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Post by warriorwitch on Jul 19, 2006 13:10:02 GMT
Last Updated: Wednesday, 19 July 2006, 12:26 GMT 13:26 UK
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Dozens die in fresh Lebanon raids
Southern Lebanon is sustaining heavy damage
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At least 40 civilians have been killed in Israeli air strikes in Lebanon.
At least 12 people died and about 30 were wounded in the southern village of Srifa, near Tyre, where residents said at least 10 homes were flattened.
There was also heavy fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas on the Lebanese side of the border, with Israeli casualties reported.
Israel attacked Lebanon after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid a week ago.
At least 270 Lebanese - mostly civilians - have been killed since then.
Twenty-five Israelis have died, including 13 civilians killed by Hezbollah rocket attacks.
Mid-East crisis map
Arabic media spotlight
The latest Israeli air strikes hit targets in the east and south of Lebanon.
Residents in Srifa said at least 10 members of one family died, and reports suggest many more were killed in other houses.
At least six people died in the southern town of Nabatiyeh, while civilian deaths were also reported in other parts of the south and near Baalbek in the east.
Open-ended conflict
Meanwhile Israeli ground troops have continued to mount what they call "restricted pinpoint attacks" across the border in southern Lebanon.
Arabic TV stations Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya said two Israeli soldiers have been killed, but there is no confirmation from Israel.
In pictures: No reprieve
The Israelis say they are fighting to end the control of Hezbollah over the lives of ordinary people on both sides of the border.
"We won't have a terrorist organisation deployed on our northern border and Hezbollah is the one that has destabilised the entire region," Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin told the BBC.
A senior Israeli army commander, Gen Alon Friedman, warned it could take weeks to reach a turning point in the combat.
The BBC's Paul Adams in Jerusalem, who has been talking to UN diplomats, says he understands Israel has no interest in diplomacy at this stage.
Exodus
Many thousands of people continue to flee Lebanon, and several countries have sent ships and helicopters to move their nationals.
FOREIGNERS IN LEBANON
Canada: 40,000
Philippines: 30,000
Australia: 25,000
US: 25,000
UK: 22,000 (inc. 10,000 with dual nationality)
France: 20,000
Navy ships and chartered vessels have been shuttling back and forth between Cyprus and Lebanon.
A British warship arrived in Cyprus on Wednesday, carrying 180 UK citizens and is returning to Beirut.
A Norwegian ferry has taken hundreds of Norwegians, Swedes and Americans to Cyprus, while a US-chartered ship has docked in Beirut to evacuate US and Australian citizens.
Tens of thousands of people - including many Lebanese families - have fled across the border to Syria.
Relief agencies say there is a growing need for water, sanitation and medical facilities for more than 500,000 people displaced within Lebanon.
Diplomacy
Wednesday also saw Israeli strikes in Beirut, with a Christian district coming under fire for the first time, as well as more Hezbollah rocket attacks on the northern Israeli city of Haifa.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Hezbollah, Syria and Iran are using our country as a battleground against Israel
Nayef, Beirut
Send us your comments
Voices from the conflict
No deaths were reported in either incident.
Diplomatic efforts are continuing. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana held talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
Afterwards Mr Solana condemned the capture of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah and called for a ceasefire.
A UN team that has been in the region over the past few days is preparing to fly back to New York to brief Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is due to address the Security Council on Thursday.
Israel also conducted separate operations in Palestinian areas.
At least nine Palestinians have been killed in fresh Israeli operations in Gaza and the West Bank.
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Post by warriorwitch on Jul 20, 2006 9:58:28 GMT
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Mandate for Palestine
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Palestine and Transjordan were incorporated (under different legal and administrative arrangements) into the Mandate for Palestine issued by the League of Nations to Great Britain on 29 September, 1923.
The Palestine Ensign, flown by ships registered in the Mandate territory, 1927-1948The Mandate for Palestine[1] also known as the Mandate of Palestine or British Mandate of Palestine was a territory in the Middle East including the modern territories of Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip, formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire, which the League of Nations entrusted to the United Kingdom to administer in the aftermath of World War I as a Mandate Territory.
Contents [hide]
1 Establishment of British League of Nations mandate
2 Palestinian Arab opposition to Jewish immigration
3 Great Uprising
4 World War II and the Nazi Holocaust
5 Division of Palestine by United Nations
6 Population of the British Mandate of Palestine
7 Land ownership of the British Mandate of Palestine
7.1 Land Ownership by district
7.2 Land ownership by type
7.3 Land Laws of Palestine
8 British High Commissioners for Palestine
9 See also
10 For further reading
11 Notes
12 External links
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Establishment of British League of Nations mandate
British interest in Zionism dates to the rise in importance of the British Empire's South Asian enterprises in the early 19th century, concurrent with the Great Game and planning for the Suez Canal. As early as 1840, Viscount Palmerston (later to become Prime Minister) wrote:
"There exists at the present time among the Jews dispersed over Europe a strong notion that the time is approaching when their nation is to return to Palestine. It would be of manifest importance to the Sultan to encourage the Jews to return and settle in Palestine because the wealth that they would bring with them would increase the resources of the Sultan's dominions, and the Jewish people if returning under the sanction and protection at the invitation of the Sultan would be a check upon any future evil designs of Egypt or its neighbours. I wish to instruct your Excellency strongly to recommend to the Turkish government to hold out every just encouragement to the Jews of Europe to return to Palestine."[2]
Before the end of World War I, Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The British, under General Allenby during the Arab Revolt stirred up by the British intelligence officer T. E. Lawrence, defeated the Turkish forces in 1917 and occupied Palestine and Syria. The land was administered by the British for the remainder of the war. The British military administration ended starvation with the aid of food supplies from Egypt, successfully fought typhus and cholera epidemics and significantly improved the water supply to Jerusalem. They reduced corruption by paying the Arab and Jewish judges higher salaries. Communications were improved by new railway and telegraph lines.
The United Kingdom was granted control of Palestine by the Versailles Peace Conference which established the League of Nations in 1919 and appointed Herbert Samuel, a former Postmaster General in the British cabinet, who was instrumental in drafting the Balfour Declaration, as its first High Commissioner in Palestine. During World War I the British had made two promises regarding territory in the Middle East. Britain had promised the local Arabs, through Lawrence of Arabia, independence for a united Arab country covering most of the Arab Middle East, in exchange for their supporting the British; and Britain had promised to create and foster a Jewish national home as laid out in the Balfour Declaration, 1917.
The British had, in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, previously promised the Hashemite family lordship over most land in the region in return for their support in the Great Arab Revolt during World War I. In 1920 at the Conference of Sanremo, Italy, the League of Nations mandate over Palestine was assigned to Britain. This territory at this time included all of what would later become the State of Israel, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, a part of the Golan Heights, and the Kingdom of Jordan. The majority of the approximately 750,000 people in this multi-ethnic region were Arabic-speaking Muslims, including a Bedouin population (estimated at 103,331 at the time of the 1922 census [3] and concentrated in the Beersheba area and the region south and east of it), as well as Jews (who comprised some 11% of the total) and smaller groups of Druze, Syrians, Sudanese, Circassians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Hejazi Arabs.
In June 1922 the League of Nations passed the Palestine Mandate. The Palestine Mandate was an explicit document regarding Britain's responsibilities and powers of administration in Palestine including "secur[ing] the establishment of the Jewish national home", and "safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine".
The document defining Britain's obligations as Mandate power copied the text of the Balfour Declaration concerning the establishment of a Jewish homeland:
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
Many articles of the document specified actions in support of Jewish immigration and political status. However, it was also stated that in the large, mostly arid, territory to the east of the Jordan River, then called Transjordan, Britain could 'postpone or withhold' application of the provisions dealing with the 'Jewish National Home'. At the Cairo Conference of 1921 a government under the Hashimite Emir Abdullah who had just been displaced from ruling the Hejaz was established in Transjordan. In September 1922, the British government presented a memorandum to the League of Nations stating that Transjordan would be excluded from all the provisions dealing with Jewish settlement, and this memorandum was approved on 11 September. From that point onwards, Britain administered the part west of the Jordan as Palestine (which was 23% of the entire territory), and the part east of the Jordan as Transjordan (constituting 77% of the mandated territories). Technically they remained one mandate but most official documents referred to them as if they were two separate mandates. Transjordan remained under British control until 1946.
In 1923 Britain transferred a part of the Golan Heights to the French Mandate of Syria, in exchange for the Metula region.
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Palestinian Arab opposition to Jewish immigration
Kibbutz Degania Alef, during the 1930sDuring the 1920s, 100,000 Jewish immigrants entered Palestine, and 6,000 non-Jewish immigrants did so as well. Jewish immigration was controlled by the Histadrut, which selected between applicants on the grounds of their political creed. Land purchased by Jewish agencies was leased on the conditions that it be worked only by Jewish labour and that the lease should not be held by non-Jews.
Initially, Jewish immigration to Palestine met little opposition from the Palestinian Arabs. However, as anti-Semitism grew in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish immigration (mostly from Europe) to Palestine began to increase markedly, creating much Arab resentment.
There was violent incitement from the Palestine Muslim leadership that led to violent attacks against the Jewish population. In some cases, land purchases by the Jewish agencies from absentee landlords led to the eviction of the Palestinian Arab tenants, who were replaced by the Jews of the kibbutzim. The Arabic speakers before World War I had the status of peasants (felaheen), and did not own their land although they might own the trees that grew on that land. Because most of these Jews were familiar with the European tradition of land-ownership, they did not realize that they were purchasing only the land, not the trees that grew on that land. This was often a source of misunderstanding and conflict. The olive tree is particularly important as it can remain productive for more than one thousand years.
The British government placed limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine. These quotas were controversial, particularly in the latter years of British rule, and both Arabs and Jews disliked the policy, each side for its own reasons. In response to numerous Arab attacks on Jewish communities, the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organization, was formed on June 15, 1920. Tensions led to widespread violent disturbances on several occasions, notably in 1921, 1929 (primarily violent attacks by Arabs on Jews — see Hebron) and 1936-1939. Beginning in 1936, several Jewish groups such as Etzel (Irgun) and Lehi (Stern Gang) conducted their own campaigns of violence against British and Arab targets. This prompted the British government to label them both as terrorist organizations.
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Great Uprising
Main article: Great Uprising
In 1937, the Peel Commission proposed a partition between Jewish and Arab areas that was rejected by both the Arabs and the Zionist Congress.
In 1936-1939 the mandate experienced an upsurge in militant Arab nationalism that became known as the Great Uprising and, "The Arab Revolt." The revolt was triggered by increased Jewish immigration, primarily Jews that were ejected by the Nazi regime in Germany as well as rising anti-Semitism throughout Europe. The revolt was led or co-opted by the Grand Mufti, Haj Amin Al-Husseini and his Husseini family. The Arabs felt they were being marginalized in their own country, but in addition to non-violent strikes, they resorted to violence. Husseini's men killed more Arabs than Jews, using the revolt as an excuse to settle accounts with rival clans. The Jewish organization Etzel replied with its own terrorist campaign, with marketplace bombings and other violent acts that also killed hundreds. Eventually, the uprising was put down by the British using severe measures. After he was implicated in killing the British district commissioner for the Galilee, Haj Amin El Husseini fled first to Lebanon, then to Iraq, and finally to Germany in late 1941.
The British placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in the remaining land, directly contradicting the provision of the Mandate which said "the Administration of Palestine... shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency... close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes." A similar proposal to limit immigration in 1931 had been termed a violation of the mandate by the League of Nations, but by 1939 the League of Nations was defunct. According to the Israeli side, the British had by 1949 allotted over 8500 acres (34 km²) to Arabs, and about 4100 acres (16 km²) to Jews.
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World War II and the Nazi Holocaust
As in most of the Arab world, there was no unanimity amongst the Palestinian Arabs as to their position regarding the combatants in WWII. Many signed up for the British army, but others saw an Axis victory as a likely outcome and a way of wresting Palestine back from the Zionists and the British. Some of the leadership went further, especially the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini (who had by then escaped to Iraq), who on November 25, 1941, formally declared jihad against the Allied Powers.
Even though Arabs were only marginally higher than Jews in Nazi racial theory, the Nazis naturally encouraged Arab support as much as possible as a counter to British hegemony throughout the Arab world.[1]
Arabs who opposed the persecution of the Jews at the hand of the Nazis included Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia and Egyptian intellectuals such as Tawfiq al-Hakim and Abbas Mahmoud al-Arkad. (Source: Yad Vashem). The mandate recruited soldiers in Palestine. About 6,000 Palestinian Arabs joined the British forces and about 26,000 Jews.
In World War II, Italy, which in 1940 declared war on the United Kingdom on Germany's side, attacked Palestine from the air. In 1942 there was a period of anxiety for the Yishuv, when the German forces of general Erwin Rommel advanced east in North Africa towards the Suez Canal and there was fear that they would conquer Palestine. This period was referred to as the two hundred days of anxiety. This event was the direct cause for the founding, with British support, of the Palmach[2] - a highly-trained regular unit belonging to Haganah (which was mostly made up of reserve troops).
The Holocaust had a major effect on the situation in Palestine. During the war, the British forbade entry into Palestine of European Jews escaping Nazi persecution, placing them in detention camps or deporting them to places such as Mauritius. Avraham Stern, the leader of the Jewish Lehi terrorist gang, whose will to fight the British was so strong he offered to fight on the Nazi side, and other Zionists, tried to convince the Nazis to continue seeing emigration from Europe as the "solution" for their "Jewish problem", but the Nazis gradually abandoned this idea in favor of containment and physical extermination.
Starting in 1939, the Zionists organized an illegal immigration effort, known as Aliya Beth, conducted by "Hamossad Le'aliyah Bet", that rescued tens of thousands of European Jews from the Nazis by shipping them to Palestine in rickety boats. Many of these boats were intercepted. The last immigrant boat to try to enter Palestine during the war was the Struma, torpedoed in the Black Sea by a Soviet submarine in February 1942. The boat sank with the loss of nearly 800 lives. Illegal immigration resumed after WW II.
Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zuri, members of the Jewish Lehi underground, assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo on 6 November 1944. Moyne was the British Minister of State for the Middle East. The assassination is said to have turned British Prime Minister Winston Churchill against the Zionist cause. Fighting Jewish terrorists on one hand and the Germans in North Africa on the other did not endear the British to the Jews in Palestine at this critical stage of the war.
The British considered it more important to get Arab backing, because of their important interests in Egypt and other Arab lands, and especially to guarantee the friendship of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, and therefore continued the ban on immigration.
As a result of the assassination of Lord Moyne, the Haganah kidnapped, interrogated, and turned over to the British many members of the Irgun (ironically Lehi members were not harmed as a result of an understanding with Haganah, even though Lehi committed the assassination). This period is known as the 'Hunting Season'. Irgun ordered its members not to resist or retaliate with violence, so as to prevent a spiraling to civil war.
Following the war, 250,000 Jewish refugees were stranded in displaced persons (DP) camps in Europe. Despite the pressure of world opinion, in particular the repeated requests of US President Harry S. Truman and the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, the British refused to lift the ban on immigration and admit 100,000 displaced persons to Palestine. The Jewish underground forces then united and carried out several attacks against the British. In 1946, the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the British administration, killing 92 people.
Seeing that the situation was quickly spiraling out of hand, the British announced their desire to terminate their mandate and to withdraw by May 1948.
[edit]
Division of Palestine by United Nations
Main article: 1947 UN Partition Plan
The United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations, attempted to solve the dispute between the Palestinian Jews and Arabs. The UN created the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), composed of representatives from several states. None of the Great Powers were represented, in order to make the committee more neutral.
UNSCOP considered two main proposals. The first called for the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states in Palestine, with Jerusalem to be placed under international administration. The second called for the creation of a single federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states. A majority of UNSCOP favoured the first option, although several members supported the second option instead and one member (Australia) said it was unable to decide between them. As a result the first option was adopted and the UN General Assembly largely accepted UNSCOP's proposals, though they made some adjustments to the boundaries between the two states proposed by it. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal.
The partition plan was rejected out of hand by the leadership of the Palestinian Arabs and by most of the Arab population. Most of the Jews accepted the proposal, in particular the Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish state-in-formation. Numerous records indicate the joy of Palestine's Jewish inhabitants as they attended the U.N. session voting for the division proposal. Up to this day, Israeli history books mention 29 November, the date of this session, as the most important date leading to the creation of the Israeli state.
Several Jews, however, declined the proposal. Menachem Begin, Irgun's leader, announced: "The partition of the homeland is illegal. It will never be recognized. The signature by institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. The Land of Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for ever". His views were publicly rejected by the majority of the nascent Jewish state. Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand, claim that this publicly expressed acceptance was mainly propaganda for the consumption of Western nations, and that Begin's statement more accurately reflected the real intentions of the founders of the State of Israel.
On the date of British withdrawal the Jewish provisional government declared the formation of the State of Israel, and the provisional government said that it would grant full civil rights to all within its borders, whether Arab, Jew, Bedouin or Druze. The declaration stated:
We appeal ... to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
Thus, upon creating the state - any inhabitants inside the newly formed State of Israel, whether Palestinian Jews or Palestinian Arabs, became Israeli.
Obviously, this inclusive solution was not an exhaustive reflection of governmental opinion, Chaim Weizmann, for example, is reported in the Churchill White Paper, 1922 to have said:
[Our intention is to] finally establish such a society in Palestine that Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English, or America is American.
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Population of the British Mandate of Palestine
In 1922 the British undertook the first census of the mandate. The population was 752,048, comprising 589,177 Muslims, 83,790 Jews, 71,464 Christians and 7,617 persons belonging to other groups. The 1922 figures may refer to both banks of the Jordan river, at least for the non-Jews. After a second census in 1931, the population had grown to 1,036,339 in total, comprising 761,922 Muslims, 175,138 Jews, 89,134 Christians and 10,145 people belonging to other groups. There were no further censuses but statistics were maintained by counting births, deaths and migration. Some components such as illegal immigration could only be estimated approximately. The White Paper of 1939, which placed immigration restrictions on Jews, stated that the Jewish population "has risen to some 450,000" and was "approaching a third of the entire population of the country". In 1945 a demographic study showed that the population had grown to 1,764,520, comprising 1,061,270 Muslims, 553,600 Jews, 135,550 Christians and 14,100 people of other groups.
Year Total Muslim Jewish Christian Other
1922 752,048 589,177(78%) 83,790(11%) 71,464(10%) 7,617(1%)
1931 1,036,339 761,922(74%) 175,138(17%) 89,134(9%) 10,145(1%)
1945 1,764,520 1,061,270(60%) 553,600(31%) 135,550(8%) 14,100(1%)
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Land ownership of the British Mandate of Palestine
The Arabs, constituting no less than two thirds of Palestine's population, owned the vast majority of private property. According to one source Arabs owned about half of the land [4]. Other sources, however, provide considerably lower figures [5].
Jews, making up about a third of Palestine's population, privately and collectively owned 1,393,531 dunums in 1945 (Khalaf, 1991, pp. 26-27) and 1,850,000 dunums in 1947 (Avneri p. 224). This constituted about 20% of cultivable, and 7% of the total land of Palestine.
Public property or "crown lands" belonged to the government of Palestine. The amount of Palestine owned by the government is also disputed. One source puts the number as high as 70% of the total land
[6http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_of_Palestine].
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david
New Member
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Post by david on Jul 20, 2006 10:44:45 GMT
Did you read the transcript of their conversation?
For anyone who did not, here is the transcript...
Blair/Bush exchange: transcript
Bush: Yo, Blair. How are you doing?
Blair: I’m just...
Bush: You’re leaving?
Blair: No, no, no not yet. On this trade thingy...[INAUDIBLE]
Bush: Yeah, I told that to the man.
Blair: Are you planning to say that here or not?
Bush: If you want me to.
Blair: Well, it’s just that if the discussion arises...
Bush: I just want some movement.
Blair: Yeah.
Bush: Yesterday we didn’t see much movement.
Blair: No, no, it may be that it’s not, it may be that it’s impossible.
Bush: I am prepared to say it.
Blair: But it’s just I think what we need to be an opposition...
Bush: Who is introducing the trade?
Blair: Angela [Merkel, the German Chancellor].
Bush: Tell her to call ’em.
Blair: Yes.
Bush: Tell her to put him on, them on the spot. Thanks for [INAUDIBLE] it’s awfully thoughtful of you.
Blair: It’s a pleasure.
Bush: I know you picked it out yourself.
Blair: Oh, absolutely, in fact [INAUDIBLE].
Bush: What about Kofi? [INAUDIBLE] His attitude to ceasefire and everything else ... happens.
Blair: Yeah, no I think the [INAUDIBLE] is really difficult. We can’t stop this unless you get this international business agreed.
Bush: Yeah.
Blair: I don’t know what you guys have talked about, but as I say I am perfectly happy to try and see what the lie of the land is, but you need that done quickly because otherwise it will spiral.
Bush: I think Condi is going to go pretty soon.
Blair: But that’s, that’s, that’s all that matters. But if you... you see it will take some time to get that together.
Bush: Yeah, yeah.
Blair: But at least it gives people...
Bush: It’s a process, I agree. I told her your offer to...
Blair: Well...it’s only if I mean... you know. If she’s got a..., or if she needs the ground prepared as it were... Because obviously if she goes out, she’s got to succeed, if it were, whereas I can go out and just talk.
Bush: You see, the ... thing is what they need to do is to get Syria, to get Hezbollah to stop doing this **** and it’s over.
Blair: [INAUDIBLE]
Bush: [INADUBILE]
Blair: Syria.
Bush: Why?
Blair: Because I think this is all part of the same thing.
Bush: Yeah.
Blair: What does he think? He thinks if Lebanon turns out fine, if we get a solution in Israel and Palestine, Iraq goes in the right way...
Bush: Yeah, yeah, he is sweet.
Blair: He is honey. And that’s what the whole thing is about. It’s the same with Iraq.
Bush: I felt like telling Kofi to call, to get on the phone to Assad and make something happen.
Blair: Yeah.
Bush: [INAUDIBLE]
Blair:[INAUDIBLE]
Bush: We are not blaming the Lebanese government.
Blair: Is this...? (at this point Blair taps the microphone in front of him and the sound is cut.)
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Post by warriorwitch on Aug 31, 2006 17:06:27 GMT
Last Updated: Thursday, 31 August 2006, 17:06 GMT 18:06 UK E-mail this to a friend Printable version Donors make huge Lebanon pledge Thousands of homes were destroyed in the month-long conflict The Lebanon donor conference in Stockholm has raised more than $940m in pledges of new money, Swedish Foreign Minister Jan Eliasson has said. The organisers of the aid conference had set a target of $500m. The new pledges bring the total amount of money raised to help with the rebuilding of Lebanon to $1.2bn. PM Fouad Siniora told the meeting his country had sustained billions of dollars of damages during the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah. Mr Siniora said Lebanon's recovery from its civil war had been "wiped out in days". Wide margin The Lebanese government has previously put the cost of damage at $3.6bn. It says 15,000 homes were damaged in the conflict and has appealed for $75m for temporary housing and $30m to repair major roads and put up bridges. Ministers from more than 60 countries attended the conference, as well as officials from the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Red Cross. DAMAGE TO LEBANON Infrastructure 15,000 homes, 78 bridges and 630km of roads damaged Agriculture Up to $185m of crops, 1m poultry, 25,000 goats and sheep lost Economy 6% growth (forecast) set to plunge, unemployment up Crisis facts and figures Annan's Mid-East challenge Sweden's foreign minister announced the amount of money raised at a press conference in Stockholm saying, "the conference has thus met its objective with a wide margin". Mr Siniora expressed his "great appreciation" to the donor countries. "Lots of work has been done during the past week in order to preserve the dignity of the Lebanese, and in order to stop the aggression that was made against them," he said. At the end of the meeting the participants issued a statement calling on Israel to end its air and sea blockade of Israel, dubbing it "a major impediment to the early recovery process". Israel imposed the blockade to stop arms reaching Hezbollah militants after fighting with the Lebanese group erupted on 12 July. Control returned United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan also called for the blockade to be lifted when he stopped off in Jordan as part of his tour of the Middle East aimed at bolstering the fragile peace between Israel and Hezbollah. Mr Annan has now arrived in Syria on the latest leg of his regional tour. Unexploded cluster bombs litter the ground in southern Lebanon He is to meet the Syrian foreign minister before talks with President Bashar al-Assad on Friday. Meanwhile, the Israeli army says it has handed back control of one part of its border with Lebanon, near the Israeli town of Metulla, to the Lebanese authorities. It is the first time since the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that Israeli troops have withdrawn from any part of the border area. The BBC's Jill McGivering in Jerusalem says that many will see this as a positive move which will help to build confidence during a time of difficult transition from conflict to a more durable peace. Mr Annan has tried to press Israel to give a definite commitment on when it will withdraw all of its troops, but so far Israeli leaders have refused to agree to a specific plan. Israel has come in for strong criticism from the UN over its use of cluster bombs during its Lebanon offensive. "I think those kinds of weapons should not be used in civilian and populated areas," Mr Annan said, urging Israel to give the UN maps of the areas that were bombed so civilians in those areas could be protected and the bombs disarmed. On Wednesday the UN's humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, condemned the "completely immoral" way Israel dropped thousands of cluster bombs on Lebanon even as a resolution appeared imminent. Israel says the weapons it uses are not illegal. Lebanon has asked for funds to help clear landmines and unexploded cluster bombs, which are preventing farmers returning to their fields. E-mail this to a friend Printable version news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/5303410.stmPublished: 2006/08/31 16:24:25 GMT © BBC MMVI |
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Post by celticwitch on Jul 12, 2007 11:37:00 GMT
Yahoo! My Yahoo Mail Search:
[
Reports condemn Israel and Lebanon on war
A year after the outbreak of war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, both countries have failed to act on war crimes committed during a month of fighting, two human rights groups said on Thursday.
In scathing reports, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both called for an arms embargo on Israel and the Islamist guerrillas until steps are taken to ensure that human rights violations are not repeated.
The two reports criticised Israel for dropping thousands of cluster bombs on southern Lebanon, many of which failed to explode and continue to pose a threat to civilians. They rebuked Hezbollah for firing at least 4,000 rockets at Israeli towns.
Nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died during 34 days.
"Neither the Israeli nor the Lebanese government has investigated these violations, nor has either held anyone accountable," said Human Rights Watch.
An Israeli commission to investigate the war focused primarily on its military's shortcomings, while the Lebanese authorities, "engulfed in internal tensions ... have lacked both the will and, seemingly, the capacity to investigate violations", the group said.
Amnesty International also called for an international arms embargo.
"The (U.N.) Security Council should declare and enforce an arms embargo on both Israel and Hezbollah until effective mechanisms are in place to ensure weapons will not be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law," said Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa programme.
The Amnesty report called on Israel to provide maps with the locations of cluster bombs dropped in south Lebanon and urged Hezbollah to provide information about two Israeli soldiers it captured on July 12 last year in a cross-border raid.
"Israel is a country with the rule of law ... and a respect for human rights. When allegations are raised about soldiers acting inappropriately, they are investigated," Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.
There was no immediate comment from Lebanese authorities.
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