Adonis Diaries

The sixth war; (August 13, 2009)

On July 15, 2006 I started my diary (on a daily basis with much detail). On July 12 Israel launched its sixth offensive war on Lebanon since 1949.  For over 60 years Israel made it its strategy to disturb Lebanon with civil wars and displacing its citizens from the southern region in order to extend its territory to water resources.

For two days and nights now Israel has been pounding all of Lebanon for the lame excuses that the Islamic Lebanese Resistance of Hezbollah was successful in taking two Israeli soldiers as prisoners.  Hezbollah had warned everyone for many months and at several occasions that it is in the process of planning to capture Israeli soldiers in order to exchange them with Lebanese prisoners. The problem is that the well planned “adventure” did not go as smoothly and as expected: it resulted in the destruction of two Israeli tanks and many Israeli deaths because of the zeal of the Israeli army to salvage the casualties.

Apparently, Israel’s Olmert PM is not now in the mood of negotiating with Hezbollah for the mutual release of prisoners as former Sharon PM has done last year.  George W. Bush has ordered Israel to launch a full scale war against Hezbollah though many Israeli ministeres wanted to end the war right now.

Israel has the total backing of George W Bush to punish Lebanon with extreme vengeance for failing to promptly satisfying his strategic plans in the greater Middle East; Bush also wants to revenge the more than 200 US soldiers who perished in 1983 by a Hezbollah suicide car bombing around the airport.  Hezbollah has just been created to resist Israeli occupation of Lebanon that started in 1982; Israel went then as far as entering our Capital Beirut.

Yesterday, my mother started to speak to herself, at my ear shot, that we need to withdraw some cash for emergency and secure supplies for a protracted war. Within an hour I drove and withdrew more than my usual amount of cash and stopped at the Wooden Bakery around 11: 15 am for bread: there was none left with promises that more supplies would be forthcoming by noon.

I continued my shopping “adventure” and parked on the street instead of the overflowing parking lot of Storiom’s supermarket.  There were no shopping carriages left; I picked up a hand held basket instead just for a loaf of bread:  the supermarket was jammed with customers in the cashiers lines, their carriages filled with two months supplies.  I felt a wave of disgust and left immediately.  On my way out a lady told me that there is no milk on the shelves and certainly no bread of any kind. 

I resumed my trip to Bekfaya to a shop that sells purely Lebanese food ingredients at affordable prices and bought three bags of white bread because brown breads were scarce, cheap olive, small white beans because the large beans were three times more expensive, two kilos of sugar, a kilo of “kishk”, some white hot pepper. 

I continued to the vegetable and fruit market where on Sundays I usually buy in bulk for our extended family of eleven persons; the market was jammed and no price tags were attached to the stands; prices have at least doubled and no one was asking for prices anymore.  I refused to wait and did not buy anything. 

The road to Bekfaya coming from Antelias was unusually busy: streams of cars driving fast were heading up to the mountain; I was told that they were going to Zahleh and Chtoura toward the Syrian border at Masnaa.  Israel has finally decided to bomb the main highway to the Syrian border bigining by the village of Sawfar. Fleeing people were borrowing the next best route through Bikfaya.

            On the first day of war my nephew Cedric came home mightily upset:  he is graduating in hotel management and the tourism season was completely shot and the tourists were evacuating Lebanon in drove; eventually foreign States would evacuate its citizens in ships.  Cedric initially blamed Hezbollah for that catastrophe but as Israel was decidedly going ahead with its destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure he relented.  It is a common behavior for people to blame the weaker party in any conflict for mass destruction as if Hezbollah is the one party who destroyed the airport, the electrical utilities, the maritime ports and the main highways.

            (Today, three years later, Hezbolah is celebrating its victory for a war that lasted 33 days, with the ful backing of the USA Administration, which offered Lebanon hope that no more Israeli offensive wars will ever be launched against Lebanon. Do you know of any State in the world that flourishes without government? Lebanon is proving that central governments are not solutions but hindrances to progress, peace, and prosperity.  For 60 days the designated Prime Minister Saad Hariri was not willing to form a government and taking all his time; this did not prevent two million tourists to flock to Lebanon and jam the roads, restaurants, and hotels.)