Soldiers carrying

Singing

casket, soldiers

at ceremony, burial, people crying

Lester:  In a graveyard north of Tel Aviv, Israelis bury a marine commando, one of twelve blown apart in a failed raid on a Lebanese guerrilla headquarters, and one of 39 Israeli soldiers killed in Southern Lebanon this year.

0.24         

Crying

Lester:  Here the calls for a troop withdrawal from the so-called Security Zone have never been louder, each death adding to a sense the Jewish State has stumbled into it's own version of Vietnam.

Soldiers firing guns, map

Gun fire

01.05

Pan of cemetery, people at gravesite

Lester:  It would be barely two hours drive north, if only you could drive it; another cemetery, this one in Lebanon.

Mohammed took his father's name because he was born on the day his father died; the day last year, Mohammed Mrouek, father of six told his wife he had work to do, too his Hezbollah weapons and joined a daring raid on an Israeli position inside the security zone.

Photo of man, interview with Nazik Mroueh

Nazik:  My husband was one of the strong, honourable people that fear for this land.  None of his family meant as much to him as getting Israel out of his country.

01.58

Family at gravesite

Lester:  Here, among the headstones of Lebanon's martyrs, some call them terrorists, death, for all it's sadness, is a triumph.

02.17

Intv with Nazik Mroueh

Super:

NAZIK MROUEH

Martyr's Wife

Nazik:  To be a supporter of Hezbollah gives us pride and victory, to continue on the same path as Hezbollah - and a Hezbollah martyr never dies - and the family of a martyr is a happy family and lives in comfort.

Two men smoking on streets, people on streets, posters, traffic

Lester:  Nabateyih, the Mroueh family's home town, has long suffered the bloodshed that comes from being on the edge of the security zone.

02.57

Here there's fierce support for the family of a martyr, and the party leading the Islamic Resistance, Hezbollah.

Kids in school yard

A former teacher, Nazik sends her children to a school built with money from Iran and run by Hezbollah; as the wife of a martyr, she pays no school fees.

03.27

Here ten year old Mariam Mroueh knows she is a special child - the daughter of a martyr.

Intv with Mariam, teacher teaching, kids working

Mariam:  He used to play with us a lot.  He used to give us piggy-back rides, and put us on a metal rod and swing us.

03.47

Nazik:  The first step is to educate my children at the highest level I can get them to, because through education people win.

Then we start to educate them with a different kind of education; an education that will put their schooling to use in the resistance against Israel.

Night, truck,

Music

building, soldiers

cityscape, pan to soldiers singing and playing guitar

Lester:  Directly across from Nabateyih is the Israeli Army; in between, Lebanese villages inside the Security Zone Israel occupies at such a high cost.

04.41

These young conscripts sing, half tongue in cheek, about serving for the Middle East's most advanced defence force on it's most dangerous assignment.

Soldiers running

Siren

picking up gear

preparing, truck arriving, tracking from vehicle shot with torch, gun

Lester:  Tonight, the soldiers' regular training exercise turns to a real alert when something trips the post's perimeter warning system.

05.25

It has all the toys of war, but on the Lebanon border, Israel's Army is easily spooked.

Radio chatter

Intv with Oded Ben-Ami

Super:

Brig. General ODED BEN-AMI

Israel Defence Forces

Ben-Ami:  Guerillas are very different to fight.  This is why we have to be so creative, so wise, so delicate.  They are very brutal, they are very bitter, they are, they are very dangerous and we have to fight them.  We have to fight them in order to protect our lives.

06.00

Night time,

Radio chatter

soldiers walking

daylight - trucks entering gate, tracking shots from truck, blurry shots, vehicle

Lester:  The alert turns out to be a false alarm; like so much of its work in Lebanon, Israel is left boxing at shadows.

bombed, bombs

exploding

It's the Security Zone's northern bases that form the front line against the Hezbollah.  We joined this supply convoy into the Zone to see one of these bases.

06.47

And here, even the convoys can become death-traps, last year, Hezbollah ambushed another supply column, the deadly result captured by a Hezbollah cameraman for broadcast on Hezbollah's own TV station in Lebanon.

07.09

Soldier with gun, and trucks, soldier with backpack hugging another

Indeed, we arrived at the base just days after five Israeli soldiers had died in a fire started during a battle with Hezbollah.

07.32

Intv with soldier, Noam Pernat

Noam Pernat:  We know if it wasn't these five soldiers, it could be one of the civilians in Israel, in one of the biggest city in Israel, Kiryat Shermona, or here in Nahariyah, or something like that. 

Lester:  Better five soldiers die than an Israeli civilian?

08.02

Noam Pernat:  Yeh, because this is the reason that we are here, to give security for these civilian people.

Soldier loading gun, intv with soldier, Noar Benish

Noar Benish:  I think my mother is very concerned, but she doesn't know exactly what I've been through, what I am doing.  I'm trying to keep them as less concerned as I can, but I think they are concerned.  Most of the people, most of the soldiers here, their parents are concerned about them.

Women listening, women speaking at microphone, audience clapping, listening

Efrat Spigel:  We were the mothers who always suffered in silence.  The time's come to remove the gag, to go out to the street, and to shout with all our might.

Clapping

Lester:  Tonight, the increasingly vocal and growing protest movement against the Security Zone meets at the Tel Aviv home of Linda and Sam Ben-Zvi, whose son has just finished serving in Southern Lebanon.

08.53

Tens of thousands of Israelis, including several key Cabinet Ministers, now want their country to withdraw.

Intv with Linda Ben-Zvi

Super:

LINDA BEN-ZVI

Linda Ben-Zvi:  We no longer want to be put in the position where we have to send our sons off to a meaningless war.

09.16

TV crew intv woman, audience clapping

Lester:  Israeli TV crosses live as part of a debate on the policy of guarding Northern Israel with troops in Southern Lebanon.

Clapping

Intv with Efrat Spigel

Lester:  Efrat Spigel's son died in Lebanon.

09.39

Efrat Spigel:  This is not a solution, because the blood of a soldier is not red more than blood of other one.  He is a child like every other child.

Intv with Sam Ben-Zvi

Super:

SAM BEN-ZVI

Sam Ben-Zvi:  It's wrong for us to be there, it's useless for us to be there, it serves no purpose and we need to pull out. So no, I'm not a traitor really.

Landscapes, destroyed building, pan of landscape

Lester:  There's another view of the Lebanon border problem which says the solution isn't in ending or extending the Security Zone; in fact, the solution isn't in Lebanon. 

10.15

It's here, on the strategic plateau that overlooks Jordan, Syria and Israel.   

Tim Lester to camera

Super:

TIM LESTER

Israeli troops have held the Golan Heights for 30 years.  Syria wants the land back, badly.

10.31

And some believe, if Syria and Israel can compromise over the Golan, the Lebanon problem will unravel.

Intv with Uri Lubrani

Super:

URI LUBRANI

Lebanon Advisor to Israeli Govt.

Uri Lubrani:  Definitely Iran is the major motivator of Hezbollah.  Syria has to agree that Hezbollah continues it's activities from Lebanon and the Lebanese government has no say what so ever.

10.45

Soldiers loading rifles, soldiers training, pans of tents in the desert

Lester:  On the Golan Heights, Israel's famed Givati Unit trains in the lead up to another three month rotation in the Security Zone.

Gunfire and yelling

Lester:  As leverage to get back the Golan, Syria reportedly allows about three jumbo jet loads of weaponry a month to pass from Iran to Hezbollah.

11.22

In return for this land, Syria might cut the supply line, crippling Hezbollah and allowing Israeli troops to withdraw form Southern Lebanon, but there are those who insist, even if Israel pulls out, Hezbollah will continue fighting.

Intv with Ben-Ami

Ben-Ami:  If we will withdraw today from South Lebanon, from the Security Zone, then the terror activities inside Kiryat Shermona and Monara and Nahariyah will be ten times worse than what they are today.

Zoom out from hill to city, soldiers walking through bush

Lester:  In scrub, on the slopes directly under the Israeli lookouts, is a Hezbollah unit.  There are no guitars here, just four men armed with the latest weaponry and trained to use it.

12.23

Abu Jaafar, is the unit commander, he knows if his unit's position is discovered, the Israelis might well shell the area so our meeting needs to be quick.

Intv with Abu Jaafar

Lester:  Have you ever killed anybody from an opposing force?

Abu Jaafar:  I had the honour of killing an Israeli.

Soldiers walking through bush

Abu Jaafar is serious about the business of killing and being killed.

Abu Jaafar:  I pray to God, day and night that I die wearing this uniform.

Lester:  It's this commitment Israel must judge.  If it leaves Southern Lebanon, will Abu Jaafar and his men stop shooting?

13.21

The border is the issue now, but you get the feeling if there's a war beyond the border, Jaafar will fight it.

Intv with Abu Jaafar

Abu Jaafar:  Our worry now is to get Israel out of Lebanon.  Later, what happens we don't know.

13.40

Traffic on road

Music

pan down from

buildings to street

Lester:  For Abu Jaafar and his men to stop fighting, the decisions of one man are crucial - the military leader of Hezbollah, his headquarters are hidden in Beirut's mainly Muslim Southern suburbs and getting to him is no easy matter.

Hand held camera through building, into car, low angle of cars,

The first part of the journey is an unnerving ride in the back of a blacked out Mercedes.

14.26

traffic, building

Our pistol carrying escorts drive us ten minutes to a garage, wait in darkness for ten minutes and drive us to another garage.

You'd almost laugh at this subterfuge, if you didn't know that the last Hezbollah leader died when an Israeli helicopter gunship blew apart his car.

Man meeting with Lester, intv with Said Hassan Nasrallah

Hezbollah doesn't give out the address of his replacement, Said Hassan Nasrallah.

14.58

Nasrallah:  The source of strength of this Resistance is the struggle and the truthfulness and the sacrificing of its sons, and the way the Lebanese people embrace it.  Anything else cannot bother this resistance.

Lester:  Here at least, the war isn't simply to get rid of an invader in Lebanon, it's to get rid of the Jewish state.

15.25

Nasralah:  As long as the Israelis are on our land, we will fight them.  As for when they leave our land, it is not my concern to give guarantees.  The Resistance is here to resist the occupation - not to give guarantees to the Israelis.

Lester:  ... but it's the guarantee Israel needs, that if it withdrew, Hezbollah would stop at the border, and Hassan Nasrallah won't give it.

Women crying,

Crying

burial, people

crying, gravesite, soldiers and people grieving

Lester:  The soldiers' funeral in Israel is now common place.  Today they bury a Jewish soldier of Ethiopian descent, each death weakens public commitment to the zone, while deaths across the border just add to the enemy's anger and zeal.

16.10

Crying

Lester:  But Israelis fear an early withdrawal from Lebanon would simply shift guerrilla war south across the border.

16.33

After 12 years, Israel is all but trapped in the Security Zone, until it's long time enemy Syria chooses to clear a way out.

END

17.00