Written by
Erminia Calabrese 

 

At one time in Lebanon, before the Israeli attack, the streets that ran from the capital to the South were covered with advertisements for cosmetics and perfumes — strictly Parisian — for cars and for stylish shops.

 

Entire villages disappeared.  Today there are wall posters of the Nasr min allah, “Divine Victory,” standing out on that street at whose sides is only the rubble of whole neighborhoods destroyed by the bombs. Many slogans decorate the piles of stones — houses and entire buildings that no longer exist — while people, without yielding, still look to extract something that could be useful or to find a cherished old photograph. This is your democracy, The Great Middle Beast, pictures of warriors who fight at sunset and photographs of wounded children: these are the wall posters that stand there where destruction reigns. Looking at the neighborhoods of South Beirut, Haret Hareik, Dahyye, and looking at the South of Lebanon, where entire villages no longer exist, what one can notice is only impotence. Only the few Christian villages of the zone remain intact.

Begin again to live. Visiting postwar Lebanon truly seems to be going back in time, as the Israeli prime minister Olmert already announced before the beginning of the war: “We will make you go back twenty years.” After the civil war a good fifteen years and much Saudi capital in the hands of the ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri were needed to reconstruct Lebanon and make its pride and that of every Lebanese grow: the Down Town of Beirut. Today, many areas of the country are reduced like Ground Zero, but the Lebanese will know how to stubbornly rebuild everything. The mobilization for the reconstruction is very strong, above all on the part of the Party of God, Hezbollah, which has distributed economic subsidies to the people who have lost everything.  It matters little to them if this money comes from Iran or from Qatar — the important thing is to begin again to live, rebuilding everything once again.

Unemployement has doubled. Hassan, twenty years: “It doesn’t matter to us that our houses have been destroyed; we will rebuild them a second time. The important thing is that we still have our dignity.” According to the Lebanese economist Kamal Hamdane, the rate of unemployment has redoubled in respect to before the war. If before the war it was 9%, now it could get to 20%.  At the outbreak of the Israeli offensive many industries were forced to lay off their workers. Already two thousand employees in the industrial sector have lost their jobs; according to the president of the Association of Industrial Workers, Fadi Abboud:“Ninety firms have been destroyed by the Israeli bombings; the people have not been let go for economic reasons but because of circumstances beyond their control.” One of the major factories for the production of milk in Lebanon was also destroyed. Was this also a target to eliminate Hezbollah? Or perhaps the economic rivalry between Israel and Lebanon hits the mark? In the same way factories producing medicines and plastic materials have been destroyed. “The victory achieved by Hezbollah in Lebanon will have destructive consequences whose impact will be felt beyond Lebanon” one reads in the Jordanian newspaper al Ghad, “Tomorrow,” going back to the conviction — widespread among the Arabs — that Hezbollah has won the war and Israel has done nothing but reinforce the political party of Nasrallah. Hezbollah has seats in parliament and enjoys great popularity among Shiites, and not only because they offer the people hospital services, schools, and social assistance. This, not political rhetoric, helps people to live.

 

Bond to Palestine. Lebanon has never been so united. The images transmitted by al Jazeera, in which Christians are seen going to Haret Hreik in order to show their solidarity, are emblematic. A fiftyish woman says: “Enough! We are no longer Sunni, Shiites, and Christians. We are all Lebanese, we are here to help our country be reborn.” “Israel has done everything to divide us but this time it has not succeeded,” adds Joseph, twenty years old. Undoubtedly, the Lebanese political situation is still very unstable, and the future of Lebanon could be bound by double bonds to the great regional questions: the nuclear dossier in Iran, the occupied Golan Heights, and Palestine.