Suffering on Web Video

Children make up one-third of the population of Lebanon. You only have to look at their drawings to see their suffering.

A 15-year-old girl from Haifa, Israel, posted a video clip on the Internet, so people could see what her life was like every day.

Her video is set in Sania Park, a homeless camp in Beirut, Lebanon. It looks like a peaceful setting, but Sania Park is a homeless camp.

Children live there, playing in a bomb shelter, under daily threat from Hezbollah missiles.

In south Beirut, there is a playground in the parking garage of a mall. A thousand people live there, including hundreds of kids, hiding from Israel's bombs.

They ask simple questions, such as: Why is America's Army giving the Israeli army the weapons to kill us?

These children believe Israel and the United States are trying to kill them. They say Hezbollah, which runs the shelter, is there to help them.

"Because he help us and don't want us to die," one 10-year-old said.

In the latest military action:

* Israeli warplanes have reportedly hit a UN observation post in south Lebanon. A UN spokesman quoted by Reuters news agency said a bomb hit the post in the Khiam area, but he would not confirm reports from Lebanese security sources that four peacekeepers were killed

* The Israeli army said it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander, Abu Jaafar, in fighting in southern Lebanon

* Earlier the UN had said Israeli forces were now in control of the town of Bint Jbeil after fierce fighting and were moving on the village of Yaroun to the south

* Israel resumed air raids on Beirut, with explosions heard in southern suburbs - a Hezbollah stronghold

* Hezbollah maintained fire of Katyusha rockets into Israel, killing a 15-year-old Arab-Israeli girl in the northern Israeli village of Maghar and striking Haifa with a large salvo

* Hezbollah said 27 of its fighters had been killed as of Monday, but the Israeli military said it had killed "some dozens".

Truce call

Mr Peretz said a zone in southern Lebanon would be maintained "under the control of our forces if there is not a multinational force".

He did not specify whether Israeli troops would remain there but insisted they would "continue to control [Hezbollah]" in their operations.

Israelis seek shelter after a rocket attack on Haifa
Hezbollah has maintained its rocket fire into Haifa

Israeli government sources have estimated the width of the zone at anything from three to 10km (1.9-6.2 miles).

An unnamed Israeli official quoted by Reuters news agency said between 10,000 and 20,000 international peacekeepers would be needed.

BBC defence and security correspondent Rob Watson says Israeli details on the zone - and how it will be secured - are far from clear.

He says it is possible Mr Peretz is trying to put pressure on the international community to deliver the peacekeeping force.

The idea of the multinational force is likely to be high on the agenda of a key international ministerial meeting on the crisis in Rome on Wednesday.

Israel is acting with tremendous restraint, were they targeting civilian populations there would be thousands upon thousands dead
Steve Gross, US

The UN has had a military force - Unifil - in Lebanon to patrol the border since 1978 and is currently 2,000 strong.

Earlier, Ms Rice had expressed concern for the suffering of "innocent people" in the fighting during her tour of the Middle East.

She met Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and later Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Mr Abbas called for an immediate end to "aggression against the Gaza Strip and the West Bank" and for an "immediate ceasefire" in Lebanon.

Ms Rice said the only solution was a sustainable and enduring peace.

Her words were reinforced later by US President George W Bush who said: "I support a sustainable ceasefire that will bring about an end to violence... Our mission and our goal is to have a lasting peace, not a temporary peace."

'New' Middle East

In his meeting with Ms Rice, Mr Olmert said he was "very conscious" of the humanitarian needs of Lebanon's civilians, but insisted Israel was defending itself against terrorism.


People in Tyre describe life under Israeli bombings

In pictures

Correspondents say that Ms Rice was unlikely to have called for an end to Israel's military offensive during her talks with the Israeli leader.

The BBC's World Affairs Editor John Simpson, in Jerusalem, says it was understood that Ms Rice would tell Israel that the US will allow it more time to continue its military operations.

Ms Rice has, however, also been highlighting the need for Israel to consider the humanitarian needs of both Lebanon and the Palestinian people and the need for a durable peace.

She said: "It is time for a new Middle East, it is time to say to those who do not want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail; they will not."

Ms Rice arrived in Israel from Beirut, where she met Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

What exactly is being defended by the violence in Gaze and Lebanon? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state? I suggest the latter. Israel's statehood is based on a fundamentally unjust ideology which causes indignity and suffering for those who are classified as non-Jewish by either a religious or ethnic test. To hide this primordial immorality, Israel fosters an image of victimhood. Provoking violence, consciously or unconsciously, against which one must defend oneself is a key feature of the victim-mentality. By perpetuating such a tragic cycle, Israel is a terrorist state like no other.

Many who wish to hide the immorality of the Israeli state do so by restricting attention to the horrors of the post-1967 occupation and talking about a two-state solution, since endorsing a Palestinian state implicitly endorses the ideology behind a Jewish one.

The very creation of Israel required an act of terror. In 1948, following years of creeping dispossession coupled to total lack of empathy, most of the non-Jewish indigenous people were ethnically cleansed from the part of Palestine which became Israel. This action was carefully planned. Without it, no state with a Jewish majority and character would have been possible.

Since 1948, the "Israeli Arabs", those Palestinians who avoided expulsion, have suffered continuous discrimination. Indeed, many have been internally displaced, ostensibly for "security reasons", but really to acquire their lands for Jews.

The ideology of the Jewish state means that all existing and future descendants of the Jewish people worldwide have more rights in Palestine than the indigenous Arabs. This makes Israel unique. What other state decrees that many of its own citizens have less stake than millions of potential immigrants? The colonization of Palestine is also unique: discussion of this past injustice is inadmissable lest it expose the current immoral statehood.

Israel is hailed as a paragon of democracy in the Middle East. How does Israel get away with its ethnocratic statehood despite its moral resemblance to apartheid-era South Africa? Surely Holocaust memory and Jewish longing for Eretz Israel would not be sufficient to justify ethnic cleansing and ethnocracy? To avoid the destabilisation that would result from ethical inquiry, the Israeli state must hide the core problem, by nourishing a victim mentality among Israeli Jews. Further, the narrative of Jewish victimhood must be fostered around the world. Many non-Israeli Jews, most of whom are perfectly happy as minorities in their respective states, willingly volunteer as missionaries of this narrative. When they are perceived as apologists for Israeli actions that are justified in the Jewish name, and encounter hostility, this reaction again helps to reinforce their victim narrative.

To sustain a victim mentality among its Jewish citizens, and to preserve an impression of victimhood among outsiders, Israel must breed conditions for violence. Whenever prospects of violence against it subside, Israel must do its utmost to regenerate them: the myth that it is a peace-seeking victim which has "no partner for peace" is a key panel in the screen with which Israel hides its primordial and continuing immorality.

Israel's successful campaign to silence criticism of its initial and continuing dispossession of the indigenous Palestinians leaves the latter no option but to resort to violent resistance. In the wake of electing Hamas - the only party which, in the eyes of Palestinians, has not yet given up their cause - the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank were subjected to an Israeli campaign of starvation, humiliation and violence. The insincere "withdrawal" from Gaza, and the subsequent blockade, ensured a chronicle of violence which, so far, includes Palestinian firing of Kasem rockets, the capture of an Israeli soldier and the Israeli near re-occupation of Gaza. What we witness is more hatred, more violence from Palestinians, more humiliation and collective punishments from Israelis - all useful reinforcement for the Israeli victim mentality and for the sacred cow status of Israeli statehood.

The truth is that there never could have been a partition of Palestine by ethically acceptable means. Israel was created through terror and it needs terror to cover-up its core immorality. Whenever there is a glimmer of stability, the state orders a targeted assassination, such as that in Sidon which preceded the current Lebanon crisis, knowing well that this brings not security but more violence. Israel's unilateralism and the cycle of violence nourish one another.

Amidst the violence and despite the conventional discourse which hides the root of this violence, actuality calls upon us to think. The more we silence its voice, the more violently actuality is sure to speak. In Hebrew, the word ELEM (a stunned silence resulting from oppression or shock) is etymologically linked to the word ALIMUT (violence). Silence about the immoral core of Israeli statehood makes us all complicit in breeding the terrorism that threatens a catastrophe which could tear the world apart.

* Dr. Oren Ben-Dor grew up in Israel. He teaches the philosophy of law and political philosophy at the School of Law, University of Southampton. okbendor@yahoo.com

A Turkish Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, would not say Wednesday if Turkey would allow them to cross. Iranians, however, can enter Turkey without a visa and stay for three months.

Iran says it will not send regular forces to aid Hezbollah, but apparently it will not attempt to stop volunteer guerrillas. Iran and Syria are Hezbollah's main sponsors.

"We are just the first wave of Islamic warriors from Iran," said Amir Jalilinejad, chairman of the Student Justice Movement, a nongovernment group that helped recruit the fighters. "More will come from here and other Muslim nations around the world. Hezbollah needs our help."

Military service is mandatory in Iran, and nearly every man has at least some basic training. Some hard-liners have more extensive drills as members of the Basiji corps, a paramilitary network linked to the powerful Revolutionary Guard.

Other volunteers, such as 72-year-old Hasan Honavi, have combat experience from the 1980-88 war with Iraq.

"God made this decision for me," said Honavi, a grandfather and one of the oldest volunteers. "I still have fight left in me for a holy war."

The group, chanting and marching in military-style formation, assembled Wednesday in a part of Tehran's main cemetery that is reserved for war dead and other "martyrs."

They prayed on Persian carpets and linked hands, with their shoes and bags piled alongside. Few had any battle-type gear and some arrived in dress shoes or plastic sandals.

Some bowed before a memorial to Hezbollah-linked suicide bombers who carried out the 1983 blast at Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. servicemen. An almost simultaneous bombing killed 56 French peacekeepers.

Speakers praised Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and laid scorn on Muslim leaders - including their own government - for not sending battlefield assistance to Hezbollah since the battles erupted two weeks ago.

Even if the volunteers fail to reach Lebanon, their mobilization is an example of how Iranians are rallying to Hezbollah through organizations outside official circles.

Iran insists it is not directly involved in the conflict on the military side, but it remains the group's key pipeline for money. Iran has dismissed Israel's claims that Hezbollah has been supplied with upgraded Iranian missiles that have reached Haifa and other points across northern Israel.

"We cannot stand by and watch out Hezbollah brothers fight alone," said Komeil Baradaran, a 21-year-old Basiji member. "If we are to die in Lebanon, then we will go to heaven. It is our duty as Muslims to fight."