BEIRUT — It’s 2:35 a.m. here and I’m run­ning on lit­tle sleep. The Israelis bombed the ports of Beirut, Jounieh and Tripoli tonight. I live near the port, in Ein el-Mreisse, so the bombs sounded like they landed on my neighbor’s house, they were so loud.
The light­house to the west of me on the ele­gant cor­niche was also bombed. I’ve seen some reports that it was either destroyed or just had the top knocked off it, but since it’s dark and I’m on dead­line to mul­ti­ple pub­li­ca­tions, I’ve not been able to check that.
Beirut is shut­tered, but not yet shat­tered. It has the feel of a deserted city, though, and at 1 p.m. today most of the shops were closed, there were very few cars on the streets and most peo­ple were in a hurry to get some­where with a rein­forced roof over their heads. In Dahiyeh, the south­ern sub­urbs, it was worse. I found huge craters in the mid­dle of inter­sec­tions, shat­tered glass from the con­cus­sion waves and mounds of red earth where Israeli muni­tions had churned up the clay beneath the street. Bridges are destroyed.
Walk­ing and dri­ving around the streets, I noticed a pecu­liar trait of Beirut: _it’s not always pos­si­ble to know what’s old war dam­age or new dam­age, and what might just be run down._ Beirut is ram­shackle and delight­fully dilap­i­dated in some parts — mostly the poor Shi’a parts, which are also the main tar­get areas. It’s an inter­est­ing chal­lenge to remem­ber that that bal­cony which appears freshly shorn off is actu­ally from 20 years ago.
Speak­ing to peo­ple from Bourj al-Barajai, a south­ern neigh­bor­hood, revealed a defi­ance that masked what­ever appre­hen­sion they might feel. I found a make-shift bomb shel­ter and spoke with the peo­ple inside, who remained defi­ant.
“Those sol­diers will not go back to their home until our peo­ple come home,” said Ghas­sam Abd­u­al­lah, refer­ring to the Lebanese pris­on­ers still held despite Israeli’s 2000 with­drawal from Lebanon after 18 years of occu­pa­tion.
It appears the bomb­ing cam­paign is designed to seal off the south from the rest of the coun­try. There is a naval block­ade. Israel has com­plete air supe­ri­or­ity. From reports, the last remain­ing bridges con­nect­ing the south to the rest of the coun­try have been blown. Israel isn’t just iso­lat­ing Lebanon from the world; Israel is iso­lat­ing Hezbol­lah forces from the rest of Lebanon. If this cam­paign is suc­cess­ful, Hezbol­lah will not be able to get rein­force­ments and sup­plies into the south and nei­ther will it be able to pull them back to pro­tect them from Israeli advances.
All this points to an inva­sion soon, and I think Israel is going to try to destroy Hezbol­lah once and for all.
The feel­ing here, and this is just based on my day in the city run­ning around talk­ing to peo­ple, is that Hezbol­lah plans to stay and fight. For a move­ment fueled by mar­tyr­dom, a glo­ri­ous final bat­tle with the hated enemy must have some cachet. This might explain their air of con­fi­dence rather than des­per­a­tion when me and a col­league got has­sled by Hezbollah’s secu­rity guys in the bunker. They acted like guys in com­plete con­trol with none of the twitchy des­per­a­tion of guys who think the gig is up. Hezbol­lah may soon be sur­rounded, but they’re going to stay and fight, I think.

BEIRUT — Whew! After a dash back to Beirut, I come back to a city shut­tered and quiet on a Fri­day night. Today’s events have been mas­sive. And friends here fill­ing me in on the Israelis’ pat­terns tell me the bomb­ing will prob­a­bly start in a cou­ple of hours. It’s 2 a.m. now. They’re try­ing to keep the city awake.
More later.

From “Wikipedia”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War#Israel_plans_for_attack:

In August, Israeli prime min­is­ter Men­achem Begin was re-elected, and in Sep­tem­ber, Begin and his defense min­is­ter Ariel Sharon began to lay plans for a sec­ond inva­sion of Lebanon for the pur­pose of dri­ving out the PLO. Sharon’s inten­tion was to “destroy the PLO mil­i­tary infra­struc­ture and, if pos­si­ble, the PLO lead­er­ship itself; this would mean attack­ing West Beirut, where the PLO head­quar­ters and com­mand bunkers were located” (Smith, op. cit., p. 377).

Now:

In March, Israeli prime min­is­ter Ehud Olmert was elected, and in July, Olmert and his defense min­is­ter Amir Peretz began to lay plans for a third inva­sion of Lebanon for the pur­pose of dri­ving out Hezbol­lah. Peretz’s inten­tion was to destroy the Hezbol­lah mil­i­tary infra­struc­ture and, if pos­si­ble, the Hezbol­lah lead­er­ship itself; this would mean attack­ing South Beirut, where the Hezbol­lah head­quar­ters and com­mand bunkers were located.

I’m not really able to blog much as I’m trav­el­ing still, but the sit­u­a­tion in south­ern Lebanon is _very_ seri­ous and could spi­ral out of con­trol very quickly. Some quick thoughts:
* Hezbol­lah has linked the release of the Shalit and its alleged cap­tives to the release of Lebanese pris­on­ers and Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers. While the Israelis have con­stantly talked about how Hezbol­lah is influ­enc­ing Hamas, and I’ve had Hezbol­lah spe­cial­ists tell me the same, this is the first direct evi­dence of link­age. An obvi­ous next step is to ask what the con­nec­tion glue is, and the answer is Iran.
* Olmert has had three sol­diers kid­napped in three weeks. He looks weak. He will have to do some­thing. And it will be big.
* This points to a major oper­a­tion in south­ern Lebanon and Gaza as a show of strength. Or a deal. But a deal will make Omert look weak, while a major oper­a­tion will give Hezbol­lah what it wants: an excuse to keep its weapons and a chance to bog Israelis down in the tar pit of south­ern lebanon again. (The scars of that still haven’t healed there.) Olmert’s in an impos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion.
Right now, the death toll stands at at least seven Israeli sol­diers killed, two kid­napped and a tank destroyed. An unknown num­ber of Hezbol­lah fight­ers have been killed. Like­wise, I’ve not heard or seen a count of Lebanese civil­ians hurt or killed.