The image below is from Google Earth, of the south Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil (Bint Jubayl).
I've included the snapshot because this is currently the site of intense "close quarter" fighting between the IDF and Hezbollah, covered by Stratfor in this podcast. Stratfor presents the conflict as a trigger for a critical debate beginning in Israel. The "internal debate" concerns whether Israel has the fortitude to continue fighting under conditions where its forces sustain heavy casualties. It's ironic, in some ways, that Bint Jbeil is the locus of such a "bloody angle", because the town has prospered during peace, rapidly developing into a small city and commercial/administrative center. It even has its own website here. The text is in Arabic, but there's an English version here. The large red iconic letters introducing the town to the world send the message: "Resisting!"
This is how small towns in the age of the Terror War are likely to present themselves, if their culture is what the philosopher and sociologist, Ernest Gellner, called "charismatic." These places have the promise of economic growth and prosperity that could create a middle class, and a substrate for civil society and democracy, but they've "resisted" that fate in favor of another.
Where Israel stuggles with the hot dilemma that a legal/rational society endures when faced with horrible sacrifice in a war it would prefer never to fight, Bint Jbeil (a city whose name literally means "daughter of byblos") has a self-image, lodged in its deepest heart, of a miniature Stalingrad.
It saddens me when I see a people who show so much promise for a prosperous future are taken over by hate, and would rather lose everything than to give up that hate.
Just an aside... Jubayl is also a derivative of the Arabic word "Jebel", meaning hill... so the name could also be translated as "daughter of the hills." I didn't learn much Arabic in the 6 years I lived in Saudi Arabia, but I did learn that the old village of Jubail (now a major petrochemical manufacturing center) was named for the little hills that could be found in this mostly flat area along the Arabian Gulf.
DaveK
It is sad - but this has become the definition of the Islamic world: taken over by hate, and preferring to lose everything rather than to give up that hate.
One can hope for this to change. One can even work to help support a change. What one cannot do, however, is expect that change.
It is almost as sad that barring a change, the only viable option for their enemies is to give them their wish, or lose everything themselves.
When friendly casualties are that much a concern and the homeland is under attack, it is appropriate to use area effect weapons up to and including WMD.
The idea is to win.
The Western way of war entails destroying the enemy. When the enemy no longer exists, you don't have to fight them anymore.
The thing that get me is that Hizb'allah and Hamas keep saying that what they want is peace, but they never say what they will give up to get it. They always have the demands that Israel should meet for "peace", which oddly enough always seem calculated to make it harder for Israel to fight the next time atrocity's or attacks happen, but they're not willing to give up anything to get peace themselves.
The only logical conclusion is that they want not peace, but for Israel to surrender. And since they can't fight Israel into surrendering, they are trying to talk Israel into surrendering. Hey, it's worked before.
"A high-ranking source in the Northern Command told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday that Bint Jbail could not be attacked by air since there were still several hundred civilians there. The officer said that the fighting in the town would continue at least for a day or two."
The above quote is from page 2 of
LINK (Modified to preserve formatting.)
In Bint Jbail, Israel is using tactics far more humanitarian than the US used in Falluja in Iraq. There the US would bomb or otherwise destroy any building from which enemy fired. This is standard operating procedure for urban combat. It is also the tactics used by Russia in Chechnya. Because of their humanitarian tactics there is the wrong impression that Israel is somehow not up to it's old, invincible standard, or that Hezbulla is proving Arabs can stand up to Israelis. It's one thing to attack an army in the field as in pervious wars but it's another to selectively remove gurellas from an urban area without harming civillians. The situation in Bint Jabail shows that Arabs can stand up to Israelis when they have innocent women children to hide behind and when Israel is constrained by international bias that other nations including Arab nations such as Syria do not have to consider.
#5
We had the time in Fallujah to convince the civilians to leave, but doing so took far more time than the Israelis have in Lebanon. They have done what they can to motivate those civilians who want to leave, and aren't being held as involuntary hostages, to get out.
War is not law enforcement. F*ck The Hostages is entirely legitimate concerning enemy populations, and Lebanese Shia qualify as that.
Israel might be doing what we've done to Iraq's Sunni Baathists - disarm the Lebanese Shia to the point where they can't stop their loving Arab & non-Arab neighbors from doing what comes naturally in the Middle East.
Tough for Lebanon's Shia. They chose the wrong leaders, just as the Germans and Japanese did in the 1930's.
Enemies must feel they are beaten before they stop fighting. In the Middle East, that means mass slaughter of the loser's civilians first, and often genocide, before the survivors decide peace is preferable to death.
Iraq's Sunni Arabs started a war of extermination which they are losing. The question for them now is whether their proportion of Iraq's population drops to 10%, or all the way to 5%. It was 22% in 2002 and is now down to @ 15% and declining fast.
The Middle East is a tough neighborhood. Israel will have peace only when they stop being Mr. Nice Guy. But I wouldn't be surprised if they just disarm Lebanon's Shia and let nature take its course.
"The thing that get me is that Hizb'allah and Hamas keep saying that what they want is peace, but they never say what they will give up to get it."
They don't want peace. They want victory. If they cannot have victory, they would prefer to fight. To me, this is the very definition of not wanting peace.
It also shows the dangers of cross cultural exchanges of language. The words for the same thing can mean very different things to different people, and the more complex, abstract, and layered the meaning of the thing - the more this is true. Simply assuming that when someone says, "I want peace.", means that they want what you want is frought with danger.
In this case, Hizb'allah wants peace in the same since that America wanted peace in 1945. America was ready for the war to end, but it wanted victory more than it wanted peace.
If Israel successfully disarms Hezbollah in this war, the Shia population of Lebanon will plummet shortly thereafter.
And, at some point, Hezbollah will be disarmed. It's just a question now of when that will happen.
Hezbollah have also fought above-average (for Arab armed formations) in rural areas.
I don't believe the word "Resisting" were on the Jbeil website a few days ago when I happened to look at it. It appeared only recently after the siege began.
chew2 #10:
You're probably right. Didn't mean to imply that it was. In fact, if they were "resisting the temptation of civil society" they'd be unlikely to say so on their website. Nonetheless I think that's precisely what charismatic societies do. They resist efforts to quell their totalitarian impulse.