The Daily Background

As promised earlier today…

“Bush gave green light” to one week allowance
The British newspaper The Guardian is reporting today that President Bush has given Israel a one-week allowance to try and destroy Hezbollah. The White House denies this. The New York Times today follows up and says that the one week claim is on the mark.

Lebanese Prime Minister pleaded with the international community to intervene and stop the violence.

Secretary of State Condi Rice is stalling her promised visit to the middle east, possibly in conjunction with the reported one-week allowance. NYT writes “Israel had made clear that it does not want Ms. Rice to begin a peacemaking effort yet, and the Bush administration has, for the time being, gone along with an Israeli request for more latitude. President Bush and American officials have resisted joining other world leaders in calling for an immediate cease-fire, reflecting the Israeli view that reaching a truce before a significant number of Hezbollah’s missiles have been destroyed would leave Israel vulnerable to more attacks.”

Israel-Lebanon Violence
Lebanon now says that 300 civilians have been killed in the fighting, and 1,000 wounded.

Between 25 to 27 Israelis are reported to have been wounded, about half of whom are reported to be soldiers.

Hezbollah rebels have sent rockets into Nazareth reportedly killing two children, meanwhile the Israeli military has for the first time bombed densely populated central Beirut– no reports of casualties are out yet.

American Evacuation begins in earnest, 1 week late
About 1,000 American and British citizens on the Orient Queen cruise ship are en route to, or have recently arrived on the island of Cyprus (more than one week after bombing of civilian areas by the Israeli military began).

Several thousands of Americans, by far the bulk of those are still behind, with many American students from Beirut escaping via a ferry commissioned by the Norweigan government after the US State Department failed to act, and virtually all other foreign students had been evacuated from the two major universities in the Lebanese capital.

According to the United Nations, 500,000 people in Lebanon are fleeing Israeli bombing.

Middle East Related Bits and Pieces
Gallup just finished a poll on Americans attitudes towards the situation in the middle east.

At approximately 1:50 this afternoon, CNN began showing several videos on YouTube, of the violence in the middle east.

White House Press Secretary isn’t sure (video) if the conflict in Lebanon is a war or not. First he said it is, then he said it isn’t.

Iraq Violence
Violence continues in Iraq, with the United Nations calculating that about 3,149 Iraqis died last month in June– which would be the largest number of civilians dead in a single month, with well over 14,000 dead since the beginning of this year.

Filed under: Middle East Crisis, Z-TDB Blog