Marisacat

Transition 30 July 2006

Casting around for photos I landed on this article (7/26) from Palestine Chronicle.  I don’t embrace all of it, but certain points are salient.  Certainly the transition of “Bismarkian” warfare and the further references to “4th generation warfare”, (which is not new – and the article does refer to Lind)….   I don’t presume to know much… but clearly – the US has been a fool in Iraq and Israel met itself coming in Bint Jbeil on Wednesday. 

My own private guess, Qana paid for that humiliation (and for it’s own 1996 history).  By this afternoon, Israel is claiming it was a “mistake”.  That is not what they said this morning – and I listened to all the usual suspects, including Ayalon who called it a Hezbollah war crime.

One of the longstanding scenarios has always been that we were being drawn in.  However it came about, we are mired.  And now with our buddy, mired as well.

Bismarckian warfare seems to have become ineffective in the Arab-Israeli context, because Israel no longer poses the threat that it once did to the Arab regimes, and the Arab regimes much prefer Israel to the rising non-state actors growing within their own borders.

William Lind has also argued that non-state actors such as Hamas and Hizballah can checkmate the Israelis as long as these Muslim parties never formally assume power. If Muslim parties were to assume the power of states, then they would immediately become targets for traditional Bismarckian warfare. However, as long as Muslim movements retain theirnon-state identity, they are strategically unconquerable.

 The commentary on the various media is worth a glance as well:

Time and space, as we experience them, are contracting because the global diffusion of technical and scientific knowledge is permitting events in one part of the world to increasingly influence events in other parts of the world, and events that once took years or even decades to unfold can now occur within mere months or weeks.

As a consequence, the disenfranchised peoples of the world are developing the ability to affect the lives of the more privileged members of humanity, which means that anything that Israel does to the Palestinians or Lebanese will have effects upon Israel that are more direct and more negative than ever before, and that further, these effects will occur in an accelerated time scale.

And I agree with the close, this is where we have been headed, having to deal with a cornered animal, Bush and all the war mongers:

In the end however, Israel’s loss of power will make it even more dangerous, because the more threatened the Israelis feel, the more likely they will launch destructive wars against the Palestinians and Israel’s other adversaries.

Finally, the same can be said of the U.S., with respect to its loss of global power. Instead of becoming more careful with its use of force, the erosion of America’s global dominance will likely make the U.S. government more aggressive, as it attempts to re-assert its former position relative to its adversaries and competitors.

And it is precisely because America and Israel are losing influence over global events, that an American attack upon Iran in 2007 becomes more likely.

God help us all.

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Oh yes.  How could I forget… on the Flip Side:   

the small prickless wonder [that would be the Dkos campaign operatives] wars:  Richard Silverstein appears to have been banned… from Dkos.  [thanks to observer]

Pop that campagne!  Rejoice Richard! [I left a comment which awaits moderation].

Dkos, and its related satellites, exists as a campaign operative’s tabloid sheet.  They have ZERO interest in real people, actual voters, and certainly NO INTEREST in liberals. 

They are interested in fluffers, campaign workers, Hill staffers, congressional aides, and other interested and paid parties to flesh out the threads.  And, they persist in using “liberal” to sell their wares.

”Banning” at Kos is activating a hunting license.

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Via ABC News… a 48 hour cessation in the aerial bombardment.

JERUSALEM Jul 30, 2006 (AP)— Israel has agreed to a 48-hour suspension of aerial activity in south Lebanon while it investigates an attack on a Lebanese village that killed a number of children, U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Sunday. […]

The stunning bloodshed pushed American peace efforts to a crucial juncture, as fury at the United States flared in Lebanon, which said it no longer would negotiate a U.S. peace package without an unconditional cease-fire. U.N. chief Kofi Annan sharply criticized world leaders implicitly Washington for ignoring his previous calls to stop the violence.

The attack in the village of Qana brought Lebanon’s confirmed death toll to more than 510.

In frankness, I think what happened at the UN offices in Beirut scared them just a little, not as a single incident, but should it spread from city to city, to US Missions and Embassies around the Muslim world…. Then, the stunning demand from the IDF for the UN to clear more Lebanese villages. 

Blood thirsty?  Just a little.

 And while i have not put up any pictures (other than mild stuff) from the many demonstrations against the war, against Israel and against the US, it is getting uglier. 

And no one should be surprised.  But it seems Olmert and Rice and a few others are surprised. 

However, more interesting is this, Tanya Reinhardt, a link found at Danny Schechter News Dissector:

Lebanon’s people know what every Israeli old enough to remember knows: that, in the vision of Ben Gurion, Israel’s founding leader, Israel’s border should be “natural”, that is, the Jordan River in the East, and the Litani River of Lebanon in the north. In 1967, Israel gained control over the Jordan River, in the occupied Palestinian land, but all its attempts to establish the Litani border have failed so far.

As I argued in Israel/Palestine, already when the Israeli army left southern Lebanon in 2000, the plans to return were ready.(12)

But, in Israel’s military vision, in the next round, the land should be first “cleaned” of its residents, as Israel did when it occupied the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967, and as it is doing now in southern Lebanon. To enable Israel’s eventual realization of Ben Gurion’s vision, it is necessary to establish a “friendly regime” in Lebanon, one that will collaborate in crushing any resistance. To do this, it is necessary first to destroy the country, as in the US model of Iraq. These were precisely Sharon’s declared aims in the first Lebanon war. Israel and the US believe that now conditions have ripened enough that these aims can finally be realized.

Sorry.  Not a post-holocaust nation, not anymore… not at all.  Clear, cleanse, even blitzkrieg they have used.  Amazing.

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Riverbend is back:

Is this whole debacle the fine line between terrorism and protecting ones nation? If it’s a militia, insurgent or military resistance- then it’s terrorism (unless of course the militia, insurgent(s) and/or resistance are being funded exclusively by the CIA).

If it’s the Israeli, American or British army, then it’s a pre-emptive strike, or a ‘war on terror’. No matter the loss of hundreds of innocent lives. No matter the children who died last night- they’re only Arabs, after all, right?

Right?

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On the Flip SIde, Hillary is on C-Span, yes what else?  Road to the White House….  God help her.  Her speech at the DLC Denver Conversation of a few days ago. 

Viewed a certain way, it’s a scream.  She has clearly been sent to some sort of speech-making tutorial class.  Smile as you speak and moderate the voice and facial gesticulation (what she is doing is beyond mere “expression”), depending on content.  It did not really work.  But she thinks it has.

She and Bill… shallow as can be.

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UPDATE:  4:30 pm, PT

A snip from a post at Angry Arab:

The question now is whether this tragedy will be enough to prevent others.”

In reply, I wrote this:

“Today is a day when we Arabs really should be spared the language and terminology of the American press. “Accidents” and “tragedy” are not the words. Not today, Mr. Dickey. Not any day, Mr. Dickey.

As`ad”

posted by As’ad @ 4:17 PM link

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Update, 7:30 pm, PT

Old Boss, New Boss, American Boss, Iraqi Boss…

“For sure there are cases of children who have committed serious crimes and even terrorism that promoted the killing of innocent people – but they are in special jails,” Obaid said.

He said there were no children among the prisoners released by the government last month. Local groups such as the Prisoners’ Association for Justice (PAJ), Relief for Innocent Children Victims of War (RICVW) and Campaign for Innocent Victims In Conflict (CIVIC) say differently.

“They do not want the issue to have international repercussions, so they release the adults in front of the cameras and the children behind it,” said Farouk Saleh, spokesperson for RICVW.

“We have received information that seven children were among the prisoners released, five from Anbar governorate and two from the capital, Baghdad, but we have reached only three of them,” added Saleh. 

And of course, because we know very well what we are producing:

Dr Emaad Abdul-Hassan, a psychiatrist in Baghdad, has offered his services to the PAJ especially for child prisoners. He’s found serious psychological problems and an increase in aggression and brutality among these patients – in particular, a desire for revenge.

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UPDATE, 7:40 pm

I caught John Roberts from S Lebanon (or maybe he was over the border in israel) on CNN.  Speaking with an IDF spokesman – Spigelman was the name, with an Australian accent.  The 48 hour cessation of aerial bombardment, at least from that officer, is so the Lebanese clear out of the villages the IAF plan to bomb.

And much talk about the Katyusha rockets.

Roberts also gave the count of dead children at Qana as 19, out of “nearly 60”.  They have to obfuscate.

And somehow this is related… I heard both Vilsack and Hillary at the DLC Conversation.  It was MIND NUMBING.  And can be summed up, Platitudes are us.  And, George Bush, alone in 5 years, wrecked the nation.  And, we do wars neater.

Then caught Dodd at some flapdoodle in Florida.  Typical Irish pol bombast.  Not enoough.  And he lauded Israel.  Said Bill Nelson is a great fighter for Israel.

Not enough – and in fact wrong.  Hillary’s refrain is, ”Democrats did it once, and we can do it again”….  seems to me that invites jokes. 

But, not to worry, ’06 should be a blow-out and ’08 a piece of cake.

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UPDATE:  9:00 pm

Almost have to laugh, it is so clear that America and her friend, Israel, thought there would be no blow back. 

We may be at the early edges of blowback.  Real blowback.  Not just a single, spectacular, killing tragedy… but a global response, thru-out the Arab and Muslim nations.  Fools that we are…

GAZA, July 30 (Reuters) – Palestinian protesters stormed the main U.N. compound in Gaza City on Sunday during a demonstration against Israel’s bombing of southern Lebanon that killed around 60 civilians, witnesses and U.N. staff said.

Hundreds of members of the Islamic Jihad militant group, some throwing stones and others firing assault rifles, attacked the compound at the end of a rally, witnesses said.

At least five people were wounded, police said. […]

Witnesses in Gaza said extensive damage had been caused to the U.N. compound, from where the world body directs its relief and aid operations for the Gaza Strip’s 1.4 million people.

The attack came hours after thousands of Lebanese demonstrators attacked the U.N. headquarters in Beirut, smashing windows and ransacking offices.

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UPDATE:  10:00 pm, PT

Took three DLCers to produce this sludge.  Clinton, Vilsack and Carper… their imprimatur at the least.

Leaves out a lot, but for a 99 cent Hallmark card, you too can have the American Dream.  Even as NAFTA, CAFTA and the Wars Without End (just for starters) kill any hope of it.

Pathetic.

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Open Thread: The Rully Big Bully Boyz. Bush and Blair :: Small Boyz on the radar screen/Jerome 28 July 2006

Oh they found their way to the East Room.  In a truly tough world, they still manage to appall… AP via NYT and as soon as the transcript is up at WH.gov will post it. 

Right now, Blair is explaining Nine One One to us.  They have hit the heights.

What a pair.

… and this from the tag end of the last thread (many links there… ) belongs with the Boyz.  Our Condi.  Be proud.  She said a prayer for peace and then played Brahms (Sonata for Violin and Piano in D Minor, Opus 108).

Bow down.

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From the NYT post event:

The two leaders, who earlier talked privately at the White House, announced what they described as a practical plan to try to stop the violence and address what they saw as the underlying cause — Hezbollah militancy — of the current conflict, as well as criticizing Iranian and Syrian support for the group.

“This is a moment of intense conflict in the Middle East,” Mr. Bush said. “Yet our aim is to turn it into a moment of opportunity and a chance for broader change in the region.”

Mr. Blair said that the plan includes sending Ms. Rice back to the region on Saturday, and bringing forward a United Nations meeting to Monday about an international stabilization force that will allow Lebanon’s government to deploy its own army in the south.[…]

The Israeli military said it carried out more than 180 aerial strikes in Lebanon during the 24-hour period that ended this morning, and there were no signs of a letup during the day today.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, maintained its rocket fire on northern Israel today. About 50 rockets hit northern Israel as of the afternoon, though only a few minor injuries were reported.

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Norman Solomon at FAIR takes a look at the NYT, Wapo, and LA Times over the last weeks.  And some commentary on a hit carried out in Sidon Lebanon in May 2006:

The situation in Lebanon is also more complicated than its portrayal in U.S. media, with the roots of the current crisis extending well before the July 12 capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah.

A major incident fueling the latest cycle of violence was a May 26, 2006 car bombing in Sidon, Lebanon, that killed a senior official of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group allied with Hezbollah. Lebanon later arrested a suspect, Mahmoud Rafeh, whom Lebanese authorities claimed had confessed to carrying out the assassination on behalf of Mossad (London Times, 6/17/06). […]

In Lebanon, Israel’s culpability was taken as a given. “The Israelis, in hitting Islamic Jihad, knew they would get Hezbollah involved too,” Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at Beirut’s Lebanese American University, told the New York Times (5/29/06). “The Israelis had to be aware that if they assassinated this guy they would get a response.”

And, indeed, on May 28, Lebanese militants in Hezbollah-controlled territory fired Katyusha rockets at a military vehicle and a military base inside Israel. Israel responded with airstrikes against Palestinian camps deep inside Lebanon, which in turn were met by Hezbollah rocket and mortar attacks on more Israeli military bases, which prompted further Israeli airstrikes and “a steady artillery barrage at suspected Hezbollah positions” (New York Times, 5/29/06).

Gen. Udi Adam, the commander of Israel’s northern forces, boasted that “our response was the harshest and most severe since the withdrawal” of Israeli troops from Lebanon in 2000 (Chicago Tribune, 5/29/06).

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UPDATE, 2:50 pm, PT

The transcript of the “press availability” of Blair and Bush.  SO many nuggets.  If people were not suffering and dying it would be a scream.

 I think we should demand that they pull Jesus from their hankie pocket.  We are way past white bunnies under the Big Tent to shock and awe the children…. The Bush and Blair show is just not enervating enough. 

Both christians, right?  They should produce Jesus, as part of the Troika for War.  Troika + Israel.

Here is a snip from W (italics are mine):

And I — look, we care deeply about the lives that have been affected on both sides of this issue, just like I care deeply about the innocent people who are being killed in Iraq, and people being denied a state in the Palestinian Territory. But make no mistake about it, it is the goal and aims of the terrorist organizations to stop that type of advance. That’s what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to evoke sympathy for themselves. They’re not sympathetic people. They’re violent, cold-blooded killers who are trying to stop the advance of freedom.

And this is the calling of the 21st century, it seems like to me, and now is the time to confront the problem.

And of course, we’re going to help the people in Lebanon rebuild their lives. But as Tony said, this conflict started, out of the blue, with two Israeli soldiers kidnapped and rockets being fired across the border. 

Blair falls into a long, long ramble about 9/11 (I found it offensive) and at times he drifts to repetitious gibberish but there is this – you think these Boyz lack … confidence?:

It’s nonsense, the propaganda is nonsense. And we’re not going to defeat this ideology until we in the West go out with sufficient confidence in our own position and say, this is wrong. It’s not just wrong in its methods, it’s wrong in its ideas, it’s wrong in its ideology, it’s wrong in every single wretched reactionary thing about it. And it will be a long struggle, I’m afraid. But there’s no alternative but to stay the course with it. And we will.

Absolute mess…  and messy madmen.

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LEVITY BREAK AHEAD: 

Jerome Speaks…. 

… more to come, have not read the slobber yet, but based on his earlier sludge… welll… I am continuing to breathe, shall we say.

ADDENDUM:  I read it finally.

Well.  I am going to post a cogent comment from the thread at MyDD….  But, I will add that so-called liberal (but it is not) progressive (but it’s not) left (but it most assuredly is NOT) Blahhhging has been very poorly served by the men (and women) who are cashing in.  

They are welcome to cash in as party apparatchiks (punditry, yes men, yes women and screaming diversions), and I may comment on what I see… which is sub-standard, unethical screamers ”demanding” ethics and accountability from MSM – and from a pol, or two (no more than a very small number). 

Other than that, they are propagandists. And there is a whiff that just does not go away, for one thing, they complicate every time they pick one of their mouths and open it…

Here from “vachon”

Re: Blogging on it all (none / 0)

Your past is your past.  Since you aren’t running for office, it’s none of my business.  Normally, I wouldn’t comment on it except now you’ve brought it up.

I am frustrated that you can’t go into detail about your experience with the SEC.  As a former trader myself, however, I’m a bit shagrinned that you would do the “I lost money too” line to wave away your behavior.  I don’t know if what you did was illegal, unethical or just plain dumb.  But it’s a big deal since the gamut of possibilities you have opened yourself up to is so wide and potentially so important to what you do here.

Look, I have a past that I’m not proud of (people in AA usually do) that would probably look devastating on a police blotter had I ever been caught.  I don’t run away from it, minimize it or wave it like a red cape for people to investigate.  So, I’m sympathetic with your situation.  But.  The lack of details is going to keep this issue, or non-issue alive:  people don’t like to be swindled.

That’s my 2 pixels.

by vachon on Fri Jul 28, 2006 at 04:25:44 PM EST

UPDATE:  1:30 am Saturday,

FURTHER Addenda:

 Lee Siegel updates his ”blogofascism” in TNR, or whatever it was.  Frankly he makes good points, and here are a couple (emphasis mine):

A good fight is certainly not something I mind–if you dish it out, et cetera. Yet, having been stung by my charges of dictatorial bullying, the left-liberal blogs proceeded to prove my point.

They bunched together in a corner of the schoolyard and solicited one another’s approval by heaving bigger and sloppier mudpies.

It wasn’t a good intellectual and rhetorical fight at all. But, beyond the blogofascist aside, I had made an argument that I waited futilely for someone to address. I had questioned the effectiveness of blogospheric rage and suggested that blogger fanaticism had a lot to do with the inability of bloggers to apply themselves to serious reflection.

And this, which gave me a laugh, considering Blahhggs are campaign operative tabloids:

The question the blogosphere has to ask itself is whether it truly has become a rejuvenating alternative to the status quo in journalism and politics or a dumping ground for the mainstream’s worst aspects–political extremism, narcissistic fantasy, cowardly herding.

Or, as Burt Reynolds put it in Sharky’s Machine,

“You know, Frisco, when we used to flush the toilet upstairs, we always wondered where it came to.” 

Yes, not a pretty  picture.  Cesspools rarely are.

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UPDATE:  3:40 pm. PT

Pilger in The New Statesman.

The catastrophe in the Middle East is a product of such an imperial tyranny. It is clearly a US-ordained operation, with the long-planned assault on Gaza and the destruction of Leba non pretexts for a wider campaign with the goal of installing American puppets in Lebanon, Syria and eventually Iran. “The pay-off time has come,” wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe; “now the proxy should salvage the entangled Empire.”  […]

Watching this unfold in Washington – I am staying in a hotel taken over by evangelical “Christians for Israel” apparently seeking rapture – I have heard only the crudest colonial refrain and no truth. Hezbollah, drone America’s journalistic caricatures, is “armed and funded by Syria and Iran”, and so they beckon an attack on those countries, while remaining silent about America’s $3bn-a-day gift of planes and small arms and bombs to a state whose international lawlessness is a registered world record.

Pilger closes his article with Orwell…

I think Orwell got it right in this passage from Nineteen Eighty-Four, a tale of the ultimate empire:

“And in the general hardening of outlook that set in . . . practices which had been long abandoned – imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions . . . and the deportation of whole populations – not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”

Really, Bush and Blair should be forced to produce Jesus.   Being christians and all. Do they ever let us forget that? 

And managing to evoke, over and over, such worry and concern for those under the Israeli aerial bombing runs.  Bloody evangelicalism.

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From Nur al-Cubicle – as those dogs, Bush and Blair today said they cannot do what is ”popular”, they must do what is ”right” – that was out of Bush’s bloody mouth….  Make them produce this Jesus they believe in.  Really… not kidding here.  Sick of the xtian games.

Friday, July 28, 2006

Israel targets refugees

A Jordanian cameraman for Germany’s N24 TV and his driver were killed when Israel directed artillery fire at a 50-car convoy of refugees organized by the Red Cross. The convoy was evacuating the sick, elderly and others from Rmeish.

posted by Nur-al-Cubicle | 7:27 AM   

1 Comments:

biddy said…

First the UN, then the Red Cross what the hell is their problem?

4:05 PM  

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 UPDATE, 6:15 pm

The bottom line, the US Come to Jesus Jamboree… US plans 4.6 billion in armaments sales to the ME countries (that figure is for Arab sales, x-Israel).

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UPDATE:  1:00 am Satruday…

“It’s a global movement, it’s a global ideology,” Mr. Blair said. “We’re not going to defeat this ideology until we in the West go out with sufficient confidence in our own position and say, this is wrong. It’s not just wrong in its methods, it’s wrong in its ideas, it’s wrong in its ideology, it’s wrong in every single wretched reactionary thing about it.”

Looking over the photos (NYT, Reuters, AP) of the global protest to the unnecessary war on Lebanon… the pics are not pretty.  This from Malaysia, simply a massing of demonstrators, is mild.  And, as it is Malyasia and the caption says they broke thru a cordon while Condi was there, I guess playing Brahms following her peace prayer just did not do it.  Again, if playing the Pharisee, please bring Jesus along.  So we can have a real show:  The Second Coming.

And if this, at the close of Norman Solomon’s article from FAIR is at all accurate (and I have no reason to disbelieve it),  for shame...

“Of all of Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared,” Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, told the San Francisco Chronicle (7/21/06).

“By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board.”

The Chronicle reported that a “senior Israeli army officer” has been giving PowerPoint presentations for more than a year to “U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks” outlining the coming war with Lebanon, explaining that a combination of air and ground forces would target Hezbollah and “transportation and communication arteries.”

Which raises a question: If journalists have been told by Israel for more than a year that a war was coming, why are they pretending that it all started on July 12? By truncating the cause-and-effect timelines of both the Gaza and Lebanon conflicts, editorial boards at major U.S. dailies gravely oversimplify the decidedly more complex nature of the facts on the ground.

 Let me add, I was suspicious of the damned spring-time, so-called revolt of the [retired] military generals – at the time. Obviously any power point presentation to journalists from senior Israeli military is something known to our military leaders, as well.

Bacevich called it right, positioning for CYA for history, as the ”grand plans” of 2001/2/3 slam to earth in a barrage of blood and horror… and that was just Iraq.  For me, our military is discredited.  And that means we are very unsafe.

The only decent response to 9/11 was to be a better power.  A decent global partner.  But that was never in the cards.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice headed to Jerusalem on Saturday to discuss ways to end the 18-day-old war in Lebanon as Israel rejected a U.N. plea for a truce to aid civilians trapped by fighting.

“There is no need for a 72-hour temporary cease-fire because Israel has opened a humanitarian corridor to and from Lebanon,” said Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner.

While Israel has let aid shipments through its blockade of Lebanon, international relief agencies say they have been unable to get Israel to guarantee safe passage to civilians in southern areas hardest hit by Israeli bombing aimed at Hizbollah.

U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland asked on Friday for the 72-hour truce to let relief workers evacuate elderly, young and wounded people and to deliver emergency aid.

The problem is the Israeli AF is bombing the so called corridor.

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