LEBANON-U.S.: Women Activists Seek Links with Lebanese

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Apr 30 1996 (IPS) - A leading U.S. women’s group is sending a delegation to Lebanon for five days to show solidarity with Lebanese women, who faced two weeks of shelling by neighbouring Israel.

The organisation, ‘Madre’, a New York-based women’s human rights group, leaves Tuesday to meet with various Lebanese women’s groups, including the lead umbrella organisation, The Coalition of Lebanese Women.

The Madre delegation — which includes noted poet June Jordan and Broadway actress Kathleen Chalfant — hopes to bring about a greater understanding in the United States of the U.S. role in Lebanon’s recent woes.

Vivian Stromberg, Madre’s executive director, argues that the U.S. public has not so far been able to connect the suffering caused by Israel’s shelling of Lebanon to the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon or to U.S. support for that occupation.

“Israel’s efforts to enforce the occupation are supported by U.S. tax dollars,” Stromberg says. “U.S. shells are fired from U.S. howitzers, by the United States’ closest ally.”

According to human rights groups, the damage from the shelling included some 170 people, mainly Lebanese civilians, killed — more than 100 of whom were killed in an Apr. 18 shelling of a U.N. refugee camp at Qana. Following a cease-fire this week-end, some 400,000 Lebanese displaced from southern towns returned home, at times finding wreckage where their homes had been.

The current cease-fire requires that neither the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) nor the Shi’ite ‘Hizbollah’ (Party of God) guerrillas attack civilians. Both sides must also keep their conflict contained to Southern Lebanon and the Western Bekaa Valley, Lebanese territories occupied by the IDF and its proxies as an Israeli “security zone”.

But Stromberg contends the cease-fire, while welcome, will not bring peace to the region until Israel’s occupation of the 15-km “security zone” is addressed.

“I think it is a hiatus, not a lasting peace,” says Stromberg. “The suspension of bombing does not constitute peace.” She argues that the Lebanese public cannot have a normal existence under the current occupation, and after the destruction of infrastructure Lebanon faced this month.

“What does it mean when you have electricity for only two hours a day?” she asks. “And what do you do about people’s building anger?”

Speaking at the United Nations last week, Israeli Ambassador Gad Yaacobi said Israel is only interested in protecting its northern border from Hizbollah attacks, not in occupying Lebanon.

“Israel’s intention has never been, or ever will be, to hurt innocent civilians or hit peaceful civilian areas,” Yaacobi said. “Operations in Lebanon are being conducted solely against Hizbollah terrorist targets.”

But Lebanese President Elias Hraoui argued that Israel’s recent attacks went well beyond direct strikes against Hizbollah, which suffered minimal damage in the offensive.

“Israel has targeted power plants, destroyed roads and hospitals, demolished homes and villages and forcefully displaced many Lebanese,” Hraoui told the United Nations.

“It blockaded roads between the villages of the South and the rest of the homeland, and obstructed the delivery of food and medical assistance to the needy and wounded,” he added. “The South was turned into a wasteland.”

U.S. media did a reasonably good job of conveying that destruction, Stromberg says. But it so far has failed to show what she deems U.S. complicity in an occupation which has repeatedly brought war to Lebanon since 1982.

For that reason, adds Amy Thesing, Madre coordinator for public education, the Madre delegation will include photographer Michelle Agins and Pacifica News journalist Laura Flanders, who will contribute to a project documenting the damage wreaked by the recent fighting.

“The U.S. press certainly gives a different coverage toward anything concerning Israel,” avoiding criticism of Israeli policies, Thesing says.

In response, she adds, Madre’s trip is “a mission of solidarity to stand with the survivors and the families of victims, hopefully to bring out their stories…to recognise that the bombing is not just one incident, but part of a larger web.”

In addition, she says, Madre will bring some 20,000 dollars worth of humanitarian aid, including blankets and anti-diabetes medicine, garnered through voluntary contributions. Among the expected stops on the trip is a visit to the Qana refugee camp that was destroyed by Israeli shelling.

The mission, Stromberg asserts, should prove that “there are no anonymous women, no anonymous children, no anonymous victims. No government bombings of civilians are ever reasonable.”