Monday, July 31, 2006

Ceasefire in Place

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3283905,00.html

Nothing unexpected there. The Qana scenario was bound to happen (please, don't read this as any disrespect to the people killed there), including the inevitable ceasefire following that. It's why I thought we should have gone with the UN's offer for a ceasefire 3 days ago. Such a shame that so many people had to die in order for this to happen. I blame the Israeli government here for being so short sighted. Hopefully, Lebanon and the UN will get their act together and use the ceasefire to really evacuate people. I have to say though that I somehow doubt they will. The UN is good for talking, I am not at all sure they can actually do something on the ground :( If I could I would drive over there myself, support old folks and carry children in my arms, just to help those families get away from them. They were given 48 hours and the clock is ticking. I hope that the Lebanese government, the army and just regular Lebanese citizens are doing whatever they can to help evacuate civilians. If I were a Lebanese today, I would get into my car and drive south, to help get at least one famliy out of there. I hope they are doing just that...

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, the destruction of 42 bridges makes the trip to south Lebanon almost impossible.

AnneMoss said...

Good point, where do the humanitarian corridors go through then? From what I have read they are in place and in agreement with the UN, so I'm assuming some bridges are still in place?

Jean said...

The lebanese army, engineering section, can help with that.

But what I am really hoping out of that, secretly, is this:
If HA is really preventing people from fleeing the region, I hope this gets shown on TV.

Anonymous said...

Just out of curiosity, does this 48 hours cease-fire means that who ever get kills after this cease-fire, it’s her/his personal fault? Meaning that person who will be killed either had belonged to HA which then that would be mission accomplished or he/she was a civilian who for whatever reason could not leave and because he had the chance still it is justified for him to get killed?

But I can’t really get the picture, the southern Lebanon is being under bombardon for past 19 days, the bridges has been destroyed, roads has been destroyed, there is no petrol, there is no car, the people are living in hiding, and have no food, they have no electricity. Outsiders can not tell where people are hiding!

I wonder in such a situation how we gonna let them know that there is cease-fire and they can actually leave?! As far as I remember the TV-stations and communication towers and mobile antennas have been destroyed. How they would find out that there is a cease-fire? Does HA really need to stop them? I don’t think so. By the time that they realise that some chance was given to flee, the 48 hours is finished. You might say the TV-stations were HA and things like that. But do these people have access to satellite TVs? Do they have satellite mobile phones?

I don’t think this 48 hours would help anything, as Israelmom said the UN are really slow on the ground, when they are slow god knows how the civilians will be. It will be more disasters after this cease-fire. It is shameful anyway why this cease-fire didn’t come earlier but I guess Israelmom has covered that!

But what I don’t like is that I can see how HA will benefit from this cease-fire. They probably had the most difficult time to move their rockets around and now have 48 hours to rearrange their stuff.

I wish for a permanent cease-fire which would last forever. How long are we going to live? 70? 80? It is not that long to spent most of it in war or fear. There has been a war for 60 years. Some people have lived their whole life in a war zone. When enough is enough? It’s not just HA and Israel involved. There have been so many governments who didn’t mind for this war to go on. USA, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Britain, Russia, Australia, Jordan, Egypt, Germany, Turkey, UAE they all have hands in this bloodshed for years gone and to come.

Bless you all.

AnneMoss said...

I would sign your now till forever ceasefire paper right away :) War is always a terrible thing.

Considering that the UN has offered a humanitarian ceasefire only two days ago, I was hoping they had some plans in place for a quick evacuation. If they even start anything, I hope maybe they can negotiate another day or two, if that helps. Civilian casualties is bad for Israel, it's bad for Lebanon, it only benefits the Hezbulla. And yes, they will most likely use the ceasefire to rearrange and re-arm.

Anonymous said...

How do you drive out of town if you don't have a car?

Anonymous said...

There is no need to drive any car! There is no cease-fire!

--
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said Israel is not ready to stop its offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"The fighting continues. There is no ceasefire and there will not be any ceasefire in the coming days," he said.

source: BBC

Ryan said...

Hi Annette/Israeli Mom,
I thought you might be interested to know how many people are looking at your blog and where they are from. There's a website: www.sitemeter.com; they have a counter they can install into your blog for you. it's very, very easy. you just give the site the name of your blog and they do all the work. anyways, it's a cool way to see how many visitors you have and you can see what city and country they are from. i think it's pretty cool.
i apologize for my tone in some of my posts. it's not like what's going on is your fault personally.
sorry,
ryan

AnneMoss said...

Big mistake about the ceasefire (or lack of), IMO. I know the arguments against it here - it will allow the Hezbulla to get more rockets and rearrange. I am saying this cautiously, as I do not live in an area directly affected by the Hezbulla (at least not yet). I guess when the katyushas are raining on your town, you are less likely to support anything that might allow the HA to get more of them.
Myself, I think it would have been wise to get the UN and the international community to arrange a humanitarian evacuation operation in place and provide a ceasefire for that. Would they have risen to the challenge? I doubt it.

Thanks for the suggestion Ryan, and for your kind words. I will look into sitemeter, it's been a while since I had to use such services lol, used to hosting my sites on my servers by now ;-) I was thinking of placing a small adsense unit on the blog, to get stats from that, but maybe sitemeter will be a better option. Thanks again.

Anonymous said...

Very moving, your blogs! The info was posted on our cat group (the Yahoo one).

Since you're in our cat group, I want to tell you about another cat lady (Miriam) who lives in Jerusalem.

Can you pls e-mail me and I'll give you her name and addy? She doesn't have e-mail and I don't think I should post her details.

Thanks, Roberta (laugh@otenet.gr)