THE GREATEST DANGER

by RAY FLEMING
I wonder whether the birds starting singing yesterday morning in southern Lebanon as the ceasefire between Israeli and Hezbollah forces took effect? It is said that at 11am on 11 November 1918 a blackbird began singing as the guns fell silent on the Western Front. The more relevant question, of course, is whether the Lebanese ceasefire will last long enough to enable human as well as bird life to re–establish itself after four weeks of devastation. The renowned Middle East journalist Robert Fisk thinks it unlikely; in an article yesterday in The Independent he said that “as the 6am ceasefire takes effect the real Lebanon war begins”. The Israeli army remains in southern Lebanon and Ehud Olmert says it will not be withdraw until the UN peacekeeping force arrives. But the tiniest excuse could lead either of the two trigger–happy combatants to break the truce (Israel did so yesterday by killing a Hezbollah fighter) and no country is going to offer troops to the UN if they would risk finding themselves in the middle of a shooting war. The greatest danger lies in the ceasefire resolution's assumption that Israel is engaged in a defensive operation whereas Hezbollah is labelled as the aggressor. This may be legally correct but it must be a long time since a defending power had only 150 casualties while the offensive force lost more than one thousand, with much of is infrastructure destroyed and one million people displaced.