Posted on 08/11/2006 9:22:48 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
GENEVA - U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said Friday the anger on all sides in the Middle East is the greatest he has seen in two decades of trying to help the troubled region make peace.
"I've never seen nations as polarized as during this recent visit," said Egeland, who was in Lebanon, Israel and the Gaza Strip at the end of July.
"People were enraged collectively in Lebanon, everybody against the Israeli indiscriminate onslaught," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "In Israel, they were a united front to support the strong military measures. In the Palestinian areas, I've never seen them as full of hatred collectively as now. It has to be defused."
Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said he was counting on the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution that will stop the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and serve as a first step to finally concluding a peace settlement in the Middle East.
"Everybody wants now to find a permanent political solution," he said in his office in the world body's European headquarters. "This has now become a powder keg. You have really to defuse it. You cannot just delay further conflict."
Egeland said the tensions were the worst he had seen in the more than 20 years he has been working to promote peace and human rights in the Middle East, including a stint as a soldier in the U.N. force in Lebanon in 1978 and involvement in securing the Oslo agreement between Israel and the PLO in the 1990s.
Egeland said the Israel-Hezbollah fighting could be stopped immediately if there is the will because it isn't protracted and there are only two parties, not 20 as in the Sudanese region of Darfur, which has been wracked by conflict since 2003.
The Security Council has to come up with a resolution that will be respected, Egeland said.
"We've seen resolutions that are effective and we've seen resolutions that are ineffective, and an ineffective one doesn't help us at all," he said. "There has to be some teeth in it and there has to be pressure on the parties to respect it.
"Every day of non-decision in the Security Council costs lives," Egeland said.
Hundreds of Lebanese have already died and the numbers are likely to start going up sharply soon, he said.
"Imagine the predicament of the civilian population. On the one side they've been asked by Israel to leave because it's too dangerous to stay. At the same time, now the Israelis say that they will fire at any truck moving that has not been cleared as a humanitarian convoy by the U.N. or the Red Cross," Egeland said. "The people are really in a desperate situation."
He said it was impossible to predict how many people will die.
"People do not start to starve immediately in a place like Lebanon if they are cut off. For weeks they can eat from whatever reserves they have. Disease does not start to spread immediately. But after a few weeks, there are no more coping mechanisms. Sick people die. Hospitals stop to function, and that has already started because they do not have fuel. Wounded people die because they cannot get medical attention.
"It's not going slowly to the worst, it's going dramatically down after a few weeks in this kind of a situation, and that's why it's so urgent to stop it all with a U.N. resolution and get a cease-fire."
He said that by some measures, the situation for civilians in Congo, Sudan's Darfur region and Iraq is worse than it is in Lebanon, but that the number of Lebanese who have fled their homes was very high.
He said the tensions in the region have made it very difficult to avoid offending parties to the conflict.
"It's part of our lives as humanitarian workers to try to be impartial and neutral in political minefields," Egeland said. "But this one has been particularly difficult to tread. I feel that they are weighing my every word."
"Israel was outraged when I said that it was clearly excessive, clearly disproportionate, and I said a war where you kill more children than armed men — there is something wrong with the way of waging hostilities. Hezbollah was outraged when I said that they are blending in to the civilian population, and it's cowardly to blend in among women and children. It's tough."
Norway's Jan Egeland, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator speaks during an interview in his office at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, Aug. 11, 2006. (AP Photo/Nicholas Ratzenboeck)
uhhh, when you have Hezzies who built schools on top of rocket launching facilities, uhh, what do you propose to do, Egeland?
---U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said Friday the anger on all sides in the Middle East is the greatest he has seen in two decades of trying to help the troubled region make peace.---
How do you spell relief? 7.62 FMJ.
As opposed to the pinpoint Hezballah rockets attacks, designed to cause no civilian casualties?
This guy is such a leftie loonie.
He's been involved in UN operations since 1978..
No wonder they are as useless as teets on a boar.
Polarization is good. Once people pick sides it is easier to figure out who to kill.
Millions of Arab Muslims need to die for the Arab Muslim civilians to stop supporting the terrorists and their methods. This surgical strike stuff doesn't cut it. The Germans and Japanese didn't surrender because we only took out their tanks and airplanes. Dresden, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, etc -- is what brought the war to a close.
To hell with Egeland. He's a leftie & muzzie symp.
Let's see if I can simplify things for you, Jan. The Israelis are outraged because your charge against them is clearly false. Hezbollah is outraged because your charge against them is clearly true. Do you understand it better now, Jan baby?
"This has now become a powder keg. You have really to defuse it."
Now is the time to let this thing explode, the west has to be locked into an action before the 2008 elections.
Egeland doesn't have the foggiest idea and, whether he realized it or not, admitted as much. Like most diplomats, all he knows how to say is "Stop the violence. Please."
This guy couldn't even deliver an ultimatum. He wouldn't know how.
Don't worry Egeland it's just an expression... Arabs/Muslims are not that united to join forces and go to war against the Israelites nor the U.S. ... they want to keep their "loosers" legacy!
Obviously he has not had his eyes and ears open during the last 20 years.
Really?
Really Really?
OMG...this...this...is like NOTHING we have ever seen in the Middle East before!
WHAT on earth is this guy smoking???
Ummm .. where has this dude been since the 70's ... under a rock??
How about ice cream and the movies for all sides?
Will these Euro Bobbleheads ever get a clue?
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