Holding Lebanon hostage

``Israel’s strategy was to drive the Palestinians to largely-Muslim West Beirut (apart from those who were killed, dispersed or imprisoned), then to besiege the city, cutting off water, food, medical supplies and electricity, and to subject it to increasingly heavy bombardment. Naturally, the native Lebanese population was also severely battered. These measures had little impact on the PLO guerrilla fighters in Beirut, but civilians suffered increasingly brutal punishment. The correct calculation was that by this device, the PLO would be compelled to leave West Beirut to save it from total annihilation. It was assumed, also correctly, that American intellectuals could be found to carry out the task of showing that this too was a remarkable exercise in humanity and a historically unique display of `purity of arms,' even having the audacity to claim that it was the PLO, not the Israeli attackers, who were `holding the city and its population hostage'''.

Noam Chomsky, 1983
from a passage in The Fateful Triangle on ``Peace for Galilee'', Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon that killed over 17,000 innocent civilians


``Hezbollah's provocative attack on 12 July was the trigger of this crisis. It is clear that the Lebanese government had no advance knowledge of this attack. Whatever other agendas they may serve, Hezbollah's actions, which it portrays as defending Palestinian and Lebanese interests, in fact do neither. On the contrary, they hold an entire nation hostage, set back prospects for negotiation of a comprehensive Middle East peace.''

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
July 20, 2006