[ppi] [ppiindia] Lebanon Sends National Army to Patrol South

** Mailing List|Milis Nasional Indonesia PPI-India **
** Situs resmi: http://www.ppi-india.org **
** Situs milis: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia **
** Informasi Beasiswa Scholarship: http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com **
<br><br><a href="http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com";><img 
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Info_Beasiswa.gif"; height="67" width="200" 
style="border:0" alt="Info Beasiswa Scholarship "/></a><br><br>
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/world/middleeast/17mideast.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5094&en=70c3aa1f88d75fe5&hp&ex=1155873600&partner=homepage



Lebanon Sends National Army to Patrol South 

 
Kevin Frayer/Associated Press
Hezbollah supporters swept the rubble on Wednesday in a southern suburb of 
Beirut destroyed by Israeli bombs. 


By JOHN KIFNER and ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: August 17, 2006
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Thursday, Aug. 17 - The Lebanese Army moved into the country's 
south at dawn on Thursday, a day after the cabinet approved the deployment 
under a United Nations-mandated cease-fire, but finessed the delicate issue of 
disarming Hezbollah.

At several points, soldiers crossed the Litani River, about 15 miles north of 
the Israeli border, into the long-held separate realm of Hezbollah.
A column of more than 100 trucks, troop carriers and jeeps, flying 
red-and-white Lebanese flags, streamed through a makeshift bridge on the Litani 
to the town of Merj 'Uyun, Reuters reported. Some vehicles towed artillery 
pieces, others carried troops and equipment.

Hezbollah fighters were not expected to resist the soldiers, nor to hand over 
their weapons. Instead, they probably would simply put their weapons into 
hiding and melt away into the civilian population.

The top Hezbollah field commander in the south, Sheik Nabil Qaouk, said as much 
on Wednesday. 

"Just like in the past, Hezbollah had no visible military presence and there 
will not be any presence now," Sheik Qaouk told reporters in the hard-hit port 
city of Tyre.

He praised the army's deployment, but said Hezbollah would maintain its 
presence without displaying its arms. He added that since Israeli tanks were 
still in Lebanon, the guerrillas reserved the right to respond accordingly. A 
Hezbollah representative in Parliament, Hassan Fadlallah, was equally 
insistent, telling Al Jazeera television that his organization would not pull 
back over the Litani, that the fate of its arsenal was not open to public 
debate and that the army deployment had nothing to do with its presence.

Whether this approach would satisfy the terms of the Security Council 
resolution that calls for the disarming of nongovernment forces, particularly 
in the eyes of Israel, the United States and potential contributors to an 
international peacekeeping force, remained in doubt.

In Israel, skepticism about the plan was evident. Still, the Israeli Army said 
Wednesday that it had started to hand over positions in Lebanon to United 
Nations troops.

Hezbollah guerrillas, known in Lebanon as "the resistance," have operated in 
the south for years. They are almost entirely local men hardened by 18 years of 
Israeli occupation after its 1982 invasion. 

During that time, they lived and worked in their native villages, building an 
elaborate social-service network and extensive underground fortifications and 
stashes of modern weaponry that astounded Israel in a month of bitter fighting. 
"No one knew they had these things, not the military, not the intelligence," 
said an equally astonished Lebanese Army general, speaking privately.

After the vote by the cabinet, which has two Hezbollah ministers, Prime 
Minister Fouad Siniora went on television with a lengthy, sometimes emotional, 
appeal for unity, expressing a wan hope that Hezbollah's arms would somehow 
disappear. The army deployment, he said, would end a "mentality of statelets." 

"There will be a single state," he said, "with the sole decision-making power. 
There will be no dual authority. There will be no armed presence outside state 
authority," he said without referring to Hezbollah by name. "Any failure to 
carry out this right will risk our country's becoming the scene of regional and 
international conflicts."

In Israel there were, to say the least, strong doubts about the plan.

Danny Yatom, a Parliament member who is a former director of the Mossad 
intelligence service, said, "There is no doubt that Hezbollah must follow the 
decision in its entirety, and it is the responsibility of the Americans and the 
French as well as the other members of the Security Council and the government 
of Lebanon to bring about the disarmament of Hezbollah and have it driven up 
north past the Litani."

A Likud member, Yuval Steinitz, said: "Whoever does not complete the 
annihilation of the enemy must not be surprised that the enemy does not 
volunteer to annihilate itself. Israel should have taken over southern Lebanon 
and cleaned out Hezbollah several weeks ago, and unless this is done now, 
Israel will be forced to do it sometime in the future." 

Amid the growing debate in Israel over the handling of the war, Israel's 
defense minister, Amir Peretz, appointed a panel to investigate how the 
military and the ministry had performed. The panel will be headed by Ammon 
Lipkin-Shahak, a former army chief of staff, and will include a number of other 
retired generals.

Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy of France met in Beirut with Mr. Siniora 
to discuss the possible composition and dispatch of a strengthened United 
Nations force. France is expected to form the backbone of the force, but it is 
still uncertain what other nations will join the effort, which is expected to 
number about 15,000 troops. Some 45 countries have expressed interest.

In Berlin, the German government said it would not send troops but would 
provide policing for the Syrian border, naval patrols and engineers to rebuild 
bombed bridges. 

In the hard-hit Shiite suburbs south of Beirut, Hezbollah supporters fanned out 
to assess war damage. Around them, residents and visitors wandered in stunned 
silence through a charred, bombed-out landscape. Someone had hung a banner with 
the words "Made in U.S.A." over the ruins of a collapsed building. 

Here and there, gunmen could be seen watching over the streets. But the group's 
army of civilian volunteers and its advance plans for rebuilding were far more 
apparent. 
One man walked down a rubble-strewn street holding a stack of damage assessment 
forms. He carried a baseball cap with the name and symbol of Jihad al Binaa, 
the Hezbollah reconstruction committee. "This not overnight work," said the 
volunteer, a 30-year-old architect who declined to give his name. "The work 
being done now was prepared over the past month, with the collaboration of 
architects and engineers."

His map included numbers for each building on the small sector he had been 
assigned. There were forms for each building, with spaces for the names of 
every resident and a description of damage to the units and needs. Photographs 
were being taken, to be used as comparison after the rebuilding has been done, 
he said.

He is one of 250 to 300 architects and engineers already assessing damage, he 
said, and the group hopes to finish 70 percent of that work in the Dahia, or 
Shiite suburban area, this week. Then will come the second and third phases, he 
said, with the group reimbursing residents for damage and starting rebuilding.

The plans also include a strong dose of publicity for Hezbollah. A few blocks 
away, volunteers had set up a tent and plastic chairs for the news media, and 
Ghassan Darwish, the group's Beirut information officer, was giving interviews.

The group divided the Dahia into 70 districts, each with two to four buildings 
in it, Mr. Darwish said. The goal was to get people back into their homes, or 
into alternative houses, or to give them enough cash to rent another apartment, 
within 72 hours, he said. In the meantime, a team of architects was being 
assembled, he said, from Dubai, Qatar, Egypt and Syria as well as Lebanon, to 
reconstruct the entire Dahia within a year. The money, he said, was coming from 
"people who hate Israel and believe in the resistance."

"There is contact between us and the government," Mr. Darwish said. "But we 
won't wait for the bureaucracy. These are the people who protected the 
resistance, and we believe they have the right to roofs over their heads within 
24 hours."

Down the street, Amina Qausan, a 39-year-old shopkeeper in a gray abaya, looked 
through the ruins of her clothing store. The floor was littered with glass and 
rubble, and the walls had come down in the back of the shop. The women's 
dresses she sells were covered with dust.

"There has been no theft, and this is because of the good men of the 
resistance," she said. "In every place there are people who commit crimes, but 
with Hezbollah patrolling that cannot happen."

At least 200,000 people have already returned to the Dahia area, said Robin 
Lodge of the United Nations World Food Program, which is providing aid 
throughout Lebanon.

Although Hezbollah is aiming to draw new support with its rebuilding campaign, 
some say the group could suffer as the reality of the war's damage sinks in.

"For the next two or three years, Hezbollah will be like the Salvation Army, 
tied up in rebuilding," said Michael Young, the opinion editor at The Daily 
Star, an English-language newspaper published in Beirut. "But the party cannot 
put Shiites through such trauma again for the foreseeable future, maybe a 
decade, which means its ability to attack Israel will be limited. The reason 
Hezbollah is so eager to rebuild is that they know the condition of Shiites 
today could turn the community against them if it's not dealt with effectively."

«
Greg Myre contributed reporting from Jerusalem for this article, and Warren 
Hoge from the United Nations.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



***************************************************************************
Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg 
Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny. 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia
***************************************************************************
__________________________________________________________________________
Mohon Perhatian:

1. Harap tdk. memposting/reply yg menyinggung SARA (kecuali sbg otokritik)
2. Pesan yg akan direply harap dihapus, kecuali yg akan dikomentari.
3. Reading only, http://dear.to/ppi 
4. Satu email perhari: ppiindia-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
5. No-email/web only: ppiindia-nomail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
6. kembali menerima email: ppiindia-normal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    ppiindia-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Situs resmi: http://www.ppi-india.org ; 
Situs milis: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia ; 
Informasi Beasiswa Scholarship: http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
<br>
<a href="http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com";><img 
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Info_Beasiswa.gif"; height="67" width="200" 
style="border:0" alt="Info Beasiswa Scholarship "/></a><br>

Other related posts: