No, I don’t suppose you do unless you are one of the 30,000 Palestinians displaced or a relative of the 400 who died two years ago in fighting between the Lebanese army and Islamist militants.
The Lebanese army went in hard. It destroyed homes and killed many innocent civilians.
Yet there were no delegations from the Arab League, no British MPs making a tour of the devastation, no UN resolutions, no lurid TV pictures, no Iranian outrage, no Hamas demonstrations, no Palestinian Authority claims of war crimes, no UNRWA officials accusing Lebanon of anything, no Viva Palestina convoys and definitely not a Jeremy Bowen in sight.
Why? Because it’s alright for an Arab country to kill Muslims with impunity. No Jews or Israelis were involved. So the world has little interest. Why did Lebanon take this action? Because an Islamist group was threatening to destabilise the country. They weren’t sending a missile barrage into neighbouring towns and cities, they didn’t threaten to annihilate the Lebanese people, but they were brutally slaughtered.
The Lebanese did not allow in any journalists. Pictures of the devastation have been carefully suppressed.
The camp was not bombed for three weeks but for 3 MONTHS!
This is what Michael Birmingham had to say on 25th October 2007 on the Information Clearing House website:
Between May and September of this year, a ferocious battle took place between the Lebanese Army and a small armed group known as Fatah Al Islam. From the first the day, the Lebanese Army surrounded the camp and fired in artillery, maintaining this course for months. Most of the residents of the camp were forced to leave with the clothes on their backs within the first three days. As the number of young Lebanese soldiers killed and horribly maimed rose through the battle, Lebanon became awash with patriotism and grief, any questioning of the army taboo.
Something terrible has been done to the residents of Nahr al Bared, and the Lebanese people are being spared the details. Over the past two weeks, since the camp was partly reopened to a few of its residents, many of us who have been there have been stunned by a powerful reality. Beyond the massive destruction of the homes from three months of bombing, room after room, house after house have been burned. Burned from the inside. Amongst the ashes on the ground, are the insides of what appear to have been car tyres. The walls have soot dripping down from what seems clearly to have been something flammable sprayed on them. Rooms, houses, shops, garages – all blackened ruins, yet having had no damage from bombing or battle. They were burned deliberately by people entering and torching them.
How many we do not know; it is too large for a few people to comprehensively assess. But finding an un-bombed house or a business that has not been torched is very hard indeed.
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18618.htm)
Basically THE ENTIRE CAMP was destroyed by the Lebanese army. Was this not a prima facie war crime? Was this not worthy of world-wide condemnation, ICC war crimes investigations and those other instruments being used to attack Israel?
Unfortunately the residents of Nahr el-Bared do not have the propaganda machines working for them, but what is incomprehensible is that they do not even appear to have the interest of their fellow Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
But perhaps it’s not so incomprehensible after all. In fact, it’s blindingly obvious. Hamas and the PA don’t care about Palestinians who are not fighting Israel because there is no political ground to be gained. Accusing the Lebanese does nothing to further their aims of destroying Israel by arms or by political stealth.
Meanwhile the BBC reports today (here):
Palestinians have been here for more than 60 years – since the creation of Israel – but they are still barred from at least 70 professions, have no access to state education or healthcare, and cannot move freely or buy land.
These conditions turn the Palestinian camps into a breeding ground for extremism, a time bomb which will inevitably explode
It sounds to me that these Palestinians have it considerably worse than those in Gaza but are ignored by the world and the Arab world especially. The BBC adds:
The UN’s relief agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has only managed to raise $43m (£31m) to rebuild the camp – a tiny fraction of the $430m needed. Lebanon’s rich neighbours in the Gulf have not delivered the funds they pledged.
Can the world not see the utter moral bankruptcy of the Arab world with regard to these people. But still it’s Israel and Israel alone which is being demonised and delegitimised around the world by Arab and Muslim hypocrites who allow hundreds of thousands to die in Sudan whilst sending support to the evil regime of al-Bashir and turn a blind eye to their fellows in Lebanon many of whom, despite the BBC’s assertion, were actually expelled from Jordan, another state that has washed its hands of the Palestinians.