Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon by Robert Fisk

Author:Robert Fisk [Fisk, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: International Relations, Lebanon - History - Civil War; 1975-1990, Lebanon, General, Globalization, Middle East, Political Science, History
ISBN: 1560254424
Google: o1BsN1T4ZZsC
Amazon: B002I61BMU
Publisher: Nation Books
Published: 1990-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

For the violence done to Lebanon shall sweep over you, the havoc done to its beasts shall break your own spirit, because of bloodshed and violence done to the land, to the city and all its inhabitants.

This, he felt, would now be the fate of the Israelis.

The mournful evacuations continued for two days after Arafat's departure. The last units of the Syrian 85th Brigade left by road on 30 August, a convoy of broken military vehicles and shrapnel-scratched armour that made its way through the Israeli lines at Galerie Semaan in silence with none of the festivities that had hitherto attended such events. There were ten old T-54 tanks on transporters - two of them apparently damaged beyond repair - and a score of armoured vehicles whose Syrian crews sat grim-faced aboard the vehicles as they passed the Israeli flags.

It was an ignominious passage of arms. The Syrians even had to face Major Haddad. The Israelis had brought him up to Beirut and he stood on the roundabout at Hazmiyeh watching the first Syrian flat-bed trucks moving slowly across the line from Galerie Semaan. Did he really think the Palestinians and Syrians were defeated, I asked him? He looked at me scornfully. `I see the march of victory in the Syrian defeat,' he shouted. `Why do you think they are withdrawing? They are not going for tourism purposes. This is part of our victory.'

And when the first tank was hauled past Haddad, one of the Syrian soldiers - mistaking him for an ordinary onlooker - waved his hand. Haddad stepped forward, pointed to the man, and then jerked the third finger of his right hand contemptuously towards the ground. Fuck you. He went on making obscene gestures at the Syrians, encouraging Lebanese soldiers to do the same. Many of them complied. When a Syrian truck loaded down with furniture passed the Christians up the road, there was a burst of slow, ironic applause. `They have been looting even now,' Haddad said.

The PLO's heavy weapons - their field artillery and Katyushas - were supposed to have been handed over to the Lebanese army, but those same guns now appeared in the hands of Amal and the Mourabitoun. The militias were actively preparing to defend west Beirut from the Israelis and the Phalange. Another sign. The last shipload of Palestinian guerrillas left Beirut port on the morning of 1 September, allowing Caspar Weinberger, the American defence secretary, to turn up in Beirut to claim an operational victory for the Marines.*

Surrounded by almost half the 800 US Marine contingent - for this was, of course, a photo-opportunity as well as a political message - the defence secretary announced that the mission of the multinational force in Beirut was `practically speaking ... pretty well completed'. The Israeli army was supposed to have left the area of the harbour, but four Israeli armoured vehicles could be seen only 400 yards from Weinberger, their crews watching him through binoculars. They were not supposed to be there. Weinberger did not appear to notice them.

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