Report of a Solidarity Mission to Lebanon – 18-25 August 2006

The Belgian NGO Medical Aid for the Third World (MATW) sent a solidarity mission to Lebanon from 18 to 25 August 2006, right after the taking into effect of the “cessation of hostilities” in accordance with UN Resolution 1701. The delegation was composed of Danny Claes of MATW’s projects desk; Marthe Franssen, a general practitioner in a people’s clinic in Brussels; Selma Benkhelifa, a human rights lawyer, and Pierre Abou Zeid, representing the Lebanese NGO Secours Populaire Libanais (SPL – Lebanese Popular Assistance) in Belgium.

I. Composition and objectives of the mission

The delegation handed over the first proceeds of MATW’s financial support campaign in Belgium to its two partner organisations in Lebanon: the Lebanese NGO Secours populaire libanais, and the Palestinian Human Call Association in the Ein El-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp near Saida. The delegation also gathered testimonies and documentation on the humanitarian catastrophe and on the Israeli war crimes in Lebanon.

The mission was intended to boost the campaign of solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese people in their resistance against war and occupation. It also aimed at increasing pressure on the Belgian government and on the European Union to clearly condemn Israel for its aggression against Lebanon and Palestine.

II. Report of the mission

Travel to Lebanon

For a one-week mission, we lost already one whole day in Syria. Although the Israeli bombing raids have stopped, the Beirut airport remains closed because of the Israeli blockade.

The route through the mountains from Damascus to Beirut is not yet open and too dangerous because of the bomb craters. We have to make a detour and enter Lebanon via the north. Our taxi bus is loaded with boxes of medicines, hastily collected by the Lebanese community in Belgium and MATW sympathizers. A humble gift, but to be gratefully accepted by the SPL. But for now, the medicines are rather a headache to us. First in Damascus Airport, and later at the border, officials were questioning us and made us wait for long hours.

The small city of Halba is our first stop in Lebanon. Even here, 200 km north of the Israeli border, schools are full of refugees. The local president of the Secours Populaire Libanais, Dr. Ghassan El Achkar, receives us warmly. He is a veteran and returned to his job because of the war. All SPL officials we will meet have a similar appearance: rather exhausted. It has been a hectic period, indeed.

Secours Populaire Libanais

Dr. Ghassan explains how the SPL functions. They are managing 28 polyclinics all over the country. A small managing team usually runs them, with just a nurse as permanent medical staff. But the team mobilizes doctors to work as volunteers in the clinic, for a few hours per day or per week, for which they get a minimal payment. A doctor’s visit costs just one fourth of the normal amount. Dr. Nouhad Mansour: “In Halba we have a rotation system with no less than 56 doctors. I myself am ophthalmologist, I work two times four hours a week in the clinic. And I am also a volunteer for the coordination of the centre. Used to development cooperation in third world countries, I reflect on what 56 specialists could accomplish in a municipality of Kinshasa, the Congo’s capital. Even in Belgium, 56 specialists working on a voluntary basis, is unthinkable. Lebanon certainly is no developing country!

"Lebanon was no developing country”, Nouhad corrects me. “For five years, we had been on course, since the Israeli’s were thrown out in 2000. We had peace and progress, people were united. But now they have thrown us 20 years backward.” Touring the city of Halba shows us how right she is: all bridges on the main road have been bombarded. 200 km from the Israeli border! Supposedly to stop Hezbollah. But Hezbollah doesn’t even exist here, it is a Christian area.

The reasons behind the war

Lebanese provide us with various analyses on the reasons behind the war. But the fairytale that Hezbollah would pose a threat to the existence of Israel is mentioned nowhere. What we hear, to the contrary, is that Lebanon as a nation is unacceptable to Israel.

People tell us: “Lebanon is uniquely located to be the commercial centre for the entire region, but Israel does not allow a strong and viable Lebanon at its border. They want Israel and only Israel to be the modern centre of the Middle East.” In Lebanon, 17 religions and sects live with and among each other. “Proof that living together is possible, and that religious tension is not unavoidable. But this, too, is a pain in the ass for Israel, which is itself a society based on the superiority of one particular religion.”
Lebanon is in fact a religion-based state itself. You are born into one religion, and you can only vote within your religious community. This is not democratic. In 2005, the Lebanese Communist Party and some hundred NGOs launched a campaign for radically democratic legal reforms. The main elements were: a democratic electoral system according to the ‘one man, one vote’ principle, non-confessional voting districts and parties, and a uniform system of civil law applicable to all. Also Hezbollah and several smaller parties joined this platform, while mainly the pro-Western Christian elite wanted to stall such reforms, which would mean the end of their position of power.
The current aggression against Lebanon also had the objective to stir up the tension between the various religious communities. While it was mainly the Shiite community that suffered the most during the bombings, the Lebanese nation reacted as one: all population groups helped care for the refugees, and Hezbollah launched an appeal for a unified national resistance against the aggression.

Which gives a much more varied picture of who is democratic and who’s not. In any case, the assertion that “Hezbollah equals terrorist” is wrong. In a small, destroyed village in the South a boy asked us: “Why do you call people who destroy our homes democrats, and people who come to help us rebuild them, terrorists?”

The refugees

From Halba in the North, we went straight to the South, to the hospital of Nabatiyeh, a town just north of the Litani river. The trip should have taken a couple of hours, but it takes us much longer, because every 20 km or so we have to make a detour via small side roads, where every small bridge causes a traffic jam. Many people with their cars heavily loaded are standing on both sides of the road. People who return to their homes in the South, but also many people who went there and found their homes destroyed: they return back to the North with whatever they could save from their belongings…
One million refugees, in a few weeks’ time: it is hardly imaginable. Thousands of people packed together in school buildings, apartment buildings,… Everybody is helping out, everywhere we hear stories of people and organisations that did anything to help. Finally, the refugees return home, in the worst case to live temporarily in the ruins of what once were their homes. This is a dear lesson from history: in 1948, the Palestinians were driven out of their homes, and ever since, they have not been able to return…

International humanitarian law trampled upon

Starting from Nabatiyeh, we make a tour of the South. We gather testimonies, but it is hard for the people to express their fear and sorrow. “This is the cruellest war we have ever experienced”, the Nabatiyeh doctors told us. And they should know, as they have treated the victims from the entire South. “What does it matter that my house is in rumbles”, anaesthesiologist Dr. Tarek Malkhaled says, “but what to say about the children that I saw dying on my operating table?”

Our lawyer, Selma Benkhelifa, meticulously notes down all testimonies. The case against Israel is becoming ever more serious. Systematic terror against the civilian population aimed at depopulating an area: that is a ‘crime against humanity’. But there’s a problem. Israel refuses to recognize the International Criminal Court and can never be brought before the The Hague tribunal. A frustrating job indeed, being a lawyer specialized in international law.

“For us, the war isn’t over yet, it will still take a long time”, says a surgeon at the Nabatiyeh hospital. On average, the hospital admits four cluster munition victims per day. We see one of them being brought to the hospital, his hand hit by exploded cluster munition while he was pruning a tree. Dr. Marthe Franssen, our medical doctor, takes pictures and tries to get his testimony.

The fact that Belgium is now organizing a demining mission as part of the Unifil II, boils down to an admission of guilt. With reason, Belgium declares that cluster munition will hit the civilian population and has to be removed. But did the Belgian government protest when the munition was being fired? Did they implement sanctions against Israel? And will the criminal have to pay for the demining?

The myth of a conflict between two parties

During our mission, we tried to verify several important questions.
Question: Jan Egeland, deputy UN secretary general for Humanitarian Affairs, once said that both parties to the conflict had hindered aid delivery to the civilian population.

"Wrong", says Dr. Ahmed Sadek, SPL’s vice-president. "I checked this with Egeland himself, and he couldn’t mention a single fact in which Hezbollah would have hindered humanitarian assistance. My impression was that he had been forced to declare that in order to be ‘balanced’.”

Question: "Hezbollah uses the civilian population as a human shield."
"Wrong", says Ali Hajjali, director of the SPL hospital in Nabatiyeh. "I saw them shooting mortars from an open area one kilometre from here, where there’s not a single house in the whole area. Twice the Israeli’s bombed that terrain, and the next day, the Hezbollah fighters were back there, to fire mortars once more, from the same area.”

Question: "But Hezbollah started the current conflict, by taking two Israeli soldiers hostage?"

Wrong again. First of all, this is already the sixth Israeli aggression against Lebanon (see below). And Hezbollah was founded precisely as a reaction to the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon in 1982.

Six Israeli aggressions against Lebanon:
1968: raid on Beirut, 13 civilian airplanes destroyed
1978: invasion of South Lebanon (up to the Litani river)
1982: operation 'Peace for Galilea', invasion of Lebanon (with the occupation of the South until 2000)
1993: operation 'Accountability', a military operation against Hezbollah and the Palestinians
1996: operation 'Grapes of Wrath', with the bombardment of South Lebanon, South Beirut and the Bekaa valley
2006: current aggression and occupation

Israel started by kidnapping and holding 18 Lebanese hostages, some of them for 25 years already, without trial. The hostage taking by Hezbollah is a response to this, meant to obtain an exchange of prisoners/hostages. But more fundamentally, the Israeli aggression was aimed at destroying the vital infrastructure of the country, chasing the population out of the South and defeating Hezbollah. These objectives had been on the Israeli army’s agenda for quite some time already. The facts attest to that. For what did Israel do the past years? It prepared for the attack, upgrading its tanks and its air force. And what did Hezbollah do? It dug tunnels in the hills in the South, it was digging in for a defensive war. For which the population is grateful: “During the 1982 invasion, the Israeli army was in Beirut in a matter of days. Now they got stranded before having reached the Litani river.”

The blue gold

The South of Lebanon contains strategic water reserves for the entire region. That’s why Israel continues to occupy the Shebaa Farms, in order to get hold of those water reserves.

In 1919, World Zionist Council president Chaim Weizman sent a letter to the British Prime Minister, requesting him to redraw the borders of Palestine so as to include the major water reserves: “The entire economic future of Palestine depends on the water supply for irrigation and for the production of electricity. (…) We think that it is essential that the northern border of Palestine encompasses the Litani river (…).”

Since that day, Israel has occupied the South of Lebanon already several times. Every time with another pretext. But always with the water flowing in the direction of Israel.

In the same way, the Israeli’s are redirecting the water of the Occupied Territories to their colonies, thus depriving the Palestinian peasants of water, they are directing the water from the South of Lebanon to Israel, using two main channels.

Driving through the area, you will notice how dry the hills are. The Lebanese farmers use water very sparsely, seldomly irrigating a piece of land. Water is more costly than oil here.

How different is the picture at the other side of the Israeli border. Orchards, fields, grasslands: everything is green. Clearly for propaganda purposes: “Look how we are developing agriculture!” But behind this façade, there is pure colonialism: robbing your neighbours’ natural resources, and using them for your own benefit, while the other foot the bill.

Welcome to the New Middle (b)East

On the way back to Beirut, we make a stop in Saida, where we visit the Palestinian refugee camp Ein El Hilweh to hand over project funds to the Human Call Hospital. Ein El Hilweh is overcrowded, but yet it is receiving thousands of additional refugees: solidarity across nationalities.

In Beirut we find ourselves in a moon-like landscape. Street after street full of rubble and ruins of half-destroyed apartments. In this area Hezbollah had its headquarters, which means that the Israeli’s bombed anything: houses, shops, hospitals,… In the middle of the rubble: a huge Hezbollah tent. Here volunteer, usually youngsters, meet to help with the cleaning up. Everything, from the bulldozers and the trucks up to the protective ribbons, are from Hezbollah. We knew the guerrilla part of Hezbollah from TV, but Hezbollah appears to be so much more: a political party and a social movement, involved in another kind of battle, one for reconstruction.

People say that Hezbollah is a state within the state, which is but a half-truth. Rather, we note that Hezbollah forms an alternative ‘state’ wherever the regular state is absent. Nowhere do we see the Lebanese authorities taking the initiative for the cleaning up. A few traffic cops, that is about all that the Lebanese state can deliver. Logical that Hezbollah is so popular. Even the most ardent atheists refuse to criticize them: “We don’t agree with their ideology, but where would we be today without them? Where was the Lebanese army when we had to be defended?”

We discuss the war with Pierre Abou Zeid’s family. “Whenever there is a conflict in the region, we get victimized. We have a saying here in Lebanon: one war hides the next one. And Lebanon is currently in the eye of the storm. In such a situation, you cannot afford the luxury to choose your friends and allies. Bush is busy remodelling the Middle East. But Afghanistan is a mess. Iraq: civil war and occupation. What’s next? Bush himself declared that the war against Hezbollah was a general repetition for a war against Iran.”

And Belgium? And Europe?

The discussion on the precise role of the United Nations force remains open. Our Lebanese friends ask: “If they were there to stop the war, why aren’t they deployed on the Israeli side of the border?”

Belgium and the European Union are implicated. Traditionally, Belgium has always chosen the side of Israel, economically, politically and militarily. Now, Belgium attempts to acquire a humanitarian image by limiting its task in Unifil to demining. But that doesn’t change the fact that a co-member of the European Union, Germany, sold weapons to Israel even during the war. It is not only the US that is arming Israel. In the meantime, the UN ‘peace’ mission appears to become a new kind of tutelage of Lebanon. High time that peace activists say, loud and clear: not in our name!

III. Petition campaign launched by the MATW delegation to Lebanon

Clearing Lebanon of cluster munition: make Israel pay for it!
All international observers and human rights organisations confirm that Israel violated international humanitarian law by using cluster bombs in populated areas in South Lebanon. Jan Egeland, the UN’s Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs, criticized the fact that Israel fired 90% of its cluster bombs in the last three days of the war, when a ceasefire was near, calling this “completely immoral”. The some 1 million pieces of unexploded ordnance that Israel left behind, are claiming victims every day (on average three per day, one of whom is below 18 years old).

The Belgian military contingent, part of the UN mission in Lebanon, is doing a good job by helping to demine the cluster munition. But this should not mean that Israel goes scot-free for its war crimes. International law contains the principle of repair payments. But today not Israel, but the Belgian taxpayers are footing the bill of the demining operation.

We demand from the Belgian government:

• that the cost of the demining operation be recovered from Israel, by any means possible
• that the recovered sum be donated for the reconstruction of Lebanon, with special attention to health care for the poorest sectors of the population
  that an arms embargo be declared against Israel, and that all military cooperation with Israel, through NATO or otherwise, be refused.