Hoisting a Vehículo blindado 45 feet in the air

6 Spanish soldiers serving in the Segunda Bandera de la Brigada Paracaidista (airborne) in Lebanon perished when a booby-trapped van blew up next to their 15 metric ton armored personnel carrier, blowing the doors off and sending the enormous 6-wheeled vehicle 45 feet in the air. You have to assume it had electronic explosive detection.

This, by the way, is a replay of the Hariri assassination.

Palestinians in Lebanon

There for 60 years! And they are forbidden to work in any decent-paying job.

Report
The camps are ghettos with rudimentary infrastructure.
LE MONDE | 22.05.07 | 14h56 • Mis à jour le 22.05.07 | 14h56
BEIRUT CORRESPONDENT

The approximately 400,000 Palestinians registered in Lebanon by UNRWA, the UN agency specialized in issues relating to Palestinian refugees, live in 12 camps scattered around Beirut, the south, the north and the east of the country. The estimated 16,000 refugees of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war are not included in this statistic in that UNRWA considers a refugee any Palestinian having lived in Palestine two years before the 1948 exodus and who was then expelled, including his or her descendants.

An agreement concluded in 1969 with Lebanon sponsored by Nasserite Egypt granted Palestinians the right to continue their struggle against Israel from the Arkub region in the south of the country. This agreement, drafted by Cairo, forbade the Lebanese to enter the refugee camps where the Palestinians were in charge of security. This agreement, of which the special section relating to the south, is in de facto lapse after the departure of the Palestinian fighters from Lebanon following an Israeli invasion, was abrogated by the Lebanese Parliament in 1987.

The mainstream Palestinian organizations are nevertheless well established and the predominance of one group or another depends on the geographical location. Thus, since the time Damascus exercised it hegemony over Lebanon, and considering its geographic proximity to Syria, the two refugee camps in the north of the country, Nahr al-Bared and Baddawi, have been dominated by Fatah-Intifada, which grew out of a pro-Syrian splinter group in 1982 from Yassir Arafat's Fatah.

But since the end of the 1990’s, Salafist networks have sprung up inside the camps in a sort of osmosis Lebanese Salafists in the Akkar region, further north, as noted by Bernard Rougier, in Le Jihad au quotidien [Everyday Jihad] (Presses universitaires de France). This event does not seem to have preoccupied the Syrians, who were already wooing the Lebanese Salafists in northern Lebanon. At the other extremity of the country, far from Damascus, in the Aïn Al-Helowi camp east of the town of Sidon, Jihadist Islamism ten years later and is part of global Islamism, opposed to the PLO and Palestinian nationalism, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In the other refugee camps, Fatah is dominant.

Built on land granted by the Lebanese state in the aftermath of the creation of Israel, they lack basic infrastructures and are ghettos where the population lives in growing misery, denied economic and social rights. In exchange for the “organization" of security inside the camps and the disarming of Palestinian outside the camps, the government of Fouad Siniora has begun to offer this guest population a decent life.
While awaiting the outcome of discussion on this topic, a Interior Ministry circular made timid headway in reducing the number of professions [such as law, investment, accounting] that are forbidden to Palestinians from 72 to 20. This is the only fragile achievement to date coming out of extremely intensive dialog.

M. Na.

Our Provisional Government

A Congressional delegation headed by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is to arrive in Damascus tomorrow. With the Executive under the control of George W. Bush and his veto power, it is unclear what the delegation can hope to bring back that would change anything.... It is at least a thumb in the eye for the President, and perhaps the first signs of a materializing provisional government in Washington. The visit follows that of Senator John Kerry a few months ago. But apart from the question of bringing back something, what could they possibly offer that regime?

Make that, Our Provisional State Department

Update: Half of Congress is in the Middle East for the Easter recess. Senator John McCain and Lindsay Graham are in Baghdad, demonstrating how "safe" the city is (provided you travel with a 50-man platoon, armed to the teeth).

Speaker Pelosi was in Jerusalem Saturday. According to L'Orient-Le Jour, Pelosi has volunteered to deliver any message Ohlmert might have for Assad. On Monday, the Speaker goes to Lebanon for talks with Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. She then goes to Saudi Arabia. Apparently, she is seeking the release of the three Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah (2) and Palestinian groups (1)last summer.

Strangely, Pelosi's visit follow that of Republican Congressmen Frank Wolf, Joseph Pitts and Robert Aderholt. They met with President Assad, Syrian businessmen, religious officials and opposition figure Riad Seif. The Republicans claimed they discussed "sealing" the Syrian border with Iraq. But there is certainly more to it than that.

We have a hero!

And another military man steps up to the plate. Général Alain Pellegrini.

Any general who upsets the Israelis is ok in my book.

From Le Monde via AFP:

"Israel deplores the statement by Général Alain Pellegrini, Chief of UN Forces in Lebanon, suggesting that he may change UNIFIL rules of engagement to allow the use of force to prevent incursions of Israeli warplanes."

Yeah, and if they attempt to bomb his positions:

"if French positions are attacked by Israeli warplanes or helicopters, we shall reply with our missiles."

And how deadly is the Aster(AéroSpatial TERminal)? Well, they say it is peerless.