I am at the airport in the Omani capital, Muscat, on my way to southern Oman.

The Inside the Middle East team will be spending a few days in Salalah, over one thousand kilometers South of Muscat, hosting the show and shooting a story for the August edition of the program.

It's over 40 degrees celsius in most parts of Oman this time of year, but we hear the weather down south is a little more agreeable. Something about Monsoon rains cooling down the atmosphere and creating a lush green tropical oasis, surrounded by the harsh deserts of the Arabian peninsula.

Tourists from all over the Gulf region flock to Salalah during the summer months. Eco-tourists from other parts of the world are also beginning to discover this part of Oman.

I will be updating the blog page regularly, so watch this space!

(Photo AP/Loay Hameed)

Israeli troops raided Hamas-funded and operated institutions overnight, confiscating documents and computers in the West Bank town of Nablus.

One of the schools was sealed off and a sign posted on the door that witnessed said reads: "the offices have been closed because they were part of terrorist infrastructure."

Similar operations have already been carried out in Ramallah and Hebron.

This appears to be part of a wider crackdown on Hamas-affiliated schools and institutions, in an effort to strengthen the hand of Hamas rivals Fattah in the West Bank.

--By CNN's Ben Wedeman

The unmistakable stench of decomposing human flesh hit me as I entered the shrapnel-scarred house on a hillside overlooking the southern Lebanese village of Aitaroun. The village was in ruins, having been pounded by Israeli artillery for days.

Many of the inhabitants of Aitaroun had fled. But not the man in this house, whose name I didn’t know. He had died in his living room—from precisely what I can’t say—several days before. The floor was shiny with dried blood; broken glass from the shattered windows crunched under our shoes.

Cameraman Joe Duran and I had come to Aitaroun during a brief lull in Israel’s campaign against Hizballah in the summer of 2006.

The war began on July 12th when Hizballah guerrillas crossed the Lebanese-Israeli border and ambushed an Israeli patrol, killing three soldiers and abducting two others, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. The Israeli government now believes Goldwasser and Regev are dead.


Hizballah demanded Israel release several Lebanese nationals in Israeli prisons (including Samir Qantar, who in 1979 as a member of the Arab Liberation Front had taken part in a particularly grisly attack on Israeli civilians in the town of Nahariya,) plus an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners, in exchange for the two Israeli soldiers.

Israel refused, and chose the military option, launching a campaign of punishing air raids across Lebanon with the stated goal of winning the freedom of the two soldiers and, in the process, of teaching Hizballah a lesson it would never forget.

At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared: “We will not give in to blackmail and will not negotiate with terrorists when it comes to the lives of Israel Defence Forces soldiers.”

But this Sunday, the Israeli cabinet, led by Ehud Olmert, voted 22 to 3 in favour of a German-brokered exchange deal. In the end, the deal wasn’t dramatically different from what Hizballah proposed in the first place.

So what was the Lebanon war about? Was it about the abducted soldiers or was it, as many believe, part of a US-inspired plan to crush Hizballah and send a stern warning to its main backer, Iran?

This we do know: it left more than 1200 Lebanese and nearly 160 Israelis dead. Thousands more were wounded. Hundreds of thousands were made homeless. Lebanon’s economy was severely damaged. The war caused billions of dollars of damage on both sides.

When the fighting came to an end on August 14th, the two Israeli soldiers (dead or alive, we don't know) were still in Hizballah’s hands. Hizballah was still intact and is today arguably stronger than ever before.

Lebanese suffered, Israelis suffered. The only ones who certainly benefited from the whole sad, grisly, gruesome, horrifying affair were the corporations who manufacture the weapons and the ammunition.

That war is almost always an utter and total waste is obvious. Well, it should be obvious, but it isn’t. And here I’m talking about real war, not the war you see on tided-up, blood-and-guts-free TV news or the absurd version that passes for a depiction of war in the movies. I mean what you see when you’re in a war zone—the seemingly random, mindless destruction (smart bombs aren’t as smart as the brochures and the spokesmen confidently claim,) the mangled and mutilated bodies, the terrified, angry, traumatised people, the women and children and the old who don’t take part in the fighting but who always are the ones who suffer the most.

It was people like these who are on my mind when I think of what a complete waste the Lebanon war was.

On another day during the war in south Lebanon, also in Aitaroun, I was with another cameraman, the tall and laconic veteran Brian Puchiati. We had made our way to the village with a group of journalists, and walked, stunned speechless, by the extent of the destruction. Houses transformed into rubble. Dead animals rotting in the street and the fields. Huge craters everywhere.

We arrived at an intersection, when an old woman stuck their head out of a door. She saw we were clearly not soldiers and called back inside.

Moments later dozens of people emerged from the doorway. They were pale, their eyes reflected a horror and numbness I’ve seen in other war zones. They came out into the street first furtively, then frantically.

“Get us out of here,” a woman pleaded to me. “Please, get us out of here.”

I asked another of those who streamed out of the doorway what he had seen, what he had experienced. He was short on details, but long on shock.

“It was unbearable, unbearable,” the man, Ahmed Bassam, told me. He was going straight to Beirut, to get as far away as possible from his nightmares.

I didn’t cover the war from Israel, but I’m sure my colleagues who were there witnessed scenes of trauma, devastation and desperation.

The Lebanon war in 2006 was a waste. Regardless of what its aims were, regardless of all that was said by Israel, by Hizballah, or whomever, it was a waste.

BAGHDAD (AP) — The Iraqi government opened six oil fields to international bidding Monday as the nation attempts to boost daily production by 60 percent.

The potential participation of big Western companies like BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Total SA in Iraq's oil industry has been criticized in recent weeks following published reports that several were close to signing no-bid contracts with the Iraqi government.

Those contracts were expected to be announced Monday, but Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani instead named 35 companies that would be qualified to bid on service contracts for the oil fields of Rumeila, Zubair, Qurna West, Maysan, Kirkuk and Bay Hassan.

"These fields were chosen because their production can be raised in a short time and at a low cost," said al-Shahristani.

All of the fields are currently producing oil, and al-Shahristani said the new contracts would raise Iraq's production by 1.5 million barrels per day. Iraq currently produces 2.5 million barrels per day and hopes to raise that to 4.5 million by 2013.

-- By CNN's Octavia Nasr

If you're a homosexual in the Arab world, there is a great chance you'll get the same treatment fifty-two men did at an Egyptian gay disco on the Nile in 2001: arrested, their heads covered with white hoods, on charges of practicing debauchery and denigrating Islam. That would be the official treatment, which might be kinder than the one you get from your family.

In the documentary titled Gloriously Free, a gay man who fled Jordan after being shot and almost killed by his brother paints a grim picture. In the film, he’s identified with only a portion of his name “al-Hussein”:

"There are laws concerning homosexuals. However there is no killing by the government by law. But there is still the traditional honor killing by family and persecution by society."

A society that is deeply rooted in the conservative interpretation of Islam and centuries-old social laws.

Another Film entitled, A Jihad for Love, explores the relationship between Islam and homosexuality, as well as the official stance from the religious authority.

An unidentified sheikh interviewed for the film says with much conviction, "Homosexuality is a crime and is punishable in Islam by death."

The film shows the disturbing stand for gay people who practice Islam.

An unidentified gay man whose face is not shown says, "I wish there was a verse in the Quran that said please do not discriminate against homosexuality."

But if gay people in the Arab world cannot live their lives openly, many of them have resorted to talking about it online, forming chat groups to offer each other support.

On the internet, an Arab gay and lesbian community is very active. They express themselves and their homosexuality openly and try to bring change to a culture that still doesn't accept them and often pretends that they don't even exist.

The Gay and Lesbian Arabic Society (GLAS) say on their special website: "We are part of the global gay and lesbian movement seeking an end to injustice."

But for now, they can only gather in secret or on the Internet until their communities give them the justice they seek.