Lamya Hussain* writing from Bourj al-Barajneh refugee camp | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"Where would you like to go?" asks a taxi driver a little older than my father, his thick Lebanese accent I barely understand.

I reply politely, "Off the airport road to Bourj al-Barajneh."

"The refugee camp? No, I don't go there," he replies.

Not understanding how to respond, I nod and keep waiting for a taxi that will agree to take me. I finally negotiate with a driver to take me to the main entrance of the Bourj al-Barajneh refugee camp for an outrageous fare of $20.

As I get into the back seat, I roll down the window and breathe in a little of Beirut. Like a child curious towards a new environment, I take in the city, its beauty and its tragedy. Avoiding conversation, I maintain focus on the road as the driver chatted away, his voice slowly merging into the city sounds.

A sudden slam on the breaks mean I had reached my destination. "Here you go! God be with you." I pull my suitcase from the trunk and settle my fare. As the taxi drove off I find myself standing at the tip of a busy bridge; across from it was a city within a city. I stand there for a moment or so, overwhelmed at its sight, unsure of how to proceed.

In my work I had visited many refugee camps but somehow Bourj al-Barajneh had its own way of instigating emotional turmoil. It stood out from the rest of Beirut and it created a sense of fear onto the outside world. As if whatever enters is lost in it forever, the kind of fear one has of drowning in the ocean.

Not sure of how to locate my host family, I drag my suitcase to the side of the road, kick it to place it in a horizontal position, and sit on it while I frantically look for my cell phone. I scroll up and down through my messages trying to find contact details for a man named Abu Muhammad. I've attracted the attention of a group of children who stand on the side, intrigued by a foreigner in the camps. They whisper to each other and giggle. I wave one of the kids over and ask him to direct me to Abu Muhammad's place.

"Abu Muhammad? The one with the Internet cafe or the one with the shop?"

"The one that owns a small shop in the camp," I reply.

He thinks for a minute. "Will you buy my friends and I ice cream from Abu Muhammad's store?"

I find his request a fair trade and agree to it. He waves over the rest of his friends who help push my suitcase through the camp as they yell and chant: "Foreigner! Foreigner in the camps!"

We finally arrive at a small shop that is almost hidden under a crooked staircase. With no particular organization in the manner in which it is stocked with goods, in the center sat an elderly man next to a very dusty television placed on a three-legged chair supported by a stack of bricks. I can barely make out his face as it is dark inside the shop and three furious candles make just enough light to illuminate his shirt and the chair which he is slowly rocking back and forth.

The kids yell out to him to get his attention while letting me in on the fact that Abu Muhammad is hard on hearing. He slowly walks in our direction and greets me with great enthusiasm. He asks the boys to help me take my suitcase up to the third floor where I would be staying with two other Canadian volunteers. I linger around to settle my promise to buy the kids ice cream from his shop. He generously adds candy to the deal and invites me to come by his place later in the evening to meet his wife.

Over the next couple weeks I find myself right at home, accustomed to the daily abrupt power cuts, crooked narrow alleyways and of course the three dimensions of water. I create a system to store clean water that could be used to shower and drink, the second dimension for laundry and finally tap water that could only be used to clean.

Time is a limited concept when one is working around frequent power cuts and scarce amounts of clean water. I obsessively back up my work, unsure of when the power would go out as I typed an email or organized my research. The tragic ends to conversations with friends and family on Skype always sting like a bee. On one such evening, I find myself sitting alone in my flat in Bourj al-Barajneh in total silence and darkness. I try to recall where I left my flashlight and slowly try to make way into the bedroom. I look through my suitcase and in the process knock over my roommate's collection of Elias Khoury novels.

"Are you okay?" I hear Abu Muhammad's wife yell from her kitchen window, located directly below my bedroom. I yell back, asking her if she had spare candles, to which she responded with an invitation to her place. "What's the point of you sitting alone in the dark up there? The three of us might as well share the darkness!" I quickly dress myself in what later proved to be an uncoordinated color combination and counted each step down to their apartment.

Abu and Umm Muhammad always extend a warm welcome accompanied with tea and snacks. As the three of us sat in darkness, their curiosity turned into a series of personal questions about my life. Nothing was off-limits; they are at ease asking me about my marital status, family details and religious beliefs. After having satisfied their inquisitiveness, they ask me a particularly difficult question: "Have you been to Palestine?"

A sudden hot flash takes over my face during this awkward pause. I stare down deep into my tea cup as if trying to focus on the already diluted sugar granules. I remember the advice from other volunteers: "Make sure you don't tell folks here that you have been to Palestine; it creates emotional turmoil for them!"

I wonder whether I could lie bold-faced to a harmless and kind elderly couple. I look up to the pair who probably already knew the truth I was struggling to conceal. "I knew it! You smell and feel like Palestine. I hear it in your voice, I sense it in your mannerisms, I feel it in the way you talk!" exclaims Umm Muhammad.

She quickly reaches across the table and embraces me as if taking into her arms a part of her country. "Oh! Let her speak. I want to hear stories" says Abu Muhammad.

In what seemed like an eternity the three of us discuss in great detail my experiences in the West Bank. "Tell me about the sea, the sea of Jaffa," asks Umm Muhammad.

"It is angry, the waves crash onto the rocks like an army filled with rage," I reply.

"What about Akka?" Abu Mohammad asks.

"In Akka the waters are calm but run deep. The old city is beautiful and the marketplace has the best of Palestinian cuisine," I say.

"What about Jerusalem, did you pray at al-Aqsa? Did you see the Dome of the Rock?" they both ask.

I share details of my Jerusalem visits; I tell them how beautiful the Dome of the Rock is: "It sits like a gem in the core of Jerusalem, one can see it from afar as its golden dome reflects the sunlight throughout the day and moonlight through the night."

We share nostalgia and a mosaic of emotions from joy to grief. "Take me home; I want to see Jaffa before I die," says Umm Muhammad.

Words escape me -- I feel a sharp pain in my gut and a certain struggle to breathe. I realize my privilege, my non-Palestinian status, my foreign identity, and my ability to exist in freedom even in spaces like refugee camps. Ashamed of this privilege, I fail to offer any consolation to both Abu and Umm Muhammad.

Sensing my guilt, Abu Muhammad continues: "Palestine is not an identity, land, home or some 'right' in international law! It's this memory we chase of a time that has long gone by, and knowing so we live in the shadows, chasing what used to be."

I ponder his words and ask, "Would you return?"

He opens his mouth to reply but he stops himself. He then reaches for a pack of cigarettes and lights the last one. I watch him carefully as his thoughts get the best of him; in that moment he was completely alone with his conscience.

"Have you ever loved something so much that it destroyed you?" asks Abu Muhammad.

I pretended that I didn't hear his question and ask, " Would you return?"

My perseverance pays off as I watched him extinguish his cigarette abruptly. He crosses his arms and leans forward, I can now make out his face, even through the dark. He chooses his words carefully, as if each were carefully picked from years of internal debate and thought.

"I remember Jaffa well. As a boy I would walk around for hours. I can smell the oranges of Jaffa. I feel the earth of Palestine under my feet, the fresh breeze of the sea, how the waves chased me back and forth. I remember in great detail my home, and in particular the door to my home. I try and unlock it every time I see it in my dreams. But no matter how hard I try I can never go inside it."

As the power returns, it brings with it an awkward abrupt pause to our conversation. Abu Muhammad abandons our discussion and resorts to talking about his shop affairs and Umm Muhammad returns to asking me more questions about my marital status, family and religious beliefs.

After I leave their humble dwelling, I find myself wide awake that night. I remember watching a home demolition in East Jerusalem, the faces of refugees in the occupied West Bank and my dear friend Aya. Her radiant smile as she visited the remains of her village. The journey we made to make her return to her original village, how she filled an empty bottle with sand to spread on her mother's grave in exile. I remembered how she silently wept at the loss of her land and marked her coming home. It is in that moment the lines between memory and return become blurred and in a beautiful summer sunset there is momentary peace.

* Lamya Hussain is a Toronto-based activist and a researcher on issues around Palestinian refugees.

By Franklin Lamb * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Cartoon by Petar Pismestrovic, Kleine Zeitung, Austria

One can quickly recall a long list of geographic place names that are indelibly etched in the annals of humanity's quest for freedom and whose very geographical place name connotes resistance to aggression, oppression, occupation and tyranny. Names like Le Place de la Resistance, Tiananmen Square, the Gdansk Shipyards, Bunker Hill, Iran's Azadi Square, Bogside, Martyr's Square, Karbala, Aita Shaab, among scores of others. Tahrir Square has become a name symbolizing every people's willingness, indeed insistence, to make personal, potentially life taking, sacrifices to achieve freedom from an illegitimate, corrupt, brutal, treasonous dictatorship or from occupiers or aggressors.

Less than one week after few outside Egypt had heard of or much less could locate on a blank map of Cairo, "Tahrir Square" the World now realizes it as the epicenter of the Middle East's unfolding and unpredictable earthquake event. The Tahrir Square uprising has led to one Arab diplomat, currently posted to Beirut, observing yesterday: "If there were to be an Arab League meeting this week attended by all the Arab Heads to State, an honest participant might suggest to the assembled potentates to look to their right and then look to their left and realize that in perhaps 24 months close one third may not be attending subsequent Arab League summits.

The Tahrir uprising may, following a cursory examination, appear unconnected with much outside the Egyptian publics urgent longings to escape poverty, unemployment, lack of educational opportunities, caused by decades of regime economic mismanagement, police brutality and government torture chambers, and pervasive corruption that has seeped into nearly every aspect of Egyptian life. But increasingly it appears that other forces are influencing recent events as noted below.

The eyes, hope and solidarity of much of the Middle East are on Tahrir Square and the bloodied but unbowed Egyptian people, who, old and young, religious and secular, illiterates and lettered, paupers and moneyed, all of whom today, following upon the glow of a spontaneous intifada in the cradle of civilization stand to win or lose so much for the region.

As the Mubarak regime plots a path for the beleaguered President to stay in power it is employing the well tested bromide of most despots including citing the need for stability, orderly transition, prevention of religious fanatics and extremists from taking over and the need for fighting "terrorism." The pro-Mubarak Egyptian daily Al-Yawm Al-Sabah is claiming that Hamas is behind much of the instigation to violence in Tahriri Square and other areas of the country.

Not buying all of these scare tactics, the Obama Administration's is revving up its "now means three days ago and counting" demands. Mr .Mubarak told CNN on 2/3/11 that he's fed up and would like nothing better than to step down but chaos and the Muslim Brotherhood would surely follow. His closest political confident and just appointed Vice-President Omar Suleiman also predicted chaos if Mr Mubarak resigned, saying it would leave a body without a head. The White House is still leaning toward Omar Suleiman but believes that Suleiman was aware of the campaign in recent days to intimidate the opposition, and are staffers are wondering whether he is still an acceptable choice. Late word from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is that the Obama Administration may support Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, who has joined anti-Mubarak protests in Tahrir Square, and is hinting he may run for president in the upcoming election. Israel would support him over Mohammad al Baradei who many view as pro-Iranian.

Still, the Mubarak regime is not without supporters. Former Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer has defended Egyptian President Hosni Mubrak, saying his collapse will be a "tremendous loss" for Israel. The former army general praised Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for supporting Israel for thirty years, Israel's Arutz Sheva newspaper reported. "When I watched his speech in which he said he would step down, it pained me to see his collapse," Ben-Eliezer said on 2/2/11 about Mubarak.

Both Washington and Tel Aviv are were reported shocked by the speed of the Egyptian revolt and their intelligences agencies admit not seeing it coming. Much of the American reaction is being scripted by AIPAC and other Israel lobby agents who regularly contribute campaign cash to 90 percent of the US Congress , including 390 of the 435 Members of the House of Representative ( 89.7%) who voted to support Israel after it committed repeatedly condemned serial murders of innocent civilians and myriad crimes against humanity in Gaza. These Israeli-pushed "American" initiatives will likely range from possibly terminating aid to Lebanon ( some Obama Administration friends of Israel claim there is a a link between the South Beirut Hezbollah neighborhood of Dahiyeh and Cairo's Tahir Square events ) and cutting off Egypt's nearly 30 years of annual multi-billion dollar cash grants as well as massive military hardware.

The US-Israel imperative appears designed to immediately regain control and co-opt the Tahrir uprising and quickly channel the uprising into a political cul de sac until Egypt can be returned to "normal", meaning US-Israel shared hegemony.

What will ultimately determine in which ways the Middle East moves following Tahrir Square events is not the armed might of the regional super power or the weapons of the global superpower. Both Israel and the US can have a short term impact but the former is shaking while the latter, equally impotent to subdue 83 million Egyptians and perhaps soon millions of Palestinians, Jordanians, Yemenis and others, is trying to stall any major regime change in favor of cosmetic adjustments to the current government. Even the Obama Administrations current public choice, Omar Sulieman is meeting with increasing resistance in Washington as details of his CV emerged including being a torture specialist and possibly a Mossad agent.

What both Israel and the US fear most is a determined and successful grass roots movement than will liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation. The Obama administration can be expected to continue to temporize events as best it can while calculating how to insert its choice of a compliant President in Mubarak's palace. As one Congressional commented by email: " The last thing the White House or Israel want is an Egyptian Chavez, or even someone like Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Completely unacceptable would be anyone with even the hint of pro-Iranian or Hezbollah leanings. The State Department favors another strong man, with an essentially rubber stamp Parliament after "free elections" as long as there are no troublesome Algerian, Gaza, or Lebanon style election results. The US-Israel bottom line is that Egypt's next government must be one that will guarantee that the 1979 Camp David Accords and Egypt's willingness to continue accepting a total of more than three billions in US taxpayer dollars annually as bribe money to collaborate with Israel against Palestine.

History is filled with ironies. One of them is the coincidence that two of the fundamental causes of the unfolding Egyptian revolution happened within months of each other both 30 years ago- soon to be followed by the beginning of the current Mubarak dictatorship---the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the US sponsored Camp David Accord. The Camp David giveaway and cave-in to colonialist Israel was never accepted by the Egyptian people, by the Islamic Republic, or by any but a small percentage of the people of the Middle East.

The hegemonic objectives of the 1979 Camp David have rolled across the region for three decades, being rejected and increasingly confronted by a growing culture of Resistance set in motion with the 1979 Imam Khomeini-led revolution. Both 1979 events fueled myriad other more immediate causes including those noted above and significantly inspired the current Egyptian eruptions, some of the paths of which are predictable while the results are unknown.

There are many other Tahrir Squares in the Middle East. One of which is Al Aksa square in Jerusalem, the eternal and indivisible capital of Palestine. It remains to be seen when or if Palestinians will revive Jerusalem as a modern day resistance place name and whether like Tahrir Square, Egypt, Jerusalem will rise up in support of increasing cries for Palestinian liberation as the inspiration and revolution of their neighbors in Tahrir Square spreads.

* Franklin Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Lebanon. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon and is doing research in Lebanon for his next book. He can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

By Franklin Lamb * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The European Union can redeem its charter and alleviate widespread suffering in Lebanon's refugee camps.

The Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon (PCRC) was organized in Washington DC and Beirut, Lebanon in late 2009 with the goal of achieving, in concert with Lebanese based NGOs, the enactment in Lebanon's parliament of two basic civil rights for more than 400,000 UNRWA registered Palestinians. These are the basic civil rights to work and to own a home.

With a series of popular support efforts, including a civil rights march on parliament on 27 June 2010 and a series of informational and analytical reports distributed widely on the Internet and in hard copy, the PCRC continues to intensify its work. Currently lobbying members of parliament, as well as pursuing several initiatives, including an International Petition which aims to collect one million signatures (it currently has 600,000 signatures from 105 countries), the PCRC in Lebanon pegs success on international and particularly European Union involvement.

Background to Lebanon's refugee crisis

During the spring-summer 1948 Nakba, 780,000 Palestinians-approximately 60 percent of the population of Palestine-were driven from their homes and ancestral lands. Over a period of several months, approximately 121,000 refugees arrived along Lebanon's southern border, trekking along ancient roads and footpaths or traveling by boat from beaches in Palestine. These Palestinians retained the hope and determination to return to their homeland.

From which areas of Palestine did Lebanon's uninvited and soon to be unwanted guests arrive? Approximately 29,500 rural dwellers and 8,500 urban dwellers escaped Zionist death squads and arrived to Lebanon by land and sea from Acre; 1,500 rural inhabitants and 7,200 urban dwellers arrived by boat from Haifa; 9,500 refugees came by land from Nazareth; and 6,900 urban dwellers and 4,000 rural dwellers came by boat from Jaffa. They came from among the 531 attacked and destroyed villages, victims of the quarter-century of meticulously planned ethnic cleansing projects A, B, C, and D (the infamous Plan Dalat)-Zionism's final solution.

Many Lebanese, Arab, and international committees undertook the responsibility of sheltering the refugees and provided them with basic humanitarian services until the establishment of the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) in 1949. UNWRA started its mission in 1950. They first provided the refugees with tents, then mud houses covered with reeds and straw mats, then one level zinc-roofed cinder block rooms and public bathrooms on main streets. Today it is common to find 5–7 persons forced to live in one room.

The United Nations and the government of Lebanon established 16 refugee camps between 1948 and 1955, of which 12 remain with close to 227,000 refugees tightly caged inside. Lebanon has the highest percentage of camp-dwelling refugees (approximately 53 percent) of all the countries hosting Palestinian refugees.

In addition to the 12 camps, more than 21,000 Palestinians refugees squat in 14 scattered 'gatherings' with essentially no infrastructure.

These refugees and their offspring account for more than 98 percent of Lebanon's Palestinian refugees, of whom 426,000 are registered with UNRWA as of November 2010. In addition, there are approximately 5000 non ID Palestinians who arrived between 1967 and 1974.

Increasingly, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon face staggering problems. Contrary to the status of refugees in other countries, Lebanon's unwanted guests are denied social, economic and civil rights, including the right to work or to own a home. They have very limited access to the government's public health or educational facilities and no access to public social services.

Recognition of the problem but still no solution

Unfortunately, the 17 August 2010 parliamentary amendments to article 59 of the Lebanese Labor Law of 23 September 1946 and paragraph 3 of Article 9 of the Lebanese Social Security Law issued on 26 September 1963, failed to address the elementary requirements of international law relating to refugees in Lebanon. The amendments also failed to achieve parliament's presumed legislative intent of granting employment rights for these victims of ethnic cleansing.

Preceding the parliamentary vote, which led to the abolition of work permit fees for menial jobs but retained the bar on Palestinians working in the more than five dozen professions and syndicated jobs, and continues the prohibition of home ownership, limited discussion was encouraged. The same false arguments from the past half century were bandied about, including unsubstantial claims that allowing refugees to work would interfere with their right to return to Palestine (resolution 194), take jobs from Lebanese, and make the refugees too comfortable thus weakening their desire to return to Palestine. The truth is, according to the international NGO community in Lebanon, that granting these internationally mandated rights, enjoyed by refugees around the world, will in fact fortify the Palestinians strong determination to refuse permanent settlement, displacement or dispersal.

The solution to the plight of Lebanon's Palestinian refugees is to grant the population elementary civil rights, and it is increasingly evident that the international community must become involved in achieving this.

There also remains a dire need to increase the amount of land allocated for the refugees to live on. The original area allocated to refugee camps has actually been diminished in size by the destruction of three camps (noted above), while the number of Palestinian refugees has increased more than 400 percent since 1948.

A need for the European Union to take an enhanced leadership role

On 19 November 2010, the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign received a much appreciated communication and invitation from Pope Benedict XVI, responding to an October 2010 open letter to Pope Benedict XVI and Lebanon's Patriarch, Nasrallah Sfeir. The missive was an interim response from the Vatican to the growing international effort to enact civil rights for Palestinians in Lebanon, and it included an invitation for a delegation from Lebanon's camp to attend for a private visit with His Holiness. The missive also highlights the fact that the grave human rights problems of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon require immediate international intervention, support and assistance to the government of Lebanon as its works to meet its minimal international obligations.

As the Palestine Civil Rights Movement launches 'Round Two' of the struggle to secure civil rights for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, international community involvement is essential, beginning with education among the European Union countries of the squalid conditions in Lebanon's camps and EU solidarity with encouraging Lebanon's parliament to fulfill its obligations and avoid a growing demand for international sanctions against Lebanon. Among actions being organized is the pending lawsuit in Washington DC to cut off all US aid to Lebanon as required under the 1961 US Foreign Assistance Act to countries, such as Lebanon, who engage in a pattern of denying civil rights to refugees.

For the European Union to champion this cause would be a win-win result for all involved. The EU has the political and economic power to quickly achieve the enactment in Lebanon's parliament of the two key goals that would alleviate much of the suffering of the refugees: the right to work and to own a home. All countries which host Palestinian refugees, such as Jordan, Syria and EU member states clearly benefit from Palestinians refugees being allowed to work on the same basis as other refugees.

The European Union is uniquely positioned to quickly achieve civil rights for Palestinians in Lebanon given its economic and political involvement in human rights. Sometimes, the EU is said to have abdicated some of its responsibilities and is accused of caving to US and Israeli objectives with respect to the Middle East.

Among EU efforts that are sought and being hoped for in Lebanon's Palestinian camps are the following:

1. The EU should move into the vacuum that is quickly developing in the languid 'peace process' and offer its own leadership initiatives. Clearly the Obama administration is struggling and would welcome EU support and an enhanced pro-active role.
2. The EU should immediately act to support the work of UNRWA, which provides, to the best of its limited capacity, health and educational assistance to the camps. UNRWA will soon be the target of US Congressional Committees whose hostility toward the Palestinian refugee community is well-known. The EU has a good record of helping UNRWA and should continue now by more publicly coming to its defense and helping with budget shortfalls. This EU initiative will have an immediate positive impact inside Palestinian camps where UNRWA budget cuts have been sharply felt.
3. The EU should take more public leadership positions such as the one expressed by former EU representatives this month with respect to blatantly illegal Israeli actions such as settlement building and the whole list of discriminatory and illegal government actions against the Arab population on both sides of the 1949 armistice line.
4. More EU presence in Lebanon's 12 Palestinian camps in the form of educational, health, cultural and small business projects would markedly contribute to the refugees need for international solidarity and would help end the siege and abandonment anxieties growing inside the camps. An urgent educational need is for volunteer teachers in UNRWA's 79 schools.
5. The EU would significantly advance the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign in Lebanon were it to send delegations to meet with local NGOs, visit the camp residents, and dialogue with members of parliament and political leaders to bring much needed international attention to this acute human rights crisis.

Were the European Union to lead the growing international effort to secure civil rights for Palestinians in Lebanon, it would be much to its credit. More importantly, it would alleviate much of the needless suffering of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon while simultaneously sending a message of hope to all Palestinians in the Diaspora. Hopefully the European Union will seize this opportunity and achieve the leadership position within the international community that has been its promise since it came into being.

* Franklin Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Lebanon. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon and is doing research in Lebanon for his next book. He can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

"O, that it were possible,
We might but hold some two days' conference
With the dead!"
(John Webster, IV.ii.18.)

"The voice of the dead was a living voice to me."
(Tennyson, "In the Valley of Cauteretz")

By William A. Cook* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Twenty eight years ago, a scene of unspeakable horror rocked the rubble strewn alleys of Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut as vengeance vied with naked lust in a massive display of human malice illuminated for the IDF overseers of this massacre with flares that provided "an unobstructed and panoramic view" for Israeli Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon and his Chief of Staff, Rafael Eitan, as they watched from the seven story Kuwaiti embassy providing logistical support for their Phalangist allies as they "massacred for 36 to 48 hours" the hapless Palestinians imprisoned in the camps. "We were breathing death, inhaling the very putrescence of the bloated corpses around us. Jenkins immediately realized that the Israeli defence minister would have to bear some responsibility for this horror. "Sharon!' he shouted. 'That fucker Sharon! This is Deir Yassin all over again.'" (Fisk, Pity the Nation, 360). Outside of the Shatila camp, who remembers? What American knows of the massacre? What government agency has investigated our involvement in it? What lives lost haunt the Israeli or American mind for the evil we have done against the innocent who died such ignominious deaths twenty eight years ago?

Would that we could hold conference with the dead, to sense the absolute black fear that grabbed the mother's heart as her executioner grabbed her skirt to shred it before unleashing his uncontrollable lust into her trembling body, to feel the depth of anguish that spread throughout her being in these last moments of her life, to fear with her the absolute despair she felt as her murderer laughed and mocked her before thrusting his knife into her child yet unborn in her womb. Would that we could share with those slaughtered during these days of anguish the pain and suffering they endured, hapless innocents offered by Sharon and his forces to their paid mercenaries as compensation for their loyalty to the invading armies of the Israeli nation. Would that we could comprehend from their recounting how a man might find it in his being, in the root cellar of his soul, to inflict such wanton barbarity on a fellow being. Would that we could understand how the chosen of G-d Almighty could unleash such hate on another people that they would allow a savage massacre of brothers and sisters to continue for three days yet proclaim to the world their innocence. Would that there might be some civilized, rational means of grasping how such pathological destruction of fellow humans could be justified that America's support for a nation capable of such barbarity might also be justified.

Chris Hedges claims that "only the vanquished know war"; but this was not war, it was a massacre, yet these vanquished souls could tell us what vengeance is, what hate is, what sick minds are capable of inflicting on others if we only had time with them to learn. It is the destroyed that know and it is the destroyed we fear; to forget is our means to mental salvation, otherwise we are doomed to live in the hell of our memory that must see and know injustice exists and rules in this world inflicted by those who claim they are civilized but know in their souls they are but brutish beasts.

What can be said of Shatila twenty eight years later? It is, after all, but an incident in the horrors of sixty years stretching from the middle of the 20th century into the second decade of the 21st. It is an icon of American and Israeli horror, a burial of thousands destroyed savagely and forgotten while a symphony of hypocrisy extolling our virtues buries the reality. Those who died never existed, their sons and daughters never existed, their dreams and aspirations never existed, the fruit of their loins never blossomed to feel the heat of the sun, the coolness of the water, the fruit of the tree of life. We the indifferent cannot accept their existence nor recognize it lest we accept as well our guilt in their deaths. To return to Shatila is an act of retribution, an act that gives voice to the dead that suffered there, to accept responsibility for the horrors we allowed to happen there, to seek forgiveness of those who lost their lives there and cannot ever live those lives again nor see the sun rise or hear the baby's cry or know the laughter of their children or weep at the loss of a mother or father ... their voices have been silenced forever, yet they echo throughout the ages how vicious is the soul of humankind to remain silent and indifferent to their brothers and sisters in death.

* William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of The Rape Of Palestine: Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied, Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy and The Chronicles Of Nefaria. He can be reached at: wcook@laverne.edu.
www.drwilliamacook.com

This wall, adjacent to Abu Yassir's shelter is used by Shatila refugee camp tykes for playing ball and other games, unaware that some of their relatives and families' friends were among the hundreds butchered against 11 such "walls of death" 28 years ago, on September 16-18, 1982. Photo courtesy of the author

By Franklin Lamb* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The untreated psychic wounds are still open. Accountability, justice and basic civil rights for the survivors are still denied.

Scores of horror testimonies have been shared over the past nearly three decades by survivors of the September 1982 Sabra- Shatila massacre. More come to light only through circumstantial evidence because would be affiants perished during the slaughter. Other eyewitness are just beginning to emerge from deep trauma or self imposed silence.

Some testimonies will be shared this month by massacre survivors at Shatila camp. They will sit with the every growing numbers of international visitors who annually come to commemorate one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th century.

There are no average massacre testimonies.

Zeina, a handsome bronzed-faced middle-aged woman, an acquaintance of Munir Mohammad's family, asked a foreigner the other day: "How can it be 28 years? I think it was just last fall that my husband Hussam and our two daughters, Maya, 8 years old, and Sirham, 9 years old, left our two room home to search for food because the Israeli army had sealed Shatila camp nearly two days before and few inside Shatila Camp had any. I still pray and wait for them to return."

In Shatila Palestinian refugee camp and outside Abu Yassir's shelter, the bullet marks still cover the lower half of the 11 "walls of death" where some of the dried blood is mixed and feathered in with the thin mortar. An elderly gentleman named Abu Samer still has some souvenirs of the event: three American automatic pistols fitted with silencers, a couple of knives and axes that were strapped to some of the killers belts as they quickly and silently shot, carved and chopped whoever they came upon starting at around 6 pm on Thursday September 16, 1982. Plus a couple of whisky bottles. These weapons were gifted to Israel by the US Congress and subsequently issued along with drugs and alcohol and other "policing equipment" to the killers in his "most moral army" by Ariel Sharon.

Earlier this year, one of the murderers from the Numour al-Ahrar (Tigers of the Liberals) militia, the armed wing of Lebanon's right-wing National Liberal Party founded by former Lebanese President Camille Chamoun, nonchalantly confessed, "we sometimes used these implements in order to advance silently through the alleys of Shatila so as not to cause unnecessary panic during our work." The Tigers militia, one of five Christian killer units, was assisted inside Shatila by more than two dozen Israeli Mossad agents, and led in this blitz by none other than Dani Chamoun, son of the former President.

No plaque or sign notes what happened here.

The world learned of the slaughter at Sabra-Shatila on the morning of Sunday September 19, 1982. Photos, many now available on the Internet, taken by witnesses such as Ralph Shoneman, Mya Shone, Ryuichi Hirokawa, Ali Hasan Salman, Ramzi Hardar, Gunther Altenburg, and Gaza and Akka Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) Hospital staff, preserve the gruesome images deeply etched in the survivors memory. The Israeli Kahan Commission, five months later in its February 7, 1983 Report, substantially whitewashed Israeli responsibility referring more than once to the massacre as "a war."

Zeina ushered me down a narrow alley from her house arriving at the 3 by 8 meter wall outside her sister's home, spraying here and there with an aerosol can as we walked. She apologized for the spray but insisted that she and her neighbors could even now smell the slaughter that happened there three decades earlier.

For readers unfamiliar with the location of Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp in Beirut, this particular "wall of death" is located across from the PRCS Akka Hospital, such as it is, after years without adequate financial or NGO support. Locating the 11 "walls of death" requires help from the few older Palestinians who still live in this quarter. They are among those still living at the scene and who still vividly recall the details of the massacre. Some provide personal history of some of the butchered, seemingly urging the dead to return by making them seem so alive, often describing a personality trait and the name of their family village in Palestine.

"A sweet boy who adored his older brothers Mutid and Bilal."

Zeina recalls that Munir Mohammad was 12 years old on September 16, 1982, a pupil at the Shatila camp school, named Jalil (Galilee). Virtually all of the 75 remaining UNRWA schools in Lebanon, like other Palestinian institutions, are named after villages, towns or cities in occupied Palestine. Often they are named after villages that no longer actually exist, being among the 531 villages the Zionists colonizers obliterated during and after the 1947-48 Nakba (Catastrophe).

Zeina recalls that it was late on a Thursday afternoon, September 16, that the Israeli shelling had grown intense. Designed to drive the camp residents into the shelters, almost all of which Israeli intelligence, arriving the previous day in three white vehicles and posing as "concerned NGO staff" had identified and noted the coordinates on their maps. Some residents, thinking aid workers had come to help the refugees, actually revealed their secret sanctuaries. Other refugees, based on their experience in the crowded shelters during the preceding 75 days of indiscriminate, "Peace for Galilee" Israeli bombing of Shatila, suggested to the "aid workers" that the shelters needed better ventilation and perhaps the visitors would help provide it.

According to Zeina the Israeli agents quickly sketched the shelter locations, marked them with a red circle and returned to their HQ which was located less than 70 meters on the raised terrain at the SE corner of Shatila camp still known as Turf Club Yards. Today, this sandy area still contains three death pits which according to the late American journalist Janet Stevens is where some of the hundreds of still missing bodies of the more than 3,000 slaughtered are likely buried. Janet had theorized that there was a second Sabra-Shatila Massacre that occurred on Sunday morning, September 19th, which piggybacked the first and was conducted on the west side of Shatila inside the second Israeli-Phalange HQ, known as the Cite Sportiff athletic complex. As the Israeli soldiers took custody from the Phalange militia of the surviving refugees, trucks entered Cite Sportiff loaded with hundreds of camp residents on the back to be taken to "holding centers". Family members forced to wait outside heard volleys of gunfire and screams from inside the complex. Hours later the same flat beds drove away to unknown locations, tarps covering the unseen mounded cargo.

Camp resident, Mrs. Sana Mahmoud Sersawi, one of the 23 complainants in the Belgium case filed against Ariel Sharon on June 16, 2001, (currently but not fatally sidetracked) explained:

"The Israelis who were posted in front of the Kuwaiti embassy and at the Rihab benzene station at the entrance to Shatila demanded through loudspeakers that we come to them. That's how we found ourselves in their hands. They took us to the Cite Sportiff, and the men were marched behind us. But they took the men's shirts off and started blindfolding them. The Israelis interrogated the young people and the Phalange delivered about 200 more people to the Israelis. And that's how neither my husband nor my sister's husband ever came back."

Journalist Robert Fisk and others who studied these events, concur that more slaughter was done during the 24 hour period after 8 a.m. Saturday, the hour the Israeli Kahan Commission, which declined to interview any Palestinians, ruled that the Israelis had stopped all the killing.

Eyewitness testimony also established that the "aid workers" described by Zeina passed the shelter descriptions and locations to Lebanese Forces operatives Elie Hobeika and Fadi Frem, and their ally, Major Saad Haddad of the Israeli-allied South Lebanese Army. Thursday evening, Hobeika, de facto commander since the assassination the week previously of Phalange leader and President-elect Bachir Gemayel, led one of the death squads inside the killing field of the Horst Tabet area near Abu Yassir's shelter.

It was in 8 of the 11 Israeli-located and marked shelters that the first of the massacre victims were quickly and methodically slaughtered. There being few perfect crimes, even in massacres, the killers failed to find 3 of the shelters. One of the overlooked shelters was just 25 meters from Abu Yassir's shelter. Apart from these three undiscovered hiding places there were practically no Shatila shelter survivors.

American journalist David Lamb wrote about this first night of butchery and the "walls of death":

"Entire families were slain. Groups consisting of 10-20 people were lined up against walls and sprayed with bullets. Mothers died while clutching their babies. All men appeared to be shot in the back. Five youths of fighting age were tied to a pickup truck and dragged through the streets before being shot."

At around about 8 p.m. on September 18 Munir Mohammad entered the crowded Abu Yassir shelter with his mother Aida and his sisters and brothers Iman, Fadya, Mufid and Mu'in. Keeping the relatively few camp shelters for the woman and children while the men took their chances outside was a common practice as the massacre unfolded. But a few men did enter to help calm their young children.

"If any of you are injured, we'll take you to the hospital."

Munir later recalled events that night: "The killers arrived at the door of the shelter and yelled for everyone to come out. Men who they found were lined up against the wall outside. They were immediately machine gunned." As Munir watched, the killers left to kill other groups and then suddenly returned and opened fire on everyone, and all fell to the ground. Munir lay quietly not knowing if his mother and sisters were dead. Then he heard the killers yelling: "If any of you are injured, we'll take you to the hospital. Don't worry. Get up and you'll see." A few did try to get up or moaned and they were instantly shot in the head.

Munir remembered: "Even though it was light out due to the Israeli flares over Shatila, the killers used bright flash lights to search the darkened corners. The killers were looking in the shadows". Suddenly Munir's mother's body seemed to shift in the mound of corpses next to him. Munir thought she might be going to get up since the killers promised to take anyone still alive to the hospital. Munir whispered to her: "Don't get up mother, they're lying". And Munir stayed motionless all night barely daring to breath, pretending to be dead.

Munir could not block out the killers words. Years later he would repeat to this interviewer as we passed the Shatila Burial ground known as Martyrs Square:

"After they shot us, we were all down on the ground, and they were going back and forth, and they were saying: 'If any of you are still alive, we'll have mercy and pity and take them to the hospital. Come on, you can tell us.' If anyone moaned, or believed them and said they needed an ambulance, they would be rescued with shots and finished off there and then...What really disturbed me wasn't just the death all around me. I...didn't know whether my mother and sisters and brother had died. I knew most of the people around me had died. And it's true I was afraid of dying myself. But what disturbed me so very much was that they were laughing, getting drunk and enjoying themselves all night long. They threw blankets on us and left us there till morning. All night long [Thursday the 16th) I could hear the voices of the girls crying and screaming, 'For god's sake, leave us alone.' I mean...I can't remember how many girls they raped. The girl' voice, with their fear and pain, I can't ever forget them."

The same kind of dégagé is displayed by the half dozen confessed militia murderers featured in German director Monika Borgmann's 2005 film Massaker, one of whom opined: "With hanging or shooting you just die, but this is double," explaining how he took an old Palestinian man and held him back against a wall, slicing him open in the shape of a cross. "You die twice since you also die from the fear," he said nonchalantly describing white flesh and bone as if in a charcuterie waiting to be served.

The killers also explained how they began a frantic rush to dispose of as many bodies as possible before the media entered Shatila. One testified how the Israeli army gave them large plastic trash bags to dispose of bodies. Another confessed that they forced people into army trucks to ferry them to Cite Sportiff where they were killed. And that they used chemicals to destroy many of the corpses. Several mentioned that Israeli army officers conferred with the militia's leaders in Beirut on the eve of the massacres.

The venomous hatred persists to this day.

To this day, the Hurras al-Arz (Guardians of the Cedars) boasts of its role in the carnage. Less than two weeks before the massacre the party issued a call for the confiscation of all Palestinian property in Lebanon, the outlawing of home ownership and the destruction of all refugee camps.

The party statement of September 1, 1982 declared: "Action must be taken to reduce the numbers of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, until the day comes when no single Palestinian remains on our soil."

In 1982 certain political parties referred to Palestinians as "a bacillus which must be exterminated" and graffiti on walls read: "The duty of every Lebanese is to kill a Palestinian"--the same hatred commonly expressed today in occupied Palestine among colonists, extremist Rabbis and politicians.

The 'Guardians' call for outlawing Palestinian refugee property ownership was indeed achieved in 2001 by a law drafted by current Minister of Labor, who pledged on September 1, 2010 that "Parliament will never allow Palestinian refugees the right to own property."

The mentality that allowed the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila 1982 is largely unchanged in 2010, as Lebanon still resists the call of the international community to grant the survivors of the Sabra-Shatila massacre basic civil rights. Some who have studied the Arabic websites and observed gatherings of the political parties represented at the 1982 massacre, claim the hate language is actually worse today and is being used to stir up Parliamentary opposition Palestinian civil rights.

During the month following the 1982 Massacre, British Dr. Paul Morris treated Munir at Gaza Hospital approximately one kilometer north of Abu Yassir's shelter, and kept the youngster under observation. Dr. Morris reported to researcher Bayan Nuwayhed al Hout (Sabra and Shatila: September 1982, Pluto Press, London, 2004) that Munir "Will smile once in a while, but he doesn't react spontaneously like others of this age, except just occasionally." Then the doctor banged on the table, and said: 'The lad has to be saved. He has to leave the camp, if only for a while, to recover himself."

When Munir was asked by al Hout if one day when he grew up and would be able to carry a weapon would he consider revenge. The pre-teen replied, replied: "No, No. I'd never think of revenge by killing children. The way they killed us. What did the children do wrong?"

Munir's 15 year old brother Mufid was among the first to enter Abu Yassir's shelter, but he left and later appeared at Akka Hoppital with a gunshot wound. After being bandaged he left the hospital to seek safety and his family. No one has seen him since and for a long time Munir could not even mention him.

According to camp residents, Munir's older brother, Nabil, then 19 years old, being of fighting age would have been shot on sight by the killers. Aware of this, Nabil's cousin and his cousin's wife fled with him as the Israeli shelling increased and camp residents reported indiscriminate killing. The trio dodged sniper bullets to seek refuge in a nursing home where his aunt worked. Like Munir, Nabil soon learned that his mother and siblings were all dead.

Postscript

Now in America, both Munir and Nabil are leading relatively 'normal lives' considering the horror and lost family they experienced while escaping death at Sabra-Shatila. Munir and Nabil have become a credit to Shatila camp, to Palestine and to their adopted country. Residing in the Washington DC area, Munir is married and busy with his career. Nabil is devoting his life to advocacy for peace and justice in the Middle East, working with an NGO. Both brothers return to Shatila camp regularly.

Also apparently living 'normal lives' are the six "Christian" militia killers featured in Borgmann's film Massaker. "They are all living ordinary lives. One of them is a taxi driver," Borgmann explains.

As is well known, the massacres at Sabra-Shatila were undeniable war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Each killing was a violation of international laws enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention, International Customary Law and jus cogens. Similar massive crimes have seen charges brought against Rwandan officials, Chile's ex-president, General Augusto Pinochet, Chad's former president, Hissein Habre, former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Liberia's Taylor and Sudan's Bachir.

No one has been punished or even investigated for the Sabra-Shatila massacre. On March 28, 1991 Lebanon's Parliament retroactively exempted the killers from criminal responsibility. However, this law has no standing in international law and the international community remains legally obligated to punish those responsible. The victims and their families of the Sabra-Shatila massacre as well as virtually all human rights organizations including but not limited to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Humanitarian Law Project, strenuously oppose blanket amnesty for the killers. They argue that the 1991 violates Lebanon's constitution, as well as international law and promotes impunity for heinous crimes.

It was precisely to achieve justice for the victims of crimes such as Sabra-Shatila that the International Criminal Court was established. The ICC must begin its work without further delay and all people of goodwill must encourage Lebanon to grant the survivors of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre basic civil rights.

* Franklin Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Lebanon. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon and is doing research in Lebanon for his next book. He can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

By Gus Bridi - www.zeropartypolitics.com

"There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over."- Newt Gingrich

Has Lebanon officially become more tolerant and progressive than the United States?

Let's talk about Lebanon's Ground Zero and you can decide for yourself.

One must first understand what "Ground Zero" means to most Lebanese.

In a country with about the same land mass as Los Angeles County which has been at war off and on for nearly four decades, "Ground Zero" for the Lebanese is arguably their entire country-and at the center of their Ground Zero is downtown Beirut, captured and occupied by the Israeli Defense Force in 1982 and which was almost entirely reduced to rubble from Muslim West Beirut to Christian East Beirut, and all points in between.

Once upon a time not too long ago, there was scarcely a building left standing or unscarred by shrapnel in all of Beirut. I know, because I was in Beirut in 1991, and witnessed first hand a city once described as "the Paris of the Middle East" reduced to ruins, pock marked with unexploded munitions and a haphazard "network" of open sewers.

Miraculously, Beirut was rebuilt and reclaimed its prominence. It once again became the jewel of the Arab world, remarkably able to bridge the ancient mystique of the east with the modern allure of the west.

Upon the first completion of its "rebuilding" process however--after 15 years and tens of billions of dollars spent on reconstructing Lebanon and its Ground Zero from rubble to splendor, Israel did what Israel does...

In July and August of 2006, Israel again followed through on its promise to "bomb Lebanon back into the Stone Age," and in so doing displaced 1,000,000 Lebanese civilians (nearly a quarter of the country's population), completely destroyed the country's infrastructure (again), its only airport, at least 64 bridges, leveled entire buildings and neighborhoods to rubble (again), including the country's largest milk factory, a food factory, two pharmaceutical plants, water treatment centers, power plants, grain silos, a Greek Orthodox Church, several mosques, and a handful of hospitals (in a country which only had a handful of hospitals to begin with).

Over 1,200 hundred Lebanese civilians were killed and over 5,000 wounded.

Israel routinely talks about "proportionality" when comparing their "terrorism deaths" to American 9/11 deaths. In order to shock the sensibilities of a gullible American public, they portray a figure "in American terms," by multiplying their dead by a number which reflects their population in comparison to the American population.

Well, what's good for the Israeli goose is good for the Lebanese gander. I will play their game: 1,200 dead Lebanese civilians are the "proportional equivalent" to 90,000 American dead when accounting for the two countries' population differences. Therefore, according to Israeli goose math, that's the equivalent of roughly thirty 9/11's Israel exacted on Lebanon in July and August 2006 over the course of 34 days-nearly one 9/11 a day for an entire month without relent.

Incidentally, July and August of 2006 only tell a small part of the story when it comes to Israeli aggression against Lebanon. There have been decades of invasion, devastation, and occupation which predated 2006. Several thousands of Lebanese have been killed at the hands of the Israeli Defense Force. Tens of billions of dollars of damage have been levied on the Lebanese infrastructure and private and public property courtesy of the IDF over the course of decades.

"Ground Zero" for Lebanon is an ever expanding, never ending, open wound that never heals.

So what now Newt?

Should you expect the Lebanese to allow a synagogue to be built on their Ground Zero, in the aftermath of a 9/11 that occurred 5 years after ours and which, "proportionately" speaking, was 30 times the size of ours?

Well guess what you hateful, misguided, twit?

THEY DID.

In the process of re-building Beirut yet again, in 2008, renovations began and have now been completed on the Maghen Abraham Synagogue located in the middle of newly renovated downtown Beirut in an area known as the "Solidere" which has become the focal point and showcase of Lebanon's rebirth.

This isn't some hole in the wall, nondescript, "excuse me" synagogue hidden out of view so as to not "offend" Lebanese non-Jews-this is an elaborate, ornate, beautifully designed, cathedral-style house of worship built for a Lebanese Jewish population that totals less than 500 in a country of more than 4,000,000 (in stark contrast to the eight million American Muslims living in the United States).

And wait until you hear Hezbollah's response to the building of this Ground Zero Synagogue.

(To those expecting a Newt Gingrich equivalent response, prepare to be woefully disappointed).

Courtesy of Hassan Nasrallah himself: "We respect Judaism, just as we respect Christianity. Our only problem is with Israel."

Did you hear that Newt (and the rest of you idiots)?

An Arab democracy, with a Muslim Prime Minister and a Christian President, allowed the building of a synagogue, squarely in the center of their "Ground Zero" in the heart and pride of downtown Beirut which used to be a dumping ground for Israeli military ordinances.

An Arab democracy allowed this, without so much as a protest being made by its citizens, or allegations by politicians that this was sacrilege, or hateful commentary by the media that the Jewish faith was barbaric, or any of the other stupidity I have seen and heard plastered all over American television, talk radio, and internet-blogs regarding a certain "Ground Zero Mosque" and the Islamic faith.

Regardless of whether you perceive Israel to be justified in perpetrating the devastation it did on Lebanon is irrelevant. The purpose of this article is not to debate that. What cannot be debated, is that Israel (a Jewish State, flying a Jewish flag) unleashed hell on Lebanon for 34 straight days in July and August of 2006 (and for decades prior in its wars against Lebanon). Regardless of whether or not you feel Israel had a right to do that, you cannot deny that Lebanese civilians harbored, and continue to harbor, a very real resentment against the government of Israel-this Jewish state-for those actions and the devestation those actions caused.

Yet these very Lebanese, who are so quickly labeled as "blood thirsty terrorists" by Newt Gingrich and his army of xenophobic morons, were able to draw a distinction between the Jews "flying those planes" in July and August of 2006 working at the behest of the Israeli government, and the Jews whom are citizens of Lebanon who had no connection with those attacks.

Lebanon rebuilt that Ground Zero Synagogue for its Jews.

Not for Israel. Not for the world's Jewry. Not as a monument to mark a "Jewish victory" over Lebanon.

Lebanon rebuilt that Ground Zero Synagogue because its Jews lived in that neighborhood and they had every right to build a house of worship in a place they called home.

For crying out loud, Hassan Nassrallah and Hezbollah can even draw the distinction between a Lebanese Jew and an Israeli soldier who happens to be a Jew. So how is it that Americans can't distinguish between American Muslims who were victims of 9/11 and Saudi Muslims who were the perpetrators of 9/11?

Thank you Mr. Gingrich for allowing Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah to outclass you and the Republican Party (and you Democrats aren't too far behind--yes Harry Reid, I'm talking to you). When the former Republican Speaker of the House and the current Democratic Senate Majority Leader start sounding less tolerant and less reasonable than a "terrorist," we need to start sounding the alarm bells.

What a sad state of affairs for America.

By Franklin Lamb* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Palestinians and Lebanese take part in a protest over civil rights, Beirut, June 29, 2010 Reuters

Lebanese Member of Parliament on August 4th explaining why Parliament must not "precipitously rush into the unchartered waters of civil rights for Palestinian Refugees".

At 3:02 p.m. on 8/17/10 Lebanon's Parliament began to deliberate on granting basic civil rights to its Palestinian refugees and within four minutes agreed to alter article 50 Lebanon's 1964 labor law to theoretically make it easier for Palestinian refugees to obtain a work permit and a job.

There was no discussion of other draft bills to grant Palestinian refugees elementary civil rights, and fifteen minutes later, by 3:17 p.m. Parliament had agreed on the next bill involving excavating for oil, which may bring millions to some well placed members. Many MP's hadn't studied either bill.

Thus did the bell ring on Round One of the fight in Lebanon for elementary civil rights for Palestinians refugees.

The members of Parliament decided to do essentially nothing to meet Lebanon's legal, moral, religious, social and political obligations to her unwanted refugees. Parliaments gesture will likely not improve the lives of many, if even a handful, of the hundreds of thousands of refugees, 62 years after their expulsion from their homes and lands in Palestine.

Round Two begins today.

The morning after Parliament amended the Labor law and cancelled the work permit fee for Palestinian refugees, the main stream media including CNN, AP, Reuters, AFP among others appeared to misunderstand what had occurred. CNN: "In Lebanon, new legislation will give Palestinians full employment rights. By the CNN Wire Staff." CNN broadcast: "The body OK'd legislation giving the refugees full employment rights and social security and will allow them to work in any job."

Hardly.

The NYT is reported that "Lebanon passed a law on Tuesday granting Palestinian refugees here the same rights to work as other foreigners."

Not accurate.

Some leading politicians also got it wrong. Fares Soueid, the General Coordinator for the March 14 coalition declared at his news conference:

"We gave to Palestinians the right to work in Lebanon, like all Arabic workers have the right to work in Lebanon."

A huge overstatement.

Unfortunately Lebanon did not grant its Palestinian refugees meaningful civil rights on 8/17/10 or even significantly improve their work prospects. What it did do was cancel the work permit fee ( which was never a big problem) and allow for the setting up of a private Social Security Fund (not the Lebanese National Security Fund as misreported in much of the media.) The Palestinian Private Fund was a compromise. Hezbollah switched its support from using the State Fund which it had earlier proposed, to the Private Fund idea under pressure from Christian ally Michel Aoun. If the Private Fund is set up it will be paid for by Palestinian workers themselves and hoped for private donations.

Insisting on a shadowy, opaque "consensus vote" rather than a more democratic, simple majority roll call, Parliament decided on the lowest common denominator by which all the MP's were essentially given a veto. What it produced was a weak, emasculated bill unworthily of the label: Civil rights law.

MP Walid Jumblatt, author of his Druze Progressive Socialist Party June 15, 2010 draft bill, which would have actually granted some substantive civil rights, appeared to throw in the towel without even stepping into the ring. However to his credit, Jumblatt confessed this morning that he will do better next Round and told Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper: "The second more serious battle is ahead: And it is home ownership rights. I won't give up, and what has been accomplished today is only the outcome of consensus among everyone (ed: led by Samir Geagea) but home ownership rights remains pending, and it is very important."

The excellent Syrian Socialist National Party bill, which meets International legal standards for treatment of refugees, supported by many human rights organizations including most NGO's as well as the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon and the Sabra Shatila Foundation was not even considered.

Within the Palestinian and NGO community there is widespread disappointment and frustration. Ziad Sayegh, an expert on Palestinian refugee rights in Lebanon said that the new legislation would have little effect in changing the overall social and economic situation on the refugees.

According to scholar Suheil al- Natour, Director of a Palestinian Human Rights Center based in Mar Elias Camp, "They spent a long time on discussions which emptied the law of any real meaning, and I wish they had put it off so we could push for a better version..." Those who voted yesterday are suggesting that what they did will alleviate the burdens on the Palestinian community. This is not true. We will not have the full right to work, they law will not apply to the more than 30 syndicated professions, we do not have any rights for property. We do not have free movement. Our camps are surrounded by the army. We will not reduce this catastrophic situation by just some changes small changes to Article 50 of the 1964 Labor law which may not even help many Palestinians get jobs."

Among the jobs still prohibited to Palestinians are more than 30 syndicated professions including Medicine, Law, Dentistry, Engineering, nursing, and all technical professions in the construction sector and its derivatives such as tiling, coating, plastering, installation of aluminum, iron, wood or decoration works and the like-Teaching at the elementary, intermediate and secondary levels with the exception of foreign language teacher when necessary, hairdressing, Ironing and dry-cleaning upholstery, publishing, printing, Engineering work in all specialties, Smithery and upholstery work. All kinds of work in pharmacies, drug warehouses and medical laboratories. In general all occupations and professions which can be filled by Lebanese nationals and have Guild or Syndicate Memberships, money changer, real estate agent, taxi driver or driver training instructor, registered nurse or assistant nurse, or other jobs in the Medical field, that have Syndicates a health controller, any job in the engineering field, licensed health controller, medical laboratory worker, clinical health industry jobs, prosthetic devices fitter, certified accountants, dental laboratory science technician, jobs relating to nutrition and meals, topography, physiotherapy, veterinary medicine."

Also, a key factor will be if and how the new law is actually implemented. Changes made in 2005 to the labor law were never implemented and Lebanon has a long history of passing laws and not ever implementing them. The role of the international human rights community is now to monitor and assure that laws regarding refugees in Lebanon are fully implemented without interminable delays.

The winners and the losers

The big winners today are: Israel and the US, the Christian right-wing Kateib (Phalange) party, the Lebanese Forces, the National Party, Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, and Hezbollah ally and head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Michel Aoun, all of whom opposed meaningful civil rights for Palestinians. Also, the politically fractured pro-Saudi March 14th coalition and even Syria. The latter will be the likely beneficiary from any explosions inside the camps as the refugees exist in the pressure cooker camps and denied the safety value of basic civil rights.

The big losers today are: Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, those under occupation in Palestine and those in the Diaspora. A meaningful victory would have given them some hope as their struggles for Justice continue.

Also Lebanon, who will now face mounting international pressure to comply with her international legal obligations plus efforts to cut off US aid based on the requirements of the 1961 US Foreign Assistance Act regarding deprivation of civil rights, and for which purpose a lawsuit in being prepared in Washington DC. In addition, he UN Human Rights Council may sanction Lebanon if it's long overdue Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of treatment of Palestinian refugee scheduled to be discussed in Geneva in December is found wanting. Lebanon plans to tell the UN Human Rights Council that its record is ok now since it amended its exclusionary labor law which should now help Palestinians get jobs. One Lebanese official stated off the record that this was one of the main reasons Parliament did anything for the Palestinians on 8/17/10. It remains to be seen how the Council views Lebanon's meager accomplishment. Lebanon will also experience a mounting and intensifying internal civil rights movement and calls for BDS as international activists become more aware of the degradation in Lebanon's camps and Lebanon refusing its international obligations and who will hopefully join the Palestinian civil rights movement. Plans to picket the Lebanese Embassy in Washington DC
until civil rights are granted to Palestinians refugees are underway.

Did Hezbollah doze?

Apart from its other current problems, Hezbollah, normally receiving widespread Palestinian support, is being asked by some in the camps what became of the role of the Islamic Resistance to the Zionist occupation of Palestine. One angry resident of Shatila camp criticized the Resistance this morning and explained:

"In 1982 I saw the Israelis watching us from on top on their military administrative building west of the camp and 200 meters away from Rue Sabra, as the slaughter was happening. In 2010 I can see the Resistance in their administrative building 200 meters to the East of the center of the camp and they can see us. When the wind shifts from the sea they can smell the sewage in the camps alleys. Neither in 1982 or 2010 can it be claimed that observers looking down into the camps did not know about conditions inside Shatila. What kind of resistance is Hezbollah leading? Resistance to we Palestinians being allowed some basic civil rights?"

It was probably appropriate that Lebanese Forces leader MP Samir Geagea was the first to the microphones to claim victory after Parliament deliberated for a few minutes to deny Palestinian refugees any meaningful civil rights. Geagea welcomed the parliament's approval of his proposed amendment to Article 50 of the 1964 Labor Code to " grant work permits to Palestinian refugees."

The amendment to the 1964 labor law was the least Parliament could have done and still be able to say it did anything at all. It will not, as Geagea assured his followers, "resolve the Palestinian humanitarian issues in Lebanon...." Geagea explained that there is no possibility of granting Palestinian refugees the right to own property. "Lebanon cannot solve the Palestinian issue on its own" the Palestinians nemesis for the past four decades declared.

In fact, Geagea spoke the truth without realizing it. Civil rights for refugees everywhere, including Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, is the responsibility of the international community which has adopted relevant international conventions which have been implemented virtually everywhere but in Lebanon and Israel. The international community, and the NGO's and activists in the West and elsewhere who claim to support justice for Palestine must now act to encourage Lebanon to meet its international obligations by granting meaningful civil rights including the unfettered right to work and to own a home.

The mild gesture Lebanon made on 8/17/10 will not grant Palestinian refugees here their internationally mandated civil rights. Not by a long shot. Perhaps the most that can be said in Lebanon's favor is that it took a first tentative step. Hopefully, symbolically it will break the stereotype against Palestinians a bit and show the public that the sky did not fall in by yesterday's gesture and will ease the stress concerning granting some meaningful civil rights.

As the Lebanese like to say, "step by step."

For the quarter million Palestinian refugees stuck in squalor in Lebanon's 12 camps and the 75,000 in the 42 'gatherings', the cause of civil rights in Lebanon endures and the dream of returning to Palestine is alive.

* Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and volunteers with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign. He can be reached at fplamb@palestinecivilrightscampaign.org.

In Lebanon this month,
like spring flowers,
proposals to give Palestinians
the right to work
are bursting out all over

Part III of a six part series
on securing Palestinian
Civil Rights in Lebanon

By Franklin Lamb* (Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, Beirut) | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

This year, the Merry Month of May in Lebanon includes Labor day, the May 15 anniversary of the Nakba, the month long Lebanese municipal elections and the May 5 elevation of Lebanon to the Presidency of the United Nations Security Council. Yet, for most Palestinians wiling away their lives in Lebanon's 12 fetid refugee camps and 27 gatherings, May will pass anything but Merry. The festive Labor day and month long elections, held in the 26 municipalities in Lebanon, with the participation of more than 650 glad-handing vote-seeking candidates extolling the Lebanese virtue of working to provide for one's family, constitute a cruel joke for Palestinian refugees denied the right to work.

The May 15th anniversary of the Nakba reminds the World that Lebanon's "camp Palestinians", approximately 15% of the 750,000+ who were ethnically cleansed by Zionist gangs six decades ago, suffer an existence that is demonstrably the most inhumane of any of the 58 camps in the Middle East, including Gaza. Warehoused in open air prisons, their children are among the most discriminated against of this largest and oldest refugee population on earth. With drug use, drop-out rates, violence, health issues rising fast-- test scores, school attendance, academic achievements, hope and self-esteem are plummeting.

Lebanon's May Day pledge to the UN: " We are honored and will fulfill our responsibility towards the Palestinian cause"

Despite proudly producing one of the authors of the 1949 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, its current membership on the governing board of the International Labor Organization, and now holding the Presidency of the UN Security Council, the first time in half a century, doubts remain whether Lebanon is up to its international duty. Entrusted by the international community with the exigent work of implementing internationally mandated civil rights, doubts remain whether Lebanon will fulfill its pledge relating to civil rights for refugees including the right to work and the protection of refugee children. Increasingly the international community, as well as its own population, is urging Lebanon, now being referred to as "Mr. President" before the Security Council and the entire United Nations, as it prepares to preside over the UNSC agenda on the subject of "Arab responsibilities towards the Palestinian cause" to begin its critical work where the need is arguably the most exigent. That would be inside the borders of Lebanon itself.

Last week, introducing an AUB workshop on the subject of securing the right to work for Palestinian refugees, Rami Khoui, Director of the Issam Farris Institute and prolific writer on Middle East affairs, told the participants "The atmosphere in Lebanon, at least on the level of rhetoric, is changing in favor of civil rights for Palestinian refugees." And so it is. The question remains whether popular will can generate enough political will for the Cabinet and Parliament to enact an elementary civil right to work into Lebanese law.

'Illegal' Palestinian labor as valued subsidy for Lebanese businesses

Lebanese bureaucracy, as in many countries, can make the most pro forma paper work task inordinately complicated. Consequently, for Palestinians in Lebanon, obtaining a work permit will remain a major hurdle for a variety of reasons including 'security considerations', lack of awareness by the applicant of how to proceed, the economic exploitive advantage to Lebanese businessmen and women who prefer cheap illegal Palestinian labor which literally subsidizes the Lebanese economy by millions of dollars annually, and inflate their personal profits—as well as occasionally bigoted government workers in some ministries. Support for this assertion in found in the recent 2009 Najdeh (Help) Association (www.associaton-najdeh.org) survey that found that only 1.2% of Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps residents have been granted work permits. The past month a total of 2 work permits have been granted Palestinians, but since the work permit must be renewed annually these two could simply be renewals.

Through sustained and varied efforts, and to their eternal credit, Lebanese civil society organizations, international and local NGO's and even some Lebanese politicians are pushing for enactment of legislation to grant basic civil rights to Palestinian refugees. The initial batch of drafts bills vary significantly. As they are discussed in conferences, meetings and workshops, there is a perceptible trend in the direction of merging the key elements into a sort of 'unity bill' that will include the minimal acceptable elements— granting Palestinian refugees the right to work, an identification document, access to public education and lifting the legal prohibition barring home ownership.

Among the draft bills headed to Parliament...

The still largely secret legislative drafts includes the "first one out of the gate" authored by Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party last February. It reflects the views of Lebanese Information Minister Tarek Mitri that Lebanon's estimated 400,000 Palestinian refugees suffer from "double discrimination," as he told one recent gathering, "Because Lebanon's labor laws are based on the principle of reciprocity, Palestinians are viewed as foreigners and yet not afforded the rights granted to other foreigners who belong to recognized states".

The PSP bill is impressive and amends Labor and Social Security laws to allow the right to work, home ownership (one apartment) by changing the 3/4/2001 law forbidding Palestinians home ownership, and allowing the inheritance of property by Palestinian refugees as well as health, accident, and retirement benefits. Jumblatt's draft law is being used as a template by others fine tuning their own legislative preferences.

Incrementalism

Some civil rights advocates are suggesting a "quiet and soft approach" so as not to rile slumbering sectarian demagogues from the anti-Palestinian civil war (1975-90) with whispering about a publicity-shy "subtle adjustment of Labor and Interior Ministry regulations as best can be achieved over time." This approach, it is argued, is designed to make it easier for Palestinian refugees to navigate the Kafkaesque and catch 22 web of work permit forms, the condition precedent of having an employer contract, and other draconian procedures. Others are quite adamant that mere "ministerial adjustments" or legerdemain without the full force and effect of law to back them up would be flimsy at best and could destruct overnight given the musical chairs of the undulating and shifting 30 member cabinet. Few in Lebanon, this observer included, can even name more than 10 of the 30 ministers by name, and a new Labor minister could simply by the stroke of a pen, publish a new labor regulation eviscerating the previous one along with the civil right it provided, or more likely, just fail to implement it.

Evidence of past as prologue on this subject is found in the much ballyhooed June 2, 2005 Ministerial Decree by the Minister of Labor. His enlightened declaration was touted as removing dozens of jobs from the "no Palestinian refugee need apply" list and exempting Palestinians registered with the Ministry of the Interior from certain conditions applying to foreigners. Even though this "Decision" was confirmed on June 26, 2008 it has never been implemented. Today this promising Ministerial Decree lays moribund. Minister of Labor Boutros Harb, of whom it is said in Lebanon that he is a master of the Lebanese legislative culture, is viewed with suspicion by some, for hinting just last week that the solution may be to just tamper a bit with the requirements for a work permit, and obfuscate other issues such as the reciprocity requirement. Harb is praised by others for his publicly expressed conviction that "something must finally be done to correct this travesty." The Minister is privately counseling civil rights advocates, including the Palestinians themselves, to bring him something concrete that all "the stake-holders" can agree upon. Boutros appears to want something specific he can present to his Cabinet colleagues and assure them that its broadly acceptable. "This is not easy. He's only one of 30 in the Cabinet and then there is the 130 member Parliament to convince" one of his staff explained recently.

"2 no's, 2 yes's and one thank you"

It appears that the representatives of the Palestinian refugee camps, including Fatah and Hamas who have cooperated on this project, may have achieved some of what the Minister of Labor has in mind, following months of discussions among various PLO groups, NGO's and importantly, representatives of the new "unity" government.

It is possible that a five point plan, prepared by a hard-working steering committee with quite broad representation, could be seriously considered. It is known to Palestine Civil Rights Campaign in Lebanon as the "two no's, two yes's and one thank you" draft. While still not made public, it can be reliably reported that this draft law says 'no' to the work permit, 'no' to reciprocity, 'yes' to social security benefits, 'yes' to the right to work in all professions, and 'thank you' but we don't want naturalization but only to exercise our right of return at the first opportunity.

Theoretically, this 'unity' proposal could end up in the Cabinet for approval and then sent to Parliament. But it is just as likely, according to experienced Palestinian insiders and observers who have been around this track a few times, that the "Lebanese model of words over deeds" will prevail at the Grand Serail unless more Lebanese and international support and political will is manifested.

Maximalism

The most comprehensive legislative proposal is the maximalist draft bill, not yet public, offered by the National Syrian Socialist Party, nemesis of the right wing Lebanese Forces led by Samir Geagea, whose partisans skirmished again on May 2, 2010. The NSSP and the LF have a long history of mutual antagonism going back to 1949 when the Phalange party, reputedly founded following an epiphany experienced d by its founder Pierre Gemayal, while a guest at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, sent "brown shirts" to trash NSSP offices. The two parties remained bitter rivals during the 1975-90 civil war when the NSSP was a pillar of Palestinian resistance and today, benefiting from strong Palestinian leadership, is gaining strength and has allied with Hezbollah and Amal. Pending a vote of the NSSP Executive Committee concerning the best timing for release of its legislative proposal, an executive summary of the much anticipated NSSP draft might read something like:

"Civil rights for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon constitute a right not a privilege or charity. These rights cannot be bargained away any more than the Right of Return. As such complete civil rights for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon must be fully implemented and backed by the State. All civil rights afforded any Lebanese citizen must be equally available to every Palestinian refugee. Included are all social, political and economic rights including the right to vote."

The NSSP draft is very attractive to many Palestinians and civil right activists. " I support this approach. It's clean. It's honest. It does not grovel.

It tells it like it is." As one Palestinian student at the Lebanese University explained.

Minimalism: 'My party has killed more Palestinians than my opponents and we have earned your vote'

Many who have labored for years to wrest some Palestinian civil rights from the government of Lebanon fear that the NSSP approach, while arguably ideal, will terrify Lebanese politicians, including some progressive Christian supporters in the Metn. One Christian proponent of granting civil rights explained: "Remember, in the last election, some rival Christian candidates would argue in private gatherings of voters that "our party killed more Palestinians that our opponents did and we have earned your vote." Another advised that the language in the by-laws of the right-wing Christian Guardians of the Cedars to the effect that " it is the duty of every Lebanese to kill at least one Palestinian" has never been expunged.

Lebanon is a country where cynicism runs deep towards politicians-- especially their words. But there are exceptions, including Samir Geagea leader of the Lebanese Forces. While maliciously rumored to be having an affair with US Ambassador Michele Sison given their frequent meetings, Samir enjoys the status as the only politician in Lebanon that, in light of the mushrooming defections of "Welch club" March 14 politicians to the Resistance bloc, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, still trusts. When he speaks about Palestinians, Geaga has a public credibility rating close to Hezbollah's. People believe him.

"You may not like what Geagea, says, but when he speaks about Palestinians you can believe him. That is very rare in Lebanon.", according to Lebanese Human Rights Ambassador Ali Khalil. The Lebanese Forces has the clearest political party position on the subject of granting the right to work to Palestinian refugees and it has never wavered over the years. During this observers first ever visit to Lebanon in July of 1981, following the Israeli massacre that killed more than 170 and wounded more than 800 in the Palestinian neighborhood adjacent to Shatila camp called Fakhani, this observer had lunch with the Lebanese Forces leader Bachir Gemayal, (known as "BG" in those days to untutored Congressional staffers in Washington unsure how to pronounce his name ). A gracious host and the son of Pierre Gemayel, who along with Camille Chamoun founded the Lebanese Forces in 1976 with the primary objective of killing Palestinians, Bachir invited a couple of his friendly and charming aids, Elie Hobeika (leader of the LF from 1985-86) and Fadi Frem ( leader of the LF, 1982-84)--both of whom would participate in the massacre the following fall at Sabra Shatila. The slaughter, which had been planned weeks in advance in Israel according to LF - Hide quoted text - participants, was ordered executed the day after Bachir's September 14, 1982 assassination. What Bachir said privately about Palestinians over lunch 29 years ago is virtually identical to what representatives of the Lebanese Forces, which fought Palestinians during the 1975-90 Civil War, are saying today. In public, their language is more restrained and less profane, but equally bigoted. As LF representative Fadi Zarifeh informed a working group on civil rights for Palestinian refugees on February 10, 2010, the Lebanese Forces remain "quite hostile to the whole idea. The Lebanese state should first take care of its own citizens and not others." Zarifeh added that his party was "the one farthest away from approving greater rights for Palestinian refugees".

The internationally orientated Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon has proposed draft legislation entitled: "The 2010 Employment Act for Palestinian Refugees." This Bill, drafted with PCRC colleagues at Harvard Law School and the London School of Economics, and benefiting from NGO work in Beirut, provides, inter alia:

Article 2: Palestinian refugees shall be subject to all provisions of State law relating to the right to work of foreigners in Lebanon, including the obligation to obtain a work permit by paying the same fee that all foreigners pay. Due consideration to be given to the privileges granted by state law to Arab subjects.

Article 3: Palestinian refugees shall be exempt from the application of "reciprocity of treatment" wherever it appears in the State law or in bilateral agreements. Notwithstanding any text in State law, Palestinian refugees are henceforth exempt from the requirement of providing proof of reciprocity.

Article 4: Notwithstanding any text to the contrary, Palestinian refugees shall be exempt from the condition of obtainment of a license for the exercise of any profession in their country, wherever this requirement appears in State law. Professional licenses shall be obtained only from the appropriate State administration.

No doubt there will be others.

On May Day (Labor Day) Lebanon's new permanent representative to the Security Council and the current President of the Council, Ambassador Nawaf Salam, announced to the World: "Part of Lebanon's message has arrived by its entry into the Security Council. Lebanon's voice for Palestine will be heard throughout the world."

And her deeds will be monitored regarding elementary civil rights including the right to work for her Palestinian refugees.

Part IV: Why Hezbollah may be a major political loser if Parliament fails to enact civil rights for Palestinian refugees

* Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and volunteers with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon. He can be reached at fplamb@palestinecivilrightscmapaign.org

What are the Odds?

By Franklin Lamb* (Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, Beirut) | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

As of mid-April 2010 there are no fewer than six draft laws, half of them 'embargoed for now' being circulated and debated in Lebanon, any one of which if adopted by Parliament, would grant Lebanon's Palestinians, for the first time since their 1948 expulsion from Palestine, some elementary civil rights including the right to work, to have an ID, and to own a home.

In a future report I will reveal publicly for the first time, with the permission of the various drafting committees, the changes in Lebanon's laws each one advocates. Despite the fact that bookies and odd makers at Lebanon's main Casino in Jounieh decline to give odds on any of the drafts actually being enacted by Parliament, Lebanon's political leaders are talking sweet. "If it were up to me, I would give the Palestinians the right to work tomorrow!" Prime Minister Saad Hariri exclaimed during a Future TV channel interview recently and to various visiting delegations who are increasingly inquiring about the subject of basic civil rights for Palestine refugees as awareness spreads in Lebanon and internationally about camp conditions in Lebanon. The PM's polite interviewer demurred from asking him why the Prime Minister thought it was not up to him and indeed not up to all members of Parliament to correct this shameful and dangerous injustice.

Hezbollah's leadership, including Sayeed Hassan Nasrallah and his deputy, former chemistry professor, Naim Qasim, and Hezbollah's Parliamentary delegation, among other party leaders, have repeatedly endorsed civil rights for Palestinians in Lebanon as obligatory given the Resistance movement's "religious, moral, national and humanitarian duty".

No Lebanese political leader has been more consistently out front in support of Palestinian civil rights than Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. He advocates 'civil rights now' and organized and funded a Progressive Socialist Party conference last January which brought together scores of leaders to push for Parliamentary passage of the right to work, to own a home and social security entitlements.

Other leaders have also expressed their views that granting Palestinians civil rights is needed for many reasons including lifting Lebanon's shame.

So why are the odd makers at Casino in Beirut so skittish about giving some friendly odds on passage of civil rights for Palestinian refugees? " You foreigners are so naïve with short memories also!" Saddam (not his real name), an "entrepreneur" and bon vivant explained from the Casino parking lot last week, as he surveyed his domain which includes 'comfort vans' in dark corners of the adjacent parking structure.

"Nobody should bet one Lira on the word of a Lebanese politician!", he explains. "Consider just the past year. Remember all those young people who worked so hard during the last election for candidates all over Lebanon who swore on the heads of their children that the youth would get to vote next time and the voting age would absolutely be lowered from 21 years to 18? And then refused to change the law and betrayed the youth and now ask why the young are so cynical about politics? And women. Don't get me started on the subject of women's rights! Women in Lebanon were promised all during the 2009 election that they would finally be granted civil rights so at least they could bestow Lebanese nationality on their children. They were also 'guaranteed' a fair share of slots on the municipal elections ballots. They were betrayed and got no civil rights and were limited to a mere 20 per cent of the municipal election slots although they number more than 50 per cent of the voters. Four women out of 128 members in Parliament? What kind of a democracy is this? Politicians have promised Lebanese women civil rights for more than 100 years and they got nothing.

"I am from Saida and every election the local politicians say the Saida Trash Mountain, which pollutes the sea and everything else around Saida and up the coast of Lebanon, will be removed and cleaned up. Last election my MP Fuad Sinioria, a guy I like, promised it 'for sure' this time. As usual, nothing was done. Then just last week, with an eye on the coming municipal election my MP Sinioria again announced--here look at this. Do you read Arabic?" Saddam shows me a newspaper with Sinioria's photo on the front page next to a photo of Saida's huge Trash Mountain, which has been growing higher and wider for 37 years—since the start of the Lebanese civil war. "Here's what it says: 'Local political leaders announce that solutions to Sidon's collapsing waste dump are on the horizon' What does this mean, 'on the horizon'? Well, so is judgment day!'' Saddam fumes, as he continues, "In short, that is why no one should hold his breath waiting for Parliament to do what should have been done as soon as the refugees came from Palestine." "Excuse me, I have to look after business."

Saddam mumbles as he approaches one of his vans, looking at his watch and shaking his head while muttering, "Time's up! Ya Allah! (Let's go!) She rents by the hour, not the week!" In addition to general skepticism about Lebanese politicians "sweet words" there are plenty of doubts being expressed about granting civil rights to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Among them is the following sampling with rebuttals from the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon: "If we grant civil rights to Palestinian Refugees it would interfere with their Right of Return!" The spurious "would interfere with the Right of Return" argument has been used by some in Lebanon to justify all manner of discriminations against Palestine refugees. For example, in relation to the prohibitions against improving or renovation of existing refugee camps, some politicians have claimed that the renovation ban is to prevent the consolidation of the Palestinian presence in Lebanon and prevent the US-Israel backed resettlement hence destroying the principle behind the right of return.

In point of fact, the granting of civil rights to Lebanon's Palestinian refugees, including the economic, social, and cultural rights in no way prejudices their Right of Return. The right to return to one's own country is based in international law and is the most obvious way to redress the situation of those who were forced to live in exile. The internationally mandated Right to Return applies not just to those who were directly expelled and their immediate families, but also to those of their descendants who have maintained what the United Nations has declared are "close and enduring connections" with the area.

Anyone who has visited Palestinians in Lebanon, including youngsters in Lebanon's camps and gatherings knows of their "close and enduring connections" to Palestine. This observer will never forget young Mr. Hamid, a nine year old who last year in Al-Buss Refugee Camp near Tyre proudly recited to a delegation of visiting Americans the names of "214 of the more than 500 villages in my country that the Zionists destroyed during the Nakba. They must all be rebuilt so we must hurry up and go home to do it" Hamid articulately explained to his astonished visitors.

Palestinians who were expelled from any part of Palestine including the West Bank or Gaza Strip, along with those of their descendants who have maintained links with the area, can exercise their right to return. Meanwhile, granting interim basic civil rights to help them live in dignity in Lebanon will in no way interfere with their Return, but will likely expedite it as the refugees in Lebanon gain the wherewithal to press their claim more effectively in the international arena.

"If Lebanon grants civil rights to the Palestinian Refugees, they may become too comfortable and seek permanency in Lebanon and Naturalization." This argument is one of the most flimsy being raised by a few in Lebanon on the issue of granting some civil rights to Palestine refugees. Virtually the whole of the Palestine refugee community as well as all Lebanon's confessions and political parties are in agreement that despite the history of Washington and Tel Aviv floating of 'trial balloons", naturalization (Tawtin) is out of the question and will not happen. The refugees insist that their home is south of the border and nowhere else. Virtually all of Lebanon agrees with the Palestinian position on this. Yet this tired bromide still surfaces in the media from time to time. On March 3, 2010 even the hold-out American Embassy in Beirut, on instructions from the State Department and after years of waffling, announced that Washington no longer favors Tawtin for Palestine refugees in Lebanon, abandoning Israel as this chimeras only advocate.

"The Palestinian refugee population poses a security risk for Lebanon and before any civil rights are granted this danger must be resolved." The Palestinian leadership in Ramallah and Lebanon have held the consistent position that Camp arms are for camp security and would never be turned against Lebanon. The arms and fighters that turned up in Nahr al Bared Camp near Akkar in 2007 came from outside Lebanon and had nothing to do with the Camp inhabitants. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recently expressed in Lebanon the communities' view that the national Palestinian leadership "supports the Lebanese Government decisions on Palestinian arms inside and outside refugee camps. We are with Lebanese authorities, with the Lebanese government and with Lebanese sovereignty. We as Palestinians are not above the law," Abbas explained in meetings with Lebanese leaders including President Michel Suleiman, President Obama, his Middle East envoy, George Mitchell as well as during a press conference on 2/22/10 with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris.

Palestinian leaders in Lebanon regularly state the unified Palestinian position: "We are with everything that the Lebanese government says on weapons outside camps. Our stance is clear and won't change," Mahmoud Abbas stated. Palestinian leaders in each of the 12 Refugee camps and 27 'settlements' in Lebanon express the same assurance and a real, imagined or potential 'security risk' does not justify the continuing deprivation of elementary civil rights for hundreds of thousands of Palestine refugees in Lebanon.

On the subject of Palestinian arms outside refugee camps, Druze leader Walid Jumblat on 4/20/10 called for "treating this dossier, which gained the consensus of the previous dialogue committee separately , without associating it with the issue of civil rights for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. These civil rights are urgent from the humanitarian point of view, and they must be acknowledged and implemented through legislative measures in Parliament," he wrote in an editorial in the Progressive Socialist Party weekly journal, al-Anbaa.

"How are Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon deprived of the civil right to work since some do manage to find a job 'illegally'?" In principle, the Lebanese Labor Law and Social Security Law are applicable to both Lebanese and foreigners. Where Lebanese law treats Palestinians differently is firstly by restricting access to certain professions, and secondly where it concerns employment injury compensation, social security benefits including end of service compensation. Availability of these entitlements for Palestinian workers is strictly conditional on possessing a government Kafkaesque-issued work permit and again on the poisonous principle of reciprocity. Palestinian workers who find work pay social security contributions, but are barred from any benefits. The fact that some resourceful Palestinians have indeed found make-shift 'illegal' jobs often at a much lower wage and without any employment benefits from an unscrupulous or even sympathetic employer is no solution or acceptable excuse not to grant morally and legally mandated elementary civil rights.

"Lebanese women also are deprived of civil rights. They must get theirs before Palestinian refugees are given any." The two problems have become politically related and among the most ardent supporters of women's rights are the Palestine refugees. Among the strongest supporters of Palestinian civil rights in Lebanon are women. Both are illegally and immorally denied basic civil rights. It often requires International Women's Day and Land Day for Palestinians to generate some hand wringing in Lebanon about the need for civil rights for both.

Those opposed to amending the draconian 1962 and 1969 laws (Presidential Decree) restricting the right of Palestine refugees to work, often but not always, reject woman's rights and oppose changing the archaic 1925 law that bars Lebanese women from giving citizenship to their child and husband. To the chagrin of most Christians, strident opponents of civil rights for both groups are often from the minority extremist Christian camp. Lebanese holding this view argue that granting women the right to pass on their citizenship would upset the country's delicate demographic balance and the same would happen if Palestinians are granted civil rights.

Since Palestine refugees and women in Lebanon share a legal limbo quite naturally they commiserate to some extent. Given the key role of women in resistance movements, from heroines represented by the likes of Mairead Farrell and Martina Anderson in Ireland, and Albertina Sisulu and Helen Sussman in South Africa to Leila Khaled and Dalal al Moughabi for Palestine and Laure Moghayzel, a founder of leading women's groups in Lebanon, it can be expected that the support of women may be the best hope for their Palestinian sisters and brothers to achieve civil rights in Lebanon.

"Lebanon needs more time to straighten out the 'situation' with the Palestinians. Also, it should be remembered that Lebanon did issue Identification Cards to the 5000 plus Palestinian refugees who have never had either UNRWA or Interior Ministry registrations subjecting them to arrest at any time. So Lebanon is making solid progress." It is true that in August of 2008 the Ministry of Interior began issuing ID cards as part of a plan to improve the legal status of the non-ID Palestinians. On more than one occasion this observer witnessed the hot crowded yard and garden in front of the Palestinian Embassy in Beirut as well as the hallways and waiting rooms as hundreds of Palestinian refugees waited to apply.

Their spirits were soaring as they expressed the hope that could no longer be arbitrarily arrested and jailed for not having ID. It also would mean that for some of them they could now exit the Camp without fear.

Unfortunately, the euphoria was short lived as the Lebanese government stopped issuing temporary identification papers to Palestinians five months later, which meant that fewer than 750 cards were distributed before it stopped the process, citing 'security concerns." In October 2009 the minister of interior announced that the process would soon resume, and indeed, the process has resumed. It remains to be seen when the "non-ID's" Palestine refugees will obtain.

"Lebanon is a very small country and we cannot afford to allow refugees to own a home, given our limited available housing space." There has been no probative evidence offered from any quarter in support of this proposition. Approximately 1/3 of Lebanon's residential building are empty, with many owners seeking tenants or buyers and would be happy to rent or sell a home to Palestinians, either without conditions or the condition that once they are able to return to Palestine the lease would end at the beginning of the next year and a reversionary future interest in real estate might be considered assuring that the mandatory vacation of the residential dwelling would be available for Lebanese if they are interested in living in it.

"If Sunni and Christian Palestinian refugees are granted civil rights, including the right to work and to own a home, this will 'upset Lebanon's delicate confessional balance' among Christians, Sunni, Shia, and Druze and plunge Lebanon into dangerous internal sectarian conflicts." Frankly, more than civil rights for Palestine refugees regularly "upsets the delicate confessional balance" in Lebanon and this may ever be the case. One recent example. On April 13, 2010 the 35th anniversary of the start of the Lebanese Civil War, the two opposing political camps in Lebanon - March 8 and March 14 -- chose to remember this day in a friendly football game in a show of solidarity at Beirut's Damil Chamoun Stadium. Thanks to 29 year old Phalange party member Sami Gemayel 's two goals late in the 'unity' match the result was a victory for the Saad Hariri-led March 14 team.

Savoring his teams win, Sami gloated that his opponent, Hezbollah's MP Ali Ammar's "defense strategy was very weak'. While his comment may have been meant as a joke it caused raised eyebrows among some confessions, such is sectarian sensitiveness these days. Wearing the wrong clothes, forgetting to observe one of the other confessions holidays, celebratory gunfire during or after a favored confessional leader's speech, violations of employment shares inside ministries (in Lebanon each confessions gets a share of government jobs and one can be sure that each confessions staff "nose counts" in ministerial offices to be sure the list is what it should be.

Drawing moustaches on posters of rival confessions (and most confessions appear to be serious rivals) can lead to violence. The point is that allowing Palestinians to work will be objected to in some quarters, but not much more than other issues and the is no evidence that it will not bring down or even alter the confessional system "balance." Moreover, the refugees from Palestine have never sought to vote, do not now seek the right to vote, and have no intention to do so according to their community leaders and polling data. Consequently, allowing them some civil rights would not add or distract from any Lebanese sect when forming a Cabinet, voting for Legislative candidates or advancing or retarding sensitive sectarian legislation in Parliament.

"Palestinian refugees don't contribute to Lebanon's economy so why should Lebanon allow them the right to work?" Actually, despite facing severe work restriction most Palestinian refugee households have at least one family member who is employed (often illegally and at a lower exploitative wage than Lebanese citizens) constitute 10 per cent of all private consumption in Lebanon, and do not burden the Lebanese welfare system, according to a recent report by The Najdeh (Welfare) Association, funded by aid agencies Diakonia and Christian aid. The study is the result of a survey of 1,500 households in eight refugee camps across Lebanon and a number of focus group discussions, and assesses the income of Palestinian refugees, challenges to and perceptions of work, and their contribution to the Lebanese economy.

According to Najdeh, the study was designed "to examine the contribution to the economy of the host country Lebanon.", the report found one third of the individuals sampled works, and roughly 40 per cent were searching for work. Only 1.7 per cent of those surveyed had work permits, a fact the report said "renders the Palestinian refugee labor force invisible in official statistics" and exacerbates their socioeconomic marginalization. Far below a livable wage, median monthly wages for Palestinian Refugees has declined from $260-266 in 2007 to $108-112 "during the first half of 2008." An overwhelming majority (84 per cent) of Palestinian households believe there are no work prospects for their children in Lebanon.

Although Palestinian refugees on a per capita basis cannot legally contribute much to the Lebanese economy through employment, their large numbers means they count for 10 per cent (approximately $352 million) of all private consumption in Lebanon. Food, healthcare and rent constitute their top spending priorities.
Consistent studies over the six decades have shown that Palestinians have aided Lebanon's economy and do much more if allowed to work and open businesses. An early study dated 12/18/59 by the Arab Supreme Committee showed that the total monetary balance transferred by Palestinians from assets in Palestine, the sale of family jewelry to buy food etc. was more than three times the annual budget of the Lebanese state in the early 1950s as has the UNRWA relief, education and health and salary budgets mainly spent in Lebanon. This propelled the Lebanese. However by not allowing the Palestinians to work Lebanon has stunted its economy.

Before the PLO administration left Lebanon in August of 1982, it created directly or indirectly more than 40,000 jobs or approximately 18 per cent of Lebanon's GNP. The PLO budget may have been larger than that of the Lebanese state itself. Palestinians also contributed to "invigorating" the areas surrounding their camps by creating low-cost markets for low-income and other marginalized communities in Lebanon. The "Sabra, Ein el-Hilweh and Nahr al-Bared camp markets are recognized as major informal economic hubs for the poor," said the report, adding that the destruction of Nahr al-Bared during the battles of 2007 had "resulted in a gap in the Akkar" region in northern Lebanon for such communities.
The debate continues...the cause endures....

Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon "Failure is not an option for the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, our only choice is success," says 15 year old Hiba Hajj, a PCRC volunteer at the Ein el Helwe Palestinian Camp in Saida, Lebanon. If you haven't already, please sign here (you don't have to be Lebanese!): http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html

* Franklin Lamb volunteers with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign in Lebanon. He is reachable at fplamb@palestinecivilrightscampaign.org.

1983 attack on the US Embassy

By Franklin Lamb* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Is the US Embassy in Lebanon squandering its diplomatic immunity?

Tensions are rising in Lebanon between elected representatives in Parliament, 'Unity' Cabinet members and the American Embassy, as the 27^th anniversary of the attack 1983 attack on the US Embassy approaches and the Embassy issues another warning for Americans to leave Lebanon.

On March 29, 2010 the US Embassy instructed Americans not to travel to Lebanon citing 'safety and security concerns." Simultaneously it warned those who are in Lebanon to seriously consider leaving.

Advising that, Lebanon, placed on a US list of 14 countries "linked to Terrorism" following the Christmas Day attempted aircraft bombing near Detroit, has "the potential for a spontaneous upsurge in violence , US citizens living and working in Lebanon should understand that they accept risks in remaining and should carefully consider those risks, as Embassy personnel may not be able to aid them in case of conflict."

The "Warder Warning" to American citizens follows a series of recent efforts by the Embassy to pressure the National Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah, currently shaping the new Unity' government with its work in Parliament and the Cabinet. It comes following Opposition charges, emphasized by Hezbollah's Secretary Hassan Nasrallah the preceding week, that the US Embassy in Beirut engages in espionage activities for Israel and cautioning that the collaboration was very dangerous for Lebanon.

According to Nasrallah during an interview with Al Manar channel: "All the information which the US embassy gathers in Beirut reaches Israel. Here we are not speaking about a normal foreign embassy which is gathering information for its own government ... When it comes to the American embassy in Beirut, it is a different story...And so what is given to the US Embassy and what reaches the Israelis, the information, all of these leads to the destruction of Lebanon. This helps the Israeli enemy to understand what is going on in Lebanon, to use this information against Lebanon and to take revenge against our country...What is the difference between espionage networks, which give information directly, or giving information by mediation, meaning giving it to the US embassy who then gives it to the Israeli side?" Nasrallah ask his viewing audience, estimated at more than 100 million viewers around the region.

April 2010 and April 1983 parallels?

The Hezbollah Secretary-General is not the only one questioning whether the Us Embassy operates as "a normal foreign embassy" with acceptable " mild spying and information gathering" or operates as " an espionage network" for Israel and passing it intelligence reports from US assets throughout Lebanon who monitor all roads and paths from Syria as well as South Lebanon and South Beirut.

What increasingly concerns many in Lebanon is the US Embassy role in recent projects including a "security agreement between the US and the Lebanese Internal Security Force' (ISF) and the Embassy and their allies described as "an American donation" to train and equip the ISF and make Lebanon stronger.

The "donation" resulted from the January 25, 2007 Paris-3 International Conference on the support for Lebanon. As far as security is concerned, March 14 foes charge that the then pro-American-pro-Saudi Fuad Saniora government "gave away the store" to U.S. intelligence by placing data related to Lebanon's two mobile phone networks at the disposal of the United States, that it is believed would allow the Embassy and Israel to tap Lebanese phones. There is a widely held belief in Lebanon that all information the Embassy receives goes to Israel. Also protested was the adopting of the American interpretation of "terrorism" which as applied by the Embassy means that no ISF member who is a Hezbollah member could receive any training to due various US Terrorism lists issues.

According to the Lebanese Ministry of Communications, the US embassy in Beirut filed a request to install reception devices in two positions in Lebanon located in mountainous areas in Aley and overlooking most of the Lebanese regions. The first is 22 kilometers away from Beirut, 760 meters above sea level and stretching over 251 hectares, while the second is 29 kilometers away from Beirut, 540 meters above sea level and stretching over 643 hectares. The US Embassy position is that it tower demand falls under the headline of technical assistance stipulated in the "donation" agreement.

Suspicion were also raised that the commando units the US wanted to train might be intended for use against the National Lebanese Resistance during a future conflicts with Israel.

On March 16, 2010, the Syrian daily Al Watan asked Lebanese MP Nawaf Mousawi about the growing concern in Parliament. Mousawi, one of Hezbollah's most popular and sought after interlocutors with American and other foreign delegations visiting Lebanon, replied :

"If the reports we read in the Lebanese papers are true, this would be a horrid scandal since it would mean that the American embassy was violating Lebanon's sovereignty and that the American security apparatuses were trying to infiltrate personal and national security in Lebanon. This would constitute an Israeli security infiltration since there is a security agreement between Israel and America in regard to the exchange of information"... "Moreover, I say that today the American embassy in Lebanon has a private militia called the embassy's guard, arresting each suspected citizen in the massive area surrounding the embassy that has become an isolated geography within the Lebanese geography. It has become a state within a state with tapping devices violating the intimacy of the Lebanese people and intelligence officers monitoring all that goes on in the ministries and public administrations. We in Lebanon now need to liberate our land from the occupation of the American militia and to liberate part of our decisions from the American occupation by limiting the relations of the American embassy to the Foreign Ministry and preventing the American apparatuses from acquiring information in Lebanon."

Crossing the boundaries of Diplomatic protection?

The Embassy's intense and escalating campaign against the Opposition, a main pillar of Lebanon's government, is also raising questions among International lawyers and government officials whether the Embassy has squandered its diplomatic status under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. A study in underway in Lebanon to determine the extent of the US Embassy abuse of Diplomatic Immunity. Opinions among scholars and analysts range from a raft of challenges to allowing Israel to have an 'illegal outpost" in Lebanon to sanctioning the Embassy for violations of the Vienna Convention, specifically under Art. 41 which requires that foreign Embassies, " respect the laws and regulations of the receiving State and not interfere in the internal affairs of the receiving State."

Researchers point out that 27 years ago this month, on April 18, 1983 the American Embassy was attacked as a direct and foreseeable result of the Embassy's involvement as a command and control center on behalf of Israel against the majority population of Lebanon. According to former CIA agent Robert Baer, the CIA never did determine who was behind the bombing( there were a few dozen upstart resistance groups wanting to expel Israel in those days) but understood that it was the result of hostile US actions against Lebanon.

Food for thought

Legal experts at the State Department privately admit that despite years of public statements to the contrary, the April 18, 1983 attack cannot be accurately labeled 'terrorism' because by bringing in and housing the command center staffed by at least 8 CIA agents and various 'special ops' units who were running a network of pro-Israel assets and providing targeting information to the USS New Jersey offshore and Israel forces in the mountains and Chouf the Embassy lost its claim to diplomatic immunity. The Embassy actions enabled the shelling of Lebanon and the killing of hundreds of innocent Lebanese civilians, among many other activities. Consequently, the Embassy became a legitimate military target udder the international laws of armed conflict. Lebanese resistance forces, who opposed the Israeli occupation of their country and their American and French allies who had abandoned their claimed role as 'peacekeepers" and in fact had taken sides in the conflict were legally within their right and duty to neutralize the threat presented. The specific and legitimate military target of the April 18,1983 attack on the US Embassy is Beirut were the eight CIA agents and their teams who had been identified by Soviet sources and the information sent to allies in Lebanon.

While no reasonable person might suggest that the Embassy is currently subject to a third attack, despite regular salafist and al Qaeda wannabe threats, observers point out the irony that it has been Hezbollah, incessantly attacked by the Embassy and its allies in the Lebanese Forces and Phalange party, (Ed: the same groups who held power in 1983 and sponsored the giveaway May 17, 1983 Agreement with Israel), that has invisibly protected the Embassy several times over the past two decades, just as it quietly provided security in south Beirut during last spring's visit of President Carter with Lebanon's Senior Shia cleric, Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, still on a US Terrorism list for purely political reasons.

Lebanon's recourse

Lebanon currently has few practical or easy diplomatic options. The ultimate sanction and prevention measure available for Lebanon is the severance of diplomatic relations. That is unlikely unless Israel attacks Lebanon for the 6th time with the predictable American 'green light'. The doctrines of self defense and self preservation are also available to Lebanon in order to prevent a foreign Embassy from facilitating aggressor against it.

Additional activities viewed as arguably incompatible with its legitimate diplomatic functions is the drum beat of attacks on certain parties in Parliament (those allied with Hezbollah) including the current widely believed to be fake "Sryia gives Scuds to Hezbollah" charges. On April 15, 2010,Syria emphatically denied the charge and asked for evidence while claiming that Israel was paving the way for new military action in the region with its false allegation.

Zero evidence has been offered by Washington or the Embassy to support this rumor, which like so many these days, originated with Israel's President Shimon Peres and given credence in the US Congress and now the American Embassy. Inquiries of the American Ambassador at yesterday's talk by former US Senator Bob Graham (R-Fla.) at the American University of Beirut, as to why the Embassy offered no satellite photos for the large easily detected outdated missiles were meet mutely with a radiant and wide smile.

The US Embassy is further accused of feeding certain politicians including the Phalange and Lebanese Forces parties with disinformation to attack the Lebanese Resistance. For example, MP Samir Geagea regularly meets and communicates with Embassy personnel and the next day invariably launches another attack aimed at lowering the high 84% polling statistics showing the level of Lebanese support for the Resistance, led by Hezbollah, deterrence capability against Israel.

MP Mousawi again: " the U.S. embassy in Awkar is harming national reconciliation efforts through the policy of sabotage and fragmentation it is adopting in Lebanon and the region."

As of the morning of April 16, 2010 the US Embassy in Beirut, said that, "the United States is "increasingly concerned" about the transfer of more sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah." But it has now admitted that it has no proof of Scuds being transferred to anyone from Syria.

As of the morning of April 16, 2010 Hezbollah intends that the Lebanese government will review every bi-lateral agreement made with the US Embassy.

* Franklin Lamb is a researcher and volunteer with the PCRC in Lebanon. He can be reached at fplamb@palestinecivilrightscampaign.org

Source: MSNBC

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A Lebanese boy watches his mother dying between his hands...

Too painful to add anymore words!

It is time to stop these blood rivers in Lebanon and Palestine...

It is time to put an end to the barbarian behavior & unjustified attacks of the Nazi like Israelis against children, women & innocent civilians.

It is time that the American people open their eyes & see how corrupted, satanic & hypocrite the American administration is under the leadership of the new cowboy G.W.Bush.

[Photos: Getty Images News, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad]

You will not see this on CNN or BBC.

This video is dedicated to the children who have lost their lives because the US, UK and Israel have willingly stopped a ceasefire resulting in the massacre of the Lebaneses people.

Where is the worlds conscience?

Help these people by sharing this video with anyone you can. Cease Fire NOW!