As a long time resident of Ma'alot going on my fiftieth year I have witnessed the absurdity of the so called "Plight of the Palestinian's" and the recent history of Lebanon.
When I first arrived in Ma'alot in March of 1976 it was nearly a year after the horrific "Massacre in Ma'alot" on May 15, 1974 where a forced rescue ended in the cold-blooded murder of the civilian hostages by the remorseless Palestinian terrorists hostage takers.
The attack was carried out by three "Arab-Israelis" who joined the (DFLP) the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine:
Ali Ahmad Hasan al-Atmah (Linou), was 27 years old and he was born in Haifa.
Ziyad Abdar-Rahim Ka’ik (Ziyad) was 22 years old he had been born in Taibe. In his youth he had been involved with criminal activities and he had a police record as a juvenile delinquent and he had been placed in a institute for juvenile delinquents “Achvah” near Akko-Acre. According to the records of the Israeli Police upon his release he joined a criminal gang that specialized in burglaries. He also became a journeyman in laying tile floors for contractors in the area of Netanyah.
Muhammad Muslih Salim Dardour (Harbi), 20 years old, the youngest member of the group was born in Beit Hanina a neighborhood North East Jerusalem.
These three terrorists went to Lebanon to join the "Resistance" and received training in "Palestinian refugee camps" in the "No Man's" land of southern Lebanon known as "Fatahland".
After the "Arabs of the Mandated Areas" catastrohic lost-read failure to commit a very real "Genocide"; in the extermination of ALL the Jews of the newly (UNR181) partitioned "Mandated Areas" know as the "Nakba" in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Lebanon became home to more than 110,000 Palestinian refugees.
These refugees as ALL "Palestinian Refugees" in ALL ARAB lands, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan have NEVER been absorbed and assimilated as productive citizens.
In the aftermath of the establishment of the state and in total difference to those "Palestinian Refugees", some 900,000 "Mizrachi Jews of Arab Lands" were "ETNICALLY CLEANSED" robbed of their property, businesses, and possessions and expelled from their homes from 1949-1964.
In total indeference to the treatment of fellow Moslems and Arabs, who were enclosed within fenced in UNWRA camps. These new immigrant Jews were absorbed by Israel as citizens. They were housed initially in "Transit Camps", due to the lack of homes. These corrigated metal hut and tent refugee encampments formed the basis of the "Development Town" project to create new towns like Ma'alot in the prepheral areas of the country.
These communities mostly comprised of Jews of Arab lands, many of whom had lived in rural areas where they were severly mistreated and uneducated, were in need of assistance in their assimilation -especially in their process of modernization and education.
Many of the more French or English colonialized educated and wealthy Jews choose to immigrate to other countries or to move to other sections of Israel. Leaving a cultural as well as social problem that hindered Israel's development for decades.
Lebanon
After the infamous "Black September" of 1970, the southern part of the "sovereign nation of Lebanon" was subverted to a terrorist stronghold by Yasser Arafat and the PLO -Palestinian Liberation Organization by the large influx of some 300,000 Palestinians that had been displaced from "Palestine" aka Jordan by the forces loyal to the imposed Hashemite King Hussein.
From 1967 until 1982, many numerous murderous attacks were launched from this area into Israel unhindered by the Lebanese forces or the UN "Peace Keeping forces".
"Operation Litani" of 1978 was provoked by the "Coastal Road Massacre" of 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children. The intended purpose of "Operation Litani" was to clear the PLO out of Fatahland but was not allowed ro be completed by pressure brought on Israel to make a "ceasefire".
"Operation Litani" ended under intensive pressure from the US and the UN for a "Ceasefire" and the "United Nations" Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was created after the incursion, following the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 425 in March 1978:
"to confirm Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon, restore international peace and security(sic), and help the government of Lebanon restore its effective authority in the area."
In reality the PLO under the "watchful eyes" of UNIFIL, returned to the area with a vengenace and brought with them Soviet made 133mm artillery, Katyusha rockets and multiple launch trucks and 122mm mortars.
Not content with terrorist infiltrations Arafat unleashed his arsenal of artillery and katyushas to fire indiscriminately almost nightly into Israel at civilian targets under the "watchful eyes" of the UNIFIL.
Israeli Concern For It's People
"Fortunately" the leadership of the Jewish state were wise and caring enough to construct public bomb shelters to protect it's citizens, especially in those areas neighborhood where older housing did not have any.
Post 1967 apartment buildings were required to have a bomb shelter for all the residents. Needless to say "public" or "joint" bomb shelters lack privacy and are noisy and are not made for a stay of long extended peiods like that of "todays" "Secure room" which are available in all of todays new housing.
In the post SCUD missile 1991 "Desert Storm" period newer housing starts by private contractors vied for providing a "secure room" in their new individual apartment housing. Since then standards for built in a "secure room"have increased.
Regretfully, for those of us who live in the prepheral areas, the once infamous "Development Towns". Our homes were built during the monetary crisis of the late 1950's early 1960's when construction mateials were scant. In my neighborhood of two floor apartments . that are 52 sq meters or 552 sq feet each; compare to average American 882 square feet. Bomb shelters were only constucted for neighborhoods in the post Six Day War period comprized of a single large underground room and toilets.
So when the shelling became increasingly a "nightly thing" each night from 1980 -1982, my wife and new born son would go downstairs to the bomb shelter to sleep in safety with the other wives and children of the building.
We husbands and new fathers would stand guard in posts on the outskirts of Ma'alot, or in my case as a combat medic man the emergency medical center.
In 2006 during the "Second War" in Lebanon during the war, the Hezbollah rocket force fired between 3,970 and 4,228 rockets at a rate of more than 100 per day, unprecedented since the Iran–Iraq War. About 95% of these were 122 mm (4.8 in) Katyusha artillery rockets, which carried warheads up to 30 kg (66 lb) and had a range of up to 30 km (19 mi). Of those 1686 explosive ladened rockets were fired at Ma'alot, 6 landed less than 50 meters from my home.
The only difference is now we have the Iron Dome system which has been actively shooting down those missile/rockets fired at us.
Lebanon Now
In June of 1982 Israel could take it no longer after gunmen from Abu Nidal's organization attempted to assassinate Shlomo Argov, Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom and the 1982 Lebanon War, dubbed Operation Peace for Galilee began.
From Wikkipedia:
"After attacking the PLO – as well as Syrian, leftist, and Muslim Lebanese forces – the Israeli military, in cooperation with their Maronite allies and the self-styled Free Lebanon State, occupied southern Lebanon, eventually surrounding the PLO and elements of the Syrian Army. Surrounded in West Beirut and subjected to heavy bombardment, the PLO forces and their allies negotiated passage from Lebanon with the aid of United States Special Envoy Philip Habib and the protection of international peacekeepers. The PLO, under the chairmanship of Yasser Arafat, had relocated its headquarters to Tripoli in June 1982. By expelling the PLO, removing Syrian influence over Lebanon, and installing a pro-Israeli Christian government led by President Bachir Gemayel, Israel hoped to sign a treaty which Begin promised would give Israel "forty years of peace".
Following the assassination of Gemayel in September 1982, Israel's position in Beirut became untenable and the signing of a peace treaty became increasingly unlikely.
Outrage following the IDF's role in the Phalangist-perpetrated Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese Shias, as well as Israeli popular disillusionment with the war, led to a gradual withdrawal from Beirut to the areas claimed by the Free Lebanon State in southern Lebanon (later to become the South Lebanon security belt), which was initiated following the 17 May Agreement and Syria's change of attitude towards the PLO.
After Israeli forces withdrew from most of Lebanon, the War of the Camps broke out between Lebanese factions, the remains of the PLO and Syrian forces, in which Syria fought its former Palestinian allies.
At the same time, Shi'a militant groups began consolidating and waging a low-intensity guerrilla war against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, leading to 15 years of low-scale armed conflict. The Lebanese Civil War would continue until 1990, at which point Syria had established complete dominance over Lebanon."
What Wikkipedia fails to elaborate on is that most of the area south of Beirut to the Israeli border was an area where members of the Shi'ite branch of Islam reside.
And as the Israeli government favoured a close relationship with the Lebanese Maronite Phalange Christian forces over that with the depressed and oppressed poorer Shi'ite minority animosity towards Israel grew.
As I mentioned in my other posts in addtion to this issue of the status of Christians within the Arab world. There has ALWAYS been a conflict within Islam between the majority Sunni Muslims who believe that the Prophet did not explicitly declare a successor and the Shia Muslims who believe that the Prophet publicly designated his cousin and son-in-law, Hazrat Ali, as the first in a line of hereditary Imams from the Prophet's family to lead the community after him.
With the "triumphant return" to Iran in February 1979 of the leading scholar of Shia Islam Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose first name means "spirit of Allah" he created a theocracy in Iran based on the Velayat-e faqih or guardianship of the Islamic Jurist.
This is a concept in "Twelver Shia Islamic law" which holds that until the reappearance of the "infallible Imam", at least some of the "religious and social affairs" of the Muslim world should be administered by righteous Shi'i jurists.
It is out of this Shi'ite belief that Hezbollah the party of God (Hizb Allah) declared its existence on 16 February 1985.
The sons of the ummah (Muslim community) established "The Hizballah Program" with the aid of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in order to spread the Islamic Revolution which follows a distinct version of Islamic Shia ideology.
According to "The Hezbollah Program" the principles of its ideology are:
To expel Americans, the French and their allies definitely from Lebanon, putting an end to any colonialist entity on our land.
To submit the phalanges to a just power and bring them all to justice for the crimes they have perpetrated against Muslims and Christians.
To permit all the sons of our people to determine their future and to choose in all the liberty the form of government their desire. We call upon all of them to pick the option of Islamic government which, alone, is capable of guaranteeing justice and liberty for all. Only an Islamic regime can stop any future tentative attempts of imperialistic infiltration onto our country.
The current leader Hassan Nasrallah has described Hezbollah's ideology as having "two main axis:
firstly, a belief in the rule by the just juris consult and adherence to Khomeini's leadership; and
secondly, lay down the basis of a Muslim state which plays a central role in the world, as well as the continued need to struggle against the Israeli enemy"
Hezbollah views its conflict with Israel and the Jewish people as religiously motivated.
The history of the Arab-Israeli conflict to them is a repeat of the negative interactions between the Jews of medieval Arabia and Muhammad and the early umma described in the Koran and other classical Islamic texts.
God, according to Hezbollah theology, cursed all Jews as blasphemers damned for all time and throughout history. Hezbollah (as well as the political/religious leaders of Iran) believe that the destruction of Israel will bring about the "reappearance of the Imam (the Shiite Islamic Messiah)"
Furthermore, the elimination of the state of Israel has been a primary goal for Hezbollah.
Hezbollah not only opposes the government and policies of the State of Israel, but also each and every Jewish civilian who lives in Israel.
Its 1985 manifesto reportedly states "our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no ceasefire, and no peace agreements."
