Fostering unity at a boy's tiny grave

Philip Khouri

You may not remember the face but Philip Khouri does.

A newspaper photo of a small boy swathed in bandages and tubes, staring from his hospital bed, 10 years ago.

Mohamed Ibrahim, aged 4, died just hours after the picture was taken, following Israel's first attack on the ancient town of Qana where Jesus is said to have changed water into wine.

Khouri is in his Eden Tce office in Auckland. He's a lawyer, a pacifist and a past president of the Federation of Ethnic Councils of New Zealand.

A Kiwi of Lebanese extraction, he has kept a copy of this photo and of others depicting suffering in Lebanon.

Khouri is not given to unmeasured outbursts and there are none today. But there is an restrained, simmering anger.

In the 1996 attack on Qana, 105 people died while sheltering in a UN compound.

When Khouri heard of last month's attack on Qana, where scores of people died, including children, he was sickened. "If I feel this upset here in NZ then I think the people who are in Lebanon must be incandescent with anger and hatred and wanting revenge," he says softly.

"That's where I can't understand how Israel can be so short-sighted. What do they think is going to happen next?"

Khouri was last in Lebanon in May, before the latest war in the war-ravaged land of his forebears. He took his wife and daughter and went to Qana.

The attack 10 years ago had already turned Qana into something of a pilgrimage for Lebanese people, uniting faiths and minorities, he says.

"When I got there I asked, 'Where is the grave of Mohamed Ibrahim', and the man pointed to the smallest grave and said, 'It's this one'. It is a place of potent imagery in Lebanon's narrative of what happens there." Khouri cried at the graveside.

That Lebanon, though, of just a few months ago, was very different to now. Spring was turning to summer, the air in the mountains was sweet.

"Everything was peaceful. There were no obstacles on the road, no menace, no sense of war. The wildflowers were in bloom. It was idyllic."

The country was showing signs of recovery and renewal from the civil war of 1975 to 1990, getting back on its feet following the withdrawal of Israel in 2000 from an occupation which had lasted 18 years.

Lebanese civilisation stretches back thousands of years. The country has experienced war and prosperity followed by more war and suffering, with invasions by some of the major figures of history - Nebuchadnezzar, Rameses II and Alexander the Great. In the recent civil war 150,000 people died.

"It's like every footstep, you don't want to say that you expect blood to well in your footprint, but there has been so much loss of life there. That's the obscenity of what Israel's done now, that just as the country was prospering and starting to heal it has decided to rip it apart again."

What maddens Khouri about the Israeli perspective on this war - that they are getting rid of the terrorist organisation Hizbollah with its ties to Iran - is the avoidance of the real issues.

Israel occupies land in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine in breach of international law and United Nations resolutions.

Other issues include Jerusalem and compensation for the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967 - 385 Palestinian villages were destroyed after the creation of the state of Israel, says Khouri.

"These are burning issues. If they were solved, most of the fire that fuels hostility towards Israel and the US would go out."

Instead of blaming Hizbollah, Israel should be looking at its own bloodied hands.

Hizbollah, says Khouri, are the tangata whenua of southern Lebanon defending their turangawaewae, the place where they stand.

"That's what it is. The Palestinians are the same. And all the attempts by Israel and the Americans and the British to call them terrorists is an attempt to obscure that reality, that they are the tangata whenua."

Hizbollah are Shiite Muslims who live in the south of Lebanon. Khouri says history shows the Shiites were always ignored by the central Government, they were the poor relations of the south, deprived and without developed social services.

"I think that if Iran provided financial assistance as well as religious training then it met a need of the people that was not being met elsewhere."

People need to remember the brutality of Israel's 18-year occupation, says Khouri.

In the town of Khiam, now virtually obliterated in the current war, the Israelis had a jail where they kept Hizbollah prisoners. It was abandoned when they pulled out in 2000 and Khouri remembers watching scenes of jubilation on the television as relatives broke in and released their family members.

Hizbollah did not exist before the Israeli invasion. They are not different people who hide weapons under the beds of civilians, they are the same people. Israel's occupation brought Hizbollah into existence and the organisation is the only thing stopping the Israelis from coming back, he says.

Khouri takes issue with Jeremy Jones, who featured in these pages last Thursday. Jones, a Jewish academic from Australia, said the war was moral and to understand why it was taking place, people needed to understand Hizbollah. He condemned the organisation as anti-gay and fascist with ties to Iran. Khouri accuses Jones of hypocrisy and distraction.

"No one's going to argue that if you label someone a fascist and anti-gay then it's okay to fight them. We're talking about war. We're not talking about dispute or argument; it doesn't mean you've got to go and obliterate half the country.

"[It's] an attempt to draw attention away from the fact that Israel occupies Lebanese land, Syrian land, Palestinian land.

"You know, when this is all over the Israelis still have to deal with [that]. The attack on Lebanon is really about Israel and its protector, the United States, trying to construct a form of peace without dealing with these issues. This will not work.

"I think Israel was on its way to being more or less accepted in the Middle East but now it's over. Now I think Israel is entering a period of demise. I think it's the failure of the whole experiment, unfortunately."

Khouri says he is not defending Hizbollah's choice of targets or Iran - and he does not believe Israel will or should be wiped off the map.

"What I don't understand is that it's so easy to solve," he says.

The United States should give Israel a time limit to withdraw from occupied lands and enable a Palestinian state; if Israel refuses, cut off aid.

Khouri lived in Israel for three months and says he understands the importance of a Jewish state to the people. He visited the Holocaust memorial.

But he also recalls going to the Wailing Wall and being asked by an Israeli with an American accent what he thought of the country.

In front of the wall is a big area of cleared land where 450 Palestinian families once lived."I couldn't think of anything to say to him."

He sits now in a pleasant office in a peaceful land a long way from the Middle East, saying there are two main reasons he is so passionate.

First, he is a pacifist and wants the peaceful resolution of disputes.

Second, he has experienced war. When he visited his grandparents in Lebanon in 1976 he ended up sheltering for two months during a major civil war battle. "That gave me the experience of what war means ... blood everywhere and saying hello to someone one day and they're dead the next."

Israel is like Lady Macbeth, says Khouri, trying to wash her hands of blood - "but we all know the blood's still there".