It looks as though the Israel-Lebanon are-we-calling-it-a-war-yet of 2006 is the first conflict to be blogged from day one. Bloggers from both sides of the border - some of whom were already aware of one another before this tragedy began - have been providing live updates, commenting on one another's blogs and sometimes linking to posts by bloggers on the other side of the border. Will this turn out to be the first time that residents of "enemy" countries engaged in an ongoing conversation while missiles were falling?

Haaretz published an article about the online conversation between Lebanese and Israelis here (Hebrew). It links to the blog of Ami (scroll down for English), who is hosting an ongoing thread of talkbacks by Israelis and Lebanse, and to the Lebanese bloggers forum where the same phenomenon is taking place.  There are currently 383 comments in response to this post on the Lebanese bloggers forum, including the following from an Israeli guy named Shachar:

Hey.
I'm an IDF soldier stationed at the Lebanon is border, but got back home for a funeral of someone I knew.

We can't see all the bombing on Lebanon here from Israel (naturaly we're focusing on bombs at Israel), so you're pretty much updating me on what's going on.

I don't want to start arguing about who's right and who's wrong, the finaly word is that it's not right that civilians get hurt in the process, from both sides.

I'm sending you my best wishes from here, and hope that you and your family will be strong and be alright until this horrible situation will be over.

Shachar.

Chez moi, a Lebanese commenter wrote, in response to my March of Folly  post:

Hi,
I think I must first mention that i am lebanese, and second that I really appreciate the fact that there are reasonable people on both sides of the border. I have been checking lebanese blogs for the past few days and was frustrated that most of the comments from Israelis were extremely unsympathetic to the plight of the lebanese civilian. We were dubbed as human shields to terrorists, and justifications were given to every civilian death in lebanon. I was appalled.
I can rest a little easier in this difficult time, because I have found reasonable voices in Israel. By the way, I am having a hard time quitting smoking, with this shit going on too.
R

And there is an article about the Lebanon-Israel blogging phenomenon on the Times Online, here.

The internet has also been offering some surreal experiences, like the ability to have a Beirut-Tel Aviv online IM chat in real time while the missiles are falling. That's what happened to me and this blogger a few nights ago. We chatted while he was sitting on the roof of his apartment building in Beirut, watching missiles from Israeli planes fall on his city and describing it to me. He was carrying on an online conversation with another Israeli at the same time. And he was able to describe his feelings and the atmosphere in a human, personal way that no newspaper article or television news segment could achieve.

Meanwhile, in a moment of supreme weirdness, someone on a pro-Hezbollah chatboard called, with striking originality, Shi'a Chat, has linked to my post about Zvi Yehezkeli on Al Manar television.

One of the prevalent themes on many of these blogs is a sense of powerlessness and great sadness. Of wondering how our countries got dragged into this conflict.

There is plenty of the blame game, too, of course. And I guess that attitudes will continue to harden as this conflict continues - which it seems set to do. As I mentioned in my last post, a lot of Lebanese bloggers have become very angry at Israel, to the point of rejecting personal contact. But this is not the case for all - not by any means.

What does this mean? I'm not sure.  I'm too sad and overtired to think about it right now, to be honest. But I know this is significant. I do think about the fact that many of these bloggers are from their respective countries' educated, liberal elite and I am sure that amongst them are some future leaders. When this latest round of pointless death and destruction ends, when the anger dissipates, perhaps they will remember the personal connections with their "enemy." Think about what it means, if the next generation of Lebanese and Israeli politicians and business leaders have intimate and personal knowledge of the others' humanity. They won't forget that, even while there was a war going on, they were able to talk to one another and express their feelings. It's not so easy to kill someone you know. It's possible to contemplate embarking on a joint development project or business endeavour with someone from the other side - if you know him or her as a human being, not simply "the former enemy."