https://pjmedia.com/columns/p-david-hornik/2020/08/06/israel-offers-to-help-lebanon-recover-from-explosion-disaster-lebanon-tells-israel-to-get-lost-n759265
On Tuesday evening 2,750 tons of apparently neglected ammonium nitrate exploded in a warehouse at Beirut’s port. The results include at least 135 dead, over 5,000 injured, and 300,000 left homeless. Even before the calamity, Lebanon was in a state of economic collapse with inflation running wild, over 30 percent unemployment, and the Lebanese pound pegged at about 1,500 to the dollar.
Since then Israel has been trying persistently to help, offering Lebanon medical and other humanitarian aid through UN channels. Considering that Lebanon is controlled by Hizballah, which sees Israel as a Little Satan with no claim to exist at all, that may seem to be a fool’s errand.
The Jerusalem Post reports that “the UN is considering opening up a field hospital in Cyprus” with an international medical team, and quotes an Israeli hospital director who says Israeli doctors could probably join that team: “If there is an international delegation then Lebanon won’t put any condition that there not be Israelis — that would be absurd.”
Absurd, yes — but this is the Middle East.
The Post adds that Israel is reportedly “negotiating sending equipment to detect missing people under collapsed buildings, medical equipment and to treat people who were injured who have foreign citizenship.”
In the Middle East, though, this is the sort of offer that can be refused.
