All Content

Patience and food running low in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon

23 July 2006


From the roof of his crumbling house, Mahmoud Kallam has a clear view across the slums of south Beirut where Palestinian children play football in streets lined with rotting bones and discarded clothes. As he looks, columns of brown smoke from Israeli air strikes rise into the sky. “My children are asleep now because they spent all night watching the missile attacks. They have started playing a game of who can spot the drone first,” says Kallam, a Palestinian researcher and life-long resident of the Shatila Camp. Shatila is one of dozens of camps where over half Lebanon’s estimated 400,000 Palestinian refugees live in squalid, cramped conditions. The camps are fully built up with concrete buildings and infrastructure, albeit in a deteriorating state. 

Egeland asks for money for UN to aid Lebanon

23 July 2006


The UN’s Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, is asking for money from the international community to help the UN aid to Lebanon. “Even if the fighting stops tomorrow, the needs will go on for months and months and months,” he told a press conference in Beirut on Sunday. Egeland briefly toured a Beirut hospital, saying he saw “too many children wounded,” including five “severely wounded” children and their parents. “The father is a taxi driver whose legs were amputated,” Egeland said, giving reporters a rare glimpse of the kind of casualties doctors in Lebanese hospitals are currently dealing with. The UN’s aid chief is visiting Lebanon as part of a trip that will also take him to Israel on Monday. 

US and UN share broad long-range objectives on Middle East – Annan

22 July 2006


Following meetings with the United States Secretary of State, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan told a US television audience that Washington and the world body share the same long-term objectives in responding to the Middle East crisis. “I think on quite a lot of the broad issues there’s very little disagreement between us,” the Secretary-General, who met with Condoleezza Rice in New York on Friday evening, told the host of the CNN show “Larry King Live.” Washington and the UN “have no disagreement on the longer-term goals,” he said. “Where we may differ is that I’m prepared to ask for immediate cessation of hostilities to allow us to assist the people, allow the diplomacy to take hold, and it does not exclude a longer-term solution.” 

What will happen to us when this is all over?

Hanady Salman Beirut 23 July 2006


I get up, fix breakfast for my own personal refugees, and start my daily phone marathon (don’t tell them land lines are still working). I start with Saida; she tells me the bombing was far from their house. She did not synchronize with her son who told me a mall very close to their house was hit. I call my friend in the north: all is fine. My other friend in west Bekaa: they brought a factory down that used to build pre-fabricated houses and hangars and export them to Iraq. But that wasn’t all. Some miracle happened early this morning it seems, when the shelling spared Al Hanane Institution where tens of orphans live; the whole area was bombed like hell. 

The Siege Continues: Evacuations of Americans Begin

Rasha Salti Beirut 23 July 2006


“Cruise beyond your dreams” read posters pasted on the walls of the huge air-conditioned tent that functions as the final stage in processing the evacuees before they board the ship. The ship, as if someone wanted to amuse Edward Said for a brief minute, is called Orient Queen. It is part of a Lebanese-owned fleet of commercial cruises, AMC (Abu Merhi Cruises) and contracted by the US embassy to shlep American passport holders to Cyprus. Holders of American passports stranded in the south were shuttled by busses earlier that day to the port of Beirut. They were greeted by US embassy personnel, a small contingent of US Marines and Orient Queen crew. 

Lies, Double Standards, and Culpable Fallacies

Raja Halwani 23 July 2006


Both US and Israeli officials claim that Hizbullah is a terrorist organization. I do not wish to argue that it is not one (it has targeted civilians), though Hizbullah itself vehemently denies the claim and most Arabs in the region do not see it as one. I do want to take issue with the double standard: if Israel targets civilians, then Israel is a terrorist state. And not only has Israel targeted civilians in its day to day military operations in Lebanon and in the occupied Palestinian territories, it has also maintained a military occupation of the Palestinians since 1967 that has wreaked havoc and fear on their lives - in a word, terrorized them. 

Letters from Beirut: Grasping on to normalcy

Renee Codsi Beirut 17 July 2006


As much as we may have seen here in Beirut, it is still nothing compared to the south. Sour/Tyre is devastated the death and destruction is hard to stomach. It is my favorite place in the south - the oldest inhabited city in the world, with incredible ruins, art, beaches and most of all the most relaxed and welcoming of people. The sea turtle reserve where I work is down there. It’s a secret I have been keeping from a lot of people because it is my safe haven and I did not want it to get crowded with people I may be trying to get a breather from. The women there are OK as of now. 

Photostory: Chicago protests Israel's attacks on Lebanon and the Palestinians

Maureen Clare Murphy 23 July 2006


Hundreds of demonstrators - estimated by some of the organizers at 2,300 - poured into Chicago’s Pioneer Court to protest Israel’s onslaught against Lebanon and Gaza Saturday July 22. Carrying Lebanese, Palestinian, and American flags, the demonstrators marched to the Israeli consulate to make their objections be known. They were also there to tell Palestinian and Lebanese civilians under siege that while the world has not sufficiently come to their aid, “We have not abandoned you,” as one of the speakers at the rally emphasized. 

As death toll in Lebanon mounts, UN's top relief chief heads to region

22 July 2006


As the death toll in Lebanon surpassed 350, including large numbers of children, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator headed to the country as part of his bid to facilitate ‘humanitarian corridors’ to allow relief aid to reach besieged residents, while UN agencies worked to shore up their own aid efforts. Jan Egeland is expected to meet with senior members of the Lebanese Government and with the newly-established High Relief Council, as well as with the UN country team and other United Nations representatives, including the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today. 

Israel's Catastrophe

Ali Abunimah 23 July 2006


Israel’s claims that it has attacked Lebanon and Gaza to free captured soldiers or prevent resistance rocket fire are designed to obscure what truly lies at the heart of this ongoing conflict: Israel’s violent takeover of Palestine. In this contribution to Ireland’s Sunday Business Post, EI co-founder Ali Abunimah argues that lacking in political and moral legitimacy, Israel exists only due to the constant exercising of brute force and American-supplied weapons technology. Israeli Jews can only gain such legitimacy, and therefore peace, by abandoning claims to special privileges enshrined in law as white South Africans abandoned apartheid.