BEIRUT: Anger is mounting in Lebanon’s business community over the Israeli air and sea blockade on the country, seen as humiliating and unjustified three weeks into the ceasefire that ended the war between Israel and Hezbollah.

“The purpose of this blockade at this point is beyond me,” Elias Sfeir, owner of Tools and Building Materials, told AFP, reflecting a general sentiment among business leaders.

“Now we feel that more and more the Israeli attitude is aimed against all the Lebanese, it is no longer against Hezbollah as such.”

Sfeir said 15 containers with goods worth half a million dollars for his company have been blocked in ports outside Lebanon since the blockade went into effect on July 13.

“If this goes on for another month, I’ll have to shut down and tell all the staff — 40 people — to go home,” he said.

Israel imposed the blockade a day after guerrillas from Hezbollah group seized two of its soldiers in a cross-border raid that sparked a month-long conflict that killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, overwhelmingly civilians, and at least 160 Israelis, 121 of them soldiers.

Israel has said that the blockade is to prevent Hezbollah from rearming and that it would be lifted once a UN brokered truce that went into effect on August 14 has been implemented fully.

But given that the ceasefire has held for three weeks and mounting calls by the international community, including the European Union and the United Nations, for the blockade to be lifted, there is general consensus in Lebanon that the measure is no longer justified.

The Lebanese government has said the country sustained some 3.6 billion dollars in material losses as a result of the war and billions more in economic losses. It has also warned of a recession and Lebanese MPs since Saturday have held a sit-in at parliament to protest the blockade.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) last week put at 15 billion dollars Lebanon’s direct and indirect losses as a result of the conflict.

Mohammed Ali Abla, who runs a company that imports powdered milk from Europe and Argentina, said if the blockade continues this week the country is likely to start experiencing serious shortages.

“I had a large stock but it’s all gone now and about 150 tonnes of powdered milk that were due in this summer are stuck in Antwerp, Malta and other ports,” said Abla, who estimates his losses at 150,000 dollars so far.

Already, some stores are beginning to feel the pinch with shelves emptying gradually.

“If this continues, it’s a catastrophe for the business community and all Lebanese,” said Antoine Bou-Samra, co-owner of La Cigale, an upscale food store that sells imported delicacies no longer available on the market. “Business is down 50 per cent and we’re losing 10,000 to 12,000 dollars a day.”

Sami Salman, Managing Director of Trans Med, a company that bottles soft drinks and mineral water and which imports consumer products such as detergents, diapers and chocolate, said the blockade had needlessly brought the Lebanese economy to its knees and had victimized the entire population.

“We have had, without exaggeration, 25 million dollars in losses,” Salman said, adding that he had been forced to lay off 10 per cent of his workforce of 800 employees.

“We will need five to seven years to recover from this if the blockade stops now,” he said. “But if it continues, it will be much more.”

Salman and others interviewed challenged Israel’s justification for the blockade saying that it did not hold up considering that airplanes and cargo ships transporting goods undergo checks at their port of origin.

“I am shipping goods from the United States, Britain and Italy and the source of my goods cannot possibly be the source of armament for Hezbollah,” said Sami Khouri, chairman of Teeba Holding, which imports items such as edible oils, frozen vegetables, sugar and corned beef.

“This is all meaningless and it amounts to punishing all the Lebanese.”—AFP