Playing with explosives leads to ...

a cease fire !!! Yes I was not that far from reality last week ;). As you can read pretty much anywhere on the medias (like here) Israel and the Hamas signed a cease fire deal to start tomorrow morning, with gradual improvements which if everything happens well will end up ... well forget about that, we'll see tomorrow how it starts.
Anyways Israel is talking to Syria about peace and giving the Golan back, makes truce deals with Hamas in Gaza, and since today seems also to open the door to talks with Lebanon, all at once! Something's definitely happening, it seems that with the US presidential elections coming the stupid "we don't talk to the Axis of Evil" is finally gone and diplomacy is restarting.

Playing with explosives

Can be dangerous...

Ref: Le Monde, Photo : REUTERS/IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA

As said in the article (but in french) a group of Hamas activists was playing in their basement with firecrackers they were planning to use to protest peacefully the Israeli aggression. Unfortunately they had smoked way too much and someone dropped a match on the magic box and blew the whole place up. They obviously first blamed Israel for the explosion, but then reverted to declare them as martyrs in an almost finished heroic operation. OK the article doesn't say that and I am being slightly sarcastic but the meaning is preserved.

At the same time the same Hamas is negotiating a truce with Israel, which is clearly not being enthusiastic about it but had postponed yesterday military operations to try to "give the truce a chance". With a little bit of chance if they keep postponing it, all Hamas military wing members will self detonate in an act of martyrdom with more results than the past 8 years of peace talks and military operations combined ?

All this to say that things aren't looking great with the neighbors and that escalation keeps going... Maybe one day someone will realize that having the biggest one is not that important.

Jerusalem shooting

Fifille arrived tuesday night this week and we've been quite busy sightseeing rather than paying attention to the news. Last friday we were over at Waffa's place and she told us about a shooting at a jewish religious school (Yeshiva) in Jerusalem the day before. We quickly checked the news, and answered one of Waffa's main concerns. Was the shooter, that killed 8 adolescent, an Israeli arab ? It seems that yes he was, and therefore it increased Waffa's fears... She knows that something like that will increase even further the pressure on them, and from what it seems that's the current concern of a large number of Israeli arabs: becoming victims for retaliation, or getting their rights severed.

Anyways, the slaughter was terrible and shoked the whole country. There is a lot of anger going around and I really can't see things getting any better from there especially that the current situation was already quite tense...

Patriots

As I was saying a couple of days ago, the tension is raising on the northern side of Israel. A battery of Patriots (those relatively inefficient anti-aircraft anti-missile US defense systems) got deployed in Haifa according to Haaretz. I suppose it's meant to comfort the locals more than really meant to provide any real protection. Anyway, since I've been here bad stuff always came from where I expected the least so I suppose nothing's gonna happen.

Car bombings

Imad Mughniyah died yesterday night in the explosion of his car in Damascus, he

headed Hezbollah's operations branch serving in a role similar to chief of staff, and had been wanted by Israel and the United States for years due to his role in numerous bombings, hijackings and abductions in which hundreds of people were killed.

Israel denied involvment but got fingerpointed immediately (probably rightfully). It is quite interresting to read the comments on Haaretz article to realize how many people this death made happy, and how much vengeance is prefered over justice. Obviously justice was impossible as he was a clandestine and kind of protected by Syrian state, but does it render the use of the same low methods as the "terrorists" acceptable ? Unfortunately many seem to think so.

Why am I posting this rant ? Well Hezbollah has said they would avenge, and the last time there was an escalation with them I spent a "Katyusha" summer. Just a few weeks after an incident at the Lebanese border that saw one death and the political tension raising to terrible levels between the Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, I just hope ther won't be any escalation (they seem to use Israel as a common ennemy to unite each others when things go really wrong)...
Anyway, the situation around here is sad, the "peace talks" are going at the speed of an arthritic snail, Gaza is locked and boiling, suicide bombings are restarting in Israel, Iran is as radical as ever, and Mossad still assassinating.
Hopefully the sun is shining and spring is starting, so I can forget all this as soon as I look through the window.

40 years

today, I am wearing his picture on my tee-shirt at work, and only one noticed.

PS: added some shots to the recent galeries also

Peace talks restarting ?

Almost 15 years later, and a coup in Gaza, it seems that serious peace talks are restarting, with more or less the same solutions. It failed last time so nobody had been really trying since, but as there is not really any other solution someone needed to restart it. Exchanging land, connecting Gaza and the West Bank, recognizing the refugee problem and doing something about it, and finally splitting the holy sites in Jerusalem, everything seems to be there, the problems always have been in the details. Haaretz article here.

Beaufort

Yesterday I joined Omer and Amir and Tel Aviv for the night. The drive was longer than expected, I spent almost one hour stopped on the highway. It seems that two palestinians managed to infiltrate Israel from Gaza and the Police had set blockades on all roads and were filtering traffic all over Israel.

For once I wasn't driving too fast :/.

After chatting and grabbing beers we picked up a movie, under Omer recommendation we picked Beaufort: an Israeli war movie that got a silver bear in Berlin festival.

"Perched atop a mountain in southern Lebanon, the Beaufort Castle has passed from army to army for hundreds of years. In the year 2000, Liraz Liberti, a young Israeli commander, is in charge of defending the last outpost.
It has become his reason to live, filling him with power, fueling him with self-importance, driving him to allow perilous - and ultimately meaningless - operations... Bomb specialist Ziv loses his life when the bomb he is about to defuse explodes. 19-year-old Zitlawi dies in a missile attack. And Oshri, who can´t wait to see his girlfriend in New Jersey, is severely injured in a bombing that leaves the swaggering Liraz frozen with terror... This is their story not of war, but of retreat, a story of no enemy, but an amorphous entity that drops bombs from the skies."

I do recommand watching it, well at least not on a depressed day.

PS: the building where I took the Front 5 picture 2 weeks ago has been destroyed, It looked kind of out of place, but no more interresting grafitis guesses.

What was it this time ?

It seems that minutes ago a few Katyushas landed in the northern israel town of Kiriat Shmona. So what was it this time that decided them (it seems it's not Hezbollah this time) to launch rockets towards an Israeli town. Press coverage here: Haaretz, Jerusalem Post (funny how the newspapers from the right report more rockets;), the news hasn't reached non Israeli media yet it seems.

So the war everybody was forcasting for this summer is restarting ? Well I start to re-hear every loud noise my neighbours make despite the AC, I had gotten rid of that habit only 6 months ago.

French politics

I have discussed recently with quite a few of you about French politics. You probably heard quite a few bad things about our new president from me, so to balance things a little bit here is a relatively fair quick guide for americans to understand french politics. It actually works as well for non amricans as american politics are more known worldwide than ours.

Bad day

This morning I woke up too early, way too early with quite a headache. Well I guess the "few" drinks from last night did it, anyways it was really early so I went and sat at the computer, read e-mail and picked up my camera and started playing around with it. I dropped it a few times in Tibet and it was a bit sloppy lately. So it starts, I take a picture and during focusing I hear "SCREEEEETCH". Mmmm is that the autofocus noise ? SCREEEEETCH yes it's the autofocus, after playing 5 minutes I realize that I can take one non blurry picture if I focus on infinity and then need to reboot the camera. It's gone, lasted almost one year :(.

Once at work I gather a few people to come with me for lunch out, using the occasion to vote for the presidential elections at the consulate. We actually settled on one of the nicest places around. Omer asks if I can pay for him as he forgot his wallet at home.
I: "sure, let's go"
Him: "thank you, let me drive so you can relax"
...
Nothing strikes you ? Well nothing striked me at that time either so we just drive there. Once almost there we remember that the way is really long and painful unless you take a forbidden left turn. We settle on the second option. We look right, left, nothing... GO GO GO !

You're still with me ? Already guessed what's next ?

Well I am in a car that just took a forbidden left car driven by a guy that doesn't have his wallet... with a cop car right behind us... Yeah, I promise right BEHIND us. So we get pulled over, the cop is quite nice and Omer just gets 1 ticket for the left turn instead of the 3 he could (1 for the left turn, 1 for driving without ID, 1 for not having any ID on him). 15 minutes later we go, find a parking spot near and walk to the restaurant, which is closed on sundays. I am not joking, it was closed, just like every sundays.

We finally ate at an ok place, I went to vote and drove back to work, finished a long day at work and... Well the french picked the short and nervous option for president, the one I didn't vote for and the one I sincerely dislike (I could get only low quality profanity in english so i am not trying). He got 53%, good luck for the next 5 years, finaly it's not that bad to be an expatriate. Only thing remaining to be seen is how many cars will burn this week in France.

And then I realized why my camera died this morning, it suicided, it didn't want to see that. As I was looking around if that was something known on the web I found that blog about photographers tossing their cameras in hope for great shots and decided I would give it a try as they get really cool shots (cf their flickr group). After a few dozen toss nothing good came out that unable-to-focus camera so I pulled its predecessor out of a box and kept on tossing it frenetically. I finally got 2 pictures half successfull, I'll let you be the judge.





So now I am looking for a very portable camera with high quality optics... So either I buy the same one again. The Canon SD800 was fine but I'd like more freedom, better optics and still something compact as I don't really see myself carrying a DSLR. Only thing I found is this, so I'm gonna think twice or more before doing that replacement...

Independance Day

So this was Independance day here. During this period many people put a smal Israeli flag on their car. I saw yesterday a car climbing the Carmel road with 2 Hezbollah flags. I was surprised by such Huzpah and was expecting something bad to happen when the car stopped at a red light in the middle of cars harboring an israeli flag. Well, nothing happened, people saw it and barely paid attention.
I wonder what would happen if someone was putting a Al Qaeda flag (does that exist) on his car near ground 0 in NY.

Last night Ravi and Omer joined me to watch the fireworks from my balcony, but we got so busy drinking, eating and playing sheshbesh that we missed it :).



Next day I had the traditional independance day Barbecue at Pierre's house where Cathy's razor blade slipped on my hair :).

When will it be ?

I haven't written much about politics here for quite a while. I probably was just too depressed about it or something like that, but something really changed with last summer's war. By then I was more hearing questions about how to make peace happen, last, or at least manage to live a reasonably safe life.

Last year there were still people believing that Israel disengaging from Gaza was one step towards peace with Palestine, Israel's foreign ennemy were not very vocal and the only obstacle towards peace in here was finger pointed as the Hamas by most of the western world. So what happened?
I still remember showing lots of hope when the "prisoners plan" (full text here) was getting signed by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah (representing most of the parties then). You know that plan that everybody forgot about, that was prepared by Palestinians from various factions in Israeli prisons, and where most factions were agreeing among things to cease arm struggles outside of the 1967 green line (point 3), forming a unity government (point 6), and that was speaking of Israel as a state and not as "Zionist entity" as usual, and finally talking about negotiations and diplomacy to solve the problems.

So what about this? It ages back to may 2006 and in the past week (9 months later then) Fatah and Hamas agreed in Mecca to form a unity government to try to stop the civilian war that is raging between them in Gaza for almost 2 months. Well, when this plan was getting agreed upon by political wings, Hamas military wing abducted an Israeli soldier within Israel which triggered a (unfortunately usual) large military operation by Israel in Gaza. The plan was dropped and forgotten almost immediately as peace was not an immediate objective anymore. Some blame the Hamas military wing to have done this because they do not want to cease armed struggle versus Israel inside Israel, some say that Israel made sure the answer was big enough so the plan would be dropped and they could stay the ones imposing unilateral moves. Anyways, it was just the start.

Two weeks later the Hezbollah abducted 2 more soldiers in Israel and triggered the second Lebanon war between Israel and Lebanon. Many believe it was in an attempt to divert Israel’s focus on Gaza, many other believe it was taken as an opportunity by Israel to start a long planned war against Hezbollah, but now the reason why it happened don’t really matter anymore. The war happened (and you can find a few entries of this blog about it), civilians were murdered, soldiers died, and it ended under a very strong international pressure.

It ended up in a state that Israel disliked badly, and despite having tactically won the war, it ended up being considered as a defeat (and claimed as a victory by Hezbollah which anyways doesn't know the word for defeat :). Why a defeat ? Because Israel didn't succeed in protecting its civilians from rocket fire despite saying it should take only a few weeks, defeat because a few well trained Hezbollah fighters resisted them for weeks while in previous wars Israel was winning within days, defeat because the abducted soldiers were not returned despite all the UN resolutions signed, and defeat because most of the people stopped believing in peace.

This year was also the one where Iran grew as the number 1 bad guy (western world perspective), and their president started to be more vocal than usual, promising destruction to Israel, promoting holocaust denial and developping nuclear technology. This was one more year of civilian war in a US occupied Iraq without any sign of progress towards peace.

I could continue to point at the multiple political assassinations and bombings that keep going on in an unstable Lebanon, the civil war in Gaza for the past 2 months and in general the various signs of a rising tension between the western (christian) world and the middle eastern (muslim) world.

Israel is at the confluent of all these tensions, and the question in most minds is "When will it be ?", the next war...

Peace now ?

So the few questions going around me are : is this peace now? and who did win that war ?
To the first one, it is a cease fire, not peace. Countries like Lebanon consider themselves at war with Israel despite an armistice in 1949 and various cease fires since. Now the question is how long will this cease fire last ? The previous one lasted around 6 years with monthly violations mostly located arount the Sheba farms. I can only hope that this one will last longer but the first days of cease fire are not very promising.

France which is supposed to lead the UN interposition force in south Lebanon already said it would not participate to the implementation of some parts of the cease fire, by not working on disarming Hezbollah. The Lebanese government agreed with Hezbollah that they would keep their weapons, just not show them in public (which itself is a violation of the cease fire conditions which say that the only weaponry in south Lebanon has to be the army's). On the other side Israeli army is still in south Lebanon, with less soldiers but still there.
Annan is supposed to start a taskforce to figure out according UN who do belong the Sheba farms to (currently it's supposed to be Syrian territory occupied by Israel, but Lebanese say it's theirs). This is a very good initiative, but there has already been words by the US that whatever the decision would be, Israel would not have to remove their troops from there. So we can assume that whatever the answer is Hezbollah will also stand on their positions. My personal opinion on this issue is that neither Hezbollah nor Israel really care who it does belong to, it is just a convenient excuse.

So is it all that bad ? Well, the only change compared to last month is that now the Lebanese army is in south Lebanon, and will assume responsability over the border with Israel. In the long term this could lead to more responsible behaviour in the area.

Now the question who did win ? Each time there is a war there has to be a winner right ? Reading the medias it seems to be the case... I find it sad that this is even a matter of discussion but well it is. Modern wars seem to have mostly loosers and no winners. Some say that Israel by weakening Hezbollah, destroying all Lebanese infrastructure, killing a larger number of ennemies than their loss won (US claim it 's a victory in the "war over terror"). Some say Israel lost because a small organisation caused it more harm than anyone ever did before, negated their high tech weaponry, sent rockets farther in Israel than anyone ever did in the past 50 years. I am leaning towards the second option.

Now does that make Hezbollah a winner like they and Iran have been claiming everywhere ? Definitely not, they resisted well, but killing 2 dozen of civillians by sending over 3000 rockets towards them looks pretty sad to me. A good exemple of katyusha accuracy:


Their role is to protect Lebanon, have I heard. What did they protect that is still standing undamaged ? If it wasn't for the international community pressure, what would be the state of Lebanon 1 month from now ?

Finaly everybody is in such a hurry to claim victory that it really is obvious that everybody did loose.

Cease fire

Sirens woke me up this morning minutes before the cease fire took place. There were no alerts since, and activities are resuming. Let's hope it lasts and the conditions for a lasting peace with Lebanon settle.

1st day without sirens

Just as the title says, there has been no sirens over Haifa today. I suspect this is not going to last much as there is no sign of a cease fire in the coming weeks despite the frenetic diplomatic activity by France (ok I didn't choose this article randomly).

Some friends told me that "charlie Hebdo"'s editorial from the 28th was a nice reading. I can't buy it, but if any of you could have a look for me I'd love it.

Besides that I read an interresting opinion from a Lebanese journalist (from the reading he's probably a christian close to Aoun's side). I can't post it as it isn't (yet ?) public domain but I'll forward it to the ones that spam my mailbox and want to have a look.

Images of war

Here are a few pictures of Haifa under the katyushas. I didn't take them myself as I do not go much out, they are just among the large number I recieve in my mailbox.

As you can see schrapnel is not enough, Hezbollah adds metal balls to make their rockets more efficient at injuring a maximum of people.

This one shoked me when I saw it, I am not sure this is the way to educate your kids, but well it's there and I still prefer bad words to metal balls.

The dictionary of war clichés

While reading Haaretz journalist Shmuel Rosner's blog I found this interresting dictionnary. Cynical, realist, unfair, bad joke ? I'll let you make your own opinion, anyway it's worth reading: part 1 and part 2.
Sirens are still sounding today on Haifa, but I haven't heard any explosion and there is no report of rockets. It might be quieting down on this side of the border.

Why ?

am I staying in Haifa ? Many of you have been pressing me in the past days to leave the country for a safer place, so I'll try to explain you why I am still here and am not planning to leave unless the situation worsens significantly.
The geographical position of my house combined with my current lifestyle makes it very safe for me to stay here for now. I am in a non targetted area, a pretty hard to target area, spending most of my time in a safe room so I just cannot reasonably get hurt.
Still, life isn't fantastic in these conditions with the sirens the explosions, the deads in the news, the situation getting worse hourly on the other side of the border :(...
But I am solidar with all my friends and collegues that live here, I believe that me staying there is doing something to comfort and strengthen them. Add to that the fact that I would hate fleeing under Hezbollah fire, it would just give me the feeling that they are winning something while they are actually just unable to harm me.
I am not suicidal, and I do not want to have people concerned about my security, that is why I seriously thought about it before taking this decision and balancing various options like going to work abroad for some time. Believe me if the situation were to worsen and put my life at risk, I would leave the area by the minute. I do not intend to risk my health for Israel, and noone around me would expect me to do that to support them.

Maybe I am just behaving to proud, but I would have serious self confidence issues if I weren't doing that.

I had planned a trip to France for vacations somewhere by the beginning of August and I still intend to do it around that period and visit my family in the alps and the Narbonne-Plage little monkey.

Hezbollah - Israel

Well, as some you might have noticed the northern border of Israel has been subject to violent military operation from both the Hezbollah and Israeli army. As usual each party is claiming that they are just answering to the other's actions, and obviously they try to make the answer big so it frightens the other.

From here it looked like Lebanese milicia came into Israel, killed a few soldiers and captured 2 others at a time where "Israel deterrence power" was already being question after a similar problem near Gaza. The answer has been extremly violent, basically Israel has set an air-sea blocus on whole Lebanon, mass-bombed Hezbollah areas, roads and other civilian service providing facilities (I suppose power plants...).
Hezbollah has been sending rockets towards northern israeli cities for the past 24h and has sent one as far as Haifa (where I live). There are civilians death and injuries on both sides, as usual in this area there are significantly less israelis.
The northern Israeli population is living in their shelters, and currently there are not many (even the most moderate) that are ready to keep taking hits without answering very strongly. Outside of strong external pressure either on Lebanon so they put their army at the border instead of Hezbollah or on Israel so they stop the fire (I don't see them recieving rockets and not shoot back though), I seriously doubt that the situation is not going to worsen fast.

Where I am I don't risk much, and the security services of my company are taking care of me so I'll be fine. I'll let you know how things evolve.