I’ve been reading quite a lot about Lebanon (and Syria) recently, because that’s where I’m headed, for a short-ish trip, later this week.
This piece in today’s HaAretz caught my eye. It’s a report by Barak Ravid on the ongoing work of the NATO-dominated UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon. It includes this:
- Israeli military officials express great satisfaction with UNIFIL’s activities. A senior Jerusalem official singled out the European units of UNIFIL, particularly the Italian, French and Spanish contingents, for their professional manner of conduct. “They do their job and cause significant discomfort to Hezbollah,” he said. “They have had quite a few successes.”
Oh, what fun it must be for the militaries of these three formerly colonial European nations to be able to strut their stuff once again in the hills and valleys of formerly colonized (by France) Lebanon.
But the anonymous Israeli official quoted by Ravid expresses concern that the continuation of the political crisis may lead to increasing Hizbullah’s room for maneuver. And then we have this:
- UN officials point an accusatory finger regarding Lebanon’s political crisis toward Syria, claiming that “Syria defeats every attempt at an agreement and pushes Hezbollah and its other allies in Lebanon to increase their demands all the time.” They say that Syria’s President Bashar Assad wants to demonstrate at any price that “nothing moves in Lebanon without him” and predict that as a result the crisis in Lebanon will continue for months to come.
The main problem, as the UN officials see it, is that not enough pressure is being placed on Assad. “He will only move if he senses a threat to the stability of his regime,” they said. “If the Americans were, for example, to send ships close to Lebanon’s beaches, that would send a clear message to Assad, but they’re not doing that.”
Okay, let’s stop right there. What we have in the above paragraphs are direct quotes attributed to a collectivity of un-named UN officials. Tell me, how does that work? Was there a chorus of two or more of these UN officials speaking in complete unison there?
So, some extremely sloppy and mendacious journalism is one thing we have.
But what we also have is the report of these same un-named “UN officials”– perhaps, more realistically, actually one UN official– apparently inciting the US to adopt a more belligerent stance toward Syria.
Is this part of UNIFIL’s mandate, I wonder? I sure don’t see it there…
I will spend most of the month of April in Syria, preceded by a few days each in Amman and Beirut visiting family and friends (although the family might not be in Amman by that time, being under imminent threat of being kicked out by the Jordanian government). This month-long trip is hopefully preliminary to a future much longer stay in Syria.
I hope to be able to drive up the coast from Beirut to Lataqiya, and then east to Halab where I will stay a week or ten days or so, then drive or take a train south through Hama and Homs, and spend the rest of the time in Damascus before regretfully returning to the United States (why am I always sad to return “home”?).
I hope that Israel does not decide it is time to bomb Lebanon back to the stone age again, or that Bush does not succeed in satisfying his lust for violence by attacking Syria now that his attempts to justify attacking Iran have been semi-thwarted. It is fascinating that it is the Arabs that have the reputation for being irrationally violent.