Smoke signals send warning to Israel - by Robert Fisk

Smoke signals from the battle of Bint Jbeil send a warning to Israel

By Robert Fisk

06/27/06 "The Independent" -- -- Qlaya, Southern Lebanon -- Is it possible - is it conceivable - that Israel is losing its war in Lebanon?

From this hill village in the south of the country, I am watching the clouds of brown and black smoke rising from its latest disaster in the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil: up to 13 Israeli soldiers dead, and others surrounded, after a devastating ambush by Hizbollah guerrillas in what was supposed to be a successful Israeli military advance against a "terrorist centre".

To my left smoke rises too, over the town of Khiam, where a smashed United Nations outpost remains the only memorial to the four UN soldiers - most of them decapitated by an American-made missile on Tuesday - killed by the Israeli air force.

Indian soldiers of the UN army in southern Lebanon, visibly moved by the horror of bringing their Canadian, Fijian, Chinese and Austrian comrades back in at least 20 pieces from the clearly marked UN post next to Khiam prison, left their remains at Marjayoun hospital yesterday.

In past years, I have spent hours with their comrades in this UN position, which is clearly marked in white and blue paint, with the UN's pale blue flag opposite the Israeli frontier. Their duty was to report on all they saw: the ruthless Hizbollah missile fire out of Khiam and the brutal Israeli response against the civilians of Lebanon.

Is this why they had to die, after being targeted by the Israelis for eight hours, their officers pleading to the Israeli Defence Forces that they cease fire? An American-made Israeli helicopter saw to that.



http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14223.htm

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. I get a "403 - Forbidden" access error when following the link

Any ideas on how to get to the full article?

2. Here is link to home page

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/index.html


Maybe that will work.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Problem solved - I had hard-coded the IP address for that website

since I seemed to constantly get "address not found" errors. Now I've removed that, my ISP's nameserver seems to be finding it OK now. Thanks for the reply.

[thereismore]

3. It is not clear just how are Israelis in "deep trouble" . They got whacked

there, but is there some sort of systemic trouble showing?