I have nothing new to report on the fighting between Hizbullah and Israel. The humanitarian situation in Lebanon sounds appalling and northern Israel is still extremely dangerous.

The past two days I have been working on a background article on the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559. Resolution 1559 has been mentioned in the news a lot lately because of its relevance to the current conflict in Lebanon. The resolution, passed by the Security Council in 2004, calls for the disarmament and disbanding of all militias in Lebanon and for the territorial sovereignty of Lebanon. As long as Hizbullah remains an armed terrorist organization in control southern Lebanon, resolution 1559 can obviously never be fulfilled.

Researching the background information was the easy part. Contacting an expert who could provide some analysis was the hard part. Because of the time difference, I was told to contact academics in Europe. The bad news was that most academics, particularly the ones in Britain, were on summer vacation.. British think tanks were the next suggestion. I might have succeeded had I not become trapped in voice mail hell. Many of the think tanks which I called had friendly receptionists who were more than happy to transfer me to voicemail after voicemail of very smart sounding people who were “unavailable” at the moment. Quite frustrating since the people who I was trying to reach all seemed to have the right credentials to provide good answers. Time started to tick away and my article still had no expert’s opinion.

The time that was ticking by actually worked in my favour because soon it was five o’clock, that magic time in Israel when you can start calling the United States. Yes, I thought to myself, the United States is surely full of talkers. So I started dialing the US think tanks. Now this is what I love about the States: When an “expert” is unavailable or busy, he/she does not just tell me that he does not have time to talk to me, but feels it his duty to inform me that CNN is on the other line, he has a TV segment coming up and that the BBC will be calling back in five minutes so I should try him in three hours.

I’m starting to become acquainted with the notion that there is a celebrity circuit of pundits who make the rounds and love to brag about who is featured on more cable news networks. Finally, I managed to get in contact with Judith Kipper, who is a fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. So far, this summer, when I spoke with Mideast “experts,” they were actually based in the Middle East so I was at first thrown off by her American perspective. She basically told me that nothing will be accomplished in the Middle East without America’s intervention, including the implementation of resolution 1559.

I am learning to love recording interviews. It is so much easier listening to an interview and then taking notes instead of the usual scrounging over illegible notes as I do back home. By the time the interview was over it was about 7 pm so I finished the article up on Sunday and it appeared on the site today, in the Facts in Context section.

A lot of my day today has been spent trying to contact a Filipino woman in Lebanon. Her sister in Kuwait contacted The Media Line and was worried that she would not be able to get out of Beirut where she worked at a hotel. I was trying to call her on her cellphone to get her story for the radio. At this point, there’s probably a better chance that cellphones work better than landlines in Lebanon. I also had trouble reaching a number of people in a southern town in Lebanon called Marjeyoun.

This was a not a news heavy post but I guarantee that I will post more later this week as developments happen.