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The Israeli–Hezbollah conflict in the summer of 2006, although brief, had a lasting impact on the region and prompted an intense humanitarian response. The conflict raised challenging questions for the United Nations (UN) about how to assist a middle-income yet extremely vulnerable population in a context where global and local relations are highly politicised. This paper focuses on two key questions that emerged from the humanitarian response. First, how can humanitarian agencies, and particularly the UN, improve the protection of civilians, and was what they did in Lebanon enough? Second, how can humanitarian agencies create partnerships with local actors and still remain true to core humanitarian principles when local actors are fiercely divided along confessional lines and influenced by external actors, and when some, such as Hezbollah, are parties to the conflict? This paper argues that despite the importance of protection and partnerships to the humanitarian response, their role in the UN emergency response still falls short. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent turn to emotions in foreign policy research has resulted in several studies of humiliation and revenge as motivations for the use of force. This paper proposes a dramaturgical perspective to expand on this research agenda, focusing on the performative aspects of foreign policy as remedial action to restore spoiled identities. The basic argument is that the visibility and transparency generated by the communications and information revolution have thrust decision makers onto a public stage on which their (live) performance and public image are constantly scrutinized by domestic and international audiences, making image predicaments and humiliation a constant threat. Discredited performances (such as military failures) call for facework, and the subsequent use of force then becomes, at least partly, a means of impression management to reclaim an identity, legitimate a role, and regain self-esteem. These ideas are investigated in a case study of Israeli decision making during the 2006 Lebanon war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand evacuation behaviour in a case of spontaneous evacuation. During the Second Lebanon War of 2006, more than one-third of residents in north Israel spontaneously evacuated—the remainder stayed in situ. Using a telephone survey of 665 respondents residing in north Israel, we were able to characterise the behaviour of evacuees and non-evacuees. The main reasons cited for evacuating were fear of injury to self or family, the effect on children, inability to remain in a protective space, and family pressure. The main reasons cited for remaining at home were no suitable alternative, did not perceive a high level of danger, had to go to work, and there is no place like home. There were no significant differences with regard to most socio-demographic characteristics of the population. These findings should aid emergency managers in preparing the population for a future emergency and in engaging in effective dialogue with the population during an emergency on the evacuation option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The July 2006 war waged by Israel on Lebanon caused an estimated USD 1 billion of direct (financial) damage to infrastructure. However, it generated also significant indirect (economic/inter-temporal) costs. One sector that suffered considerably in this respect was agriculture, the main source of income for 30–40 per cent of Lebanese. This paper's main objective is to develop a methodology to estimate the total—direct and indirect—cost of the war to agricultural crop production, using an area of south Lebanon as a focal point. The indirect loss assessment viewed inter-temporal reductions in crop production values as the opportunity cost of not working fields due to the presence of unexploded ordnance (UXO). Various crops were evaluated for two scenarios (50 and 100 per cent damage due to UXO) over UXO-clearance periods of five and 10 years. The results indicate that any damage estimates that include only direct losses will under-estimate total losses by 80 and 87 per cent for the five- and 10-year periods, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]