Adonis Diaries

August 15, 2006

Israel withdrew from all the eastern part of south Lebanon and withdrew today from the town of Ghandourieh of where they lost 20 Merkava tanks three days ago.  Only 3% of the Israelis believe that they won a clear-cut victory and 85% of the Americans handed the victory to Hezbollah. Ramsfield (US defense minister)is scared shit of when the Shiaa in Iraq get organized and armed.  Tony Blair of England is withdrawing from Basra by the end of the month; I may conjecture that Tony is trying to leave Iraq before the crazy Bush antagonizes Iran militarily.  This time around Britain will have nothing to do with that lunatic of GW Bush.

Hassan Nasr Allah offered us a fresh and cool analysis of the war aftermath.  His speech was mainly targeted to those Lebanese politicians who jumped on the occasion to demanding from Hezbollah to disarm before Israel withdraw from Lebanon, before the Lebanese prisoners are returned, and before the Lebanese army is ready to take positions along the Litany River and before the UN compose the Blue-Helmeted  multinational forces.   Nasr Allah blamed these politicians who are close to the US and against Syria, and who indeed have no substantial popular support, to go far beyond the demands of the UN resolution 1701 or even the attempts of Israel to fulfill their objectives in this war.

Nasr Allah promised that reconstruction and compensations to the refugees will commence immediately and that Hezbollah is not about to wait for the government to start what it is supposed to do.  Saudi Arabia is scrambling to form an association for reconstructing Lebanon to challenge the financial help coming from Iran.

Around noon, President Bashar Assad of Syria went on air and rambled for almost an hour.  He congratulated Hezbollah on its victory, lambasted the “half -man” of the Arab leaders who provided political cover to Israel to extend its objectives and who never believed in any kind of resistance to the plans of the US and Israel in the Middle East.  Assad asserted that the Arab regimes have in fact submitted all their cards to the US in order to engineer a peace process, a decision that not only failed the process but encouraged more blood shed among the Palestinians and worked very hard to restrain any Palestinian independence and self autonomy from Israel. Assad never mentioned the prerequisite of liberating the Golan Highs or how he will subdue the political fractions in Lebanon staunchly opposing the Baath regime.

Assad’s pronouncements generated severe and numerous backlash from the media and the local and foreign politicians. The German foreign minister canceled his trip to Damascus. The reactions to Assad’s speech range from outright opposition of everything he said to cynical and hidden hatred for this regime that is being further isolated and has no support but from Iran.  The main objective of Assad is plainly to calm down the internal unrest of his people who realized that Syria was unable to help the resistance forces in Lebanon or was not willing to get involved, as was the positions of most Arab States.

Hezbollah did not respond to Assad’s speech, and most probably will not, but I suspect Hezbollah is not that thrilled and would gladly be content that Assad did not get himself involved at this junction.  Assad’s speech smacks of plainly usurping the victory of the Lebanese resistance forces and implicitly claiming the victory to Syria who was viewed by the Western Nations as the main ally to Iran in the region.  What we need is to keep internally united and iron out our differences by ourselves. The contributions of Syria in this conflict was to supplying electricity to the northern part of Lebanon, some gas, and most importantly permitting thousands of Lebanese refugees to enter Syria, fly from Syria and allowing humanitarian aids to be transferred by land from Damascus. These contributions are important and should convince our antagonistic politicians to learn not to wage vicious political wars with our immediate and strongest neighbor.

I went to the gym around 3:15 and had a good afternoon; I enjoyed some sun tan, swam in the outdoor cold pool, used the gym machines, and had a sauna and a hot shower.  I met gorgeous girls at the gym doing static bicycles and jogging machine but did not attempt to link any conversation with them.  I realized that they were following my footsteps when I was done with the exercise machines.  I returned about 8 for the evening news.  Mother was at my aunt Marie to congratulate her on the Virgin Marie day.

Victor and Raymonde visited and dined at Naoum’s, his brother, and took Adrea and Chelsea with them.  Joanna has a day off and is not cheerful; she is spending her time at home doing or creating matrices of numbers and playing with her newly adoptive kitten which she finally called Snowy.  William is constantly on the phone, or that’s how it appears every time I see him.