Lebanon's Children and Israeli Phosphorous Bombs

By Randa Takieddin

07/27/06 "Al-Hayat" -- -- Did the American people see on CNN the child whose face was burnt by Israeli phosphorous bombs in Lebanon? Did they hear him screaming in pain at Sidon Hospital, with his mother falling to pieces in agony beside him because of the injury he sustained from the terrible bombs? How can the American people accept their elected President George W. Bush's rejection of a ceasefire?

The insanity of the Jewish State that is brutally attacking families and children in South Lebanon and in Beirut's southern suburb has almost become an everyday feature in the Palestinian territories.

Can the disaster that has befallen Lebanon, in which fathers, mothers and children have lost their homes and relatives, be a solution for the US administration and the Jewish State?

Lebanon is grateful for the millions-of-dollars worth of humanitarian aid from the US, but it will never forget that the US administration gave Israel the green light to continue with the shelling and destruction in this dirty war.

The US administration claims that it had asked Israel not to hit Lebanon's infrastructure. But Israel has indiscriminately destroyed everything: airports, bridges, seaports, roads and houses. Israel's aim is to devastate and kill.

In Lebanon, as in the Palestinian territories, Israel's soldiers, the grandsons of the victims of the Holocaust, have demonstrated their inclination to use terrifying weapons, such as phosphorus bombs. This is disgraceful for a people who had suffered from torture and brutality.

Whatever the outcome of Israel's war on Lebanon, the Jewish State has shown that it knows no solution except the use of force. This solution leads to more violence, war and hatred.

Nobody in the world knows what the outcome of the balance of power in the world will be. Nobody knows whether Israel has weakened Hezbollah's military capabilities or defeated it. Either way, the major victim is the Lebanese people, who are now certain that they are paying for the war of others on their soil. The US and its ally, Israel, are fighting Iran and Syria on Lebanese soil, and are imposing a blockade on Lebanon, while the world's superpower claims that it will ask Israel to lift it.

Israel caused the closure Rafik Hariri Airport in Beirut under the pretext that Hezbollah uses it for bringing in arms. Many Lebanese people therefore went to Damascus, the only outlet to the outside world. Israel shelled all the Lebanese seaports. Meanwhile, Hezbollah's rockets continuously fall on several Israeli cities. The US administration claims it wants to help Prime Minister Fouad Seniora's government. But how? By maintaining the blockade on Lebanon, or by continuing with the dirty war?

Hezbollah, on the other hand, is held responsible for what it has dragged Lebanon into. Israel is a well-known enemy, and its tactics in Palestine are obvious. Does Hezbollah have the right to bring destruction, misery, displacement and disaster to Lebanon and its people? Does it have the right to turn Lebanese soil into a battlefield for others? Can this be called resistance? However, the answers to these questions have been put back until the end of the war.

The best solution is that Resolution 1559 be implemented of Lebanon's free will and that the State regain its role and spread its control over all its territory. Lebanon needs a national army that will not drag it into a venture that may end its existence.

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