July 2006: Gruesome evidence of Israel’s military failure in Lebanon

They made a desert and known as it peace. Srifa – or what was as soon as the village of Srifa – is a spot of pancaked properties, blasted partitions, rubble, ravenous cats and trapped corpses. However it’s also a spot of victory for the Hezbollah, whose fighters walked amid the destruction yesterday with the air of conquering heroes. So who’s accountable for this desert? The Shia militia which provoked this conflict – or the Israeli air pressure and military which has laid waste to southern Lebanon and killed so lots of its individuals?

There was little question what the village mukhtar thought. As three Hezbollah males – one wounded within the arm, the opposite carrying two ammunition clips and a two-way radio – handed us amid the piles of damaged concrete, Hussein Kamel el-Din yelled to them: “Hallo, heroes!” Then he turned to me. “You realize why they’re offended? As a result of God didn’t give them the chance of dying.”

It’s a must to be down right here with the Hezbollah amid this terrifying destruction – means south of the Litani river, within the territory from which Israel as soon as vowed to expel them – to grasp the character of the previous month of conflict and of its huge political significance to the Center East. Israel’s mighty military has already retreated from the neighbouring village of Ghandouriyeh after shedding 40 males in simply over 36 hours of combating. It has not even managed to penetrate the smashed city of Khiam the place the Hezbollah have been celebrating yesterday afternoon. In Srifa, I stood with Hezbollah males wanting on the empty roads to the south and will see all the way in which to Israel and the settlement of Misgav Am on the opposite aspect of the frontier. This isn’t the way in which the conflict was presupposed to have ended for Israel.