Laleh, who teaches at SOAS in London, went to Lebanon last week. She wrote me this:
"AFter going around the South and the Dahiyyeh I have come to 3 conclusion, 2 about the war, and the third about the Lebanese. 1) Because of the broad overlap between the Lebanese poor and the Shi'a communities of Lebanon, the July War was really a war against the poor. It is shocking to see the scale of destruction in poor neighbourhoods, the impact of infrastructural damage (e.g. the Airport Bridge or the bridges and roads in teh south) on the mobility of the poor, and the devastation of poor people's businesses in the Dahiyyeh. 2) If Israel claims they used precision weapons to attack Lebanon, they are exactly right. The precisely targeted those civilian populations that they thought they could a) turn against Hizbullah (the Sunni of Marwahin for example) or b) punish for however distantly belonging to a family that has a Hizbullah fighter in it. Because of Hizbullah discipline and their ability to stay away from most civilian centres, IDF couldn't get the fighters, so instead they blew up the houses belonging to the parents, or to the siblings, or the cousins of fighters. This of course is only the continuation of their policies in the Occupied Territories..."