Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Amnesty International

Today Amnesty International issued a report indicating that Israel's attacks on Lebanon, where whole villages, bridges, roads and fuel plants were destroyed were not what Israel calls 'collateral damages', but part of their strategy to debilitate Lebanon. In the report, Amnesty calls for a full-fledged UN investigation in order to check out if, in fact, there was a violation of human rights both by Israel and Hezbollah.

Also, Italy has offered to lead the UN forces in Lebanon, after France refused to send more than the 200 men force already there, for lack of clarification about a mandate. The 15.000 troops the UN resolution 1701 had called for are becoming a disappointment for Kofi Annan, as the European countries are unsure to send their contigents to such a fragile truce, where breaches are still happening. Notably the air and sea embargo Israel is still holding, on the pretext of avoiding arms smuggling between Hezbollah and Syria and/or Iran.
Lebanese are still hostage in their own country.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

And there is more to come. Even though the military maneuvers have stopped, there are still tens of thousands of cluster bombs scattered around more than 300 location in civilian populated areas in Lebanon - curtesy of the IDF, just waiting to be picked up by children. Already 30 kids died from them. The UN are already clearing them up, but they estimate it will take at least a year before it is clean.