for Sydney to escape the civil war. “Instead I was sent to hell for 13 years,” he says, with a bitter smile. He was imprisoned in Saydnaya and Tadmur ( Palmyra), together with dozens of Lebanese detainees. Dehn was charged at first with fighting against the Syrian presence in Lebanon, as well as with spying for Israel, a charge common to most of the detained Lebanese. He says they were tortured, beaten and humiliated. “What they did to us was inhuman. I was hanged by my wrist until the joint separated. The person interrogating me told me he would show my elbow to me. I didn’t believe he could. But he twisted my hand, so I saw my elbow,” he remembers. He also remembers how he got the dozens of scars on his body – the ones on his legs from the beatings – the broken hand, the cigarette burn on the back of his neck, the dislocated shoulder. He says he is not afraid to speak out, although he has been threatened with death several times. “I’m trying my best for the other prisoners who are still being tortured. There were many Lebanese with me. Bashar al Assad denies the existence of Lebanese in their prisons… but I left six of my friends in there. I know! We were sharing the little food, the small potato we had to split between five persons. They are still there! I don’t know if they are alive or dead – but I left them in Syria!” The situation of Lebanese detainees was an official taboo in Lebanese-Syrian relations for decades. Damascus had a military presence and control over Lebanon from 1976 until April 2005, when it withdrew its troops after the Cedar Revolution, the Lebanese reaction to the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri on February 14, 2005. Several human rights organizations and the families of the detainees missing in Syria started to pressure the government in Beirut to take action and ask for information on the missing Lebanese in Syrian jails. But there has been little progress. “The problem is important for both political alliances in Lebanon, March 14 and March 8. They cannot deny it and can’t run away from responsibility in this case,” Atallah stresses. At the request of hundreds of families, the Lebanese Ministry of Justice has recently started to update the files of the alleged political prisoners. But Atallah, who is a member of the Foundation for Human and Humanitarian Rights, says he is not very optimistic. “The Lebanese government is not well organized, it’s not serious,” he says. One by one, the Lebanese politicians who visited Syria after the establishment of diplomatic relations threw the ball into somebody else’s court. The minister of justice, Ibrahim Najjar, has acknowledged the existence of 745 Lebanese citizens missing in Syria. In a television interview, he said these citizens were divided into two main categories – convicts and kidnap victims – and that the Justice Ministry should take responsibility for the convicts. However, Najjar did not say how the Lebanese government would deal with the situation of the kidnap victims. At the end of September 2008, the justice minister announced he had received an updated list of 120 Lebanese prisoners from Damascus. But no political prisoner was on it, Atallah says. “They are criminals imprisoned for drug trafficking or smuggling weapons or working in prostitution. There was no information about the soldiers detained during the 1990 Syrian attack on the Christian areas.” After his visit to Damascus in November, Lebanese Interior Minister Ziad Baroud said his talks with Syrian Interior Minister Bassam Abdel Majid did not cover the dossier of missing persons and detainees in Syrian prisons. “The issue of missing Lebanese in Syrian jails was not excluded from discussions with the Syrians, but I did not want to exceed my authority, so we only discussed the role of the interior minister in this matter,” Baroud said in a statement on his return to Beirut. When Lebanese President Michel Suleiman asked his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al Assad, about the fate of the political prisoners, the leader in Damascus is said to have replied that it was not a presidential matter. “They diverted this case to the joint committee, the Syrian-Lebanese Committee. It’s not promising. The work of this committee is based on a routine. At every meeting, the Lebanese present a list of people who are allegedly detained in Syria, and the Syrians ask for information about their people lost in Lebanon in the civil war. In fact, this is not the same thing,” Atallah says. “They were in Lebanon for 30 years. Why didn’t they look for their people then? Now they remember?” Gen. Michel Aoun, the Free Patriotic Movement leader, also visited Syria recently. The human rights organizations, as well as the families of the people who vanished in Syria, asked him to bring up the issue in front of the Syrian president. Aoun refused to deal with the case because he said it was the responsibility of the president of the republic. The families of the people who vanished in Syria still hope they might hear from their relatives. “We hope that now, with the diplomatic relations with Syria, maybe we might know what happened to my father,” Rana Khawand sighs. “The last time they heard of him was in 2004. A Lebanese prisoner was released and he said that he saw my father in prison.” Her father would now be 79. She hopes he is still alive, but she knows that the chances of seeing him lessen every day. “If Syria doesn’t admit it has Lebanese prisoners, nothing can be done. I can’t see a good relationship with Syria if there are still Lebanese prisoners there,” she says. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has confirmed that an embassy will be established in Lebanon by year's end. Atallah says he can hardly wait for a Syrian embassy to open in Beirut. “The day they open it, the families of the prisoners will set up tents in front of it,” he promises.

OLD JEWISH LADY IN BEIRUT

The woman is obvioulsy very ill and very lonely. She lives in the building that used to belong to her family before the war. But her brothers left the country when it was clear that the Jews were not welcome in Lebanon anymore. After the civil war, being a Jew was the same as being a Israeli. It didn't matter that they were as Lebanese as everybody. But she stayed here, in Beirut with her parents, to take care of them and the shop they had. But then the Syrians took their shop. She has hired a lawyer to get her shop back. How she pays him is a mystery.

She lives with her cats in an almost empty apartment where the walls would fall on her at the slightest tremble. She's scared and paranoid as any person would be in her shoes. She's alone, with no money, no clothes other than those she's wearing and she turned into this dignified beggar in order to eat everyday. "Do you have something to give me to buy food for me and the cats? The BBC girl gave me 50 000 once. And the clothes I wear now. Do you happen to have a winter coat? You're my size. Not a new one, please. Just one you don't want anymore."
She used to be beautiful when she was young. She still wears a bit of make up. "You're from Europe. You have that Europan look. I have the Arab looks. You know, I have Spanish ancestors too. " She speaks perfect French. She doesn't even talk about Hebrew. She wants her life to be small and pass un-noticed.

THE JEWS IN LEBANON

Some say they might be as few as 40 left. Others believe that there are still many, but they changed their names and now they pray in secret and avoid speaking Hebrew. I started to be interested in the story when I read this on Charles' blog.

I broke into the Beirut synagogue.

It wasn't hard. The gate has a lock on it, but it was knocked down, and the security guards no longer patrol the place as vigilantly. The Ottoman era buildings around the synagogue have been destroyed, and the edifice poses no security risk to the Prime Minister's Grand Serail or Future Movement leader Saad Hariri's future residence.

My friend and I climbed over the trees growing in the courtyard and walked into the main hall, decorated with 6-point stars. The front of the synagogue was desecrated. The holy documents were intentionally removed, but the other ornamental structures were destroyed.

When I met Charles, a Lebanese American, a friend of another friend of another friend, I had no idea he was the owner of Lebanese Political Journal, a blog I've always found interesting.
There were some 20 000 Jews in Lebanon in 1948. Official records list like 200 after 2003.

1948 Jewish population: 20,000
2003: Fewer than 100

When Christian Arabs ruled Lebanon, Jews enjoyed relative toleration. In the mid-50’s, approximately 7,000 Jews lived in Beirut. As Jews in an Arab country, however, their position was never secure, and the majority left in 1967.

Fighting in the 1975-76 Muslim-Christian civil war swirled around the Jewish Quarter in Beirut, damaging many Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues. Most of the remaining 1,800 Lebanese Jews emigrated in 1976, fearing the growing Syrian presence in Lebanon would curtail their freedom of emigration. Most Jews went to Europe (particularly France), the United States, and Canada.

In the mid-1980's, Hezbollah kidnapped several prominent Jews from Beirut — most were leaders of what remained of the country's tiny Jewish community. Four of the Jews were later found murdered. Nearly all of the remaining Jews are in Beirut, where there is a committee that represents the community. Because of the current political situation, Jews are unable to openly practice Judaism.

In 2004, only 1 out of 5,000 Lebanese Jewish citizens registered to vote participated in the municipal elections. Virtually none of those registered remains in the country. The lone Jewish voter said that most of the community consists of old women.

The community has turned into a legend. Source of stories and secrets. Apparently there are a few shope owners in Downtown and on the Corniche as I could read in different Lebanese newspapers. They pray at home, as the synagogue has been vandalized during the 2006 war. There is also a Lebanese man, Aaron-Micaël Beydoun, a young muslim guy who started a blog on the issue a few years ago.