The wrath of Israel
John Steinbeck never dreamed that the title of one of his novels, The Grapes of Wrath, would one day be used by the Israelis as the code name for their military operation, which has killed at least 31 people and injured nearly 200 others in a week.
Unlike Steinbeck's Pulitzer prize winning work, which shows deep understanding and sympathy for the cruel exploitation of migrant workers on Californian farms in the 1930s, the Israeli military's "Operation Grapes of Wrath" has caused great suffering to a multitude of innocent people.
The military operation, which entered its seventh day yesterday, has driven more than 400,000 Lebanese from their homes in the wake of Israel's continuous air raids. According to foreign news reports, the Israeli air force has conducted some 1,000 sorties since the campaign began last week.
Until yesterday, there was no sign of either the Hizbollah guerrillas or the Israeli government letting up. Instead, the violence seems to be escalating. Yesterday, the Hizbollah's Katyusha rockets slammed into Israel's largest border town of Kiryat Shmona. Israel retaliated by blasting several villages near Lebanon's southern port of Tyre.
Despite condemnations by a number of countries -- including non-aligned Indonesia, Russia and even France -- and the diplomatic efforts of the U.S. and the European Union, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres has turned a blind eye to all the efforts that could bring an end to the crisis.
He remains adamant in his stance and has said that only a written understanding involving Lebanon, the Hizbollah guerrillas, Syria and Israel will stop the fighting.
"We aspire to a written document," Peres said in reference to Israel's last onslaught on Lebanon in July 1993, when the United States helped broker an oral understanding to halt attacks on civilian areas.
Many political scientists here believe that Peres, dubbed as "Mr. Security" and the savior of his people, launched the military operation more to boost his personal image before the May 29th general election than to truly address the fears of the Israelis who inhabit Kiryat Shmona, which the Hizbollah has threatened to convert into "an uninhabitable hell".
The suspicions of the political analysts were proven correct when Peres and Israeli army chiefs held several press briefings for "Operation Grapes of Wrath", an undertaking regarded by some as a media campaign for the Peres government, which itself has come under fire by the Likud opposition.
We cannot but deplore Israel's military operation in Lebanon and appeal to the United Nations to help end the fighting and suffering of the hundreds of thousands of innocent Lebanese people who have fallen victim to the political and military adventurism of the Israeli government. At the same time we hope the Hizbollah guerrillas will restrain themselves from launching further rocket attacks on the border town of Kiryat Shmona so as to prevent the deaths of more civilians and the need for another exodus.