Friday, July 21, 2006

Israel/Lebanon War Updates

Updated throughout the day.

- As I noted in my previous post, a rocket struck a UN observation post on Friday. It's unclear whether it was an Israeli or Hezbollah missile. No one was injured.

- Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has apologized for the deaths of two Israeli children in Nazareth following a rocket attack on Wednesday saying 'we consider them martyrs for Palestine and martyrs for the nation.' You can read more about his view of the war at that link.

- Israel has called up its reservists after warning there would be a "massive" ground invasion on Thursday. The Jerusalem Post sets the number of reservists called at 5000.

- CNN's Larry King will interview Kofi Annan on Friday evening. He invites you to submit questions. Also, in an emotional interview with King on Thursday nite, Lebanon's president Siniora spoke about the destruction and sense of hopelessness in his country.

- The IDF claims that 100 Hezbollah fighters have been killed. How they came up with that number is beyond me, especially considering that, by their own admission, they really have no way of knowing.


Speaking to reporters about the fighting in the North and in the Gaza Strip, Halutz said that the two facts that "the Hizbullah does not publish its dead or damage and has lied to the media are indicative [of its condition]."


- Canadian journalists in the Middle East blog about their experiences.

- CBC explains what constitutes a war crime.

- Condi Rice is heading for the Middle East on Sunday.


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will include Israel and the West Bank in a visit to the Middle East next week and attend an international conference on Lebanon hosted by Italy, a U.S. official said on Friday.
[...]
A senior U.S. official told Reuters on Friday that Washington supported an expanded international security force on Israel's border with Lebanon but said details are not fixed.

Some U.S. analysts doubt Rice's prospects for stopping the 10-day-old fighting because of her reluctance to talk to key players -- Hizbollah and its backers, Iran and Syria.

Diplomacy is not on the march.

- Did you know that the alphabet was invented in Lebanon when it was the land of the Phoenicians? You learn something new every day.

- Journalist Robert Fisk has been writing a series of articles about the war which are first available at The Independent to subscribers. Information Clearinghouse has been publishing them as they become free for all to read. The latest: The child lies like a rag doll - a symbol of the latest Lebanon war.

- Wiki is keeping a running count of the dead and injured, contrasting the difference of those reported by Israel and Lebanon.

- Best Guess blog (good blog - bookmark it) has posted a series of interviews with Professor Khalidi, Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University.

- Turkey has opened its ports to Canadian refugees from Lebanon in order to take some of the strain off of Cyprus.

more to come...

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