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| How on earth do you celebrate a civil war? This is no idle question because in Beirut, the Lebanese - with remarkable candour but not a little trepidation - are preparing to remember that most terrible of conflicts in their lives, one which killed 150,000 and whose commemoration next week was originally in the hands of the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri - who was himself assassinated on 14 February. Is this something which should be contemplated? Is this the moment - when all Lebanon waits for a Syrian military withdrawal and when the Hizbollah militia, itself a creature of that war, is being ordered to disarm by the United Nations - to remember the tide of blood which drowned so many innocents between 1975 and 1990? | Even before the UN Security Council chooses an international commission to investigate the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, Syria’s best friends in the Lebanese security service are beginning to fall off their perches. Given the verdict of the UN’s original fact-finding mission into the killing - it accused Lebanese investigators of "gross negligence, possibly accompanied by criminal actions" - most Lebanese drew one conclusion: about time. |
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| On reflection, I think it probably is. The Lebanese have spent the past 15 years in a political coma, refusing to acknowledge their violent past lest the ghosts arise from their mass graves and return to stir the embers of sectarianism and mutual suffering. "Whatever you do, don’t mention the war" had a special place in a country whose people stubbornly refused to learn the lessons of their fratricidal slaughter. | First came the chief judge in the official Lebanese murder enquiry, Michel Abu Arraj, who last week mysteriously announced that he was exhausted, adding that he felt it necessary to resign "because of the atmosphere of scepticism surrounding the investigation." Then came news that General Raymond Azar, the powerful head of Lebanese military intelligence, has decided to take a months "leave of absence" amid the political opposition’s continued demand for his resignation and that of five of his colleagues. |
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| For almost 10 years, my own book on the civil war was banned by Lebanon’s censors. Even Hariri himself told me he was powerless to put it back into the shops - ironically, it was a pro-Syrian security official whose resignation the Lebanese opposition is now demanding who lifted the ban last year - and none of Lebanon’s television stations would touch the war. It remained the unspoken cancer in Lebanese society, the malaise which all feared might return to poison their lives. | And now General Ali Haj, the head of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces, is expected to follow Azarõs example. Haj it was who ordered his men to move the bombed-out remains of Mr Hariri’s convoy from the scene of the crime just before midnight on February 14th, the day of the assassination. In the words of Peter FitzGerald, the deputy Irish Garda commissioner who headed the UN Mission, this decision prevented "any ballistic analysis, explosive analysis and evidence gathering at the scene." General Haj was once a member of Mr Hariri’s security detail - but was redeployed after the former prime minister concluded that he was passing information to the Syrian security authorities in Beirut. |
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| There clearly was a need to understand how the conflict destroyed the old Lebanon. When al-Jazeera broadcast from Qatar a 12-part documentary about the war, the seaside Corniche outside my home in Beirut would empty of strollers every Thursday night; restaurants would close their doors. Everyone wanted to watch their own torment. So, I suppose, did I. | Even President Lahoud, Syria’s most faithful friend in Lebanon, now supports - or says he supports - a full international investigation of the Hariri murder. Thus is the pendulum slowly swinging in the direction of the political opposition. |
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| Everyone I knew lost friends in those awful 15 years - I lost some very dear friends of my own. One was blown up in the US embassy on his first day of work in 1983; another was murdered with an ice-pick. One, a young woman, was killed by a shell in a shopping street. The brother of a colleague - a young man who helped to maintain my telex lines during the 1982 Israeli siege of Beirut - was shot in the head when he accidentally drove past a gun battle. He died a few days later. | Or so it seems. |
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| And so this 13 April, the centre of Beirut is to be filled with tens of thousands of Lebanese for a day of "unity and memory". There will be art exhibitions, concerts, photo exhibitions, a running and cycling marathon. Hariri’s sister Bahia will be staging the events which her murdered brother had planned. Nora Jumblatt, the glorious wife of the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt - one of the warlords of those ghastly days - will be organising the musical concerts. | The resignation - for the second time in a month - of Prime Minister Omar Karami is a further sign of Lebanon’s political decay. Unable to find a single opponent of Syria prepared to serve in a coalition government, he refused to lead a cabinet of "one colour" and preferred to step down in ignominy. But without a prime minister, it is doubtful if national elections could be held in May - which would preserve the present Lebanese parliament which is loaded with Syrian supporters. |
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| The original 13 April - in 1975 - marked the day when Phalangist gunmen ambushed a busload of Palestinians in Beirut. The bus still exists, the bullet holes still punctured through its rusting skin, but it will be left to rot in the field outside Nabatea where it lies to this day. The only bullet holes visible to the crowds next week will be the ones deliberately preserved in the statue of Lebanon’s 1915 independence leaders, who were hanged in Martyrs Square, where a "garden of forgiveness" connects a church and a mosque and where Hariri’s body now rests, along with his murdered bodyguards. The square itself was the front line for the entire war. Who knows how many ghosts still haunt its hundreds of square metres? Not far to the east is the infamous "Ring" highway where Muslim and Christian gunmen stopped all traffic in 1975 and walked down the rows of stalled cars with knives, calmly slitting the throats of families of the wrong religion. Eight Christians had been found murdered outside the electricity headquarters and Bashir Gemayel directed that 80 Muslims must pay with their lives. The militias kept on multiplying the figures. When you are in a war, you feel it will never end. I felt like that, gradually coming to believe - like the Lebanese - that war was somehow a natural state of affairs. And, like all wars, it acquired a kind of momentum de la folie. The Israelis invaded, twice; the American Marines came and were suicide-bombed in their base at the airport. So were the French. The United Nations arrived in 1978 with Dutch soldiers and more French soldiers and Irish soldiers and Norwegian soldiers and Fijians and Nepalese and Ghanaians and Finns. Everyone, it seemed, washed up in Lebanon to be bombed and sniped at. The Palestinians were slowly drawn into the war and suffered massacre after massacre at the hands of their enemies (who often turned out to be just about everybody). That the conflict was really between Christian Maronites and the rest somehow disappeared from the narrative. It was everyone else’s fault. Not the Lebanese. Never the Lebanese. For years, they called the war hawadess, the "events". The conflict was then called the "War of the Other" - of the foreigners, not of the Lebanese who were actually doing the killing. A taxi driver who gave me a lift several years ago turned to me as we were driving through the streets and said: "Mr Robert, you are very lucky." And he meant that I - like him - had survived the war. I remember the last day. The Syrians had bombed General Michel Aoun out of his palace at Baabda - in those days, the Americans were keen on Syrian domination of Lebanon because they wanted the soldiers of Damascus to face off Saddam’s army of occupation in Kuwait - and I was walking behind tanks towards the Christian hills. Shells came crashing down around us and my companion shouted that we were going to die. And I shouted back to her that we mustn’t die, that this was the last day of the war, that it would really now end. And when we got to Baabda, there were corpses and many people lying with terrible wounds, many in tears. And I remember how we, too, broke down and cried with the immense relief of living through the day and knowing that we would live tomorrow and the day after that and next week and next year. But the silences remained, the constant fear that it could all reignite. No one would open the mass graves in case more blood was poured into them. It was in this sombre, ruined land that Hariri started to rebuild Beirut. It will be his new Beirut which will host next week’s brave festivities, its smart shops and stores and restaurants and bars - despite Hariri’s murder and the continuing crisis and the dark bombers who are still trying to re-provoke the civil war. That Lebanon’s war did not restart with Hariri’s murder is a sign of the people’s maturity and of their wisdom, especially the vast sea of young Lebanese who were educated abroad during the conflict and who do not - and, I suspect, will not - tolerate another civil war. And so I think the Lebanese are right to confront their demons next week. Let them celebrate. To hell with the ghosts. |
Hizballah is still refusing to move from its position of support for Syria, which means that tens of thousands of Shia Muslims remain outside the Lebanese opposition. And the three night-time bombs which have exploded in commercial districts of east Beirut are surely not the only ones that have been prepared for the coming weeks. By targeting the eastern, largely Christian suburbs of the city - where opposition to Syria is strongest - there appears to be a plan to provoke the Maronite community against Lebanese Muslims. So far, it has proved fruitless. But if that is the case, so the Lebanese argue, surely the agents provocateurs will next time use car bombs in crowded streets. Mercifully the Sunni Muslims, Druze and Christians had created their anti-Syrian alliance before Hariri’s murder; had they tried to do so in its aftermath, they may well have failed. |
Even before the UN Security Council chooses an international commission to investigate the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, Syria’s best friends in the Lebanese security service are beginning to fall off their perches. Given the verdict of the UN’s original fact-finding mission into the killing - it accused Lebanese investigators of "gross negligence, possibly accompanied by criminal actions" - most Lebanese drew one conclusion: about time.
First came the chief judge in the official Lebanese murder enquiry, Michel Abu Arraj, who last week mysteriously announced that he was exhausted, adding that he felt it necessary to resign "because of the atmosphere of scepticism surrounding the investigation." Then came news that General Raymond Azar, the powerful head of Lebanese military intelligence, has decided to take a months "leave of absence" amid the political opposition’s continued demand for his resignation and that of five of his colleagues.
And now General Ali Haj, the head of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces, is expected to follow Azarõs example. Haj it was who ordered his men to move the bombed-out remains of Mr Hariri’s convoy from the scene of the crime just before midnight on February 14th, the day of the assassination. In the words of Peter FitzGerald, the deputy Irish Garda commissioner who headed the UN Mission, this decision prevented "any ballistic analysis, explosive analysis and evidence gathering at the scene." General Haj was once a member of Mr Hariri’s security detail - but was redeployed after the former prime minister concluded that he was passing information to the Syrian security authorities in Beirut.
Even President Lahoud, Syria’s most faithful friend in Lebanon, now supports - or says he supports - a full international investigation of the Hariri murder. Thus is the pendulum slowly swinging in the direction of the political opposition.
Or so it seems.
The resignation - for the second time in a month - of Prime Minister Omar Karami is a further sign of Lebanon’s political decay. Unable to find a single opponent of Syria prepared to serve in a coalition government, he refused to lead a cabinet of "one colour" and preferred to step down in ignominy. But without a prime minister, it is doubtful if national elections could be held in May - which would preserve the present Lebanese parliament which is loaded with Syrian supporters.
Hizballah is still refusing to move from its position of support for Syria, which means that tens of thousands of Shia Muslims remain outside the Lebanese opposition. And the three night-time bombs which have exploded in commercial districts of east Beirut are surely not the only ones that have been prepared for the coming weeks. By targeting the eastern, largely Christian suburbs of the city - where opposition to Syria is strongest - there appears to be a plan to provoke the Maronite community against Lebanese Muslims. So far, it has proved fruitless. But if that is the case, so the Lebanese argue, surely the agents provocateurs will next time use car bombs in crowded streets. Mercifully the Sunni Muslims, Druze and Christians had created their anti-Syrian alliance before Hariri’s murder; had they tried to do so in its aftermath, they may well have failed.
http://www.sisde.it/sito%5CRivista19.nsf/servnavig/5
definizione hezbollah
È l11 Giugno 2002 quando, ad ovest di Jenin, viene posata la prima pietra del muro dellApartheid. Un progetto di lunga data, teorizzato anni prima dal laburista israeliano Ehud Barak, prende forma proprio qui a Jenin, una delle zone di lotta palestinese più in fermento. Un muro che forse, in un primo momento, poteva essere visto solo come uno strumento di divisione e non di annessione. «Il muro allorigine, è stato proposto dalla sinistra israeliana, dai settori più moderati - racconta padre David Jaeger, esperto di questioni mediorientali - Lidea rispondeva alle esigenze di sicurezza in Israele per fermare gli attentatori e nello stesso tempo il muro doveva demarcare la frontiera tra Israele e Palestina e passare lungo la cosiddetta Linea Verde. Lidea laburista incorporava il riconoscimento del diritto dei palestinesi ad uno Stato indipendente e portava con sé il ritiro dalla maggioranza dei territori occupati».
Ma nel 2002 le cose sono diverse, Ariel Sharon guida lo Stato dIsraele e anche i timidi progetti laburisti vengono travolti. «Il piano - spiega il ministro della Sicurezza interna Uzi Landau - non si propone di tagliare in due Gerusalemme, ma solo di impedire lingresso di terroristi palestinesi provenienti da Betlemme e da Ramallah. Lindivisibilità di Gerusalemme e la sovranità di Israele sullintera città, capitale eterna del popolo ebraico, è fuori discussione». E pure i permessi di passaggio del muro sono chiari nella mente dei suoi ideatori. Ne saranno istituiti tre tipi. Uno, detto «intelligente», permetterà il libero passaggio degli israeliani ma non dei palestinesi, un altro permetterà il veloce ingresso delle truppe dello Stato ebraico, un terzo sarà utilizzato dagli agricoltori israeliani.
Una struttura difensiva, secondo gli israeliani, non un confine geo-politico. Quindi, nessun pregiudizio a possibili negoziati. Ma, commenta il ministro dellInformazione dellAnp, Yasser Abed Rabbo, «lobiettivo degli israeliani è di frantumare i Territori, trasformando la Cisgiordania e la Striscia di Gaza in altrettante enclaves circondate da zone cuscinetto e intensificare la colonizzazione». E i palestinesi non sono gli unici ad opporsi al Muro. Per differenti ragioni, anche i coloni israeliani non sono daccorso con Sharon. «Quel Muro intende indicare il confine politico di Israele e quello dello Stato palestinese. Uno Stato del terrore che non dovrà mai nascere perchè rappresenterebbe una minaccia mortale per Israele». A parlare a nome degli oltre 220mila coloni che risiedono negli insediamenti in Cisgiordania e nella Striscia di Gaza, è Benny Lieberman, presidente del Consiglio degli insediamenti di Giu dea e Samaria. Originariamente, secondo la prima mappa del Muro, presentata nel settembre del 2002, la barriera sarebbe dovuta essere lunga in tutto meno di 200 chilometri, ma le proteste dei coloni hanno convinto Sharon a estenderla, per includere in Israele anche gli insediamenti. Nel marzo del 2003, una nuova variazione del percorso include i villaggi di Ariel e Immanuel e prevede l'attraversamento della valle del Giordano.
In un anno, gli israeliani completano la "prima fase" del muro, 145 km che attraversano i distretti nord della West bank, Jenin, Tulkarem e Qalqilya. Una barriera che rinchiude in terra israeliana 210mila palestinesi, un muro che mangia 120 ettari di terra che ora sono definiti "zona di sicurezza". La confisca della terra, la distruzione di edifici e le limitazioni agli spostamenti si stima provocheranno la perdita di circa 6500 posti di lavoro. Secondo ordinanze militari israeliane, tutte le terre ad ovest della "prima fase" sono da considerarsi "zone cuscinetto". Di fatto si tratta di una vera e propria annessione di territorio.
Un esproprio che provoca perplessità anche negli Stati Uniti, i miglior alleati del governo Sharon. Ma il ministro degli Esteri israeliano Silvan Shalom tranquillizza gli umori, spiegando che con gli Usa è successo un «malinteso che deriva da uninsufficiente conoscenza dei particolari del progetto». Il timore di rottura del feeling americano, nasce da un incontro a fine luglio 2003 tra Abu Mazen, numero due dellOlp e il presidente Bush. In questa occasione, il presidente americano aveva affermato che la costruzione della «recinzione» costituiva un «problema». Ma, alla fine Ariel e George W. «si sono trovati daccordo su quasi tutto, e su quel poco su cui erano in contrasto hanno convenuto di non convenire». Potere della diplomazia. La costruzione del Muro va avanti e, assicura Sharon, «ogni sforzo sarà fatto per ridurre al minimo le difficoltà che creerà alla popolazione palestinese». Non si sa quale sia la nozione di minimo nella testa del premier israeliano.
Risale al 21 ottobre 2003 la prima risoluzione dellAssemblea Generale delle Nazioni Unite che chiede a Israele di "fermare e smantellare il muro dell'apartheid". LOnu dichiara testualmente che «quella barriera di sicurezza è contraria alle leggi internazionali» e che Israele deve «porre un termine alla costruzione del muro nei territori palestinesi occupati, inclusa Gerusalemme Est, e rimuovere quella parte della barriera già edificata». Il parere dellAssemblea- 144 i voti a favore (tra cui quelli dell'Unione Europea), 4 i contrari (Usa, Israele, Micronesia, Isole Marshall), 12 le astensioni non è giuridicamente vincolante, ma ha una valenza simbolica di grande portata. Ma nemmeno così, nessuno dei bulldozer che devastano i villaggi palestinesi ha smesso di lavorare.
LAssemblea dellOnu chiede anche che la Corte penale internazionale che ha sede a LAja, apra un fascicolo riguardo al «Muro della discordia». Ma le autorità internazionali paiono non preoccupare assolutamente Sharon. Nel febbraio 2004, Israele fa sapere che «non si farà processare dal Tribunale dellAja». Non parteciperà alle udienza convocata per il 23 febbraio, non riconoscerà la competenza del foro internazionale a pronunciarsi sulla legalità della barriera perchè si tratta «di una questione che investe il diritto fondamentale allautodifesa di Israele». Ma nonostante tanta ostentata indifferenza, Sharon teme il responso dei giudici internazionali, e dà avvio a una forte attività diplomatica. E le sue parole convincono Usa, Russia e Unione Europea. I tre giganti, pur criticando il tracciato della barriera, si dichiarano contrari a un intervento della Corte dellAja nella vicenda, perchè non esiste una «via giudiziaria» alla pace. Così come, aggiungiamo, non dovrebbe esistere una «via militare» alla pace. Ma forse, la quiete è lultima delle cose che interessano ad Ariel Sharon. I suoi convincenti discorsi, insomma, fanno sì che solo 13 Stati, per lo più musulmani, intervengano alludienza dellAja, accanto allAnp, alla Lega Araba e allOrganizzazione della Conferenza islamica.
E mentre allAja si lavora per trovare soluzioni, in Cisgiordania il cemento continua a mangiarsi case e terreni. Il 23 febbraio 2004, le ruspe dellesercito israeliano iniziano a spianare unarea vicino a Beit Surik, nella Cisgiordania nord-occidentale, da dove partirà il nuovo troncone del «muro», lungo circa 96 chilometri. Per chi non lavesse capito, «nessuna Corte al mondo potrà mai mettere in discussione il nostro diritto di difesa, del quale la barriera è parte fondamentale», ribadisce Dore Gold, consigliere diplomatico del premier israeliano.
La sentenza della Corte, seppur non vincolante, è perentoria: quel Muro crea danni «ai diritti dei palestinesi e le violazioni derivanti dal suo percorso non possono essere giustificate da alcuna esigenza militare o da richieste relative alla sicurezza nazionale o allordine pubblico» dIsraele. Perché il Muro «costituisce una violazione da parte di Israele di diversi obblighi relativi alla legge umanitaria internazionale ed agli strumenti dei diritti umani».
Israele cerca conforto tra gli amici e chiede agli Usa di esercitare il diritto di veto per bloccare in Consiglio di Sicurezza qualsiasi risoluzione Onu sul muro. I palestinesi esultano per la vittoria politica. «Nessuno può imporci questo muro dell'apartheid, il suo smantellamento è ineluttabile: il muro di Berlino è crollato, e il muro di Sharon lo seguirà», queste furono le parole di Yasser Arafat.
Nel luglio 2004, è un altro tribunale a bocciare il Muro. Questa volta, però, è la Corte Suprema israeliana. E Sharon è costretto a fermare i bulldozer. Peccato, solo per trenta chilometri, giusto quelli che i giudici hanno ritenuto inopportuni. Uno spostamento di 30 km di «muro» a nord di Gerusalemme, una bocciatura certamente parziale ma significativa: "Il percorso del muro nel villaggio di Beit Surik (ndr) - danneggia gravemente gli abitanti e viola i loro diritti, sanciti dalla normativa internazionale. Lo Stato dovrà trovare una soluzione alternativa che dia meno garanzie di sicurezza ma pesi di meno sulla popolazione locale". Considerazioni che potrebbero calzare a pennello anche ai restanti 700 km di muro.
Il 20 luglio 2004, una nuova risoluzione dell'Assemblea Generale dell'Onu (150 voti favorevoli, 6 contrari - tra cui Usa e Israele -, 10 astenuti) chiede ai paesi Onu di "non riconoscere la situazione illegale scaturita dalla costruzione del muro nel territorio palestinese occupato, compreso all'interno e intorno a Gerusalemme". Per Israele è un voto «vergognoso». Per la direzione palestinese è «la decisione più importante per la nostra causa dal 1947». Ma nemmeno questo parere è vincolante, e non cè da sperare che le orecchie di Sharon vogliano ascoltarlo. Anche se stavolta, nemmeno lUnione Europea lo ha appoggiato. «Siamo delusi - dice Sharon - per il sostegno massiccio di tutti i Paesi dellUe, che non ha tenuto in alcun conto del terrorismo di cui Israele è vittima».