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"A strong humanitarian response by the American people will send a powerful message of hope," said Awad. |
WASHINGTON — The largest Arab American civil rights organization in the United States is suing the Bush administration for putting at risk the lives of 25,000 Americans in Lebanon by rejecting an immediate ceasefire, shipping weapons to Israel and pursuing a slow-pace evacuation process.
"At no time has President (George W.) Bush, Secretary of State (Condoleezza) Rice, or Secretary of Defense (Donald) Rumsfeld called for a ceasefire in Lebanon," Mary Rose Oakar, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"To the contrary, the Bush administration has encouraged the violence by sending an urgent shipment of bombs to Israel, giving that country the green light to continue in its indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon," she charged.
The lawsuit, which named Rice and Rumsfeld as defendants, asks a federal court in Detroit, Michigan, to order the administration to stop shipping weapons to Israel as long as US citizens remain in danger inside Lebanon.
"This has placed innocent civilians, including thousands of US citizens, in harm's way and has resulted in injuring several US citizens in Lebanon," Oakar said.
It asks the court to order Rice and Rumsfeld to seek a ceasefire between Israel and Hizbullah to enable the remaining US nationals to flee Lebanon.
Arab and American Muslims had slammed the Bush administration for sufficing to look on the bloodshed in Lebanon by Israel's military arsenal and pursuing an unbalanced foreign policy.
Israel launched an offensive on Lebanon after Hizbullah took prisoner two Israeli soldiers in a border raid on July 11 and said it would only free them in exchange for the release of prisoners at Israeli jails.
More than 380 people in Lebanon, the overwhelming majority are civilians, have been killed in random Israeli air strikes and bombardment that also left Lebanon hard-won infrastructure in ruins.
Rights Violation
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| "A strong humanitarian response by the American people will send a powerful message of hope," said Awad. |
The lawsuit, filed by the ADC and 34 Lebanese-Americans who have either left Lebanon or are trying still to get out, also accuses the Bush administration of violating their constitutional rights to protection with the much-criticized, slow evacuation.
It demands that US officials "increase their evacuation efforts and use all resources at their disposal," including more military transports and commercial charters.
The slow-pace of the response and a now-abandoned policy that required US citizens to agree to pay for the costs of their evacuation have provoked widespread anger in Detroit's Lebanese community, the largest outside Lebanon.
The State Department said about 25,000 Americans were in Lebanon when the Israeli onslaught started and that 13,600 had been evacuated as of Monday.
"We were all American citizens and there was no way that anybody helped us. No communications nothing," said Nina Chahine, who with her family were among the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
"I was on my way to my wedding fearing death, basically," the 19-year-old told Reuters outside the federal court.
Muslim Aid
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest US Muslim civil rights group in the US, meanwhile, appealed to Muslims and non-Muslims in the country to collect humanitarian relief supplies to help war-torn Lebanon and the Palestinians.
"CAIR is urging that the supplies be collected following regular congregational prayers this week in American mosques, churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship," the group said in a statement.
"A strong humanitarian response by the American people will send a powerful message of hope and support to the Lebanese and Palestinian men, women and children caught up in the current humanitarian disaster," CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad said in another statement.
CAIR was particularly asking for diapers, water purification tablets, flour, rice, sugar, cooking oil, powdered milk and lentils.
The group said it was asking for supplies rather than financial assistance because of restrictions imposed by the Bush administration on aid for the Palestinians in the wake of the spring election victory of Hamas.
Shipping the aid packages is to be handled together with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Washington announced Monday a 30- million-dollar immediate aid package for Lebanon.
Officials said US forces would start an airlift of 100,000 medical kits, 2,000 plastic sheets and 20,000 blankets on Tuesday.
UN relief chief Jan Egeland has launched an urgent appeal for 150 million dollars, and warned that the crisis would get worse if the hostilities would to continue longer.
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