Perseverance and defiance in face of Israeli aggression
By Mitchell Prothero
THE minute Umm Ali hears the Israeli fighter jet engines overhead, she stops looking through the rubble of her destroyed Haret Hreik home in Beirut’s southern suburbs, turns her scarf-covered head toward the sky and begins to shout in Arabic at the unseen enemy above. ‘Allahu Akbar, God is the Greatest!’ she cries, pumping her fist in the air and cursing the Israeli pilots bombing her nation from above. Within a few seconds another woman also in a full hijab, or headscarf, joins her.
‘With our blood and souls we redeem you, Sayeed Nasrallah,’ they chant, their voices bounce off the rubble and smouldering jetsam of their lives a week before and draw the attention of two men four floors up in a damaged but livable apartment building. They’re almost certainly Hezbollah spotters or snipers because no one but Hezbollah fighters remain in the ground zero of the Israeli campaign to destroy the Shia militant group.
They begin to wave posters and sing songs honouring the leader of Hezbollah and the war against Israel. The mood is upbeat and defiant despite the square kilometer having been pummeled into bricks and concrete dust. It’s as if they are fighting the Israelis the only way they can: By refusing to be cowed. The 10-day bombing campaign has taken its toll on the infrastructure of Lebanon, as Israeli planes, warships and artillery have targeted roads, bridges, power plants, ports and runways. But hardest hit have been the Lebanese Shia communities where Hezbollah draws its main support: In South Lebanon, the Dihya suburbs, in the Bekka Valley and Baalbek with its famous Roman ruins.
A few days after the scene of defiance in Haret Hreik, the city of Baalbek is also deserted save for Hezbollah fighters. But these guys lack the swagger their comrades in the city displayed. Eerily silent save for the occasional motorist speeding out of town and the periodic thunder of distant air-strikes in the surrounding hills of the Mt. Lebanon range, the fighters are coolly welcoming to a car full of western journalists that have surprised them by arriving amid the battle.
It’s not a battle in the sense of two armies knocking back and forth across front lines. The Israelis bomb positions in hopes of breaking capability and spirit and Hezbollah tries not to lose hope, hope that somehow the international community will turn against the bombing or that the Israelis enter Lebanon for a fair fight to stop the steady rain of unguided missiles harassing their northern towns. In Baalbak, the men aren’t singing songs, they’re just trying not to die.
Mohammed Mulimh, 29, a farmer, hasn’t joined Hezbollah, and can’t as he is a one-legged Sunni Muslim. But he supports their efforts and thinks their resolve can win. ‘We are used to this,’ he says, sipping coffee and resting the one good leg he has. He lost it at five years old to an Israeli air strike during their last invasion in 1982. ‘We are farmers, we can fall back on the land, hide in caves, make our own cheese and eat our lambs. The Israelis in their bunkers, this life upsets them. They will quit.’
Back in Beirut on Friday, more than 1,000 refugees from south Lebanon and from Dihya have taken shelter in a three-story underground parking garage. The vast space is full of families staking out small spaces occupied by piles of clothes, food, bedding and the odd children’s toy. These ‘refugees’ packed with the efficiency of an army on an operation and seem to have brought no unnecessary possessions: few sentimental items, only what they will need for the long haul, should it come to that. The facility is so well thought-out that it’s adjacent to an operating supermarket where they can buy goods or just walk the hours whiling away the time until they can return home.
They’re tired and hot in the humidity of the Beirut summer and some young teenagers begin to fight before they are separated and yelled at by ubiquitous Hezbollah volunteers. They appear to be unarmed but their authority is uncontested as they organise people into patrols to clean the parking garage of trash, monitor the sick and tend to the babies. These might well be the cleanest, most tidy refugees in the history of displaced persons.
Other than the volunteers — who readily admit to being Hezbollah — patrolling with their handheld radios, there’s a noticeable lack of fighting age men. There’s no point asking where they are. These people don’t know, answering only that their son or father is a Mujahid or holy warrior. But here even 18-year-old Ali is a Mujihad for he patrols the complex looking for sick people to take to the clinic staffed with doctors three hours a day upstairs near the supermarket. If the sick cannot wait until it opens, ambulances supplied by Hezbollah will take them to hospitals. ‘Mr Hassan Nasrallah has said that this is a war and we will never stop fighting it,’ he says. ‘It is uncomfortable but we do not mind it. They will not make us quit.’
As he talks, an older woman in a headscarf, who will not give her name, appears and wants to talk. ‘If America and Israel want to do this to us, there is nothing we can do about it,’ she says. ‘We don’t care about staying here as long as the boys who are fighting and Sayeed Nasrallah and the leaders are OK. We can withstand anything as long as we don’t have to bow to the Americans and Israelis. Death is normal to us and it means we will go to heaven. May God bless all the Mujihadeen around the world,’ she exclaims.
Almost a dozen people have gathered to hear her speech and all nod knowingly. They don’t sing but after 10 days they have yet to wilt.—Dawn/The Observer News Service
