The room shook. Not since the 1983 earthquake has my apartment rocked from side to side. That was the force of the Israeli explosions in the southern suburbs of Beirut - three miles from my home - and the air pressure changed in the house yesterday morning and outside in the street the palm trees moved. Is it to be like this every day? How many civilians can you make homeless before you start a revolution? And what is next? Are the Israelis to bomb the centre of Beirut? The Corniche? Is this why all the foreign warships came and took their citizens away, to make Beirut safe to destroy? Yesterday, needless to say, was another day of massacres, great and small. The largest appeared to be 40 farm workers in northern Lebanon, some of them Kurds - a people who do not even have a country. An Israeli missile was reported to have exploded among them as they loaded vegetables on to a refrigerated truck near Al-Qaa, a small village east of Hermel in the far north. The wounded were taken to hospital in Syria because the roads of Lebanon have now all been cratered by Israeli bomb-bursts. Later we learnt that an air strike on a house in the village of Taibeh in the south had killed seven civilians and wounded 10 seeking shelter from attack. In Israel two civilians were killed by Hizbollah missiles but, as usual, Lebanon bore the brunt of the day's attacks which centred - incredibly - on the Christian heartland that has traditionally shown great sympathy towards Israel. It was the Christian Maronite community whose Phalangist militiamen were Israel's closest allies in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon yet Israel's air force yesterday attacked three highway bridges north of Beirut and - again as usual - it was the little people who died.
Is it to be like this every day? How many civilians can you make homeless before you start a revolution? And what is next? Are the Israelis to bomb the centre of Beirut? The Corniche? Is this why all the foreign warships came and took their citizens away, to make Beirut safe to destroy?
Yesterday, needless to say, was another day of massacres, great and small. The largest appeared to be 40 farm workers in northern Lebanon, some of them Kurds - a people who do not even have a country. An Israeli missile was reported to have exploded among them as they loaded vegetables on to a refrigerated truck near Al-Qaa, a small village east of Hermel in the far north. The wounded were taken to hospital in Syria because the roads of Lebanon have now all been cratered by Israeli bomb-bursts. Later we learnt that an air strike on a house in the village of Taibeh in the south had killed seven civilians and wounded 10 seeking shelter from attack.
In Israel two civilians were killed by Hizbollah missiles but, as usual, Lebanon bore the brunt of the day's attacks which centred - incredibly - on the Christian heartland that has traditionally shown great sympathy towards Israel. It was the Christian Maronite community whose Phalangist militiamen were Israel's closest allies in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon yet Israel's air force yesterday attacked three highway bridges north of Beirut and - again as usual - it was the little people who died.
Bombs kill 33 farm workers in Beka'a valley in one of war's deadliest strikes Israeli aircraft struck deep into Lebanon yesterday, killing at least 33 Syrian Kurdish farm workers and destroying four bridges on a key aid route leading north from Beirut. The attack on the farm workers, who were loading peaches and plums on to trucks at Qaa in the north of the Beka'a valley, was one of the single deadliest strikes of the war. It came as Hizbullah demonstrated that its ability to strike at Israel remained largely intact, by firing more than 200 rockets at northern towns and villages, killing three civilians and injuring dozens. Two rockets landed deeper in Israel than any previously, hitting near the city of Hadera, 50 miles from the border. In Qaa, the bodies of the dead were laid in a row at the scene of the bombing. Some were covered with blankets, others lay in the clothes in which they died. Baskets and fruit were strewn around them. Another 20 people were wounded and taken to hospital across the nearby border into Syria. Israel said its aircraft had targeted a Hizbullah weapons storage site in the Beka'a. The Syrian minister of information, Mohsen Bilal, appeared on state TV late last night, saying "Syrian blood is now mixed with Lebanese blood. The United States and Condoleezza Rice are responsible for this crime."
Israeli aircraft struck deep into Lebanon yesterday, killing at least 33 Syrian Kurdish farm workers and destroying four bridges on a key aid route leading north from Beirut.
The attack on the farm workers, who were loading peaches and plums on to trucks at Qaa in the north of the Beka'a valley, was one of the single deadliest strikes of the war.
It came as Hizbullah demonstrated that its ability to strike at Israel remained largely intact, by firing more than 200 rockets at northern towns and villages, killing three civilians and injuring dozens. Two rockets landed deeper in Israel than any previously, hitting near the city of Hadera, 50 miles from the border.
In Qaa, the bodies of the dead were laid in a row at the scene of the bombing. Some were covered with blankets, others lay in the clothes in which they died. Baskets and fruit were strewn around them. Another 20 people were wounded and taken to hospital across the nearby border into Syria. Israel said its aircraft had targeted a Hizbullah weapons storage site in the Beka'a.
The Syrian minister of information, Mohsen Bilal, appeared on state TV late last night, saying "Syrian blood is now mixed with Lebanese blood. The United States and Condoleezza Rice are responsible for this crime."
What is the point of a 75,000-member Lebanese army ... which cannot disarm Hizbollah?
and
all across the Muslim world, "we" - the West, America, Israel - are fighting not nationalists but Islamists. And watching the martyrdom of Lebanon this week - its slaughtered children in Qana packed into plastic bags until the bags ran out and their corpses had to be wrapped in carpets - a terrible and daunting thought occurs to me, day by day. That there will be another 9/11.
