From Beirut to the Beltway

Ibrahim Youssef Rhayyel was found dead inside the Lebanese border on Wednesday, reportedly killed by 3 Israeli bullets, UNIFIL confirmed on Thursday. He was a 17-year-old shepherd. A shotgun was found near his body. Around the same time of the murder, an Israeli reconnaissance plane violated Lebanese airspace, flying over Tyre, Sidon, and Naameh.

The Israeli army claimed they fired at a "an armed man with binoculars [who] was seen crossing the U.N.-demarcated border. When he opened fire, Israeli soldiers responded and apparently hit him." The location of the body seems to refute that claim, even though the results of the autopsy said the boy was shot from a distance of 50 meters. There were reports in the National News Agency and in as-Safir that claimed an Israeli commando unit had infiltrated the border.

By Friday, UN secretary general still had not received UNIFIL's report confirming this was an Israeli operation.

The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's spokesperson Stephane Dujjaric said: "The UN cannot comment on the incident until they have received a formal copy of the investigations. As far as we are concerned, the investigations are ongoing."

This cold and insensitive statement was used by Hizbullah as proof that "most of the Lebanese people, did not trust the international body to take action against Israel."

"We don't even expect them to denounce the incident," Nayef Mousawi, Hizbullah's "foreign affairs official" said, referring to the statement above. "We know how to take our rights with our own hands."

Hizbullah will probably retaliate soon. Now that Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has re-conferred the "national resistance" title upon them, paving the way for the militant organization to end its 6-week boycott of the cabinet, they will continue to act as Lebanon's only defense force against Israeli aggression.

This begs the following question. The Lebanese flag wrapped around Ibrahim’s coffin notwithstanding, must we keep the issue of retaliation to Israeli terrorism the sole property of Hizbullah? Jumblatt has reiterated his call for sending the Lebanese army to the south and reviving the armistice treaty with Israel. And yeah, settling the ridiculous Shebaa farm dispute, where the shepherd was killed. Had the issue been resolved, had there been an army in the south, then the Lebanese government’s condemnation of Israel would have found more ears in the world. And maybe Rhayyel's father would have asked the government, not Hizbullah, to avenge his son's death.

Blame Israel, blame American bias towards Israel, blame Hizbullah, blame Syria, and even blame the shameful international and UN silence, but also blame a cabinet weakened by indecisiveness. We have been demanding that Syria respect our sovereignty. We have rightly rejected Syrian plans to hijack that sovereignty. We ask the same of Israel, yet our efforts to deal with that struggle are hampered by this unwillingness to take on the issue directly. How will Israel be stopped if we don’t seem to care about establishing an official presence on the southern border? Let them try violating our airspace and killing our people with our army on the border. Then watch Lebanese rally around their national army and state, as opposed to an unrepresentative religious militia. Give Lebanese the opportunity to own and direct that struggle.

The resistance against Israel should not be run the way it is run today. It needs to involve all of Lebanon. All Lebanese should have cried at the picture of the relatives weeping over the dead boy's body. It should have had the same domestic and international impact Syrian terrorism has. However, the south continues being the property of a militia and not the Lebanese government. And Lebanon remains divided. The return of the five ministers and Siniora’s word game will do little to reunite the country, let alone stop Israel.

UPDATE. As expected, Hizbullah has retaliated. Their guerillas fired rockets at an Israeli army post in the Shebaa farms on Friday.