19-Jul-06: The fog of war

Having viewed other people's wars through the lens of the television screen over the years, and lived through several in a more direct fashion, we know how different the reality is from the image. To give our readers a small taste of the sort of chaos and uncertainty that comes with the up-close experience, here's a snapshot of what's happening at 10.30 Wednesday morning - a thin time-slice in an event-rich and turbulent period.

• First, most of the country is without electricity at this moment. Jerusalem where we live was blacked out for about 15 minutes around 9.30 this morning, but power was restored and has stayed "up" for now. But we're told to expect rolling blackouts around the country for an unspecified amount of time to come. Elevators are shut down and stuck in many places with hundreds of people stuck inside them. The firefighters and police are scattering to respond to rescue calls (as if they did not have enough to do already).
• Since traffic lights need power, there's traffic chaos in much of Israel.
• There are tens of fires - mostly brushfires as far as we know - in various parts of the north. No immediate explanation. Maybe the heat, maybe missiles, maybe arson.
• The entire Sharon region (basically the northern arc around Tel-Aviv) is subject to an immediate and concrete highest-level terror warning. There may be a pursuit underway right now of a specific individual or terror gang. One report (basing itself as always on news tips from its readers) says there's a suspicion of terrorists having penetrated Tel-Aviv. (UPDATE: At 11am, the authorities in Kfar Sava, a tel-Aviv suburb, are urging people to stay indoors while the pursuit is underway.) As always, reports like this need to be taken with enormous care, but in this part of the world, you can never tell, never be too wary.
• After absorbing about 120 Katyusha missiles yesterday, the north is on edge again and under attack today. In Nahariya (where a man running towards cover in a shelter after the sirens sounded, was killed) and Haifa, there are reports this past ten minutes of multiple Katyusha attacks, multiple booms and at least one direct hit in Haifa (on a residential building). This happened around 10am. Residential buildings in this country are almost invariably apartment houses with six or eight residences or more. For security reasons - a reluctance to convey to the enemy how accurate or inaccurate their fire is - the radio and television are being cloudy about what and where, but there are injuries.
• Some twenty Qassam rocket attacks pounded the area around Gaza during the night and early morning. The IDF is now moving into the central Gaza strip, with few clear details other than that five soldiers are wounded. It's a developing story, it appears.
• Today and yesterday - significant fighting right inside Nablus. Given the circumstances, the over-stretched state of military management resources and all that's going on elsewhere, it's our guess this was initiated by the locals and not by the IDF. There's little concrete information to go on for the moment.
• The army, under Israeli public pressure to convey both the scale of the achievements and the size of the ongoing problem, is quoted in this morning's news saying that its forces have destroyed 180 Katyusha rocket sites in Lebanon and some 200 Hizbullah buildings and weapons warehouses. In the nature of things, it's hard to put this into a context, but the military's estimate is this represents between 40% and 50% of what Hizbollah have in place. But the essence of their message is this: Hizbollah have had six years (since the total withdrawal of any Israeli presence from Southern Lebanon) to dig in, spread out and equip themselves. Six years of passive-aggressive apathy and non-interference by the government in Beirut. Six years of this sort of dedicated work are not going to be neutralized overnight, so be ready for much more where the missiles till now came from.
• To emphasize the dynamic nature of their resources, Hizbollah suffered the loss of four large truckloads of weapons and munitions 'neutralized' by IDF action when they were intercepted on the road into Lebanon from Syria. Rather laconically, the army's comment on this says: "Syria is not a target. Messages have, however, been relayed to the Syrians and we hope that this phenomenon stops." Amen.

It's unlikely the fear, uncertainty and doubt that come with moments like this are translating well via the media.