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INSIGHT

Continued Bombing of Lebanon

Aired July 18, 2006 - 18:00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHIHAB RATTANSI, CNN HOST (voice-over): The starts and stops of life under siege. Sirens and rockets mark the hours in Lebanon and Israel as civilians on both sides of the border try to make it through another day of war.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's very bad. Very, very, very bad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RATTANSI: Welcome to INSIGHT. I am Shihab Rattansi.

Beirut once again filled with the byproducts of war. Civilians all too familiar with the sounds and images of a 15-year civil war are falling back into an ominous routine. During brief respites in the bombing, some people dart into the streets for supplies, but many of the shops and businesses are closed. But the mood is more intense in the southern suburbs of Beirut, which have borne the brunt of the Israeli artillery.

On our program today, civilians caught in the middle. We begin in Lebanon with Ben Wedeman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Smoke rises from the ruins of what was until recently the southern Beirut suburb of Harat al Harag (ph). Pounded by repeated Israeli air strikes.

A few people crunch through the rubble to retrieve their belongings. Israel bombed this area because it is a Hezbollah stronghold, but it was also home to tens of thousands of people. Now it's a ghost town, abandoned. The mundane trappings of daily life look absurdly out of place in this devastation.

The tens of thousands who fled the bombing in Beirut in the south have been put up in government schools. Most of the refugees are Shiites, many supporters of Hezbollah. Almost every refugee I spoke to backed the group.

Like Najila Hoseni (ph), whose hate for Israel runs deep.

"From birth," she says, "we teach our children Israel wants to fight us and kill us."

Like Zahara Zalzelsi (ph), a mother of five from south Lebanon, who says she would be happy to blow herself up to kill Israelis.

Homelessness and destruction don't seem to have shaken the faith of Hezbollah's rank and file. But others feel caught in the middle.

"Not one drop of blood should be shed, not even Israeli blood," says Raja Minsi (ph), who fled with her family of eight from Beirut's southern suburbs. "We don't want this war. Let the leaders solve this crisis, because the people are paying the price."

And a high price at that.

Ben Wedeman, CNN, Beirut.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RATTANSI: Many people in Lebanon are trying to leave the country. One man made the journey in the opposite direction. Marwam Saad traveled from Egypt through Syria and into Beirut to care for his sick mother. He joins us now to give us more of a sense of the situation where he is.

Marwam, first of all, tell us what that journey was like.

Marwam? Hi. It's Shihab, in Atlanta.

Tell us about your journey into Beirut?

MARWAM SAAD, BEIRUT RESIDENT: Our Journey in Beirut today is almost calm, a little better. The bombardment is almost focused in Dekar (ph) and also in the south. We have a lot of people here suffering from lack of medication, lack of security, lack of safety. They are living in a terrible situation due to the invasion, the new invasion, of our lovely country, Lebanon.

RATTANSI: Your mother, I understand, is in intensive care in hospital. How is she being cared for?

SAAD: Yes, she was admitted last Thursday to the intensive care unit. I wasn't in Beirut. I was in Egypt. I was trapped there. I came back on Sunday, under the bombardment, through Syria also. It was a terrible, terrible journey for me also. And now today this patient is doing better and she is improving, but you see we don't have electricity, as well as other supplies, and the hospitals, they are suffering from lack of medication and all resources.

RATTANSI: Do you get warnings of the bombs before they drop?

SAAD: Sorry? I couldn't hear you.

RATTANSI: Do you get warnings of the bombardment? Do you know when the bombs are coming?

SAAD: Sure, from where they are coming. They are coming from the Israeli part.

RATTANSI: No, but before they come, though, can you take cover before they come? Can you protect yourself?

SAAD: We took the risk to come just to see our family, to protect them, to take care of them, because they are alone. They cannot tolerate this situation. Just to help them in case of anything will happen.

RATTANSI: Marwam Saad, thank you for joining us.

SAAD: Thanks for you. Thanks for you.

RATTANSI: Obviously we had some communication difficulties there, but I think we get a sense there of one man trying to cope with his ill mother in Beirut.

Israelis too feeling the strains of bombardment, especially in the northern city of Haifa, where Hezbollah rockets have struck repeatedly. Sirens sounded again on Tuesday, signaling to residents that they have one minute to take cover. No casualties were reported in that barrage of rockets which have hit the city for a third day in a row.

On Sunday, eight people were killed in a railway depot in Haifa in the most deadly attack yet in Israel. Adding to the exodus from the region, the United Nations pulling its nonessential staff and families from Lebanon, but relief workers are staying because of the mounting number of people who can't or won't leave the country, like Marwam, who we just spoke to.

Life is far from easy for these residents. Earlier, Ralitsa Vassileva spoke to Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, about the humanitarian crisis in the region.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAN EGELAND, U.N. EMERGENCY RELIEF COORDINATOR: The situation is very bad and it is deteriorating. We now have reports of hundreds of thousands of people being displaced. They're fleeing into Syria. They're fleeing into the mountains of Lebanon, or they're trying to seek refuge by friends, family. Tens of thousands are already in schools and in public buildings.

Part of the problem we really have, and especially the Lebanese authorities and Red Cross, has these ambulances to move freely, because of the disruption of roads (UNINTELLIGIBLE) infrastructure.

It has to stop in terms of attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and, of course, the Hezbollah attacks into northern Israel has to stop as well. Civilians have nothing to do with this political conflict.

RALITSA VASSILEVA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: To what degree are civilians the targets in this conflict on both sides?

EGELAND: It seems very odd that both sides are to this degree targeting civilian targets. I mean, both sides are going primarily after what would seem civilian targets. Certainly, Israel is of course trying to hit Hezbollah, but also in places where there is no Hezbollah. Bridges, roads, communication centers that are primarily serving the civilian population and that was built up through years of foreign assistance and painstaking efforts by the Lebanese after a cruel civil war.

I don't think it's in the interest of anybody to enrage their neighbor and the general population. It would only lead to more hatred and perhaps more violence later on.

VASSILEVA: Well, what the Israelis are saying is that they have targeted the roads, they have enforced this blockade, because they need to make sure that their people are protected and not attacked and that supplies are not coming to Hezbollah.

EGELAND: Of course, Israel has the right to defend herself. There are now 1,000 or more rockets that have rained into northern Israel. But don't bomb the whole Lebanese society. This is a complex society with as many people who are against the Hezbollah as people who sympathize with them. It seems too much is being hit and it really, really makes humanitarian work very difficult.

We are trying now to evacuate civilians and we're trying also to get teams into the country to help in humanitarian assistance, but, of course, humanitarian assistance is a plaster on the wound. The wound has to heal and that should be healed now by talks, negotiations and not Hezbollah attacking Israel nor disproportionate retaliatory action.

VASSILEVA: The Israeli military says that their operations will continue, possibly for a few weeks more. Can the Lebanese people cope with that?

EGELAND: No, I don't think they can cope with that at all. We already hear of hospitals and other places running out of blood because there are too many wounded and because we cannot, they cannot and the international cannot move with new provisions.

There should be humanitarian corridors declared. There should be a ceasefire declared. This should be possible now for the civilian population to cope with this, for the civilian population to escape to where here would be refuge, and diplomats to resolve this. Israel merits security. So does the Lebanese population.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RATTANSI: That was Jan Egeland talking to Ralitsa Vassileva.

When we return after this break, weathering the war on both sides at the border.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RATTANSI: Many Americans in Lebanon feel the United States has been slow to evacuate its citizens, but as the United States is still trying to coordinate transportation for its people, some are being informed that it isn't a free ride. Some evacuees may be billed later by the State Department, although the U.S. military doesn't charge for evacuation.

Welcome back.

They may be charged later and it might have taken longer than expected for the helicopters to arrive, but those Americans are the lucky ones. Those left behind face the humanitarian chaos and the overwhelming fear that those of us who have never been in a war zone simply can't comprehend.

As so often in recent years, this is a conflict not fought between armies on a battlefield but amidst cities and villages that only a week ago had no inkling of what was to become.

What is life like for those now trapped?

Joining me is Professor Bashir Abu-Manneh, a Palestinian from Israel who is just back from Haifa.

Professor, thanks for joining us.

First, give us a sense of what life is like in Haifa right now?

PROF. BASHIR ABU-MANNEH, BARNARD COLLEGE: Well, the situation in Haifa, as I left it, was that people are scared. Katyusha rockets are falling in Haifa. Some people in the north, in the hundreds or in the thousands, have been evacuated, but all of the evidence suggests that Israel has asked people to stay in shelters and stay secure in their homes. There hasn't been any kind of mass evacuations to compare with the half million Lebanese that have been forced to leave southern Lebanon, the way the situation current is in Lebanon, nor has there been any kind of sense that there is a humanitarian crisis.

The only part of the economy which has been, as it were, hit, has been the tourist side of it, which is understandable, but that has only affected the northern parts of Israel. Tel Aviv is living life as usual, as it were, and so is Jerusalem. You cannot, really, to my mind, compare the suffering and the effect that this war has had on the Israelis -- you can't compare it with the devastating effects that it has been having on the Lebanese people in the south, in Beirut, in the north, being besieged, bombarded from the sea, from the air, from the ground. I think a lot of people have been reminded of the 1982 situation and have described it to me, a lot of Lebanese people in Beirut, as again the Israeli-created living hell.

I worry much more, much more about what is happening in Lebanon than what is happening in northern Israel, even though there have been fatalities, the numbers have been very small, the predominantly Lebanese people have been affected by this so-called war.

RATTANSI: Professor, obviously, though, Israeli isn't just doing this for the sake of it. they obviously feel that they need to do this. Can you explain what is going through the Israeli generals' minds as they decide that it is the civilian infrastructure that is the key to Hezbollah?

ABU-MANNEH: I'm glad you mentioned the Israeli generals. I think part of the problem in Israeli politics is that Israeli generals have so much power. I think Israeli politics have been structured predominantly in the last many years through the logic of force.

Every time -- for example, I can give you the example of the Palestinians in Gaza. Every time they have a situation where they can peacefully settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as you had even after the Hamas government came into power with the business initiative, which is a very robust business initiative, which calls for the implementation of what the international consensus is in Israeli-Palestinian, effectively a two-state solution which involves dismantling the settlements, according to international consensus, evacuating.

RATTANSI: Professor, I'll stop you there. We have many times discussed the political background of this. We wanted to focus more on the humanitarian situation and indeed why Israel is targeting the civilian infrastructure. And they say it's partly because Hezbollah uses the civilian population of southern Lebanon and elsewhere as human shields. Surely, that's part of the problem. They keep their weaponry and so on amongst the civilians of south Lebanon, for example.

ABU-MANNEH: I don't understand the Israeli logic here. There are half a million Shiite in the south and half a million living in Beirut. What does Israel suggest to do with all of these civilians? To kill all of these civilians because they happen to support the political party that they disagree with? Surely that's totally irrational logic. It is even barbaric to suggest that this is what they are trying to do.

I think what Israel has utilized the situation to do is exactly to gain political ground inside Lebanon, to try to crush Hezbollah politically and to allow for more pro-Western influence to predominate in the region. I think the Israeli agenda of bombing civilians, targeting infrastructures, targeting Beirut's airport, is to try to pile up internal pressure on Hezbollah and crush it politically to allow for, as it were, what people call today a regime change.

RATTANSI: We literally have 10 seconds left. Might that actually work?

ABU-MANNEH: Might that actually work? The question the Democrats and liberals would ask is, is it desirable? Is it the way to conduct politics these days? To force people, to kill civilians, slaughter hundreds of them in order to gain political outcomes which most of the civilians inside those areas in Lebanon are totally against? I mean, there is not one voice in Lebanon that I hear which is not against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The prime minister himself says that this is against Lebanese sovereignty, against Palestinian independence, even when the Israelis claim to be implementing the 1559 solution, which calls for Lebanese independence, full sovereignty and freedom, they're actually in total contravention of that resolution by besieging and attacking Lebanon.

So, Israeli logic is totally contradictory. They claim to be doing certain things while in reality they are doing others, as usual.

RATTANSI: And Professor, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

We'll take a break now. When we return, yet another thing to lose in the conflict. We'll explain after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RATTANSI: The battle rages on a wounded land. It's nothing new. It's happened for centuries. And so far, many landmarks and revered places have survived the violence. But for how long? And when they're finally gone, what is really lost?

Welcome back.

Hundreds have died in Lebanon and scores in Israel during the past week. Beyond that, lives have been changed irrevocably with the loss of houses and businesses, sometimes a lifetime in the making.

There is no barometer to measure the toll so far that this conflict has taken, but there is also a wide danger.

Delia Gallagher has more.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

DELIA GALLAGHER, CNN FAITH AND VALUES CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's almost impossible to bomb a town in the Middle East without hitting a piece of history. Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq -- full of ruins and shrines -- provide a foundation for many of the world's major religions.

Biblus, the Mediterranean sea town where Israeli ships are now blockading Lebanon, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Just 22 miles from Beirut, the city dates back to 7000 B.C. The word "bible" comes from Biblus. The Papyrus on which the Bible was written is believed to have entered through this port, now under siege.

JON ALTERMAN, DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST PROGRAMS, CSIS: The number of religions and religious movements that have started not only in Lebanon and Israel, but even in places like Syria, that may soon come under conflict, there are people all over the world who look here for their spiritual inspiration and now they see bombs and bullets flying both ways.

GALLAGHER: The Israeli City of Haifa, where two missiles landed Thursday, is the worldwide headquarters of the Bahai faith, founded in Persia in the 19th century. Mount Carmel, high above Haifa, is the site of the Jewish Prophet Elijah's cave. Mount Carmel is also home to the Carmelites, a Roman Catholic monastic order of the 12th century that is still there today.

Also hit by bombs was Zefad or Safed, in Upper Galilee, the ancient home of Kabbalah, a mystical form of Judaism begun in the 16th century. The Book of Genesis traces Noah's son and grandson to this area. In the middle of the fighting in Southern Lebanon is the Town of Canna, the place where Jesus was said to have turned water into wine.

ALTERMAN: One of the things we see in other conflicts is that when something does get hit, people all over the world feel a personal connection. They see the images but there's also a spiritual connection. So in the event that something goes horribly wrong and one of these religious sites does get hit, we can imagine the resonance of that is going to be much, much more than merely gunfire back and forth.

GALLAGHER: Delia Gallagher, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RATTANSI: And Jon Alterman joins me now.

Jon, as far as you know, have any major sites of historical value been hit so far?

ALTERMAN: We haven't seen any historical sites being hit so far. Certainly there are things in the area, there are things in Haifa, and we've seen even some of the Arab towns, the Christian Arab towns of Galilee coming air assault from Hezbollah rockets.

But up to now, people have seemed to be relatively careful with their targeting, and no sights of significance have been hit.

RATTANSI: You think this is actually due to careful targeting and not just coincidence and luck?

ALTERMAN: Well, the Israelis are certainly being very careful with their targeting. It's a little unclear exactly what the Hezbollah targeting is. It seems to me from my uneducated view that they're just lobbing things into the air and hoping to hit something. Except for the missile they fired at the Israeli destroyer, they don't seem to be firing very sophisticated missiles and they don't seem to be having very specific areas they're trying to hit.

RATTANSI: You said an interesting thing, though, in Delia's story there, that in some ways it's actually when monuments are hit that the world starts to take notice. Do you really believe that? I mean, hundreds have been killed in Lebanon so far.

ALTERMAN: There is something -- if you remember, when the Taliban destroyed the Buddhist monuments in Afghanistan, there is something about world history that drives us together, a sense of our common human heritage that somehow brings that conflict home. People look at images in the Middle East and they say we've seen fighting in the Middle East, we will see more fighting in the Middle East. It doesn't really have that urgency as when we say some part of our common human history is about to be lost.

RATTANSI: Do you think that may explain some of the muted reaction, particularly in the United States, for example, because just as far as they're concerned, you know, the Middle East on fire again, and perhaps it will take some kind of monument for there to be a groundswell of public opinion that says to the government, look, you'd better step in.

ALTERMAN: Yeah, I'm not sure that it's been muted. There has been tremendous news coverage. I did an online chat with the "Washington Post" today. I have never had so many people. There were more than 50 questions. I didn't have time to answer in the hour I was there.

I think there is a lot of interest. People are following it. The president has I think very clearly expressed his view, that Israel is not at fault, Israel has the right to defend itself, and the United States isn't going to restrain Israel. The problem is Hezbollah and Syria and Iran. And I think for that policy reason, the U.S. government hasn't been engaged.

Many Americans, rather than being disengaged, I think, throw up their hands, say I don't understand it, I don't know what to do, and if the president says this is what we're going to do, we're going to give that a chance. But I don't think people are disengaged. I think in my sense people are quite engaged.

RATTANSI: But you heard Jan Egeland earlier on expressing some surprise about the scale of the civilian targets that are being hit, particularly by the Israelis on an enormous scale as compared certainly to what Hezbollah is up to. You know, roads, power stations, villages, convoys and refugees even.

Give us a sense then -- perhaps you can help us. Give us a sense of what the Israelis are thinking as they go about their campaign in this way?

ALTERMAN: Well, part of it is clearly that you have a new Israeli government that was elected on the premise that unilateral disengagement is what will bring peace, and now they find themselves fighting a two-front war in the very places from which they've unilaterally disengaged. You have a prime minister without a long defense and security resume. You have a defense minister without a long security resume.

So, I think to some extent this is an Israeli government that had something to prove, that wanted to prove its toughness. I'm not sure exactly where the strategy is other than proving toughness. It seems to me that ultimately they need a political outcome, and it seems to me that they need to think very carefully about how the military actions, which they unquestionably can carry out with impunity, lead to precisely the kind of political outcome they're looking for.

RATTANSI: But doesn't even the way that you're explaining it suggest a certain disengagement, that this is just a matter of the Israeli leadership trying to prove its toughness? We're talking about over 200 people killed and a Lebanon that was barely restructured and reconstituted being destroyed again.

ALTERMAN: I think in their view, they're not trying to destroy Lebanon. In their view, the citizens of northern Israel live in fear, partly because the government of Lebanon said we don't really care about Hezbollah attacks on Israelis. We really will over time move in, but if the Katyusha rockets fall, that's not really our problem, that's something the Israelis started.

I'm not sure that that is going to get them the right result either with Hezbollah or with the Lebanese government, but that's where they're going. And as your previous speaker said, there is a strain of thought in Israel that says it is force that gets the Arab world to take notice, and we have to apply more force. The question is.

RATTANSI: Jon Alterman, we have to leave it there, but thank you so much.

ALTERMAN: Thank you, Shihab.

RATTANSI: That's INSIGHT. I'm Shihab Rattansi.

END

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