Mission & Justice

Zvi Bar’el, 14/5/08

For the cannabis-growing residents of eastern Lebanon, recent internecine fighting in the country has been a blessing, albeit one covered in hash resin and dollar signs. To these villagers, gunshots and warfare are good for business, and the last three years have been far too quiet for their taste, leaving the authorities more than enough time and resources to come for their crops. Peace and quiet frees the Lebanese Army to help local law enforcement combat the drug trade, especially in the summer, when soldiers and police are deployed to cannabis fields to rip and cut the flowering stalks of marijuana set for processing and export to Israel, Europe and beyond.

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11/5/08; http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=7768

Women cyclists ride through the streets of Amman on Friday. The ride, which has become an annual event to campaign for peace and highlight the plight of Arab women, started in the Lebanese capital last week and the cyclists passed through Syria before arriving in the Kingdom through the Jaber crossing. More than 250 women from 30 countries including the US, Britain, Japan, South Africa, Turkey and Iran are taking part in the event, being held for the fourth consecutive year. Yesterday, the women rode to Madaba, where they visited religious and historical sites as well as Mount Nebo and the Baptism Site. The ‘Follow the Women’ bike ride was set up in 2003 by Detta Regan, a well-known international youth work adviser and European Woman of the Year in 2004

29/4/08

Differing accounts have emerged of what caused four Palestinian children and their mother to die during an Israeli air raid on the Gaza Strip.  While Palestinian witnesses blamed Monday’s deaths on an Israeli missile, the Israelis say the blast was caused when explosives carried by Palestinian fighters detonated during the raid. “Due to the sensitivity of the matter and the complexity of the battle … additional inquiries are to be carried out,” into the incident in the town of Beit Hanoun, the Israeli army said in a statement on Tuesday.

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28/4/08

Seven Palestinians have been killed during a raid by the Israeli army in the northern Gaza Strip, six of them by a shell which hit a family home. Four children and an elderly man were among the dead. The children’s mother was taken to hospital but died later as doctors struggled to save her life. The health ministry said shells were fired at a house in the town of Beit Hanoun - the family inside were eating breakfast at the time. The Israeli army said an air raid was targeting a group of armed men near the house.

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24/4/08; See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/977826.html

A state-run Lebanese news agency has said that an explosion of a cluster bomb left behind by the Israel Defense Forces from the Second Lebanon War wounded four young Lebanese in the country’s south. The report says that Friday’s incident occurred in the village of Adsheet when the four children, aged between 10 and 15, found the suspicious device and held it before it went off. The four were then taken to hospital in the southern province of Nabatiyeh. Lebanon has a huge problem with bombs left behind during the 2006 war. Twenty-seven civilians have been killed and 209 wounded since. UN and human rights groups say Israel dropped about 4 million cluster bomblets during the war. One million failed to explode and now endanger civilians.

George S. Hishmeh; 10/4/08

Sixty years ago this month, my mother rushed one morning into the bedroom that I shared with my younger brother, Suhail, and told us to dress quickly because we are travelling by sea very shortly to nearby Beirut, Lebanon. We had had quite an evening the night before - April 22 - in Haifa, our Palestinian hometown - a horrific night because of the sound of gunfire was deafening, keeping both of us wide awake. I recall the blankets that my father had placed over our window so that stray bullets would not harm us while we were asleep. It turned out that Haifa had fallen in the hands of armed Jewish groups and many Palestinian Arab families were already in the port area hoping to take a boat to the Lebanese capital.

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