The Bombing at Qarantina
By Franklin Lamb, writing from Qarantina, Lebanon
That word again, Qarantina.
Qarantina was the site of yesterday's message to the Bush
administration where a 33 lb bomb killed three and wounded 21. The
explosion destroyed the bomb resistant titanium reinforced US four
wheel drive SUV which Embassy security agents liked to use to give
their girlfriends rides and make fast food pickups for Embassy
staff. This day it was being used for an Embassy errand, a drop off
at Beirut's airport.
Qarantina, forever etched in the black annals of Palestinian history
is the area of east Beirut near the Port where on April 13, 1976
Phalange forces killed 26 Palestinian bus riders. A grisly crime,
followed by another massacre of Palestinians months later in nearby
Tal al-Zattar Refugee Camp which began on August 12, 1976 and
according to scholar Helena Cobban killed 1,500 Palestinians in one
day, and eventually as many as 3,000 according to other reports.
Qarantina and Talal-Zattar. Some historians argue that these events
ignited Lebanon's 15 year and Civil War which killed and injured
152,000 and from which Lebanon has never recovered.
Some Lebanese geographical place names, like Qurantina and Tel al-Zatter
return to the world's attention from time to time. Another is Qana,
site of the April 18, 1993 Israeli massacre of more than 106
Lebanese and wounding of nearly 400, and Qana again, July 25, 2006
site of the massacre and maiming of dozens more.
Yet another is Khiam, the Israel created and closely monitored
detention Center, near the blueline, and so often in the news due to
its torture and murder chambers and infamous utility poles where
prisoners were routinely handcuffed naked in freezing temperatures
and left for days and mockingly given electric wire shocks to keep
them, sometimes unsuccessfully, from freezing. During the July 2006
War, Israel carpet bombed Khiam, futilely trying, like the killer in
Edgar Allen Poe's Tell Tale Heart, to erase its two decade old crime
scene, which following Israel's May 24, 2000 expulsion from Lebanon
was turned into a grim 'museum' by its liberators.
Ironically, for all the tons of US bombs Israel used against the
former prison at Khiam, the metal torture box where a recalcitrant
prisoner would be squeezed inside an oven or freezer, depending on
the season, and a deranged sadist would then beat on the metal walls
with a hammer inducing hearing loss and psychological disorientation
and well as dislocated joints. Ironically, the Khiam torture box and
the torture pole, no doubt both Israeli July 2006 bombing targets,
remained undamaged during the intensive assault-erect today amidst
the rubble, a monument and testament to Lebanese defiance and
resistance.
Quaratina's blast late yesterday afternoon was heard by this
observer as he was weaving in and out of Beirut traffic on his
motorcycle pleased that he had a good way to get home without
sitting in traffic half the evening. These days in Lebanon when one
hears of bomb blast the first word that comes to mind is who. Who
was the target? Who were the perpetrators?
The organizers of the bombing of the Embassy car on its way back to
the American Embassy at suburban Aukar, north of Beirut, are
unlikely to be identified anytime soon, just as none of the past 21
bombings over the past 30 months in Beirut have been solved.
But this bombing seems different somehow.
It is doubtful that it was a failed attempt to assassinate
Ambassador Feltman. Had they targeted him it is likely the
Ambassador would be dead.
Murderous as it turned out to be for those killed and wounded, and
while all terrorist acts are fundamentally designed as means of
communication, the Qarantina blast, using 33 lbs. of high explosive
is meant to tell the Bush administration something. Specifically
that the Bush Administration is widely viewed in Lebanon and the
Middle East, and increasingly in America itself, as a criminal and
terrorist regime, and that it must depart Lebanon post haste.
The Qarantina blast is advising Bush and Rice to expedite US
Ambassador Feltman's long delayed and overdue departure and send a
helicopter if necessary to get him to Cyprus for a plane back to
Washington. Don't even use Lebanon's airport.
The message is also that if Bush and/or Israel act on their plans to
attack Iran or Lebanon or Syria, the Embassy should be closed sooner
rather than destroyed later. Few in Lebanon doubt that if Israel or
the Bush administration bomb Iran that the American University of
Beirut, bombed in 1991, and other US Rumsfeldian ' legitimate
targets of opportunity' will be attacked.
Security guards at AUB's four main entrances, Main Gate, Dorm Gate,
Medical Gate and Sea Gate are on heightened alert this morning, List
of targets found in suspected Salafist offices routinely list the
Embassy, AUB and American businesses.
Despite Ms. Rice's tough talk from a Saudi Palace that: "The United
States will, of course, not be deterred in its efforts to help the
Lebanese people, to help the democratic forces in Lebanon resist
interference in their affairs," the Embassy closure may be imminent
with a possible reopening with the new US administration.
For many in Lebanon, the American Embassy under the Bush
administration has become an Israel Embassy in the way that John
Bolton became a second Israeli UN Ambassador. Once an Embassy joins
one side in an internal conflict as it did in 1982 it loses its
diplomatic status and under international law can be targeted as if
a participant in hostilities against the Country.
What little credibility the Bush administration had, was lost when
it intensified the US record of facilitating Israel's destruction of
Lebanon, a string of five wars armed and funded, largely
unknowingly, by American taxpayers and without their consent during
1978, 1982, 1993, 1996 and 2006. The Bush performance this week in
occupied Palestine erases any doubt about its objectivity.
Few in Lebanon, Palestine, or the wider Middle East take Bush for
anything more than a dangerous zealot in the service of Israel, not
America. Bush's midlife crisis exhibited by his dancing around with
a sword in Saudia returns him full circle to his alcohol fuelled
toga fraternity parties.
The Arabs, indeed the world, including the Zionist handlers realize
that Bush and Rice are on a futile fantasy tour and will achieve
nothing to resolve the question of Palestine, the central cause of
the conflict in the Middle East. Which of course is the whole idea.
Any rationale that the American Embassy is dong legitimate work for
American citizens here and should remain in Lebanon was severely
weakened during the July 2006 war, when Embassy staff stiffed US
citizens and left them stranded and in mortal danger in Tyre. This
occurred when the Embassy cancelled a rescue Ship because of Israeli
attacks near the Port of Tyre, and ordered Embassy staff not to take
the US citizen telephone calls because it might "tie up our lines".
"Just drive to Beirut for Christ's sake" 'ASC # 1' (American Service
Center employee number one --"US Embassy consular staff can't use
real name anymore for their own security) advised some American
citizens who did manage to get through by phone, apparently
oblivious to the fact that Israel was bombing any vehicle that moved
south of the Litani River with weapons paid for by the same frantic
and desperate US citizens. Anger is still intense in Lebanon and the
States over these callous breaches of diplomatic responsibility and
national duty.
Added to this is the practice of Consular staff illegally
confiscating and refusing to return passports of US citizens who
have been critical of US Middle East policy. While the Embassy
entreats US citizens to leave Lebanon these days it prevents some
from doing so and places them in possible danger. A US Federal Court
lawsuit is soon to be filed in Washington DC regarding one such
case.
The Bush administration's intense and continuing interference in
Lebanon's internal affairs rendered it guiltier of doing what it
claims others are doing. Many of Lebanon's political leaders have
asked it to stop. It ignores these calls and sends instead a parade
of Welch Club adherents on almost weekly visits with more orders,
commands, and threats.
Bush would do well to close up shop here thereby protecting American
interests and let the new administration offer an Ambassador to
Lebanon. And next time hopefully based on the standards laid down at
the 1815 Congress of Vienna when diplomatic immunity was offered for
plenipotentiaries from nations who presented letters of credence and
pledged to refrain from using their posts to undermine the
sovereignty of the country which accredited and received them. This
action would serve American citizens as well as the people of the
Middle East.
The next administration can open a new phase of honest relations
with Lebanon by a whole series of friendly and needed acts,
including but not limited to these:
1. Order the delivery to UNIFIL of the Israeli firing logs to limit
the continuing loss of life from the US ordnance fired into Lebanon
under penalty of freezing US aid;
2. Permanently ban all shipments of cluster munitions to Israel;
3. Make good on its pledge made at the United Nations conference in
Geneva this week to create a rapid reaction force to defuse cluster
bombs left over from conflicts and assign that force to Lebanon.
Join the nearly 100 countries an the International Committee of the
Red Cross, and support the "Oslo Process", the initiative launched
by the Norwegian government in 2007 which aims to produce a legally
binding treaty banning cluster munitions by the end of 2008.
The current US position which supports the use of cluster bombs if
used and defused properly, and that argues that efforts should focus
on ensuring countries know how to use the weapons in a way that is
in full accordance with international humanitarian law is patent
nonsense. The July 2006 war shows that the Israeli M-85 cluster bomb
which it sells for $ 10 each because of its self-destruct feature
does not work and this mechanism will not work because the cluster
bombs are used in civilian areas and not wide open spaces for which
they are designed.
The only humanitarian solution is to ban the anti-personal cluster
bomb completely. Israel has demonstrated in 30 years of its use
against civilians in Lebanon that it is ineffective against military
targets but is devastating against civilians, both during and after
the conflict.
4. Offer Lebanon a Marshall Plan for reconstruction projects
necessitated by 30 years of Israeli bombardment with American
weapons;
5. Demand and enforce, if necessary, Israel's withdrawal from
Lebanese territory including Shebaa Farms and the village of Ghajar.
6. End American interference and support for certain factions and
extend respect and dialogue with Lebanon's opposition which in fact
represents a significant majority of Lebanon's citizens
7. Help more than 12% of Lebanon's population, i.e. the Palestinian
refugees, return to their land and homes in Palestine by forcing, if
necessary, the full implementation of UNSC Resolution 242;
8. Remove the Lebanese Resistance from the silly US 'terrorism list"
which makes a mockery of American ideals of the right to resist
occupation and American commitments for respecting the choices of
voters in elections from other countries as we ask them to respect
ours.
These acts by the next US administration will go a long way in
restoring the loss of respect our country has suffered from the
current Cheney-Bush-Israel lobby cabal. And it may well prevent
American expulsion from the region.
Franklin Lamb PhD is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle
East Peace, Wash.DC-Beirut and Senior Fellow, The Institute for
Middle East Policy Dialogue, USA. He is doing research in Lebanon
and can be reached at mailto:fplamb@gmail.com
