I was in a church today and I saw a picture of three crosses on a hill with a sunset in the background. It wasn’t a painting, but a live picture with the breeze rustling the trees. The three crosses brought to mind and heart what is happening in Israel and Lebanon, and I prayed for peace in Jerusalem. The way to my heart is to mention the children. There are thousands of children hiding in shelters in Northern Israel unable to go at and play as children should because of terrorist rockets raining down.
For a month, thousands of children have been living deep beneath the earth’s surface because their houses are more than a minute from safety.And those 60 seconds can be the difference between life and death. Only 7,000 of the town’s residents remain in their homes, most of them poorer families who cannot afford hotel rooms in Tel Aviv or the Red Sea resort of Eilat and who have no relatives in the south of the country where they can stay.Many of them are olim – Jewish immigrants from Russia and the former Eastern Bloc countries – and Israeli Arabs. “We agree with what Israel is doing,” says Fatiah, an Israeli Arab busy feeding her three children. “We have been on the front line for six years since Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon in 2000. Hizbollah has just got stronger and stronger.
“I just want my children to live in peace, not to spend every day hiding below the ground.
“If Hizbollah isn’t destroyed now, then that is what is going to happen to us, day in and day out, for the next generation?”
Ari, from Russia, plays table tennis with his friends in a shelter deep below the ground in Borochov Street as the all-too familiar sound of rockets thud overhead. The teenager and his friends live in the shelter now. He says: “I know when the rockets are coming close. You can smell them.
“There is a football pitch close by which I would love to play on, but when we started a game once, we played for five minutes before the siren went off. We don’t bother now.
“At least down here you are safe – and I am getting very good at table tennis.”
Ari has no friends in the rest of Israel so there is nowhere else for him to go. The town council organises daily coach trips out of the city to the seaside, to Tel Aviv, an hour’s drive away for about 200 people. “It just gives some sort of respite from living every day in the shelters,” says the deputy mayor.
“But although we get complaints from people about the living conditions, they all want this war to go on until it is finished. It is the price we must pay for a lasting peace.”
They want lasting peace, and I hope for the children’s sake they can find it after the Security Council agreed unanimously on Friday on a measure calling for a full cessation of hostilities in Lebanon, deploying 30,000 Lebanese and United Nations forces in southern Lebanon and calling upon Israel to withdraw its forces “in parallel.”
The Security Council resolution, drafted by France and the United States, expands the existing 2,000-member United Nations peacekeeping force, known as Unifil, to 15,000 and dispatches it into southern Lebanon to assist a 15,000-member Lebanese force that Fouad Siniora, Lebanon’s prime minister, has pledged to send there.In addition, the resolution gives Unifil, a peace-monitoring force that has long been criticized as ineffective and lacking resources, greatly enhanced authority, equipment, responsibilities and scope of operation.The resolution calls for a ban on all sales or other supply of arms to Lebanon, except as authorized by its government. Israel has interpreted this as preventing Hezbollah from being resupplied with weapons by Syria and Iran.
The measure also calls for the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, a reference to Hezbollah, but it does not specify how this should be done. The language of the resolution calls for an immediate cessation of “all attacks” by Hezbollah but only of “all offensive military operations” by Israel.
The resolution does not define “offensive military action,” but both American and Israeli officials said that Israel would be able to address threats to citizens in Israel and its armed forces in Lebanon, and that it could respond to attacks from Hezbollah. If faced with an imminent threat, a senior American official said, “then yes, Israel can respond.” Nonetheless, she added, “We expect a large-scale reduction in violence, and we’d expect the large-scale bombing to stop.”
More columns of Israeli ground forces, supported by armor, started moving into southern Lebanon Friday evening, while forces already inside, in a strip about five miles from the border, prepared to move forward to the Litani River and beyond.
Most of Hezbollah’s thousands of rockets are short-range Katyushas. Pushing Hezbollah beyond the Litani would take most of Israel’s cities out of range, and would make it easier for an international force to take up positions in the south, Israeli officials argued.
{http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/12/world/middleeast/12nations.html?th&emc=th}
Here is the resolution:
Lebanon’s Cabinet accepted the U.N. cease-fire plan to halt fighting between
Israel and Hezbollah fighters on Saturday, moving the deal a step closer to
implementation, the prime minister said.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says his guerrillas would agree to any cease-fire brokered by the United Nations but insists the militant group has a right to resist Israel.
(Resisting Israel does not mean shooting at them as they pull back, Mr. Nasrallah. Remember that.)
I heard a report that Nasrallah said they would continue to fight while Israel was in Lebanon.
Today I received a link to a video of a captured Hezbollah terrorist that participated in the kidnapping of the two soldiers that sparked the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah…note I did not say Israel and Lebanon.
{http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEQQUdU7Dqs}
Here is another video I received about how Qana was staged as propaganda against Israel. Let me warn you that it is disturbing!
{http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vPAkc5CLgc}
Here is one I received today about the myths and facts:
{http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zmRVCihnCQ}
And one thing you might not hear from the mainstream media is that not all Muslims support Hezbollah or the atrocities it commits. Some support Israel, and condemn attacks of terrorism.
{http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR-jMY9e5wI&NR}
Let me close by leaving a link to an interactive of the Middle East conflict from CBS News:
{http://www.cbsnews.com/elements/2006/06/29/in_depth_world/interactivehomemenu1766402.shtml}
Again I pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and a lasting resolution…one that will be enforced this time.
The cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah will start at 5 a.m. GMT on Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says.
Posted by jpfarris9 