Eilon, Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Hello friends
After yesterday's huge barrage which occurred around 5 in the afternoon, when according to local sources more than eighty rockets fell within Israel, we still managed to sleep fitfully. Gilad came by and took the dog for the night. It saved my evening stroll with Zed. As usual sporadic artillery fire continued throughout the night. In the east a jet may have cast an occasional rocket into the gloom that must be overtaking southern Lebanon. From bed it sounded like a medium sized stone plummeting into a broad and ever deepening cistern. When you peer into its depths everything is just as obscure as before.
Some of those rockets were classic katyushas, the ones we often witnessed from Adamit exploding in the gorge. Rumors began to circulate where some of the latest cluster may have dropped. A neighbor said Avdon, but there was even a reported unconfirmed sighting of one rocket making a big splash in the Hamdan reservoir across the road. Wherever they did fall, coupled with the ferocity of the exchange, it sufficiently motivated Moshe, our security chief, to stress the need to use the shelters, or in the case of the Van Gogh "suburbans", to remain indoors for the remainder of the day.
Starting work at 5:30 has advantages in July. Clods of ashen cumulus clouds that inevitably wither in the summer heat, crowd a brightening sky. It is still dark enough for me to drive up to our trailer where the irrigation computer is situated with head-lights, reminding me of winter and the wet emerald leaves of our Ardit avocado trees. A solitary eastern howitzer commenced firing at 4:45 AM joined by a choral cannonade of big guns ranged around the region, and automatic heavy machine gun fire beyond the ridge of Sulam Tsur [Jebel Mushaqah].
Zohar and I reach the Bayit Lavan orchard, a lone jackal espying our presence is forced to quit the field, after a night of ravaging pipe lines. We discovered a newly dug hole beneath the fence, exactly where Ibrahim had stitched a breach, and was forced to leave it at that, when this whole new trouble began. The jackal, seeing us approach, pranced off.with aplomb. His night shift was done. In the west an artillery round snapped the air and there was more automatic gun fire.
The gunfire here appears to have its own phonetics and own variable audio sequences. There are different timbres of shot, popping and plummeting, reverberating beyond the massif which separates us from the Adamit plateau and the hilly Lebanese terrain beyond. The earth shudders; the air dilates and flaps haughtily in our faces. The audible deviation of one gun to another depends on location, the grandeur of the terrain as well as the type of ordnance expended in its deadly rondo. Its arrangement is left to chance, like the Dadaist's chance instrumentation of a symphony. An errant violin is coupled to the tympani, the bassoon bound to the bass; the trumpet in tatters.
Reaching home earlier, I can report that some services are suspended while others carry on despite the fighting. The nearby gas station is closed. There has been no mail delivery for more than a week. The local grocery remains open, but the proprietor, Nissim, has stipulated that he won't take customers if they bring their children into the store. He even inserted an announcement on the local closed circuit television channel. Outside I hear Abu Nawaf's truck making its usual trash collection. As the truck clawed and compressed its contents within its maws, the shooting escalated. We heard that rockets had dispersed harmlessly in open fields in Western Galilee, but the first alerts had sounded as south as Haifa.
Yesterday the United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Anan, spoke of the possibility of dispatching a military stabilizing force to the region while his envoys met with Israeli officials. In Israel there are few expectations that such a force could succeed at its task. One should not forget that the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon [UNIFIL] is still deployed across the frontier, but has played no substantial role in the current conflict. In fact, Hezbollah, in the past, has often exploited UNIFIL positions to launch its attacks. Quite often these missions serve to separate wrangling adversaries, much like an official at a soccer match. They issue colored cards for violations of ceasefire agreements.
The United Nations played a prominent role in the disarmament of Iraq's toxic arsenal, but their success was predicated on Baghdad's capitulation in the first Gulf War. As soon as Saddam Hussein's government ceased cooperating, the UN inspection team could no longer perform its task and left the country. Two subsequent allied bombing campaigns quickly followed
It should not be forgotten that Hezbollah's public debut occurred when there was a multi-national force operating in Beirut in late 1982. When the American and French marine barracks were targeted, the four participating nations abandoned their mission.
Barry