Skip to content

Tragedy in nahr al bared

  • by

By IRIN News – Nahr al-Bared, Lebanon

image

He picked plastics and paper off the rubble-filled conveyor belt, Issam Sayyed indicated to a white house behind him pock-marked with bullet holes and with its roof caved in. “That’s my home,” said the father of nine, a Palestinian refugee displaced from the Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon, which was ruined in a 15-week war last year between the army and Islamist insurgents.

Soon the bulldozers clearing the ruins would knock down the white house along with the others, and the remains of Sayyed’s home would be passing before his hands as he sorted through the rubble for a wage of US$13 a day.

Across from the camp in the temporary accommodation known as the “barracks”, Sayyed’s wife was mourning the loss of their 10th child, a baby boy. He had died for lack of medical care just four days after his birth, according to his father.

The failure of the international community, and Arab states in particular, to fund an emergency humanitarian appeal for Nahr al-Bared means life for refugees like Sayyed will get just a little harder.

The Palestinian refugee agency’s (UNRWA’s) emergency appeal for $42 million to meet the immediate humanitarian needs of the 30,000 Palestinians displaced from Nahr al-Bared remains almost entirely unfunded.

Only the USA and Norway have donated, meaning UNRWA will this month decrease rental subsidies for 3,200 displaced families from $200 to $150 a month, and reduce items in the food basket each family receives.

In June, UNRWA said it needed about $445 million to rebuild the refugee camp – both the so-called New Camp, which sustained heavy damage, and the original, smaller Old Camp which was completely destroyed.

OPEC

So far UNRWA says it has received just $70 million, 88 percent from Western donations. OPEC, the 13-member Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which this year is forecast to make record breaking revenues of over $1 trillion, has donated just $5m to the reconstruction of Nahr al-Bared. Six OPEC members are from the Middle East.

The $20 million cost of the projected 18-month rubble removal operation has been half met by the European Union (EU). In July 2007, Saudi Arabia donated $12 million to UNRWA to help displaced families pay rent and buy food, but as yet no Arab government has pledged to the long-term reconstruction of the camp.

“Buried under these thousands of tonnes of rubble are the dreams and achievements of a people who have waited 60 years for a just solution to their plight,” said UNRWA Deputy Commissioner-General Filipo Grandi at a press conference in Nahr al-Bared to launch the rubble removal on 29 October.

“Money is the most difficult challenge we face… I am very confident donors from west and east will deliver much-needed funds. What is at stake is the stability of the region and the well-being and future of 30,000 people. That is too important to ignore or forget.”

Protest

As he spoke, a handful of Palestinians held a noisy protest outside the press conference, accusing the international community of failing them.

“For those who believe in human rights what UNRWA is doing is a crime against humanity,” shouted an irate Arkan Bader, a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) faction in Nahr al-Bared.

“They have decreased medical funding by 15 percent. Gulf countries promised in June to pay half their commitments [to Nahr al-Bared] but until now they have paid nothing.”

Unexploded Ordnance

The magnitude of the task facing UNRWA and other agencies working on reconstruction and recovery in Nahr al-Bared was underlined by the assessment of a deminer leading the removal of unexploded ordnance (UXO) from the ruins of the camp.

Paul Leader, Nahr al-Bared task manager for Handicap International, which is contracted through UNRWA to clear UXO, said he expected the job could take 2-3 years to complete, despite an initial contract of just one year.

“Something of this magnitude and this level of contamination has never been done before,” said the veteran deminer, with experience in Iraq and the Balkans. “In any conventional war 10-15 percent of explosives do not explode. And there were a lot thrown in here.”

(Originally published in IRIN – www.irinnews.org – Nov 5, 2008)

Read More »Tragedy in nahr al bared

Israel sends Iran war warning to Obama

  • by

 

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has called on the White House not to rule out the military option for retarding Iran’s nuclear program.

In a meeting with visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday, Barak said Israel is ‘convinced that Iran continues to try to build a nuclear weapon’.

Tehran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), denies the Israeli claim and insists that its enrichment program is solely directed at the civilian applications of the technology.

Senator Barack Obama, the 44th president-elect of United States, has vowed to engage Iran with dialogue to resolve the nuclear dispute.

"We don’t rule out any option. We recommend others don’t rule out any option either," Ehud Barak said after the meeting with Rice in regard to Obama’s Iran policy.

Earlier on Thursday, Israel had expressed its opposition to potential Tehran-Washington reconciliation efforts — Tel Aviv’s first dissonance with an Obama administration.

Israeli Foreign Minister and Kadima leader Tzipi Livni said dialogue with Tehran would be ‘interpreted as weakness’.

"We need to continue the pressure on Iran by intensifying effective sanctions," Livni said on Israel Radio, urging the continuation of the Bush carrot-and-stick approach toward Tehran.

In dealing with Iran, the Bush White House introduced incentives and sanctions, as well as threats of launching strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities in order to persuade Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities.

Senator Obama has promised to change the Bush policy, which has failed to yield results on the Iranian issue.

The UN nuclear watchdog, which has extensively monitored Iran’s nuclear activities since 2003, concedes it is not in a position to fully clarify the nature of the Iranian nuclear program.

The agency, however, announced in its latest Iran report that its inspectors have not found any ‘components of a nuclear weapon’ or ‘related nuclear physics studies’ in the country.

MD/AA

Read More »Israel sends Iran war warning to Obama

Obama picks pro Isarael hardliner for top post

  • by

Obama Picks Pro-Israel Hardliner for Top Post

By Ali Abunimah

During the United States election campaign, racists and pro-Israel hardliners tried to make an issue out of President-elect Barack Obama’s middle name, Hussein. Such people might take comfort in another middle name, that of Obama’s pick for White House Chief of Staff: Rahm Israel Emanuel.

Emanuel is Obama’s first high-level appointment and it’s one likely to disappointment those who hoped the president-elect would break with the George W. Bush Administration’s pro-Israel policies. White House Chief of Staff is often considered the most powerful office in the executive branch, next to the president. Obama has offered Emanuel the position according to Democratic party sources cited by media including Reuters and The New York Times. While Emanuel is expected to accept the post, that had not been confirmed by Wednesday evening the day after the election.

Rahm Emanuel was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1959, the son of Benjamin Emanuel, a pediatrician who helped smuggle weapons to the Irgun, the Zionist militia of former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, in the 1940s. The Irgun carried out numerous terrorist attacks on Palestinian civilians including the bombing of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in 1946.

Emanuel continued his father’s tradition of active support for Israel; during the 1991 Gulf War he volunteered to help maintain Israeli army vehicles near the Lebanon border when southern Lebanon was still occupied by Israeli forces.

As White House political director in the first Clinton administration, Emanuel orchestrated the famous 1993 signing ceremony of the "Declaration of Principles" between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Emanuel was elected to Congress representing a north Chicago district in 2002 and he is credited with a key role in delivering a Democratic majority in the 2006 mid-term elections. He has been a prominent supporter of neoliberal economic policies on free trade and welfare reform.

One of the most influential politicians and fundraisers in his party, Emanuel accompanied Obama to a meeting of AIPAC’s executive board just after the Illinois senator had addressed the pro-Israel lobby’s conference last June.

In Congress, Emanuel has been a consistent and vocal pro-Israel hardliner, sometimes more so than President Bush. In June 2003, for example, he signed a letter criticizing Bush for being insufficiently supportive of Israel. "We were deeply dismayed to hear your criticism of Israel for fighting acts of terror," Emanuel, along with 33 other Democrats wrote to Bush. The letter said that Israel’s policy of assassinating Palestinian political leaders "was clearly justified as an application of Israel’s right to self-defense" ("Pelosi supports Israel’s attacks on Hamas group," San Francisco Chronicle, 14 June 2003).

In July 2006, Emanuel was one of several members who called for the cancellation of a speech to Congress by visiting Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki because al-Maliki had criticized Israel’s bombing of Lebanon. Emanuel called the Lebanese and Palestinian governments "totalitarian entities with militias and terrorists acting as democracies" in a 19 July 2006 speech supporting a House resolution backing Israel’s bombing of both countries that caused thousands of civilian victims.

Emanuel has sometimes posed as a defender of Palestinian lives, though never from the constant Israeli violence that is responsible for the vast majority of deaths and injuries. On 14 June 2007 he wrote to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "on behalf of students in the Gaza Strip whose future is threatened by the ongoing fighting there" which he blamed on "the violence and militancy of their elders." In fact, the fighting between members of Hamas and Fatah, which claimed dozens of lives, was the result of a failed scheme by US-backed militias to violently overthrow the elected Hamas-led national unity government. Emanuel’s letter urged Rice "to work with allies in the region, such as Egypt and Jordan, to either find a secure location in Gaza for these students, or to transport them to a neighboring country where they can study and take their exams in peace." Palestinians often view such proposals as a pretext to permanently "transfer" them from their country, as many Israeli leaders have threatened. Emanuel has never said anything in support of millions of Palestinian children whose education has been disrupted by Israeli occupation, closures and blockades.

Emanuel has also used his position to explicitly push Israel’s interests in normalizing relations with Arab states and isolating Hamas. In 2006 he initiated a letter to President Bush opposing United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based Dubai Ports World’s attempt to buy the management business of six US seaports. The letter, signed by dozens of other lawmakers, stated that "The UAE has pledged to provide financial support to the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority and openly participates in the Arab League boycott against Israel." It argued that allowing the deal to go through "not only could place the safety and security of US ports at risk, but enhance the ability of the UAE to bolster the Hamas regime and its efforts to promote terrorism and violence against Israel" ("Dems Tie Israel, Ports," Forward, 10 March 2006).

Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, told Fox News that picking Emanuel is "just another indication that despite the attempts to imply that Obama would somehow appoint the wrong person or listen to the wrong people when it comes to the US-Israel relationship … that was never true."

Over the course of the campaign, Obama publicly distanced himself from friends and advisers suspected or accused of having "pro-Palestinian" sympathies. There are no early indications of a more balanced course.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli- Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

http://www.miftah.org

Read More »Obama picks pro Isarael hardliner for top post