Rasha Salti

Happy New Year From Beirut

2006-08-10T22:07:00.000-07:00

[This was a New Year's Note that Rasha sent on December 31, 2005]
Dear Naeem,
I don't know if 2005 was a good year for you. Or for your people. Or for your astrological sign. I would like to try to stack words into sentences and convey optimism and hope for merriment, bounty and felicity, on the advent of this coming year and yet sound credible. My wishes spring wholly and truly from the deepest of my heart. The question is whether we can imagine that the world might become a less intolerant, unjust, unhappy and dark place for the largest share of humanity.

You have no reason to share my optimism, but I am writing from Beirut, a really small place in this world that believes itself to be a small vangard laboratory where the Great Powers that rule the world experiment with forms of social and political organizations. Beirut is many things, including the world capital of hubris, or the place where the largest amount of people that indulge in hubris live or spend their summer and winter vacations.
[Image: Zena el-Khalil]

Beirut is also a Nieztchean capital, or the capital city where the largest amount of people live animated (purely and exclusively) with the will to believe they are anywhere else but in Beirut. Beirut is a place in this world where the parochial is universal, the commonplace regional, the everyday world-historical, and where the news reads like a third rate noir and international intrigue novel.

Fearless of hubris, from Beirut, I dare express my optimism and wish you all a new year filled with felicity, bounty and merriment.

Hubrisless, optimistic and stubborn, Rasha.

Notes from the Siege 12 (Qana)

2006-08-10T20:27:00.000-07:00

The history of earlier drives into Lebanon shows that even as the Israeli war machine gains momentum, so do the chances of terrible accidents and atrocities. In 1982, under the protection of Israeli forces, Christian Lebanese militias carried out the now infamous massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Ten years ago, during a campaign against Hizbullah similar to the one now underway, Israeli gunners blasted a United Nations monitoring post at the South Lebanese town of Qana, where terrified locals had taken refuge. More than 100 civilians were killed in a barrage that lasted only a few ghastly seconds. International outrage quickly forced Israel to end its offensive. The Israelis say they are being more careful this time around, not least because they don't want to be forced to stop. "The presidential approval by Bush, the surprising level of support he's giving Israel, the patience he's giving Israel—it looks as if there's a great amount of slack being cut to us," says a senior Israeli security source, who did not want to be identified by name because he is not authorized to speak on the record. "Absent a Qana, it might go on." –from the article "Torn to Shreds" in last week's Newsweek.
(This siege note I wish to dedicate to Maher)

Bearing witness to a massacre only a few kilometers removed from one's being (or home).
Coming into consciousness of, or bearing witness to, a massacre only a few kilometers removed from one's being (or home), feels very much like the experience of being in the proximity of a very powerful explosion only at an extremely, extremely slowed motion. Taking stock of the information on time, place, and the toll of victims, watching televised transmission of rescue workers piling a kindergarden in rigor mortis, is identical to the astounding sensation of the air being sucked from all around, that typically precedes the explosion. And at some point, it all sinks in, the information processes into information, and the images breakdown into their compositional elements (rescue worker carrying four year old with hand stretched to the sky and fingers wide spread), and you explode, or implode, with some sort of a system shut down. For a split second your heart does not beat the way it is used to, and your lungs don't quite inhale or exhale according to the book.

9:00 am, or somewhere around there. I am zapping between al-Jazeera, LBC, BBC, Future TV, and my new discovery of this war, Sky News. I have to finish some proposal text to send to funders to collect desperately needed funds to support the army of volunteers and the programs for displaced kids. I cannot disappoint "Nouna", I have to be at the library at 10:00 am with the text in English.

9:05 am, or somewhere around there. Yasser Abou Halileh, who just landed in Lebanon from Jordan is catching his breath on al-Jazeera. He arrived to Qana and just reached the shattered shelter site. Qana was carpet-bombed throughout the night. The air-bombing was not a "surprise" to anyone, because the Israeli army dropped flyers advising residents to leave. The bodies piled in the shelter ravaged to rubble were of people too poor to afford the ride from Qana to Sidon or Beirut, or people with disabilities.

Qana besides being an extremely poor village in the anemic economic orbit of Tyre, was also the site of one of Christ's miracles, then a little short of two thousand years later it housed a UNIFIL base (UN peacekeeping force), and a notorious Israeli massacre of fleeing hapless southern Lebanese villagers at said UNIFIL base. Yasser and his team headed for Qana because rescue workers alerted the media to the possibility of another massacre. The shelling did not stop as rescue workers lifted bodies from under rubble.
You know the rest of the story. An Yasser's story as well, it is no different from any correspondent that suddenly becomes a human being, a father, a brother, a son and Yasser was looking for words to put together into sentences to report the first report of the massacre. When he and his camera arrived, rescue workers were on site, slowly pulling bodies from under the rubble. Yasser is catching his breath and slowly, you can feel the air being sucked from all around him, children of all sizes, mostly small and extra small (some are barely a few months old), piled next to him, covered in ashen powdered concrete.
As Yasser must have been experiencing "the explosion" of "implosion", that's when I felt the air being sucked from all around me. I jumped from my bed and ran hysterically in the house looking for someone in my family to tell the news to. And when I did, I realized that a vacuum cloaked me. I heard myself speak, I saw myself put my shoes on, pack my bag, feel tightness in my chest, say goodbye to my parents, walk out into the street. Walk out into the street. Flash of the voice of Yasser hiccuping wiith emotion. Nothing unusual about this Sunday morning. Forgot the laptop. Forgot what I owed Nouna. Flash of the image of the rescue workers leaning in half to be able to go into the ravaged building. Back up. Back upstairs. Flash of baby lying on rubble, her cutie derriere dripping a pool of blood and powdered concrete. Al-Jazeera's screen. Zap, maybe it's a mistake. An exageration. Text message from Rula: "Are you watching al-Jazeera?" I grab my purse again, leave. Come back: the laptop. On the street, as I wait to hail a cab, I wonder why there is not a trace of powdered concrete in the air. I could taste it in my mouth.

10:15 am, or somewhere around there. Municipal building, 3rd floor, Beirut's Municipal Librairy. Elevator working. Flash of rescue worker carrying a baby girl, barefoot, covered in powdered concrete. Her arm sticking out, upright in rigor mortis, her palm wide and fingers stretched as if she were trying to reach out. At the municipal library that morning, there was a training workshop for the volunteers from the NGOs that are in charge of overseeing the settlement of the displaced in the schools around Beirut. A training workshop for educational games and activities around the book and storytelling. I walked in, greeted Nouna and another lady, I know I was not very present, the vacuum still cloaked me. I just said to them, as best as I could make coherent sentences "there was a massacre in Qana". Most of the volunteers had woken up and rushed to the workshop without hearing news.
I put my laptop in the office, and sat, stood up and started calling people. Everyone was choking in shock, rage and horror. Rula was out of her mind, zapping frantically. Only al-Jazeera showed images, BBC and CNN had a very down-played report. She beckoned me to make phone calls. Who could I call? I am nobody. I called friends, and more friends, people in the know and out of the know. Then a text message came: Protest in front of the ESCWA building at noon. I was beginning to breathe again. Condoleezza Rice was supposed to land in Beirut sometime around noon.

11:00 am, or somewhere around there. I was still sucked into the vacuum. Things moving around me were confusing, I could not quite mediate with reality. My mind was racing. The flashes of dead bodies were still coming. I needed to describe them, in gruesome detail to someone. Whoever I called, described them to me, in their gruesomeness: "Did you see that baby girl with her buttocks drenched in blood?" She was there in front of my eyes, off course I had seen her.
I typed something in English on the laptop. I called Nouna. We discussed it. I repeated the things she said to me so they would sink in. One of the attending volunteers could not hold still, who smoked outside, paced, and checked her cell phone about ten times, walked over to us and said she was going to the protest.

12:00 pm, sharp. I was back on the street. I walked towards the ESCWA (basically the offices of he UN and UN-related institutions) building. The street was filled with people, men, women, children carrying flags, Lebanese, Hezbollah, and Amal, walked decidedly, almost angrily in the direction of the ESCWA building. By the time I got there, there was a mob scene in front of the building. Young men (and a few women) were banging on the gates, throwing rocks to the windows that were bouncing against the glass and falling back on them. The release of rage was collective.
The sheath of vacuum around me, inside me, dissipated. The explosion/implosion was now happening to me. I felt myself transform into a magma of anger and sorrow at once. I felt my own rage channel to the crowd, I stood on the sidewalk, sucked into the magnetism of the mob, my body totally merged with theirs. The flashes from the al-Jazeera broadcast were no longer caged inside me. They were wafting away. The flags were pulled down and instead the masts in front of the fancy structure were now flagging Hezbollah, Amal flags and portraits of Hassan Nasrallah.
(When people later criticized the mob scene for "attacking" the ESCWA building –"Was it necessary?"– I was surprised they did not have that rage, or that they could not comprehend it.)
The crowd that unloaded into downtown Beirut was at that point mostly comprised of the displaced from the southern suburb. They shouted: "Hezbollah, Nasrallah, wel Dahiyah killa" (Hezbollah, Nasrallah, and the whole of the southern suburbs.)
On the other side of the street, at the foot of the Media Center building where newsmedia post their cameras and microphones and their anchors shoot their live shots, people were screaming at cameras.
The crowd was growing fatter and fatter, now people were coming more prepared, they had signs and banners, in Arabic and English.
I came across Mohammad, a friend, and finally, finally I could cry. I burried my head in his shoulders and wept helpless.
Mohammad led me to the Media Center building. I sat in one of the offices with windows onto the street. More and more people were coming. Army and internal security personel were also arriving. They stood by and watched. At some point a truck carrying some sort of a load of something parked in the lot across the street from the ESCWA building. It became a stage atop which various spokespersons stood and delivered speeches. I guess someone brought a voice magnifier, and someone else brought a tape and a tape player because soon there were also chants blaring. The flags flying on top of the crowd were now of several political parties: the "Free Movement", the Communists, the Syrian Nationalist (the most overt supporters of Hezbollah). The most touching scene was of sunni and shi'i sheikhs huddled together, hand in hand almost talking and then delivering speeches. From the window of the 6th floor, I could see their round head coiffe and robes.
Randa sent a text message from Cairo. I asked her to call me. She was weeping and I begged her to call her activist friends and organize a mobilization in Cairo. I wanted to weep, and hated myself for stiffening my upper lip. I borrowed Mohammad's phone and started to call friends across the world, hysterically, begging them to organize protests. I was nonsensical. I woke my sister in New Jersey. My tears were now flowing silently.
I felt I was going to collapse. I had to leave and be quiet for a while.
I walked home, a long, long meditative walk in the punishing heat of a late July afternoon. It was 2:00 pm. Everyone urged me to write something, a "siege note" for Qana. I could not.
Instead I slept. My eyelids felt heavy from crying.

Unscathed
Maher called. I woke up. He said he was leaving with a team of journalists to Tyre. Did I want to come. (I did not know.) I should be ready in ten minutes if I wanted to come. I said no, I was not thinking and I regretted it for the rest of the day. Until now when I write, I regret it.
Maher is a filmmaker. When this war started he was in Paris. He went nuts after a few days and decided to return. He wanted to be here for the war. He came on one of the ships that the French sent to evacuate French passport holders. His voyage was surreal, but that's another story.
He has a project to establish a website to collect and disseminate the record of the lived experience of this war, lest it should lapse from the collective record again. He has started to distribute cameras to young filmmakers, artists, even volunteers to record, film, transcribe the mundane and the non-sensational everyday of surviving this war. The website is not ready yet, but as soon as it s, I will publicize it.
Maher had been itching to go to Tyre, closest to one of the sites of battle. He went with the convoy of journalists and humanitarian aid workers. If my rage took me to the street and the mob scene, his would drive him to the front, to the site where the hurt is most poignant. He told me he was going to Qana, and I was not surprised.
I called him the next day in the afternoon. He had indeed been to Qana, and visited the site, and smelled death. From his voice, I felt that something had happened, something that still impressed him greatly. His locution was more sullen than lazy, but I could barely make out what he said, and I kept asking him to repeat himself. He did not get exasperated, his voice was detached. He was speaking to me from a different world.
My heart sank. He said Qana was exactly what I saw on TV. He kept referring to going through Srifa as being very difficult. "Very difficult" he kept saying. Nearly all of Srifa is destroyed. Limbs covered in powdered concrete emerge from between the ravages of collapsed buildings. No one has had the energy or courage to pull out the dead. The Red Cross and Civil Defense ambulances have been targetted relentlessly by Israel. When the guns will quiet, we will discover that Qana is small-time compared to Srifa. There is a pattern emerging now: Marwaheen, Srifa, Blida and Qana: terror to induce forced displacement (or pardon my French, "deportation"). Scorched earth and mass graves, this is how we achieve the New Middle East.
Maher said nearly 60% of Bint Jbeil has now become flat rubble. Most of its central area. There two limbs stick out of collapsed buildings, and the smell of death is everywhere. While rescue workers pulled out the dead from that shelter in Qana, the IDF was shelling the only functioning hospital in Bint Jbeil, a day prior to Maher's visit. That's how battered Bint Jbeil was, even its hospital the IDF decided was a Hezbollah stronghold and posed a grave security threat on the well-being of the children of Kiryat Shmona who prefer to go to school and not dwell in shelters after they have kissed the shells that their army will shower on Lebanon to implement UN Resolution 1559 and eradicate terror.
In the convoy to Bint Jbeil, journalists outnumbered the rescue workers, and they found a group of elderly men and women who were trapped in a shelter. They could not ambulate without assistance and had not eaten for four or five days. They were carried out and given some water and driven to places where they could receive the care they needed.
The BBC produced a number of excellent reports from Bint Jbeil, in heir backdrop, I saw Maher's face. His demeanor confirmed the impression I had after speaking to him on the phone. Maher had seen the face of death. Not death as in the sorrowful but inevitable expiring of everyday life, and not the death of a soldier on the battlefield. He had seen the face of organized, carefully orchestrated, mass-scale death, the planned death of hundreds and thousands as a solution to restoring power hegemony in a region.
You never leave a mass grave unscathed. Maher had seen several that day. Even if helping survivors seems like a life-affirming release, it will not alleviate the burden, the imprint of the face of death. I know he has been branded for ever now and there is not much anything that can be done about it. My forever beloved Marwan worked on collecting the bodies of victims in Sabra and Chatila after the massacre. Seeing the face of death was so overwhelming he left the country shortly thereafter. He moved to London and did not return to Lebanon for decades. You can still feel the brand of that mass grave in the lining of the timbre of his voice, in the lining to his gaze, there is a mute inconsolable sorrow.
I don't know if Maher will leave Lebanon, but I know he will return to Beirut markedly changed. For the time being the pull of the mass graves, of the people trapped in shelters, of bodies surging through rubble is too powerful, he wants to be near them. While the journalists he drove down with have left Tyre, he called last night to say he is tempted to stay. His voice felt he called from a netherworld, Israel is now engaged in a massive ground offensive in the south.

This siege note took a couple of days to write. I could not find my words or sense of self after news of the massacre on Sunday.

The Bougainvilliers Are in Full, Glorious Bloom

2006-08-05T07:30:00.000-07:00

This siege note is dedicated to Akram [Zaatari].

Akram is from Saida (in English it should be Sidon, but I don't have the patience to accomodate the white man or his burden in this siege note, won't you humor me?). Akram was my first friend from Saida. I had visited Saida before I met him, but it became a whole other story after I went there with him, and after I became familiar with his work. Akram is also one of the constitutional elements of my life in Beirut. Our friendship is peculiar because it has carved a world specific to it, a language of its own, replete with metaphors, a stock of memories, and piles and piles of images and stories. I like to think of it as a space, a retreat, like a small interior garden where a deeply anchored quietude prevails.

Since I have been back here, Akram has been stuck outside the country. Until this war, I had grown used to missing him, but from the moment the airport was shelled and the siege began, missing him has become a whole other story. I miss the "retreat", the quietude of our friendship. Conversations that expand over hours not because much is spoken, rather because whatever is, takes all the time it needs to be said. The sentences I have not been able to finish since this war began would have fallen right into place in our friendship/retreat.
If you can still remember the first days of this war, Israel's strategy was first and foremost to dismember this country. The network of roads and bridges in the south was practically all destroyed. Communication between the south's three main areas (or sections) was rendered very impracticable, but the roads linking the south to the capital Beirut were entirely severed. Saida and Beirut were usually a 20 to 30 minute drive apart, linked by a highway along the coast. Now the safe passage to Saida goes through the mountains that oversee that coast line. It's a 3 hour and the half long drive. Since the war began, people in the south have been forced out of their homes, home by home, hunted down by F-16 planes, car by car, family by family, to each a shell, sometimes two. As such Saida has transformed into a hub for southerners fleeing death and devastation.

If Akram's absence has been palpable, he certainly has been present in how I magined he would have witnessed the transformation of Beirut and, surely, Saida. Everytime I took note of the small, discreet changes that have taken place in Beirut, in my mind, I have reported them to Akram. I was lonesome for sharing our shared obsession for archiving the mundane, for compiling empirical and anthropological notes of the quotidian around us.

I admit that a few days ago, in a fit of selfishness, I wrote to him and suggested he should come back. (I am everyday more and more aware of how fragile I become under siege.) My arguments were pompous, they did not mask well my purely selfish longing for him.
Throughout the war, shelling , siege, grief and sorrow, the bougainvilliers have been in full, glorious bloom. Their colors are dizzying in their intensity: purplish red, boastfull fuschia, glaring white, and sometimes canari yellow. Most of the time, their bloom, which is the objective outcome of "natural" factors, namely, access to water, sun, heat, and even perhaps wind, has irritated me. Everything has changed in this time of war, except the full glorious bloom of the bougainvilliers. Other flowering trees have wilted, or shyed, as their franchised gardners or patrons no longer operate on the same schedule or have evacuated on the ships of the bi-nationals. On the road to Saida, I was struck, irked and even upset at the bougainvilliers full bloom. From between their abundant leaves and flowers, vignettes of the ravages appeared. Bridges torn in their midst framed by the purple and fuschia bloom of the bougainvilliers.

The Road to Saida: Trekking the Coast
Maher went to Saida and came back and told me I ought to go. I thought I would go to find Akram, the world where a lot of things that are very meaningful to Akram dwell. I wrote to him and confessed I was planning to visit Saida because I missed him so much. I described it, in my cruel selfishness, as an "act of love". Instead of sending me instructions as to guide my act of love, he gave me a phone number for Ziad, a photographer, video artist and filmmaker. Ziad too is from Saida. He now lives in Paris where he is pursuing some sort of a degree, but is very much the son of Saida's privilges and the son of Saida's streets. Ziad happened to be in Saida on a visit when the war broke out.
Israel had given us two days, forty eight hours of no airstrikes on the south to allow inhabitants in the "zones of combat" to flee from sure death (as per Qana). Yesterday was the second half of these 24 hours. I thought it would be the least unsafe opportunity. And after making a set of phone calls, I set forth on my journey. Maher wanted Ziad to film my trek through the city for his website.
It was difficult to hitch a ride and I ended up calling Ahmad, a very enterprising young man whom I had met when I hung around journalists, a week or so ago (time unravels at a different pace now). He found a 4-wheel drive and a driver, and decided to accompany me. There are two routes to Saida. A coastal road (the old and straightforward route) is deemed dangerous because it is unprotected from the ire of Israeli warships lounging in our seas. There is another route, long and circuitous that drives up through the mountain overlooking the coastal road and then back down to Saida. I climbed into the 4-wheel drive and Ahmad announced he preferred us to take the coastal road, but that the passage near Damour had just been shelled. I asked to stop at a shop for us to buy water.
The driver stopped at one of the main intersections a few blocks from the apartment. When I climbed back, the driver was gone. Ahmad sat in his place. He said the guy got scared and decided to go and see about getting a new passport but let us use his car. Ahmad smiled to comfort me. I decided I was not going to worry about that glitch, that the driver's fright was merely a glitch.
As we drove out of Beirut, the road was increasingly empty, there were a few trucks carrying boxes of supplies labelled "Medecins sans Frontieres" and "Hammoud Hospital".
The last available bit of Hariri's proud highway from Beirut to the south was the tunnel. I noted the graffitti: "W R = Love forever" and smiled. There was something comforting about that marking. Or the absence of other markings.
We drove along the old road. It had not survived unscathed. There were small holes in its middle, and pieces of rocks, cement and debris. From within the winding inner roads, the new highway was visible and the big craters from the shelling. Ahmad decided we ought to take a chance and go through the Damour passageway, the bridge had been bombed almost entirely, except for its extreme most edge, the width of a 4-wheel drive. An impromptu army post guided traffic. It was iffy, but we made it.
The moment we crossed Damour, the thick charcoal smoke bellowing from the Jiyeh power plant filled the air, the fire in the fuel reservoirs had not extinguished. The tanks were charred, the plant was deserted. And so was the small port next to it.
The coastal road would have been bustling at this time in the summer. Expats, bi-nationals, students on summer vacation, and tourists. This is the stretch of the south's most visited beaches. They range from the very fancy to the modest. At this time in the summer, the roads would have been busy with the town's handsome beach boys, tanned, strutting in swim trunks and a claim to some local fame. Everything was eerily deserted. Even army soldiers, posted in spots with seemingly no rhyme or reason, walked cautiously, expecting to duck for cover at any moment. Life all around had folded and packed. What remained was suspended in terror from the Israeli barges lounging with arrogance and too far from eyesight in the sea. The eye could not see them, but every muscle in your body was stretched stiff with anxiety under their watch. Life was at the mercy of the IDF's whims, they had shelled the entire coast repeatedly, as only to satiate their cruelty, to assert their might.
We drove on the small roads inside Jiyeh and inside Rmeyleh and the small towns in between. We drove by closed homes, doors locked, windows shut, shutters sealed. The last gaze of their dwellers still lingering on the front porches, the gaze of a hesitant farewell that quickly ran a checklist to make sure all was safely tucked and hoped for the best, maybe even whispered a prayer or invoked God or Christ's clemency and then hurried into the car and sped away for a temporary safer haven. Under the cruel watch of the Israeli warships, lounging with arrogance and too far from eyesight in the sea.

Saida
The bay of Saida appeared and the coastal highway leading to its seaside corniche was entirely deserted. The bridge that unloads traffic from the highway onto the corniche had been pounded. Carcasses of cars lined its sides, some buried under blocks of concrete. We drove around and turned and entered Saida from roads tucked behind, lined with orange groves and bougainvilliers in full bloom.
Ahmad sitting behind the wheel said nothing, and now Akram's voice was speaking to me, bits and pieces of conversations from our trips to Saida and further south. The orange groves were dizzyingly fragrant. I forgave their charms for Akram's sake and focused my irritation with the bougainvilliers. Car traffic inside the city was heavy. Pedestrian traffic was heavy.
Saida had received more than 100,000 displaced until two days ago. The numbers increase by the day. People were guided first to the municipality where they were processed and instructed to go elsewhere, to a school, a public edifice. I was told people were renting entrances of buildings to sleep at night, or the garages of cars. So far more than 85 schools were housing all these displaced, in addition to an old prison and the building of the court of justice.
Saida was delivered a serious pounding in the first week of the war, but was relatively spared in comparison with other places in the south. During that first week things went quiet, the city wound down a little. Those who could afford to leave did, and the bi-nationals evacuated. After it was cut off from Beirut, and seemed relatively safe, a semblance of a normal pace of life returned. The streams of displaced added an intense bustle to that pace, but the city still sleeps earlier than its usual.
I called Ziad. He had left his house leaving his cell phone behind. His mother instructed me to drive near the old fort and look for his red Polo car. She also instructed me to ask "The King" about him and he would dig him up for me. I did not know who "The King" was. "You don't know the King?", she asked surprised. That was Saida. A provincial capital. Everyone is one and the half degrees of separation removed. Ahmad and I drove by the old fort looking for a red Polo. No red Polo, but hordes of families lounging about, in the open-air, obviously out for air.
I called Abdel-Karim, following Maher's instructions.

Where Love Dwells, Dalal and Abdel-Karim
Maher's instructions were delivered during our abbreviated phone conversations when he was in Tyre. They were brief because he could not really say much, and I did not feel I could pressure him to say much either. I call them instructions for kicks, to pretend I was on some sort of a mission. Maher wanted me to collect stories and footage or images for his project. Abdel-Karim and Dalal, his wife are his life-long comrades, he runs a center in Saida that provides training for people with disabilities to be able to integrate fully in the social economy of everyday life. They receive local funding as well as funding from Europe.
With the outbreak of the war, the center's life and role has been turned wholly upside down. Abdel-Karim and Dalal have themselves become displaced and Dalal who has another job has now become involved in the center's relief work. They now reside in Saida, in a house shared by several other families. Abdel-Karim and Dalal don't have any disabilities, but the vice-president, wheel-chair bound, who resides in Zreiriyeh a village further south, had to be evacuated and relocated to Saida, with his family.
In the space of a mere few days, the center's administration realized they had to set-up an emergency plan. The center opened their fully equipped bathroom to all the women and children who needed to take a shower. The center's kitchen, also fully operational offered meals to all those who need it. Two large pots with stuffed eggplant and squash were cooking in tomato sauce when I visited. A ceaseless clothes collection drive was provisioning people with clean garb. One of their ateliers was transformed to storing diapers, food rations and medicines. The computer class room was transformed to a sleep area, so was their exercize and recreation room.
Teams of volunteers were called and assigned tasks, by the time I visited they counted more than 15 teams comprising four or five people, some had disabilities, others not. Their emergency plan began with tending to their "own" people, namely the community of people with disabilities they knew. They visited them in their homes and made sure they had everything they needed. As streams of displaced were guided to the municipality, volunteers from the center contacted the teams who were receiving families to inform them they had the know-how and expertise to handle people with all forms of disabilities and special needs and could be entrusted with their care. Two weeks into the war and the "census" according to the municipality's paperwork showed there were only 20 persons with disabilities with special care. Abdel-Karim and Dalal were very skeptical. So Dalal assigned a team of volunteers that toured every single site where the displaced were resettled: schools, hospitals, public buildings. Wherever they went, they spread word that they would be able to answer the needs of the disabled. They found 250. They noted down the needs of each and everyone and have now assigned volunteers to visit them everyday and meet their needs. A simple example: bathrooms. Public and private schools are not outfitted for people with disabilities, so the center ordered for special devices from a local carpentry shop to facilitate bathroom use (more than 20 of these devices were purchased from the center's budget).
People with physical and mental disabilities are severely marginalized in everyday life in Lebanon under normal conditions of life. During war their marginalization becomes heart-wrenching. As people were evacuating under duress, in haste and panic, families were separated, the disabled were sometimes entrusted to the care of others (more able) or left behind. Their special needs were disregarded (wheelchairs, crutches were left behind, long-term supply of medication, etc.). There are horrific stories. A man with grave mental and physical disabilities was packed in the trunk of car and driven for 80 kms until he was placed in a bed. An elderly woman who cannot walk was left alone (she could not fit in the taxi her family hired to flee) and was evacuated by the village mayor. He dropped her at the center and left. Abdel-Karim was relaying onto me these stories, and his voice became hoarse. He choked and repressed his tears as he told me the fatal ones: a woman had died because her vital doses of insulin were not administered and one of their volunteers died as he drove under shelling to rescue and evacuate three disabled persons left behind in the village of Qasmiyeh just above of Tyre. The three were eventually brought into safety and they did not know died on his way to their rescue.
I sat in the main office across from Abdel-Karim's small desk cluttered with paperwork and a large computer monitor, Dalal was buzzing around us with missives and missions. The office was bustling with activity. It felt like the HQ of a major operation. People walked in and out, reporting on their "missions", delivering things, taking things, the phone did not stop ringing, and yet there was not a hint of tension, anywhere. It was the first time since the outbreak of this war that I found myself in a place where love was palpable. Love as in the spontaneous convivial filiation that binds a community overpowered by a dark circumstance.
Abdel-Karim ended every transaction or exchange with a joke or a very affectionate note. I was mesmerized by his ability to smile as often as he did. He is a tall, thin man, dark-skinned, handsome, features chiseled finely. He exhuded so much tenderness and amiability that the fine angular chisel of his features melted to roundness. Dalal, on the other hand, is of short stature, but she exhudes so much energy, you cannot fit her being in the size she actually occupies. She is fair-skinned, with colored eyes and a killer laugh. She is straight to the point, no bull-shit gal, who cannot sit down for more than fifteen minutes. Theirs is a great love story, but that's a whole other story.
They are both former fighters from the Communist party who have retired from the front decades ago. In the political landscape of power-wrangling in Saida, they are caught in the stampede of competition between the two"ruling" poles of Saida: the Hariri family and the Saad family. Sadly, actually the right epithet ought to be "sinisterly" but I don't know if that's exists in the Queen's English, relief for the displaced (in all its aspects) has been severely politicized. Abdel-Karim's gentle disposition turned to unforgiving rancor when he assured me that once the war is over, he will not let anyone get away with the corruption, the thievery and the banditry he has witnessed. To the best of his abilities he was compiling a daily log (too brief to become a journal) precisely to make sure he did not forget the crimes he was seeing. "This is our political class", he said, "when it's time to do politics, they do emergency relief, and when it's time to do emergency relief, they do politics." Dalal had not shyed from fighting in public with officials who withheld medicines for people she knew needed them badly. She has resorted to every imaginable stratagem: she has faked her voice and affiliation to secure beds for badly injured people in private hospitals that only open their doors to the wealthy and the well-connected (8 cases that I went to visit). They found her out after the 8th case. She caused a minor uproar in the press during an interview on al-Jazeera and revealed a corruption scheme regarding one of the medicines needed for people with mental disabilities. They both exploded in laughter as they recounted Dalal's exploits. (A couple of days prior to my visit, the Ministry of Health caught one of their employees stealing medicines and selling them to pharmacies in Beirut. The Minister of Health had made a big brouhaha about the "scandal" to show he was in control of the situation.)
A young woman stepped into the office, shyly. She needed to use the phone. She asked Abdel-Karim for permission. She called her family who had relocated to some other town. She reminded me of the people I see lining at public phones in Beirut. In their gait you can read the list of questions they are burning to ask. She spoke hurriedly, so as not to distract the center's phone line for too long. Her conversation was like a telegraphic ledger of who's where and how they were doing. She reported her information and information was reported back to her. She hung up, smiled from within a veil of anxiety and thanked Abdel-Karim, shyly. He gave her a compliment about her dress. She giggled a little but walked out hunched from the weight of the information freshly delivered to her, her mind processing facts, recalling each one, nailing each one so none would slip her memory.
The center was now also helping people find their kin. They gave shelter to people who were sleeping on the street, totally stranded. Amongst those, a Sri Lanki woman who worked as a housemaid and whom the household that employed her had left behind.

A Red Polo and Killer Smile
I was ready to receive instructions from Abdel-Karim and mostly Dalal (she had more of a bent for instructions) as to where to go. Ziad called. He was ready to meet me. I gave him directions to the center and went down to the street to fetch him. Ziad is in his twenties, he walks with a slight enough strutt that you know his street smarts still run deeper than his engagement with video art. Ziad is tall, charming, ties his hair in a pony tail, wears a goatie-beard, and has an unforgettable, fatal, killer smile. And smiles almost as often as Abdel-Karim. He came accompanied by a friend of his, Hussein. A Pentax dangled from Ziad's neck and Hussein carried the video camera.
I asked Ziad what he'd been doing. The first week, like most people, he had squatted at home, but as soon as the shelling let a little, he started going out and thinking about his life, the life of the city as it adjusted to this war. He was filming, but he was not a "voyeur" he told me, and did not chase after the gore and misery. "When your work is not about capturing the moment, you take your time to think and decide what to film," he said to me. The previous week he had put together something on the increasing shortage of water in Saida. And this week he was working on the fuel shortage. He had been going to gas stations that were selling gas and filmed the long lines, the tedious negotiations, the angry outbursts.
I led him and Hussein up to the center. They filmed. Dalal recommended I visit Dar es-Salam, a care center for the senior and the elderly. Since the outbreak of this war it started receiving patients with special needs, namely physical and mental disabilities that need monitoring on the longer-term. I wanted Ziad to take me to his Saida, or Akram's Saida.
Ahmad appeared suddenly as we paused on the street, he seemed nervous. We agreed on a time to leave and he insisted, the sooner the better. Had he heard something? "No," he said. He was just cautious. First the driver takes off, then Ahmad wants to leave barely an hour after we set foot, I commended myself on my skills for organizing adventures. I negotiated for two additional hours. He smiled. He had a kind heart and a kind face, Ahmad.
Ziad, Hussein and I climbed in the red Polo. "Where do you want to go?", he asked. (Killer smile.) I answered, wherever he wanted to take me, whatever he wanted me to witness, I had no plans really. He was now the navigator. So he said we should go to the Hammoud Hospital. He went looking for a physician who was a friend of his family and who told him about some sort of a case in her care. Ziad just presented us as "press". We parked, we walked up to the front desk. Ziad presented us as the press again. A few days earlier I had appeared on al-Jazeera (I was interviewed about these damned siege notes) and the front desk staff thought I was a newscaster. "You're on TV, right?", was the question. "Yes," was the self-assured reply. The lobby of the hospital was busy with activity, but the movement of limbs, bodies, the pace of conversations, the weight of gazes, all was encumbered with an additional gravity.
The physician was not available. We left. "Where to now?", Ziad asked. I reluctantly took the lead, and replied Dar es-Salam. As we winded through the streets of Saida. Ziad teased Hussein about his supposed affinity for the Saad family. Hussein played along. But it was clear the city was quite polarized and that competition had pervaded to the small rituals and habits of everyday life. Oussama Saad (the heir) is rumored to be distributing food rations with a clear label that reads "Made in Syria", to underscore the Hariri family's feud with the Syrian regime as a pro-American, anti-Arab stance. Oussama Saad had apparently made statements that he had dispatched a commando of fighters to the front to participate with Hezbollah in the battle. Hussein retorted something regarding the Hariri family. I stopped listening as we drove by the municipal building and was dumb-struck by the sight of incoming displaced.

Dar es-Salam
The building stood on a hill overlooking old Saida and the fort. There was a soft gentle breeze and all was quieter up on that hill. We went through the charade of introductions, and finally, it was Ziad's family name (his father) and my own (my father) that allowed us entry. We requested to visit only those new patients who had come as a result of the war, those with "special needs".
We were guided by one of the administrators in charge of the institution. The floor was innundated with natural light. Even the corridor was well-lit. The rooms were spacious and fit with four beds. The floor was not at full capacity.

In the first room, Amal and her two brothers. The brothers are not able to walk, she has only slight physical disability but stayed with them. A round soft face, amiable, gorgeous black eyes. When we walked in she was adjusting her coiffe. One of her brothers leaned by the window that gave onto the garden, and the other lay on the bed, not engaged with us. Their family was relocated to a school, they came to visit them. They had been at the hospital for 11 days.
In the next room, lay a man on a bed with severe mental and physical disabilities. "He was packed in the trunk of a car", the administrator said, "and driven from Aytaroun (now practically destroyed) to Saida. His brother drove him here, left Mahmoud, his son to take care of his uncle, and drove with the rest of the family somewhere else." Mahmoud was a fifteen year old boy that seemed a little too short for fifteen in my opinion. He had a bright, bright, radiant, gorgeous face. Wide hazel eyes. Mahmoud struck Ziad's heart. He walked up close to him. "I wanted to take care of my uncle", replied Mahmoud to someone's question. That implied changing diapers, feeding and bathing, explained the administrator. My heart dropped to my knees with sorrow. Mahmoud and his uncle had been there for 11 days. When his father dropped him off with his uncle, Mahmoud had no idea where his family would end up. He was without news for days. Mahmoud thought they would stay in one of the schools in Saida. Somebody reported seeing them in one of the schools, but it turned out to be false news. His father called one day from Syria. Unfortunately, Mahmoud had gone to the mosque to pray. One of the patients in the neighboring room answered the phone call and took down the information. Mahmoud was deeply saddened to have missed the call.
The administrator praised him a lot and the extent to which his spirits were positive, but reported catching the boy standing by the window looking sorrowful and mournful into the horizon.
In the next room, there were two men, both had sustained serious injuries and were recovering at Dar es-Salam to alleviate pressure on the hospitals. The first man did not speak. At least not when we were there, he is from Aynata (the village received a pretty dramatic pounding). He had two injuries in his legs. He asked the administrator for crutches. In the second bed lay an elderly man with an injury to his leg as well. He had been rescued by the Red Cross, from the same village (Aynata) and driven to Tyre, from there he was transferred to Labib Hospital in Saida, and from there to Dar es-Salam. He was in good spirits. His family was relocated to a school next door.
In the next room, lay two women. One was of an advanced age. Her son sat next to her and was caring for her. Across from her was an elderly woman that had physical disabilities and could not walk. She was from Abbassiyeh. She had been left behind. The mayor of that village had dropped her off and left. She did not speak. No one knew anything about her. She carried no identity papers. She lay in bed and stared into the garden. Her gaze was not unfocused. In fact it was intent. I have rarely seen such sharp, pure and focused sorrow. We moved around her room and she did not budge. The hospital administrator greeted her, to no reply.
In the next room four elderly women were lodged. One was from Zreiriyeh, a diabetic whose legs were amputated, and was on dialysis. She had piercing green eyes. Ziad (Killer smile) got the old ladies to talk. He walked in and asked each one where they were from. To the old lady from Zreiriyeh he asked if she knew the Kojok family. She said she was born a Kojok, "I recognized the green eyes", he replied knowingly. Her neighbor was from Adloun, she needed cataract surgery and had been there for 20 days. One of the women nudged me to ask her, and I asked her, and she said that she was from Srifa. "You will hear about the massacre of Srifa, you will hear," she said to me. She had driven with her family to Tyre, then to Saida, but her mother, who shared the room with the other eldelry ladies, had walked a week later from Srifa, "walked for three days, without respite," she kept repeating. "An old lady like me, walking for three days. We saw death and we could do nothing but walk."

The Bougainvilliers will be Forgiven
I know Ziad will return to see Mahmoud. We drove away and decided to get coffee. On the way Ziad was struck to see a gas station was operational and was selling gas. The line of cars was huge. People were tense. I said I did not mind him filming. We zigzagged through the cars, off course he honed in on the pretty girls and pretty women. Off course he negotiated filming them in some sort of a sequence after flashing that killer smile. I did not follow him. I stood watching the rhythm of stillness and anxiety.
As they drove me back to meet Ahmad, Ziad was playful again: "The crucial question in this war is, where are the women of Saida? How could they have disappeared?" Hussein replied that they all moved to Broumana (the mountains) or evacuated with the foreigners. "Damn our luck, all the women of Saida are bi-nationals!". "They're all gone? There must be some left, we must find them." Hussein chuckled.
Ahmad and I drove back the same way. I looked forward to the fragrance of orange blossoms and was now forgiving to the full glorious bloom of the bougainvilliers. My heart had never felt as heavy. There was a lot to hang on to, I mean for hope or strength or whatever it is that keeps people going, but there was so much wretchedness.
... The sorrows I have seen.

Map of Lebanon Attacks

2006-07-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

Please find a map of the attacks on Lebanon from July 12 to 22.
Best, Rasha.

Lebanon Siege: Day 11

2006-07-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

[Image: Rashidiyyeh Palestinian refugee camp, south Lebanon, near Tyre.]
Every day, I have to ask at least twice or three times what day it is, where we are now in July (Please tell me this war will be a July affair only). The calendar of the Siege barely sticks in my head. It's Day 16 or 17 when I am writing now. I don't know.
I have also tried to the best of my abilities to keep up to date with professional commitments from my former life. It's almost impossible, but if I stop I know I will fall apart entirely. It is surreal to write emails following up with work. The world outside is decidedly distant. The mental image of my apartment in New York is practically impossible to summon. Avenue A, the deli at the corner and the Yemenis who own it, all lapsed. This is what happens when you are under siege. Or these are the first effects of the siege, maybe when time will pass, my perception of the world will change and my imagination will be back at work, I will have this imagined geography of where I once was and people I once knew. I know I am not alone in this. My friend Christine said to me yesterday that she forces herself to go to the office to keep from going insane, but she cannot remember anything about her work before the siege started. The renowned Lebanese novelist, Elias Khoury, said this morning on al-Jazeera that he is so reminded of past experience with Israel's wars that he feels he is living between a time of memory and the present time. This war is not exactly a replay of 1982, but we cannot help recalling 1982. I keep joking that the "veterans" of 1982, those of us who endured that Israeli murderous folly, should get some sort of a break, a package of mundane privileges, free internet, free coffee, parking spots.
Beirut has been spared and life has resumed an almost normal pace. The sound of Israeli air raids comes every so often just low enough to spread chills of horror and fright. But the droves of displaced who arrive here every day have transformed the space of the city. Their wretchedness is the poignant marker of the war.
We live from day to day. The scenarios for the conclusion of this war seem very difficult to articulate, even to imagine. The US is intent on the continuation of the war, Israel has suffered a defeat and the goals it has set to determine some sort of victory don't seem fathomable. The Israeli press was beginning to ask a few intelligent questions until the IDF suffered losses in an ambush set-up by Hezbollah. One damn ambush, a mere handful of soldiers, and the entire press corps went ballistic overnight. They were all about flattening Lebanon, hurting the government, bringing out the big guns, more troops. One damn ambush where a mere handful of soldiers were faced with a reality they were not prepared to contend with: that Hezbollah guerrillas are well trained and will fight without blinking to defend the land from a ground invasion. What a funny army! What a funny society! What do they expect when they go to war with a guerilla?
One of their pundits (or officials) said that Israel was only using 10% of its military capacity. Imagine, 10% for a mere 3 or 5 kms squares! The arithmetics in Israel are suddenly emerging. For a very long time I have wondered what the equation is between the death of brown people and a single "white" life. There must be some sort of a secret arithmetic someplace in someone's drawyer that guides "outrage" in the western world. Off course Rwanda came to shatter all notions of an arithmetic. Then came the killing of Rachel Corrie, a white face with a brown heart. She did not count. Or at least it took a lot of pull to make her death a reason for outrage in the mainstream of the western world. In this war, other equations have emerged, for the still breathing life of a single Israeli soldier, the deaths in Gaza are enough to crowd a cemetary. And just recently, we had the famous equation, for every shell in Haifa, 10 buildings go down in the southern suburbs of Beirut. (This was verified on Tuesday: 23 shells brought down 10 buildings). But I digress...
It's a losing battle and they should negotiate a settlement and avoid more bloodshed and wretchedness for us all. This a time to be smart, not bloodthirsty.
The shelling in the south has been astounding. People are trapped in villages for days without anything: no food, no water, no electricity, no medicines. They were sending out calls for help and no one could get to them because the Israelis would not let ambulances come near (two were shelled in the past two days). The UN has been allowed to deliver some basic rations of food and medicine but they have been scarce. The Beqaa has been shelled ruthlessly as well.
The humanitarian tragedy is beyond description. One of the local television stations airs the cries of help from citizen trapped in their homes under shelling: so and so has not eaten for a week, so and so needs diabetic medicine, so and so needs his chemotherapy, so and so needs to be let out, so and so, so and so... The messages scroll, and scroll, and that's all I can see and hear. I can think of very, very little else. In fact, I obsess over these messages, of people trapped under shelling, bodies under rubble. I keep having fantasies of a huge, huge civilian procession of human shields walking alongisde convoys of food, medicine, ambulances, that defy Israeli's military superiority in the air. A similar mass of people that took to the street when it was aggrieved by former Prime Minister Hariri's death that walks fearless and relentless to the south. A human convoy of hundreds and thousands of people just taking back the country and lending their bodies to rescue their brethren trapped in villages. Civility turning the tide on barbarism. A crazy dream that ought neither be crazy nor a dream. Perhaps one day...

My Palestinian friends are irked again that because Lebanon is "sexy", the world watches Lebanon while Gaza is being sliced and bled. This is due to the ruthlessness and savvyness of the western media. On the Arab media, there is as much coverage of the Israeli horrors in Gaza as there is of the dose administered to Lebanon. In all cases, as Israel is now waging a war on these two fronts (in addition to its adventures in Nablus), something unexpected has happened. The two fronts are now inexorably linked. Gaza is nothing like the entire geography of Lebanon, politically, sociologically, culturally the two geographies could not be more different, and yet, as the same shells explode and kill there and here, and the flow of images from there and here is uninterrupted, the geographies have merged. The tacit alliance between Hamas and Hezbollah could not have achieved this proxiness. Their dead are now our own, our siege is theirs, there is a tandem of solidarity, of tragedy, of resilience, of defiance.

I have stopped accompanying journalists, I started to hang around the schools and other sites where the displaced have been relocated. I go from disappointment to outright rage at the governments' failure at responding appropriately to the humanitarian crisis. The other face of this country's victory is and will be its handling of the humanitarian crisis. The challenge is of an unimaginable scale. It is clear that the government neither has the wherewithalls or the know-how for handling it (and I would add will because when there's a will, there is a way). Closer to a third of the population is displaced. The Ministry of Social Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Health, and a slew of other public institutions have been subsumed in the pettiness of internecine political fighting. Not a single appointed official has had the guts or displayed the resolution to tend to the problem appropriately. If a crisis will erupt and I believe it will, they will have to be held accountable.
They parade on TV and in the streets, with their neat hair and pressed suits, moving from their air-conditioned meeting rooms to restaurants for "power lunches" and so-called coordination meetings, while hundreds and hundreds of volunteers are actually carrying the burden of this problem. What a shame this political class has proven to be. To make matters worse, they whimper and nag about how the Lebanese state has to be "reinforced" to diplomats and foreign envoys, while their OWN people sleep on mattresses (if they are lucky to have been given one) and walk around barefoot in circles wondering how they are expected to make a living.
In wars, there are two fronts: the battlefield and the civilian front. The critical civilian front in this war is not the unaffected handsome and well-to-do of Lebanon, but the 800,000 displaced. If Hezbollah are waging the war on the battlefield, the other field has been left to be tended to by bands of NGOs and charity organizations. The NGOs have shouldered the brunt of the burden, but only a handful charity organizations are not attached to the extremely petty ambitions of a political figure or group. And the ugliness of their short-sighted calculations (just as during the parliamentary elections that followed March 14th) have prevailed as they hand over sacks of sugar and rice. Some charity organizations have had the arrogance to force those who receive relief aid to hold up a photograph of the so-called political figure! Others ask them to pledge their loyalty or simply pledge their vote! This is how the political class is "rallying" around the country! This is how they face Israel's might!

I spent the afternoon yesterday in Karm el-Zeytoon, a neighborhood in Ashrafieh (that translates literally to "olive grove") where some schools have been opened to house some of the displaced from the south and from Beirut's southern suburb. I went to visit friends who were in charge of the Nazareth Nuns school (a public school). A band of dashing young men and women, not yet thirty years of age, that have taken upon themselves the task of ensuring the well-being and safety of some 120 or so men, women, children and elderly. Some in that band of volunteers belong to the Democratic Left movement, and the school, as are two neighboring other schools, are under the charge of the Samir Kassir Foundation.
Although they have established a schedule of shifts so as not to have their entire lives taken over by their volunteering, still, their entire lives are on hold and all they do in effect is tend to the displaced. The atmosphere inside the school was convivial, slow-paced but a low-grade tension is impossible to ignore. All throughout my visit I was smitten by their grace. They have had to organize every single aspect of everyday survival in that school: spaces where people sleep, the use of bathrooms, the overall hygiene of the place, "house-cleaning", collection of garbage, preparing meals, keeping stock of supplies, medicines, medical needs of the group, fun and games for the kids, security of the site, etc. That night, they were going to have the first attempt at screening a DVD in the school's open air courtyard (Finfing Nemo). They are not yet thirty years of age and yet they have to sort through the everyday problems that arise between adults their parents' age.
A nine-year old boy came nagging to T. (one of the main volunteers), as he and I chatted in the makeshift "salon" (a broken table and school bench at the side of the gateway to the school). He wanted T's permission to go to a printer's shop where he had heard he could find work on a day to day basis. He implored him. T. promised he would talk to the boy's father that night and they would see. The boy told him that some man in the group assured him that he would find him work. T did not have the heart to lecture him about the ills of child labor. The boy was in turmoil over the humiliating state of his family and was eager to share the burden with his father (a taxi driver whose earnings have gone extremely low).
At the opposite end of the open courtyard, R. (another volunteer) was trying to settle a dispute between two women. Khadijeh was upset with Hanadi because Hanadi had gotten all uppety and defiant that day and reneged on her duty to clean the bathroom and her sleep area. Khadijeh had cleaned in her place just to avoid a clash with other people in the group. Hanadi and her were related by marriage, Hanadi had provoked her. She had gotten uppety because her husband Ali, who works as a mechanic somewhere in the southern suburbs had gone back the day before and opened shop and earned some hard-needed cash. He claimed to have come back with 1,000$ in his pocket, bragged about not needing hand-outs and charity. It was probably a lie, but his wife was so tired of the brunt of humiliation she no longer felt obliged to abide by the rules that regulated their lives in that shelter. The women's screams got loud at some point, until Khadijeh walked away. It took some time for them to cool down. The other residents looked away, a discreet gesture to give the two women space for privacy. That's all the privacy afforded to people there, a gaze turned away. Otherwise, strangers have had to live with each other, their privacy shattered, their intimacy stripped.
Half an hour later, R. went to the back of the school building, I saw her, Khadijeh and Hanadi sit around a pot of freshly brewed coffee and cigarettes, sorting things out in gentler tone.
Another volunteer walked in carrying medicines for the group. He held a list in his hand and the bag of prescription drugs in the other. He went looking for each one, he knew them one by one. An hour later, a volunteer doctor came in, and that same volunteer went over the cases with him. He knew them one by one, who was allergic to what, who was breastfeeding and could not take that particular prescription, who had not reacted well to that medicine... I was in awe.
R. finished her seance with the two women and came back to sit with me. I played cards with a six year old with one elbow in a cast and eyes sparkling with humor. An elderly overweight woman came over and asked R. to find her and her sister a room. She could not tolerate the heat or the mosquitoes in her old age and health conditions. She begged her. She wanted to die in dignity, not like that, on a mattress in a school. She could barely hold back her tears.
I left them reluctantly. I was worried about the volunteers as much as the displaced. Until when could they go on on like that? Civil society is not equipped to supplant the government in that daunting task.
Two days ago, a TV station caught Walid Eido (a parliamentarian from Beirut, and one of the particularly mentally challenged from Hariri's al-Mustaqbal movement –God forgive Hariri for plaguing us with his own band of court-jesters), lounging on the beach, playing cards. They split their screen and aired images of the hapless displaced. The contrast was sinister. The next day, this illustruous representative of Beirut rushed on television to seem busy and babbled on as if he were in the "know". I hope that this war will be the end of his ability to walk the streets of Beirut. Do you understand my rage?

In my last siege note, I ranted about the Arab political class. Yesterday morning Hosni Moubarak served me with another stellar illsutration of his mugnificence. On his way back from Saudi Arabia to Egypt, he stated publicaly that Egypt would never go to war with Israel for Lebanon. Egypt is a country that is currently struggling with its development and was negotiating growth and could not put all this at risk for the sake of Lebanon. That same morning, the Egyptian government raised the price of gas by 30%!
Dignified! Contrast that sense of dignity with the Lebanese injured who refused to be flown over to Jordan for treatment because of the King's support of the Israeli war on Lebanon.
On a final note I would like to correct something I wrote from my last "siege note". I said that the Arab League is complicit in the destruction of Lebanon. I need to ammend that and say that the Arab League is complicit in the destruction of Gaza, in the increase of settlements in Palestine, in the construction of the apartheid wall and in the genocide in Darfur. These are its 2005-2006 achievements that linger in my memory. There could be more.

Lebanon Siege: Day 9/10

2006-07-28T12:41:00.000-07:00

My siege notes are beginning to disperse. I write disjointed paragraphs but I cannot discipline myself to write everyday. Despair overwhelms me. A profoundly debilitating sense of uselessness and helplessness. Writing does not always help, communicating is not always easy, finding the words, deciding which stories should be included, and which should not. The experience of this siege is so emotionally and psychically draining, the situation is so politically tenuous...I miss the world. I miss life. I miss myself. People around me also go through these ups and downs, but I find them generally to be more resilient, more steadfast, more courageous than I. I am consumed by other people's despair. It's not very smart, I mean for a strategy of survival.

My day started today (in effect it is Day 13 of the War, but just another morning under siege in my personal experience) with news from Bint Jbeil, reported on al-Jazira. Ghassan Ben Jeddo, the director of the Beirut office was analyzing the situation on the southern front in Bint Jbeil. He announced flatly that Hezbollah had conceded to the military surrender of Bint Jbeil, that the IDF had besieged the town, and that the town had been almost entirely flattened to rubble. My breathing became tight. I knew well, and had been told for days, that military defeats and victories were very tricky to determine in this type of unusual warfare, because a conventional army has clear retreats and advances whereas a band of guerrillas behaves in an entirely different way. The military defeat in itself did not really matter enough to cause tightness in my chest, although I was a little worried about the IDF feeling empowered to proceed with "scorched earth" plans or some other nightmarish fantasy. My breathing became tight because I immediately thought about some 1,500 people, making up some 400 families whom I had heard the day before were trapped in Bint Jbeil. Some were displaced from villages around Bint Jbeil. They were trapped there in two buildings, one of which was a government school. I could not imagine what they were living. As the al-Jazira showed footage from around Bint Jbeil, there was a continuous soundtrack of pounding from Israeli tanks. I could only see them and hear that pounding: were they huddled together? Were they laid down on the floor, their hands over their heads? How does one survive 2 days of continuous shelling like that? Had they any hope of fleeing?
They stayed with me, 1500 souls in Bint Jbeil. I went to the public garden where displaced people were now living, I went to the cooperative supermarket in Sabra, I went to an air-conditioned cafe with WiFi, and the 1500 souls were with me. I had lunch, tried to write, still with me. Until after sunset, a journalist friend told me he had interviewed the mayor of Bint Jbeil in the afternoon. The man had suffered a stroke this past Sunday and had been evacuated for treatment. By today he had recovered and was struggling to find a way to get the remaining 40 Lebanese-Americans trapped in Bint Jbeil. My friend allowed me to sigh with some relief, the trapped souls were 400 not 1,500 today... (Most of the residents of Bint Jbeil are Lebanese-Americans from Dearborn and Detroit Michigan.)

Is there a point to relaying on to you the events of the past few days? I am still stuck to the television. I am still living from breaking news to breaking news. I now get things from the second-tier horse's mouth, so to speak, journalists whom I have taken to hovering around.
Khiyam shall soon be rubble. As is Bint Jbeil. After Khiyam will be Tyre. The Beqaa has received pounding. Israelis targetted factories, some operational, others under construction. None were Hezbollah fortresses off course. They also hit a UNIFIL outpost last night killing UN international observers.

This will be a long note because it is a cluster from the past few days. It will most likely be a tedious read. It reflects my encounters these past few days, conversations and discussions with friends journalists and analysts as well as vignettes from Beirut under siege. As I attempt to tie all of these sections together, I am back at the Cafe with WiFi. Yesterday they played the soundtrack from Lawrence of Arabia. I don't know if they were aware of the "post-colonial" and "postpost-colonial" dimension. Condi was in Jerusalem. The Bedouins were firing rockets at Haifa. And Faisal spoke late into the night, promising the rockets would go further than Haifa.
Today, they have a Charles Aznavour playlist. Somebody with executive power in this cafe is a shameless sentimental. This is the first sign of a return to normalcy in my experience so far. I, an unrepentant sentimental as well, am very fond of Aznavour, this playlist has been the soundtrack to my convalescence from amorous setbacks, it is a first tangibe reminder that I had once a different life.

Hezbollah, now the symbol
It took a few days into this war for Hezbollah to acquire a new power of signification. The semiologists, the political sociologists, and hords of regional experts and policy advisors have to watch this carefully, they better at least, if they are to understand this moment and the new political idiom. And they have quite something to contend with, Hassan Nasrallah's pronouncements, al-Manar TV, the video productions, the manufacture of image and meaning.
Hezbollah have now become the only Arab force to have refused to accomodate, even slightly, Israel's missives and caprices. They are undaunted by the military might of the IDF, its awesome ability to bring wretchedness to a people and a country and its ability to shrug at international laws regulating warfare, conflict and non-aggression. They are also undaunted by the moral highground provided by the US, and presently the Arab League and the International Community (whoever this construct stands for). In that, they have won the hearts and minds of Arab masses. The so-called Arab street (that vague beguiling force at once vociferous and inept that the western media have reified into a pressure valve of the potential/appetite for Terror –or anti-western sentiment) has been won in heart and mind by Hezbollah's retaliation to the Israeli assault. The Arab world is mesmerized by this movement that has developped the ability to fight back, inflict pain and for the first time in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict pause a real threat to Israel. Hezbollah does not have the ability to defeat the Israeli army. No one in the region can and none of the Arab states is willing, in gest or merely using the power of suggestion, to challenge Israel's absolute hegemony. (I don't know whether Iran can or not, but in principle Israel's military abilities are superior to the Islamic Republic's conventional army.)
In its careful study of a military strategy for defense, conducted in full cognizance of the movement's weakness and strength and of Israel's weakness and strength, Hezbollah has achieved what all Arab states have failed to achieve. Since the war broke out, Hassan Nasrallah has displayed a persona and public behavior also to the exact opposite of Arab heads of states, he may be in the "underground" for security reasons, but he is not discheveled, he speaks in a cautious, calculated calm, a quiet dignity. His adresses have been punctuated with key notions that have long lapsed from the everyday political vocabulary in the Arab world: responsibility (for defeat, victory and the toll on Lebanon), dignity, justice, compassion (for the suffering inflicted on people and for the Palestinian Israeli victims of Hezbollah shelling in Nazareth and Haifa). A stark contrast with the political class in the Arab world that speaks of "calculated retreats", "compromises for peace", and the real politik convictions that induce Amr Moussa to cast himself as the gesticulating pantomime for the Saudis and the Americans. In an interview with al-Jazira, Ahmad Fouad Najm, the famous Egyptian popular poet quoted a Cairene street sweeper who said to him that Hassan Nasrallah brought back to life the dead man buried inside him. This is the "pulse" of the much-dreaded Arab street. This too is a measure of Israel's miscalculation. Moreover, at the moment when Sunnis and Shi'as have been blinded in murderous rage in Iraq, when Idiot-King Abdullah of Jordan and a handful Barbaric Wahabi pundits babbled on about the dangerous emergence of a "Shi'i crescent" in the region, Israel's assault has brought to the fore a solidarity that transcends the Sunni-Shi'a divide in the Arab world, and consolidated a front of those who reject Israeli hegemony and those who cower to it in fear.
This new symbolic power beyond the boundaries of Lebanon was willed by Hezbollah in the postwar, it peeked in 1996, when Israel conducted its notorious "Operation Grapes of Wrath". After the Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon, Hezbollah claimed the credit for liberation. Some analysts saw the Israeli withdrawal from the occupied south as a strategic move to end the "Lebanon" file, and deprive Syria from a crucial hand in its negotiations with Israel (Hafez el-Assad died shortly after). Other analysts saw the Israeli withdrawal as Hezbollah's defeat of the IDF in a long, long war of attrition. Nevertheless, Hezbollah represented itself in its propaganda machine as the only armed force in the Arab and Muslim world to have in fact defeated Israel.
In this present crisis, and from Hassan Nasrallah's first pronouncement (the radio/audio adress he delivered), the "open" belligerance that Israel is conducting on Lebanon has been represented as a turning point battle in the saga of the Arab-Israeli conflict. A saga replete with humiliating defeats for Arab armies, a turning point because Hezbollah promised to deliver a victory (as it has achieved many victories in the past). In other words, he transformed this present conflict from a "Lebanese" question into an Arab and regional conflict.
The significance of defeat and victory is bearing a deep impact far and beyond the boundaries of Lebanon. This is one of the reasons Condoleeza Rice's notion of a "New Middle East" smacks of first rate hubris. The "New Middle East" is taking shape elsewhere, or the real new Middle East is here, and there is little the White House, Ehud Olmert, 23-ton shells autographed by the beautiful children of Israel (the pictures are quite astounding) dropped in the middle of refugee camps to unearth underground bunkers of "terrorism", can do about it.
In the first few days of the Israeli assault on Lebanon, there was barely any movement in Arab capitals. The Arab world seemed content watching us burn on TV, our fate seemed sealed with the Arab League meeting. I remember writing my rage in one of these dispatches. However, after Nasrallah's first adress, which ended with the spectacularly staged shelling of the Israeli warship, Hezbollah's sustained ability to hold its fort and to shell cities as far as Haifa and Nazareth, in addition to the sight of Israel's sustained massacres of civilians and destruction of Lebanon, turned the tide. Hezbollah's position in the region and in Arab consciousness is etched with an empowering, envigorating significance.

The New Middle East, Conspiracy and Hassan Nasrallah's televised adress
Condoleezza Rice showed up in Beirut two days ago. The message she carries is that the US will not enforce a ceasfire. Israel estimates it needs an additional week before the atmosphere is "conducive" to a ceasefire. This means they need a week to achieve their aims. Their aims have changed over the past two weeks, although they have formulated a set of demands to the White House and the G8.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Saniora on his way to the Rome conference said he did not expect the meeting to produce a ceasefire. Only Kofi Anan seems to expect that from this high-profile meeting.
She did not speak of a New Middle East in Lebanon, in fact there were no public pronouncements made in Lebanon, but she did hold several press conferences in Israel, where reference was made to this new map. The "New Middle East" has not been officially unveiled by the Americans.
It emerges at a moment when Israel has failed at undermining Hamas with all the means the world has afforded to support it: diplomatic pressure from the US and EU, an effective paralysis of Hamas' ability to govern, an internal conflict between Hamas and Fateh, the incarceration of cabinet members and parliamentarians, a humanitarian siege, and a full scale military assault on Gaza. The Palestinian population has yet to unseat Hamas or question the legitimacy of its position.
This moment is also when Iraq seems to have effectively slipped into a civil war and the US and UK occupation forces are neck-deep in a quagmire with violence escalating to frightful scale. Civil conflicts and violence develop a momentum and logic of their own that create their own hell, and Iraq seems to be teetering at the precipice of this hell with no sign of decisive and effective intervention to bring it to a halt. This moment is also when the negotiations with Iran over the development of nuclear weapons are taking baby steps and in circles.
With the war in Lebanon, the "moment" in which the "New Middle East" is unveiled is a moment where Hezbollah has emerged as a force that is able to humiliate the Israeli military on the field of battle, and represent the Israeli civilan leadership as reckless, confused and bloodthirsty. Hezbollah define their victory as maintaining their ability to deter Israel from assaulting Lebanon, namely, deterring a ground attack (the battle in a cluster of villages has been going on for 5 days now) but mostly firing rockets and missiles into the Israeli interior. In that regard, they are so far victorious.
So the question is on what grounds are the US, Israel and the EU imagining the "New Middle East"? And how do they imagine its implementation?

Past midnight last night, al-Manar television announced they would broadcast a pre-recorded adress by Hassan Nasrallah. He wanted to present his views and reactions to the diplomatic activity that has been taking place in the past few days. He also wanted to send a message to the nation, Israel and the wider world regarding Hezbollah's strategy in this conflict. For Nasrallah the "New Middle East" was the final indication that Israel's assault was premeditated (and part of a greater US plan) and that Hezbollah's victory would be the principal bullwark to thwarting the conspiracy of this "New Middle East". He also revealed that Hezbollah had now received information that Israel had planned the assault on Lebanon and Hezbollah for September or October. Israel planned to roll a massive ground force across the borders, with a cover from the air targetting Hezbollah leadership and roads and bridges that aimed at crippling the movement from responding. The element of surprise was key to the success of that military strategy. With the present conflict, Israel had proceeded with its plans, but without the element of surprise. And that is one of the reasons Hezbollah have the upper hand so far. And finally, he reiterated the "surprises" that Hezbollah had delivered to Israel thus far: the warship, hitting as far into Israeli territory as Tabariya, hitting as far as Haifa. He announced that Hezbollah was now ready to hit targets "beyond Haifa", at a time of their choosing. Did he mean Tel Aviv? Would he hit Tel Aviv? Was it his retaliation at psychological warfare?
This morning, Olmert's office announced they had heard Nasrallah's threat and would respond accordingly.

More on Being a Proud Arab
Saudi Arabia pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and whatever to help Lebanon in these tragic times. I wish the political class of this country had the spine and intelligence to reject this fortune or negotiate its political cost from the position of the empowered. Hezbollah is changing the terms, and unfortunately the cabinet of Fouad Saniora, as well as the Hariri movement is still behaving in total subservience to Saudi Arabia, protecting Saudi hegemony in this country and the region.
The Jordanians sent us a plane load of emergency relief supplies. It just landed in our destroyed airport. The Israelis gave the Jordanian plane the security cover. Jordan and Kuwait are sending environmental experts to help us clean the sea from the oil and fuel spills that Israelis dumped. Did I mention this? Did I mention that after their warships retreated to a distance safe from Hezbollah's firepower, they spilled enough oil to cause an environmental disaster on our coastline? Did I mention that no one has been to fish a fish and that the shores are now pitch black?

This said, I still cannot get over, or forgive the Saudi, Egyptian and Jordanian actions vis-a-vis the Israeli war on Lebanon. There was a chance to stand upright, to redress from the hunch of servility. For a moment there was an opportunity to salvage dignity and turn the tables for good. They chose to cower, to protect US and Israeli interest and extend moral cover for Israel to destroy this country. The Arab League is complicit in the destruction of this country. Fawwaz Traboulsi said it time and time again on television stations, they have a myriad means at their disposal to shake Israel and the US if only to impose red lines, to defend a notion of sovereignty. They could have withdrawn their ambassadors from Israel, they could have suspended the peace accords with Israel, they could have threatened a regional escalation during the Arab League meeting. Saudi Arabia could have used its hegemony over the oil market or its deposits in US banks. Instead, Amr Moussa opined that the road map for peace was defunct. This is servile complicity.
Imagine how much they would have gained in the eyes of their societies and as regional actors, had they simply stood in one line-up in the face of Israel. Obviously, it is hubris on my part to imagine these heads of states capable of any action beyond humiliating subservience. This is one of the meanings of defeat. The total relinquishing of agency and dignity.
The political culture that prevails in the Arab world has a very select cast of roles for officials (whether elected or not), at heart they are variations on three main roles: taxidermists, court-jesters and kitchen undercooks (the more accurate word is in French, "marmitons"). They resurrect dead effigies, brandish defunct ideologies, they gesticulate and throw fits to soothe, distract, and deter, or they slice and dice, pick-up the peels and clean-up in the "big kitchen" of regional politics. This too is a face of defeat.
There has been much, much ink spilled on the impact of "defeat" on Arab societies, identity, political culture, etc. The other meaning of defeat is the inability to imagine political alternatives beyond the debilitating bi-polar pathology (and I use the metaphor with the psychic disorder in mind) of US/Israel vs. fundamentalist political Islam. These simply cannot be the two options for citizenship, identity, governance and political representation. (Perhaps it is impossible in Palestine because occupation is war, and war creates situations in extremis –and yet the Palestinians, Moslems and Christians, did not cower from electing Hamas into government, in cognizance of the costs). And so far, that "third" option (obviously not Blair's "Third Way") is not yet clear or cogent.
In the present conflict, a secular egalitarian democrat such as I, has no real place for representation or maneuver. Neither have I and my ilk succeeded in carving a space for ourselves, nor have the prevailing forces (the two poles) agreed to making allocations for us. That is our defeat and our failure. In Lebanon, we are caught in the stampede and the cross-fire. As I noted in one of these siege notes, I am not a supporter of Hezbollah, but this has become a war with Israel. In the war with Israel, there is no force in the world that will have me stand side by side with the IDF or the Israeli state.
It was my foolhardy hope, that the Lebanese front that emerged after the mass mobilization on March 14th would rehabilitate its nearly depleted political capital (depleted down to its most base and vulgar sectarian constituencies) and refuse to meet with Condoleeza Rice. Out of principle that the US and Israel are waging a war on one of the chief agents in Lebanon's political landscape. Instead, all these handsome men and women showed up at the US embassy, smiling, wearing their Sunday suits, aping the display of servility that the Idiot-Kings and Senile-Presidents-for-Life display at the Arab league meetings. She showed up at the embassy and enjoyed this band of court-jesters and taxidermists society while the Depleted Uranium Smart Bombs were delivered from the US military base in Qatar to Israel.
Was I foolhardy to have once seen an opportunity for change when the March 14th mobilization swept the capital? Surely now, in light of this war. And you would think that by reading newspapers, this band of brothers (and sisters) would learn something. You would think that by watching what happened to their equivalent band of brothers in Fateh would inspire another behavior. To no avail. Look at the pathetic story of Mohammad Dahlan. Once a proud young man from Gaza, once a hero of the Palestinian resistance, once a prisoner in Israel's gaols, once a popular leader in the streets of Gaza. He was so corrupted by power, he became the US Foreign Secretary's Boy Toy. His street smarts became thuggery, his humble origins fed his appetite for cheap thrills: nice suits that he never hung well on his shoulders, fancy cars that he never had a chance to drive on decent roads, fine cuisine that he never knew how to order and first class tickets to capitals where he flew to surrender more and more and more servility. The story of Dahlan, although small and borderline insignificant should be told to children. I look forward to the day when he will not be able to walk in the streets of Palestine. Why do I single out Dahlan when so many others like him roam the unpaved roads of Palestine, because for a brief moment I believed he was a man. A time long ago that I cannot recall now.

In Lebanon, the Displaced, the Schizophrenia
Within Lebanon, the situation is different. The White House and Israel are hedging their bets on an internal rift. The most dangerous would be a Sunni-Shi'i divide. So far the country has been united, but warning signs are let out everyday. The sectarian polarization is still cut grossly along the lines of the pro-Syrian and anti-Syrian camps, they cut across the conventional sectarian rifts that polarized the country during the civil war, and to some extent in the postwar. In every speech, Hassan Nasrallah has hailed and expressed gratitude for the fantastic popular support that has rallied around the resistance. The council for sunni religious associations met yesterday, reiterating their support for the resistance and condemning the silence and cowardice of the Arab world.

It is compelling to see the hords of volunteers tend to the displaced. There are two main organizations channeling emergency aid and resources to the NGOs tending to the displaced, they are the Hariri Foundation and the National Relief agency. The management of relocating and lodging the displaced has been less than ideal, and I am of the opinion that the government has not really galavanized its full abilities to face up to the crisis. The Ministry of Social Affairs, the Ministry of Health and other concerned public agencies are coordinating efforts to bring some order into the chaos. However, there is increasing critique that they are not marshalled as they were in the past. True the scale of displacement is harrowing and keeps increasing everyday and the government has never had to contend with a challenge so tremendous. We now count 800,000 people who are displaced. Access to shelters, schools and other sites of relocation has been uneven. Problems have begun to emerge. I have made an effort to collect as many anecdotes as possible, to get an overall sense of the situation. So far, I have not been able to. The overwhelming question seems to be managing the distress and frustration of the displaced and the exhaustion of volunteers. The crisis seems to drag, and longer term solutions will have to be implemented because immediate emergency solutions are usually not sustainable over time.
The anecdotes tell stories of everyday heroes and everyday greed and sectarian prejudice. It's a mixed bag. Unanimously however, the work that Bahia Hariri, sister of slain former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, and parliamentarian from Sidon (the northernmost first city in south Lebanon), has been stellar. Using the arm of the Hariri Foundation in Sidon, she is housing 12,500 displaced from the south (mostly Shi'ites) and tending to all their needs. There are ironic anecdotes too, for example schools in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh have been opened to house Lebanese refugees.

The brunt of this war are felt unevenly in the country. The eastern suburb of the city and significant areas in the mountains have been more or less spared from shelling and violence. Occasional Israeli air raids spread fear. The targetting of the broadcast tower for the major Lebanese television stations that claimed the life of an employee at the LBC (Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation) was a poignant reminder, but the astounding wretchedness inflicted on the South and the Beqa'a have not been inflicted elsewhere.
This is not atypical of Lebanon's exprience of its civil war and of the postwar occupation of south Lebanon. This dysynchrony in "experiencing" the Israeli assault translates sometimes to a schizophrenia. There are people sun-tanning, partying, taking it easy while others are displaced. This too is part of the political class's engagement in the war. They could inspire a different mindset.
In the Israeli invasion of 1982, I was in West Beirut. I was 13 years old. All my friends and classmates fled the siege of West Beirut. The political rifts were different then, but I remember that when I returned to school after the withdrawal of the Israeli forces that fall, I carried the burden of the trauma of the siege while my classmates had memories of fun and games of that summer spent in the mountains. While they recalled witnessing shells fall on Beirut from a distance, I recalled their sound as they exploded. I resented all the stories they told of that summer. They were all happy stories. I shut my ears when they recalled them. Until now, there are a set of songs that were popular then, that I cannot hear without feeling a pinch of anxiety in my stomach. It's the impact of that trauma. Part of the reason I cannot leave Beirut is that I don't want to become like them. It's like a pledge I made to myself. But this is happening again, on a smaller scale, because the shelling has reached beyond the southern suburbs of Beirut and the south.
These distances that separate the people of this country have to be bridged somehow. The "united" front has to find a more cogent gel. We have everything to win if we are able to meet that challenge. We have our country to win. If we remain hapless victims who beg, and who remain beholden to the "charity" of Arabs we will never have full sovereignty... Hezbollah's victory can be articulated to become Lebanon's victory (this too might be naive folly on my part, but I need to believe this, at least for the next few days, so just humor me). Particularly now that the Syrians are making noises about plans to roll their rusted tanks and army of underfed and illiterate soldiers with its thuggish command back in the country.
I am so weary of the return of Syrian control over Lebanon. The Syrian people, all those pictured cursing the Lebanese for their arrogance and lack of gratitude should protest against a re-entry of the Syrian military into Lebanon. And if the self-described "last fort of dignity of the Arabs" are inspired to fight Israel, they have the entire front of the Golan to do so. The Lebanese will not liberate the Golan, the Syrians will have to. You don't subcontract liberation. Moreover, Hezbollah has claimed time and time again that they are prepared for the long haul and don't need a bullet from any of the Arab states.This is another reason for the Lebanese political forces to band around the resistance and shield the country.We might have a chance to rebuild this country without owing a percentage of every contract to a thug from the Syrian junta, and that feels like humane relief.

I will end this siege note with another of the obsessions that taunt me. People caught under rubble. In describing the surreptitious commonplace horror of the civil war in a televised interview perhaps ten years ago, the famous Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury drew the following scene. While everyday life was taking place, traffic, transactions, just the mundane stuff of life, and as you walked passed buildings, you knew that in the underground of that commonplace building, there might be someone kidnapped, waiting to be traded or simply held in custody for money or whatever reasons militias kidnapped for. And you walked by that building.
I am haunted by the nameless and faceless caught under rubble. In the undergrounds of destroyed buildings or simply in the midst of its ravages. Awaiting to be given a proper burial.

Lebanon Siege: Day 8

2006-07-28T12:36:00.001-07:00

I have to confess that writing is becoming increasingly difficult. Writing, putting words together to make sentences to convey meaning, like the small gestures and rituals that make-up the commonplace acts of everyday life, has begun to lose its meaning and its cathartic power. I am consumed with grief, there is another me trapped inside me that cries all the time. And crying over the death of someone is a very particular cry. It has a different sound, a different music and feels different. I dare not cry out in the open, tears have flowed, time and time again, but I have repressed the release of pain and grief. My body feels like a container of tears and grief. I am sure it shows in the way I walk. Writing is not pointless per se, but it is not longer an activity that gives me relief. The world outside this siege seems increasingly far, as if it had evacuated with the bi-national passport holders and foreigners.

The past few days have been MURDEROUS in the south and the Beqaa Valley. The death toll has been increasing in a horrific exponential envigorated with the White House giving a green light for the military assault to persist. Beirut has been spared so far, but not the southern suburbs. Today is Day 12 of the war, the Israeli military has conducted 3,000 air raids on Lebanon in 12 days. Out of the total deaths so far, which range close to 400 (numbers are not definitive), almost 170 are children. The numbers of the displaced are increasing by the hour. Have you seen the pictures of the deaths? The mourners in Tyre? Have you seen the coffins lined up? And the grieving mothers.
It is impossible not to grieve with them, it is impossible to shut one's ears to their wailing. It haunts me, it echoes the walls of the city, it bounces off the concrete of destroyed bridges and buildings. In trying to explain what drove Mohammad Atta to fly an airplane into one of the towers of the World Trade Center, someone (I forget whom- sorry facts-checkers) once said to me that Atta must have felt that "his scream was bigger than his chest". That description stayed with me, I don't know if I agree with it, or if that's how Atta felt in reality, but it comes back to me now because I feel that my grief is bigger than my chest and I have no idea how to dissipate it.

The Southern Suburbs
I accompanied journalists to Haret Hreyk two days ago. I suspect I am still shell-shocked from the sight of the destruction. I have never, ever seen destruction in that fashion. Western journalists kept talking about a "post-apocalyptic" landscape. The American journalists were reminded of Ground Zero. There are no gaping holes in the ground, just an entire neighborhood flattened into rubble. Mounds, and mounds of smoldering rubble. Blocks of concrete, metal rods, mixed with furnishings, and the stuff that made up the lives of residents: photographs, clothes, dishes, CD-roms, computer monitors, knives and forks, books, notebooks, tapes, alarm clocks. The contents of hundreds of families stacked amidst smoking rubble. A couple of buildings had been hit earlier that morning and were still smoking, buildings were still collapsing slowly.
I was frightened to death and I could hear my own wailing deep, deep within me.
I stopped in front of one of the buildings that housed clinics and offices that provide social services, there seemed to be a sea of CD-Roms and DVDs all over. I picked up one, expecting to find something that had to do with the Hezbollah propaganda machine (and it is pretty awesome). The first one read "Sahh el-Nom 1", the second "Sahh el-Nom 17". "Sahh el-Nom" was a very popular sit-com (way, way before the concept was even identified) produced by Syrian TV in the 1960s. It was centered on the character of "Ghawwar el-Tosheh", who has become a salient figure in popular Arab culture. I smiled mournfully, at the irony. Around the corner passport photos and film negatives covered the rubble.
Haret Hreyk was a residential area. The residents, I was told by our driver who lived a few blocks away, were evacuated by Hezbollah to other places before the shelling began. Those who refused to leave then, left after the first round of shelling. Haret Hreyk is eerily ghostly, there are practically no people left in that neighborhood. In the two hundred meters radius removed however, life is on-going. Residents testified that Hezbollah was securing food, electricity and medicines to all those who stayed.
Haret Hreyk is also where Hezbollah had a number of their offices. Al-Manar TV station is located in the block that has come to be known as the "security compound" (or "security square"), the office of their research and policy studies center, and other institutions attached the party. It is said that in that heavily inhabited square of blocks, more than 35 buildings were destroyed entirely.
Hezbollah had organized a visit for journalists that day, as they had the day before. They provided security cover for the area for the international media cameras to document the destruction. There was a spokesperson greeting journalists. A small rotund man, dressed in a track suit, fancy sunglasses, a two-day old stubble carrying two state of the art cell phones. He spoke in concise soundbites and was affable. There was nothing menacing about his demeanor, in fact were it not for the destruction around him he looked more like he would be an assistant to Scolari (similar dress code and portend) than part of the media team of a "terrorist organization".
The security apparatus of Hezbollah was also impressive, underscoring the identity of Hezbollah. They were all affable, welcoming, dressed casually and unarmed. They all held walkie-talkies, and when looming danger of another Israeli air strike seemed tangible, they all ushered the group of some 30 (and more) journalists to clear the area. They issued their warnings calmly and confidently.
One of the buildings was still burning. It had been shelled earlier that day at dawn. Clouds of smoke were exhaling from amidst the ravages. The rubble was very warm, as I stepped on concrete and metal, my feet felt the heat.

Israeli Warfare Mystery
Doctors in hospitals in the south have testified on television that they a number of bodies that have reached them have an unusual, unfamiliar skin color. Some of surviving injured exhibit a pattern of burns that doctors have also never seen before. The question is beginning to get attention for the world community of physicians and human rights organization. Israel is suspected of loading its missiles with toxic chemicals. The fear, in addition to their toxicity being immediately lethal on its victims, is that the waters and earth may now be poisoned. The inhabitants of the south may have to suffer from Israel's wrath for a very, very long time, in chilling cold blood.
The as-Safir newspaper, the second largest running daily in Lebanon, has taken up the task to investigate the question.
Beyond the crime of toxic poisoning, the type of shells and bombs used is also astounding. I met a woman who was displaced from the borderig village of Yater. She is a native American, blue blood and apple pie, but with a hijab. She, her husband, her three babies and her husband's family, a total of 14 people were trapped in one room in their house in Yater. On the 6th or 7th day of shelling, she cracked and her kids could not longer handle the violence. Risking their lives, they jumped into their car, and decided to take their chance. They drove straight without stopping, taking circuitous ways when the main roads were impossible to tread. They expected to die on the road. After 14 hours of driving they made their way to the US embassy in the northeastern suburbs of Beirut. They were not aware of evacuations. They were lost on the way, and someone stole her husband's wallet with the 400$ in cash they carried (the totality of their fortune), his green card and her US passport. I came across her at the US embassy compound. She was trembling. She could barely tell her story coherently. She repeated over and over that she had seen houses fly, that the shells made the houses fly in the air and then collapse on the ground. She repeated that she ought not to have gone to the window, but she could not help it, she was curious, and she saw the houses fly.
As a holder of US passport (and real native) she had been allowed into the embassy. Her husband, only a green card holder, was not. The US embassy changed their policy, I was later told by people and journalists, but at various stages in the evacuation, green-card holders were not included in the evacuations plan. Pardon me, in the plans for "assisted departures".
I don't know what happened to the American mother from Portland Oregon and Yater south Lebanon. I know her babies are lactose intolerant and their only food was the stock of soy milk she had with her. She was very young, a face earnest, her skin transluscent white. In her pale blue eyes there was despair and fright that she will not recover from for a very long time.

The Displaced
The displaced have been dispersed in the country. They have been placed in schools, universities, government owned buildings. Aid is arriving, but still in chaotic manner. Volunteers are beginning to get tired. However nothing compares to the distress of the displaced. They are in a state of complete emotional upheaval. Their presence has already changed the habits and rituals of the neighborhoods where they have been placed.
As the sun begins to set and the harshness of its rays begins to dim, you find families strolling on Hamra street (a main commercial thoroughfare in West Beirut). Shops are closed, sandwich shops are closed, cafes are intermittantly open, but the sidewalk provides an opportunity to escape the confinement from the shelter where they been relocated. You can see it in their walk, their body language. Their pace searches for peace of mind, not for a destination, their lungs expand drawing in oxygen to inspire quietude and calm, not for cardiovascular pressure. They have a deep, mournful, sorrowful gaze. They left behind their entire lives, maybe even their beloved.
In Ras Beirut, small backstreets have come to life. To escape the heat of indoor confinement, displaced families relocated to old homes or government-owned buildings, have grown in the habit of placing plastic chairs and their narguiles on small front porches or entrance hallways of buildings. I had to walk home after a long day of working with journalists, two nights ago, and as I zigzagged through these back streets, I was comforted by their gentle presence. They chatted, softly, quietly, huddled in groups, watching the night unfold, fearful of the sound of Israeli warplanes.
The ceaseless newscast from a radio kept everyone informed. It too sounded softly. It was a gentle summer night, and the families dispersed and uprooted surrendered to the gentleness of the night.
On the next block, three young woman stood in line, queuing for access to a public payphone. That too has become a familiar sight in Beirut. People lining at public payphones. They stood, clearly tired but resilient. To my "good evening", I was greeted back with smiles and another "good evening". I was relieved to see that they felt safe, that they roamed the city at night without qualms. How long can they afford to pay for these phone calls is another question. There is a definite need for a long term plan. This emergency solution will soon reach a crisis, and state structures need to be prepared to face the anger and frustration of nearly 500,000 people.
On the next block, a Mercedes car packed with people was parked at a corner, in front of the entrance of a building. The car's doors were flung open and the radio broadcast news. It was a visit. Two displaced families on a nightly visit. Everyone was gentle, and a soft breeze blew with clemency.

Lebanon Siege: Day 7

2006-07-28T12:35:00.000-07:00

This will be a disjointed "siege note". Much has happened in the past two days, I no longer have the energy to chronicle assaults, retaliations, reactions, diplomatic activity. official pronouncements, and so on. I also realize that these exsitential and angry dispatches that are meant to say: "I'm OK" and meant to help me overcome what is happening around me, are held by readers (especially in Israel) to surprisingly high expectations in journalism and reporting. An interesting community of facts-checkers has emerged south of Lebanon's south. They find my "reporting" deplorable and send corrections that conclude with profound philosopical interrogations on who do I think I am, what I want from life, and if I am ready for a serious dialogue with the "other". I am not a reporter, nor do I ever wish to be. I am not interested in dialogue with Israelis and don't foresee that in the horizon of this conflict I will. I should have take the advice of my anti-Zionist Israeli friends and never even acknowledged the reactions to my emails south of my south.

[Photo: Israeli reserve soldiers fires a mortar shells towards southern Lebanon from a military position in the northern of Israel, 10 August 2006. (MaanImages/Moti Milrod) and Electronic Lebanon]

Evacuations
Although the "evacuations" have provided the cover for some sort of a calm, there was nonetheless enough shelling in the past two days to cause grief and wretchedness (deaths, injuries and serious damage). Israel attempted several times to proceed with ground invasion but failed. Some reports claim that Hezbollah made incursions into Israeli territory! This is significant only in the sense that so far, Hassan Nasrallah seems to be the more calm, realistic and pragmatic interlocutor, while the various figures from the Israeli military as well as Minister of Defense seem to be drawing erroneous conclusions, make the wrong calculations and convey unrealistic expectations. In fact, the Israeli military is beginning to behave publically like the American military.
Finally the German and US governments were able to evacuate their passport holders (I no longer dare to say their "nationals" since classes of citizenship seem to be the rule) trapped in the south. People were shuttled in busses on circuitous roads from various points in the South under the cover of a lull iin shelling. That lull allowed red coss ambulances to bring some of the very seriously injured to hospitals further from the zones of heavy shelling. It also allowed the cameras of journalists to travel and record the toll of shelling on border towns and villages or Israel's recurring targets.
From tending to the injured but also packing the bodies of the slain, emeregncy rescue workers, doctors as well as photojournalists and camera men have all unanimously reported how unfamiliar Israel's weaponry is. Bodies are disintegrating in unfamiliar ways or so seems to be a unanimous observation. I actually plan to send a file to Shobak and ElectronicLebanon.net to post a set of photos. They are really gruesome, but they have to be made public. Rescue workers and doctors are urging forensic experts to try to find out what the exploding shells are made of or what have they been "reinforced" with.

Orient Queen
"Cruise beyond your dreams" read posters pasted on the walls of the huge air-conditioned tent that functions as the final stage in processing the evacuees before they board the ship. The ship, as if someone wanted to amuse Edward Said for a brief minute, is called Orient Queen. It is part of a Lebanese-owned fleet of commercial cruises, AMC (Abu Merhi Cruises) and contracted by the US embassy to shlep American passport holders to Cyprus. Holders of American passports stranded in the south were shuttled by busses earlier that day to the port of Beirut. They were greeted by US embassy personnel, a small contingent of US Marines and Orient Queen crew. The buses were parked on the dock and passengers waited their turn for long hours to be searched, have their stuff searched their papers processed and then onto the ship.
The platoon or brigade or whatever the appropriate word is for the group of US Marines landed in Beirut some twenty years after the bombing of their base in 1983. In fact, to a renowned American journalist, they revealed that they were known as "the Beirut platoon", or contigent or company... This twenty some years "return" of the Marines was presented as a big "to do" everybody had high emotions about it. Its significance escaped me. So what? They were going to be here for 2 days to evacuate American passport holders and then they went back to their lives. Their lives? As it turns out they were to return to Jordan where they were training the Jordanian army. (Ooops, that was not supposed to be said. Delete it from the record.)
The marines were curteous in the manner that army personnel is trained to be curteous. Their coordination with the Orient Queen staff would have made sense only if it were a Monty Python filmscript. Some very very funny movie with prophetic visions of social and politcal horror to come. The Orient Queen has apparently a special brigade of Rio Brazil Dancers. I refrained from saying go-go, but the way they wiggled their hips and tied their yellow T-shirts to "celebrate their bodies" was all about go-go.
There is a famous story amongst trade unionists in the New York-New Jersey about a solidarity between teamsters and airline attendants during the Reagan administration and teamsters supporting airline attendants during protests. Fearing the teamsters' homophobic proclivities, the trade unionist that drove the truckdrivers to the site of the protest had the wisdom to rent a bus with a VCR and bring along the only two "choices" that might pacifiy his constituency: "The Godfather" or porn. Porn did it. By the time the teamsters had reached New York, they were pacified. I recount this story because the only way to describe the chemistry between Brazil-Go-Go dancers and US Marines is to evoke that story.
The moment you come across a member of the US embassy personnel they correct you, "it'a assisted departure, not evacuation". They explain that it's how they manage the feelings of the Lebanese. Evacuation seems too terminal, too definitive and only those who choose to leave, do. No one is forcing anyone to leave. True. But evacuees are almost all in a state of shock. They were trapped in the south under the unrelenting shells of Israel's campaign. Most testify that the arsenal of weaponry is entirely new, unfamiliar, a lot more frightening.
Rumors claim that the evacuation fee on the cruise ship is up to 5,000$/person. The US government provides loans to those who cannot afford to pay upfront.

Letter to Maria
One of my closest friends, my beloved sister really, Maria left two days ago. Up until a few hours before she was supposed to follow instructions from the British embassy for evacuation, she could not get herself to leave. She has two boys aged nine and five. Maria and her husband lived in London for a long while and earned citizenship there. Everyone who matters in her life called and urged her to evacuate with the Britons. She had moved from Beirut to the mountains on the second day of the siege.
She and I had maintained contact by phone. Maria is so close to my heart, she is part of my bare consciousness of the world around me, one of the foundational elements that make up my world. From the moment this horror had started, our sentences had shortened, the tone of our conversations become contemplative, inconclusive, incapable of circling to some sort of closure. We could not even say "goodbye", invariably we ended conversations with "I will call you back". It felt better to say that, to claim the exchange of information and emotion not yet complete, than the opposite. We called one another to exchange pointless information, "breaking news" that we had heard and had no hope of breaking "fresh" to the other. We repeated headlines to one another and news of other friends: so and so moved to there, so and so left, so and so went nuts... Although absurd, our phone conversations had the rare virtue of being "constitutional", they charged our respective systems and reminded us of the people we once were, the lives we once lived. We asked the same question over and over, "should I leave?", "should you leave?"... She did not want to but felt she ought to for the boys. The eldest of the two was aware of almost everything: Israel, Hezbollah, the "daisy cutters", bunker busters, and kidnapped prisoners. And at age nine he was seized with anxiety and panic at the escalating horror of the military campaign.
She caved in two days ago. I called as she waited on the docks with her two sons. Her husband did not want to leave. "It's awful, it's awfull...", she kept saying. "It's awful, it's awful...", I echoed her. "Have I done the right thing?", she pleaded. "Absolutely," I replied without a hint of hesitation. I could not help telling her that I would miss her. It felt selfish, childishly needy in the way children can be self-centered and dependent. In truth I was terrified of living through this siege without her. I felt like a good part of my heart, at least a good part of what I love about being in Beirut, was standing at the docks waiting with her two sons. We spoke three times. Three times my tears flowed uncontrolably, three times I did not want her to feel anything in my voice, three times I said "I will call you back". I cried like a scared little girl. How am I going to survive without her? How will I make it through without her?
She did not know where she would go after Cyprus. I have not had the courage to call her husband and find out where she is. As I write this, my tears are flowing. Silly, isn't it? I have all the privileges in the world, in Beirut, I have so many safeguards, and yet I draw emotional and mental strength from the friendship of people like Maria and when she is forcibly driven away, my privileges feel futile, useless.

Evacuations are not "assisted departures", they are uprootings, they borne from decisions made under duress that feel nothing like decisions. The extent of the evacuation does not bode well. In fact, standing on the docks watching the American passport holders who were shuttled from the south in busses I got a full sense of what the evacuation means when you're the one staying behind. Whether rational, reasoned or reasonable, or not, there is a faint, inchoate sense of extinction, death, perishing. These people may very well one day remember us, all of us they have seen and witnessed and interacted with before they boarded the ship. I don't know where we will be when they will remember us.

Lebanon Siege: Day 6

2006-07-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

(The generator shut down before I could end this entry. It's noon the next day now...)
I am drafting this entry in this unusual diary at 11:30 pm, I have about half an hour before the generator shuts down. Most of Beirut is in the dark. I dare not imagine what the country is like. Today was a relatively calm day, but like most calm days that come immediately after tumultuous days, it was a sinister day of taking stock of damage, pulling bodies from under destroyed buildings, shuttling injured to hospitals that have the capacity to tend to their wounds more adequately.
The relative calm allowed journalists to visit the sites of shelling and violence. The images from Tyre, and villages in the south are shocking. Images from Haret Hreyk (the neighborhood in the southern suburb that received the most "focused" shelling) are also astounding.
The number of deaths is yet uncertain, it increases by the hour as bodies are pulled from the landscape of destruction. In the southern suburbs, some people may be trapped in underground shelters under the vestiges of their homes and apartment buildings. And yes, there is a problem of space in morgues in the south and the Beqaa, because none of the towns and villages are equipped to handle these numbers of deaths.
The IDF has destroyed almost entirely the village of 'Aytaroun. Some of the surviving wounded are Canadian citizens. Like the 8 Canadians who died in the building in Tyre (a building that housed the red cross and civil rescue), the Canadian government has had very little regard for them.

Evacuations, Privilege, Solidarity
Today was a particularly strange day for me because I was granted an opportunity to leave tomorrow morning. I hold a Canadian passport, I was born in Toronto when my parents were students there. I left at age two. I have never gone back, for lack of opportunity and occasion, no other reason. I have the choice to sign up for the evacuation, but the European and North American governments have been so despicable, so racist that I don't want to subject myself to a discrimination of that sort. The Swedes, the Danes and the Germans have evacuated their patriots with blond hair and blue eyes. The immigrants that were given shelter to their countries "out of the kindness" of their governments have been systematically left behind; and the guest workers who stayed to enliven their economies and their babies who adjust the dynamism of their demographies, were left behind to fend for shelter under the shells. But I digress. The point I set out to make is that I refuse to be evacuated as a second tier denizen.
I had the opportunity to leave tomorrow by car to Syria, then to Jordan and from there by plane to wherever I am supposed to be right now. For days I have been itching to leave because I want to pursue my professional commitments, meet deadlines and continue with my life. For days I have been battling ambivalence towards this war, estranged from the passions it has roused around me and from engagement in a cause. And yet when the phone call came informing me that I had to be ready at 7:00 am the next morning, I asked for a pause to think. I was torn. The landscape of the human and physical ravages of Israel's genial strategy at implementing UN Resolution 1559, the depth of destruction, the toll of nearly 250 deaths, more than 800 injured and 400,000 displaced, had bound me to a sense of duty. It was not even patriotism, it was actually the will to defy Israel. They cannot do this and drive me away. They will not drive me away.
This is one of the most recurring mistakes that the IDF makes, this is how we see things: THEY have destroyed this country, THEY are taking an opportunity to turn it to rubble and to usher us into oblivion, if there is ambivalence vis-a-vis the wisdom of Hezbollah's capture of the two soldiers, there is unambiguous, unanimous solidarity to stand in the face of Israel's barbaric arrogance. Some people see more in this war, some people see a moment of where the logic/values of the policies of the Moubaraks, the Abdullahs of the Arab world, i.e. the defeatist, pragmatic corrupt sell-outs will be humiliated as well. And I am sure, other people see other things as well.

The roads to Damascus are not safe. Its many different ways are shelled everyday. Drivers know what "calculated" risks to take, I am assured, but one never knows. Everyday the way out becomes more difficult. I decided to stay, I don't know when I will have another opportunity to leave.
The first contingent of Britons was evacuated early this evening. There are two ships, but the evacuation will take place over 3 days. Same for the French and Americans, their evacuations will last for 2 days. While the evacuations are taking place, there was relative quiet. A welcome lull. There was activity in the street, even on the Corniche along the seaside. Refugees from the south, displaced from their homes and provided shelter in public schools strolled in Hamra, looking for a breath of fresh air. A break from the confinement in schools and other makeshift shelters.
Imagine the horror, the sad, sad horror: we are on borrowed time and the only reason we are not under threat, under any serious threat is because the passport holders of some of the G8 countries are evacuating safely to safer harbors. With this relative calm, the sense of impending doom becomes almost palpable, time, space, light and movement are subsumed in an eerie stillness. It feels vaporous and fills the air. As it wafts from room to room, from apartment to apartment, as it turns a corner and moves to another neighborhood, every gesture, every act is a little delayed, slowed, surreptitiously lethargic, every thought lingers too long in the unfinished or inchoate state. This eerie stillness numbs the passage of time and the cognitive perception of things material. Objects seem both familiar and unfamiliar. They are familiar in that they were there the day before and seem not to have moved from their place. They are unfamiliar because they seem to belong to another time, another life. There was another life, I had another life that seems distant and foreign now. The morning is different, noon is different, sunset is different. Another Beirut has emerged. War time Beirut. War time Lebanon. War time mornings, war time noons. Siege time Beirut, siege time morning, siege time sunsets. Everyone else in the world is going about their day as they had planned it or as it was planned for them. The shakers and movers of this world, the fledgling middle classes of the developping world, the 11 million children workers in India, the good-doers and the evil-doers. We are in a different geography of time, of agency, we are besieged, captive, hostage. No chance of Stockholm syndrome this time. Our every move is monitored: every moving vehicle delivering food, fuel, or medicines is monitored, every phone call is listened on, every email read, every dream snarled at, every desire crushed. Israel has the right to explode it to smithereens.
The shelling has not really let, don't get me wrong. It still goes on but it's more occasional, there are more "blank spaces" in between now.

Hezbollah
These "siege notes" have been receiving a number of reponses from Israelis. I have to say that most are of the annoying sort. First, they always begin by noting that I am intelligent and I get commended for my intelligence like Colin Powell gets commended for his English language speaking skills and you wonder what those making these observations expect from you and the world in the first place. Second, they systematically mistake expression of dissent and critique with Arab regimes and official discourse as some sort of a favorable disposition towards Israel. In other words there is, falsely, a tautology between regarding Israel as an enemy country and endorsing radical ideologies of Islamic fundamentalism or rabid nationalism. As if being a democrat, an egalitarian and a feminist implied that one could not have even more profound grounds for being critical of Israel and regarding that country as an enemy country that has sponsored and produced nothing but war, violence, wretchedness, misery, banditry and usurpation. And so heartened by my ambivalence towards this war they recommend that more conversations should take place between Israelis and I. Off course most propose that I make the effort to seek those Israeli interlocutors out. This extreme form of Habermas-mania, that assumes that deep conflicts can be "talked through" is the sumum of hubris. The experience of the peace process is telling: it is clear that Israelis cannot cannot cannot accept Palestinians as human beings whose humanity is of equal value as their own. This is the bottom line. And until that bottom line is changed, there is nothing that a member of a society that builds walls around itself to shut itself off from the world and shut the world from itself can tell me. Punto final.
One of my impromptu (Israeli) commentators warned of my candor, despaired at my position vis-a-vis Israel, and took generously time and space to explain to me that Hezbollah he/she must be crushed because if they were to win, they would destroy Israel and me, because of my values and lifestyle. This view, along with other views salient in western media (particularly American) of Hezbollah betrays ignorance. It is fatal ignorance.
The most gross miscalculation Israeli strategists are making is based on the assumption that Hezbollah is a) not a legitimate political entity in this country, b) its base is made up of extremists and c) its "elimination" would leave the Lebanese construct unscathed. In point of fact, pushing the Lebanese population to "rise up" against Hezbollah, or the scenario of a Lebanese implosion is the worst case scenario for all regional "parties", because the country would then become the jungle of violence and killing that Iraq is today.
Because I am a staunch secular democrat, I have never endorsed Hezbollah, but I do not question their legitimacy as a political actor on the Lebanese scene, I believe they are just as much a product of Lebanon's contemporary history, its war and postwar as are all other parties. If one were to evaluate the situation in vulgar sectarian terms, when it comes to representing the interests of their constituency they certainly do a better job than all the political representatives presently and in the past.
It would be utter folly (in fact it would be murderous folly) to regard Hezbollah as another radical Islamist terrorist organization, at least in the ideological and idiomatic vein of the American intelligentsia and punditry. (There is something about a stubborness to misunderstand that betrays an intent to see a crisis linger or even escalate in the US. If Americans feel better being misguided idiots, Israelis should know better. If the Israeli intelligentsia wants to play deaf like Americans the only outcome will be an Iraq scenario, although I reiterate that Lebanon is not Iraq and the Lebanese are not and will not be Iraqi and will not be manipulated into the barbaric sectarian horror. We've tried that before and it does not work, and we are tired of fighting each other.)
Hezbollah is a mature political organization (that has matured organically within the evolution of Lebanese politics) with an Islamist ideology, that has learned (very quickly) to co-exist with other political agents in this country, as well as other sects. If Lebanese politics was a representation of short-sighted petty sectarian calculations, the lived social experience of postwar Lebanon was different. Sectarian segregation was extremely difficult to implement in the conduct of everyday social transactions, in the conduct of business, employment and all other avenues of commonplace life. And that is a capital we all carry within ourselves, there are exceptional moments when the country came together willingly and spontaneously (as with the Israeli attacks in 1993 and 1996), but there are other smaller, less spectacular moments that punctuate the lived experience of the postwar that every single Lebanese can recall where sectarian prejudice was utterly meaningless, experienced as meaningless.
When former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated, the country seemed divided into two camps, the consensus was overwhelming however that we will not revert to fighting one another, to eliminating one another.
If Israel plans to annihilate Hezbollah, it will annihilate Lebanon. Hezbollah and its constituency are not only Lebanese in the perception of all, they are also a key, essential element of contemporary Lebanon. Moreover the specifics of UN Resolution 1559 may have regional implications, but at heart and in essence they can only be resolved within the Lebanese consensus. Israel CANNOT take it upon itself to implement that UN resolution. There is off course sinister folly that Israel should implement any UN resolution considering its stellar record of snarling, snickering and shrugging at every single UN resolution that did not suit its sensibilities.
Hezbollah are not al-Qaeda, Israeli and US propaganda will portray them as much, and that is the downfall of public opinion, that is the tragedy at the root of the consensus that agrees to watching Lebanon burn. In more ways than can be counted they are different political ideologies, groups and movements. First, they are not suicidal. Second, they are not anti-historical. Third, they are a full-fledged political agent at the center of a dynamic polity. Their ideology is not an ideology of doom, they represent as much petty interests of their constituency as they are imbricated in the fabric of regional politics.

Israel, and Channel 2
I was watching Lise Doucet on the BBC interview one of Olmert's underlings yesterday after the speech. This is the folly of the Israelis, and I believe it will be their downfall, ultimately. He was lamenting that Hezbollah hit the "peaceful" city of Haifa, an Israeli city that he described as exemplar of coexistence between Jews, Christians and Muslims. Haifa! An Israeli city? Haifa? The name is Arabic. The jewel in the crown of Palestinian cities... A peaceful haven of coexistence between Jews, Muslims and Christians? My God! It took DECADES for Christians and Muslims to appear on the roster of "human beings" in the ledgers of the Israeli government. Decades of struggle, riots, pain and suffering. And they are still second class citizen, and they are still unwelcome, pushed out, day after day, crushed by the Israeli machine.
This eloquent underling was making the argument that Hezbollah wanted to destroy the city of "coexistence". Off course, he does not care that the city the IDF has currently under siege, the city they are bombing to rubble, the city where the red cross and civil rescue headquarters were shelled to the ground, Tyre, is itself a gorgeous jewel on the Lebanese coast. That it is a GENUINE city of coexistence amongst Christians, Shi'ites and Sunnis. And the delightful town of Marja'yun is also a city where sects and religions co-exist, and Zahleh... and so on and so forth... But no matter, the Israelis have always done this, and eventually, it catches up with them, and in the end, they realize that their narrative is so far removed from reality they have to back track. The key to understanding Israeli's relationship to our humanity lies in a text by David Grossman, one of Israel's foremost novelists, essayists and writers. He wrote it around the time of the First Intifada. Israel was then beginning to come into reckoning that the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was no longer tenable or sound strategy for the well-being of its democracy.

By the second or third of these "siege notes", the emails reached Israel and Israeli blogs. A journalist from Israel's Channel 2 contacted me by email and asked for an interview. I was uncomfortable with the idea at first, for fear that my words be distorted and my genuine, candid sentiments quoted to serve arguments I do not endorse. Exposing oneself with transparency has its charm and price. That journalist seems like a nice person, but I have no reason to trust her and she understands my misgivings. My only defense is transparency. She sent me the set of questions below for me to answer so she can air them on TV or use them for some report. I decided to share them with you all.

1. How your day looks like from the morning. What you did today? did you have coffee? how do you get the news - television? radio? internet?
The routine of our days is totally changed. We now live under a regimen of survival under siege. Those of us still not wounded and not stranded do whatever needs to be done to survive until the next day. Coffee, yes, I have coffee in the morning, and at noon and in the afternoon. Perhaps I have too much coffee. The passage of time is all about monitoring news, checking everyone's OK, and figuring out what has to be done to help those in distress. News are on all the time. All the time, whatever media works.
There is a great need for volunteers to tend to the hundreds of thousands displaced now.

2. Can you describe the neighborhood you live in?
So it will be bombed? No thank you. I live in a very, very privileged neighborhood, far from the southern suburbs. After the evacuation of foreign nationals (and bi-nationals) is complete, everyone is expecting doom and if Israelis decide to give us a dose of tough love as they did in the southern suburbs my life will probably be in serious danger as my family's and everyone who has decided to stay here.

3. Can you say something about yourself - like what you do for living, if you can say.
I organize cultural events and I am a free-lance writer. I used to live in New York city and moved to Beirut Tuesday July 11th. I have no life at the present moment. I try to do a few things over the internet, but that's increasingly difficult.

4. Are you Lebanese or Palestinian?
Both and it gets more complicated I have Syrian blood too. And Turkish and Bosnian. I am the product of the Ottoman empire, and I say it with pride. I know it ires a lot of people. But I am VERY proud to claim my lineage. My father was expelled from Jerusalem in 1948, he and his family lived in a gorgeous home in Talbiyeh. I think it is a day care school now. We own property in old Jerusalem as well and the Atlantic Hotel which was bombed by your "valiant" paramilitary pre-national militias in 1946.

5. In Israel our leaders think that by targeting Hezbollah and other places in Lebanon will make the rest of the local population against them. Is this true?
It is pure folly, but even if it were true it is a terrible strategy, an imploded Lebanon is a nightmare to all, not only the Lebanese but to everyone, does Israel want an Iraq at its doorstep? There seems to be consensus now in Israel over the military campaign. It is because Israelis are not yet pressing their leadership and military the smart questions. Do you actually believe it would be possible to eliminate the Shi'i sect from Lebanon, and that it would go down easy in the region? If the Americans are advising you, duck for cover or move. Need I list their record of wisdom and foresight recently? Vietnam, Central America, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq. If you need to listen to imperialists, find less idiotic ones, at least who have a sense of history. Gold help us all if Rumsfeld is also in charge of your well-being. This war will bring doom to all. Stop, cut everybody's losses. Wars can be stopped before the body count is "intolerable" or an entire country has been reduced to rubble.

6. What is the atmosphere in the streets of Beirut, if you can tell.
Beirut is quiet, dormant, huddled. We are caged, but there is tenacious solidarity. You have to understand that we see ourselves under an unwarranted attack from Israel. The capture of two soldiers DOES NOT justify Israel's response. There has been a status quo for the past 6 years that was well managed. Hezbollah was not in an impasse, the Olmert government was in an impasse. He ran on a campaign to solidify the "new" (illegitimate) borders, finish the wall and finalize the enclave and withdraw into the boundaries of that enclave. The Olmert government did not have the maturity or intelligence to know how to deal with the Hamas government. Your government was guided by arrogance. We, you and us, are here today because your political class is not up to the challenge. I am sorry, but the Hamas government was elected democratically, and there were myriad ways to deal with them. MYRIAD. But this is the stage of your destiny that you have reached, you build walls around yourselves (you to whom the Massada is a foundational trauma/myth!), and you chase barefoot, toohtless, illiterate, hungry people with state of the art military arsenal. And you insist that you are victims, and you insist that you are on the right side of history. All this bulllshit will catch up with you.

7. What is the atmosphere among your friends?
The consensus is solidarity. Our country is under attack. Otherwise, we are an exceedingly plural society every one has a theory and a point of view, and we co-exist. Humoring one another. What do you do when you are under siege? Do you eat one another, cannibalize on one another, or stand in solidarity to weather the storm?

8. Can you go to work, or do you have to stay home? (because some of the workers in the north of Israel did not go to work today)
The largest, largest majority do not go to work. Although it is a form of resilience. If the war goes on for longer, life will have to evolve a different routine. A large part of the work force is impaired from movement. And then there is the random shelling, it's also dangerous to go out. This has gone on from the first day of the siege. The south is now sinking in a humanitarian crisis. Beirut will soon.
(The new regulation by your glorious IDF this morning is to shoot at all moving vehicles larger than SUVs. One was just shelled in Ashrafieh. New danger, new things to look out for.)

9. Whatever crosses your mind.
Let's not go there... It's dark now, and I am too traumatized. I just want this to be over. I am waiting for a ceasefire. Are you? Is that too unmanly for your society? What do you need to see before you cease your fire? You want to hear me expire? You take down Hezbollah, and I am going down with them. Do you know when Hezbollah was born? 1982. Where were you? Was it an exciting summer for you?

10. I, for example, went to my gym class this morning. I am at home now, listening to the radio on one side, writing mails on the other side. Air-condition is on, since it is extremely hot and humid in Tel Aviv. I live in the center of the city. Later I will go to the office. I think life in my city continues but in a lower volume.
Life as it were, or as previously understood, in my city has stopped. No gym classes, and I am accumulating cellulite, hence chances of finding second husband are lessened (can I make the IDF pay for that?). Air-conditioning is dependent on electricity or generator working. Power cuts are the rule now and the generator works only on a schedule. I like it when Israelis report their weather, it ought to have some cathartic virtue, because it's like a reality check one of the few reminders they are in this region and not in Europe. So yes, without air-conditioning and with power cuts, my "semitic" curls produce unruly coiffe and I have to admit, I am enduring siege with bad hair.
I am on email, but that's intermittant between two bouts of "breaking news".

I hope you will wake up to the nightmare you have dragged us into. I hope you will want to have fire ceased as soon as possible. I hope you will deem our humanity as valuable as your own.

Best, Rasha.

Lebanon Siege: Day 5

2006-07-28T12:32:00.001-07:00

A quiet night in Beirut, more or less, compared to what the inhabitants of Tyre and the south and the Beqaa and Tripoli experienced. They were shelled from the air and sea with little respite. Tyre is in tragically dire situation. 30,000 displaced, the mayor was on TV screaming for help, his voice choking with despair. They are out of supplies, they have more wounded than they can handle and the city's reserves in fuel and other basic amenities are pretty much depleted.

(The IDF wants to "clear" three provinces in the South: Tyre, Marja'uyun and Bin Jbeil, in preparation for the "20 km buffer zone")

The port of Tripoli was bombed, the port of Beirut was bombed. The range of targets has expanded to new zones of hurt: civilians, civilians, civilians, and reservoirs of fuel (Jiyyeh, power station feeding the south, and the airport again), storage facilities of vegetables and fruits in Taanayel (Beqaa) and in the south, and Lebanese army barracks. The roster of martyrs of this war now includes poor soldiers, reservists who were stationed in their posts, watching idly the country go up in flames.
The intention? Probably to cripple the population even further, to make survival harder and harder and to corner the Lebanese army.
The promise of "scorched earth" did not really happen yesterday, I mean the inhabitants of the south were served a good dose of Israeli virility, but not to the level of "shock and awe". Maybe it will come in small calculated doses (The IDF are a "calculating" military, not like us, rogues, we don't calculate). Who knows? Who the fuck knows? What makes sense anymore...

Dementia is slowly creeping in... Slowly, surreptitiously. At the rate of news flashes. This is how we live now, from "breaking news" to "breaking news". A sampling: I have been in the cafe for one hour now. (The cafe is an escape from home, but in itself another island of insanity... will get to that later at some point).
OK, I have been in the cafe for one hour now. This is what I have heard so far:
1) A text message traveled to my friend's cell phone: A breaking news item from Israeli military command. If Hezbollah does not stop shelling Galilee and northern towns, Israel will hit the entire electricity network of Lebanon.
2) Hezbollah shells Haifa, Safad, and colonies in south Golan.
3) A text message traveled to my other friend's cell phone, from an expat who left to Damascus and is catching a flight back to London. "All flights out of Damascus are cancelled. Do you know anything?"
4) Israeli shell fell near the house of the bartender, his family is stranded in the middle of rubbble in Hadath. He leaps out of the cafe and frantically calls to secure passage for them to the mountains.
5) Hezbollah down an F-16 Israeli plane into Kfarshima (near Hadath). Slight jubilation in a cafe that thrives on denial.
Does the world make sense to anyone? It's not supposed to, I know, but these "surgical" military tactics are supposed to make sense to at least 15 people. And out of these 15 people, at least 14 disseminate the news, and since the world is about 6 degrees of separation removed, at some point, somebody has to know something...

I started writing these diary notes to friends outside Lebanon to remain sane and give them my news. I was candid and transparent with all my emotions. The ones I had and the ones I did not have. They were more intended to fight dementia at home, in my home and in my mind, to bridge the isolation in this siege, than to fight the media black-out, racism, prejudice and break the seal of silence. Friends began to circulate them (with my approval). By the third diary note, I was getting replies, applause and rebuke from people I did not know who had read them. It's great to converse with the world at large, but I realize now that candor and transparency come with a price. A price I am more than happy to pay. However, these diary notes are becoming something else, and I realize now that I am no longer writing to the intimate society of people I love and cherish, but to an opaque blogosphere of people who want "alternative" news. I am more than ever conscious of a sense of responsibility in drafting them, they have a public life, an echo that I was not aware of that I experience now as some sort of a burden. I have been tortured about the implications of that public echo. Should I remain candid, critical, spiteful, cowardly, or should I transform into an activist and write in a wholly different idiom? There is off course a happy medium between both positions, but I don't have the mental wherewithalls to find it now. And I don't want to sacrifice candor, transparency and skepticism at the risk of having my notes distorted to serve some ill-intentioned purpose, or in the vocabulary of official rhetoric, "give aid and comfort to the enemy". The enemy does well without the aid of my rantings (they have a nuclear bomb, a hero soccer player form Ghana, the gift of democracy, fantabulous drag queens, and a right wing freak whose first name is BiBi). Notes from a hapless stranded thirty-something caged in Ras Beirut (ie the privileged of the privileged), I believe, will not really make a difference.
I am reminded of the many, many, many e-diaries that Palestinians send when the Israelis want to secure peace and give them a virile dose of justice with sieges, shelling, checkpoints, sniping, maiming, beating, and all that Israel has developped in the vein of practices to strengthen its democracy and territory and off course contribute to the blossoming of the peace process. Well my rantings are far from the emails of my Palestinian brethren. They are charged with ambivalence and anti-heroics. In Palestine things are less complex, less dirty, more starkly contrasted and clear. What Israel is now administering to Lebanon is a small dose of what it delivers to Palestinians. Intense, condensed, but a small dose. However the complications of Lebanon's internal politics and the very, very complicated imbrications of Lebanon with regional politics renders enduring, witnessing, documenting this war more confusing. So bear with me. It's lonely being an anti-hero.
My Palestinian friends are protesting that the Israeli campaign in Gaza has been eclipsed from the world's attention and concern. Beirut is now attracting attention. Don't look away from Gaza. The same canons are firing. The same children are orphaned, the same people are being displaced, shoved outside history and the attributes of humanity, rendered to integers in the logs of NGOs for donations of bags of flour and sugar. The same.

By Day 5 of the Siege, a new routine has set in. "Breaking news" becomes the clock that marks the passage of time. You find yourself engaging in the strangest of activities: you catch a piece of breaking news, you leap to another room to annoounce it to family although they heard it too, and then you txt-message it to others. At some point in the line-up, you become yourself the messenger of "breaking news". Along the way you collect other pieces of "breaking news" which you deliver back. Between two sets of breaking news, you gather up facts and try to add them up to fit a scenario. Then you recall previously mapped scenarios. Then you realize none works. Then you exhale. And zap. Until the next piece of breaking news comes. It just gets uglier. You fear night-time. For some reason, you believe the shelling will get worse at night. When vision is impaired, when darkness envelops everything. But it's not true. Shelling is as intense during the day as it is during the night.

There has been "intense" diplomatic activity between yesterday and today. UN envoys, ambassadors, EU envoys, all kinds of men and women coming and going carrying messages to the Lebanese government from the "international community" and the "Israeli counterpart". Officially they have led to nothing. But we are told, officially on the news, that the "secret" channels have started working, and these are the ones that work. The secret channels were launched when the Lebanese Prime Minister met with the US ambassador and the Lebanese head of parliament in a closed door meeting at the head of parliament's home. There is supposed to be some sort of press conference after that. And Jacques Chirac (Lebanon holds a special place in his heart) is sending handsome Dominique de Villepin to Lebanon this afternoon. He is scheduled to arrive at 5:00 pm. He's the genius who created the CPE, the genius who finally "listened" to the dark-skinned and maladjusted children of France during the last round of riots. I guess we should be glad he's not sending Sarkoczy? Or is the ugly Pole going to Israel? In the final count, we are a "banlieue" of France, the bad boys are at it again, burning cars and breaking the "fragile" status quo in the region. When de Villepin is here, we could have a lull in the shelling. Maybe. Maybe that's when they'll evacuate the "foreign nationals".
The foreign nationals are a new issue now. With so many expats visiting for the summer, and with so many Lebanese holding dual nationality, it's been tough for the G8 to plan their evacuations. Two hundred thousand Canadians (8 of whom perished yesterday in the south)! Fifty thousand Frenchmen... What to do with all these bi-nationals? Create categories. Category A are the real, genuine, white-skinned, tax-paying valuable natives, Category B are the recently integrated, recently assimilated, brown-skinned, tax-paying not so valuable natives.
The best evacuation plan is the American. They are directing their "nationals" to a website (ha! with electricty power cuts it's kinda funny) where they promise an airlift from the airport (although the air strips have been destroyed) to Cyprus. But the seriously unfunny part is that there is an evacuation fee. And for those with no money, the US government generously offers a loan. Isn't that brilliant? Loans and fees are processed in Cyprus.

There are ultra-secret channeling mediated by the Germans too. The Germans negotiated the last round of prisoner exchange between Hezbollah and Israel. "The Germans know their way with Hezbollah" noted a newscaster. Isn't it funny how these conflicts find their interlocutors and negotiators.

I am obsessively thinking about these negotiators and diplomats. How they go through their day. How they initiate conversations, how they end them. Top on my list is Amr Moussa, Egypt's star diplomat and gift to the Arab League. His handling of the Lebanese crisis is stellar, and comes after his handling of the assault on Gaza and perhaps his crowning achievement is his handling of Darfur. How do these people receive dispatches that hundreds of people are dead and decide not to act? I am fascinated by how they structure their consciousness. Not conscience, consciousness. I guess they become numb. I guess they believe that the sweep of history spares them. They probably see the world in a different way, that some people are condemned to be in Gaza or in Tyre and they are supposed to live meaningless lives and die anonymous deaths. They don't. They believe they fashion history writ large. They go through their day, enjoying sleep and meals. Air-conditioned cars, private jets, tailored suits, who's coming to dinner, where to spend summer vacation. They are never to be held accountable for whatever they say or do.
How did Amr Moussa go through the conversation with the Saudi envoy, for example? The tall Saudi minister of foreign affairs was firm, emboldened with an unusual surge of virility, he must have said to him, "Screw the Lebanese, the Hezbollah have to pay. We support the Lebanese government but we should publically condemn Hezbollah and demand a cease-fire. And Amr Moussa said what? "I agree with you." And felt good about agreeing with the Saudis. Did his stomach not writhe with a hint of an ulcer when he hung up? Did he not press on and say, "But the Arab League should take a vanguard role in ending this crisis as soon as possible and impose a cease-fire?" Off course his president, Hosni Moubarak had his own pep talk with the press. And it was inspiring. I think it's easier being Hosni Mobarak because he's senile. Senility is his understanding of freedom. He's a few inches away from absolute freedom. Egypt is waiting with abated breath when he comes out and dsiplays the joys of having absolutely not a single hint of remembrance or cognitive perception of the world around him.
Meanwhile Lebanon was being shelled to rubble. And Amr Moussa must have felt "pressured" to offer something to the "Arab street" (aaah that elusive demon). The foreign ministers agreed in unanimity that the best course of action would be to raise the question at the UN security council meeting in September. To the embarassingly weepy mother of the decapitated child, to the embarassingly nagging child of the charred mother, to the "steadfastly valiant" Palestinians in Gaza and the "hapless" Lebanese in the south, they figured they owed them something, a statement to relieve them from their grief. And the groundbreaking insight said that "the Arab league officially deemed the "peace process to be dead." No one, no one expected such enlightening wisdom from the council of foreign ministers. I am still enraptured in its profundity.

Breaking News: It's not clear Hezbollah downed a plane. The al-Manar TV is now describing it as a "foreign body". Will the Israelis add it to their list of casualties?

Day 5 of the Siege is promising to be more enthralling. More mad ramblings tonight...

Day 5 of the Siege part 2.

It's 3:30 am. Perhaps past that time, I don't know. I could not sleep from the shelling. It's not the intense quantity of shells falling, no, it's 10 to 12 shells every hour or hour and the half. They augment the nerve-wrecking aspect: they don't focus shelling one one zone, with one objective. It's wounds inflicted over time and time, the length of a week...
It's been a really, really rough night. Where do I begin with what you will not hear? With what you will not know and what will be hidden from your ears?

The air raids over the Beqaa did not really stop all day today. The raids and shelling over Tyre were also really bad. Saida was shelled and bridges and roads leading to the south. The mountains were shelled as well, specifically bridges.
There seemed to be a lull of sorts in the late afternoon. But as soon as the sun set, the air raids over the southern suburbs returned. By now the IDF knows that there are only civilians, that the Hezbollah leadership is elsewhere in hiding. But they have express missive from the US to kill Hassan Nasrallah (according the largest circulating Israeli daily, Maariv).
At night, the Jamhour area was targetted. It is where the Lebanese Ministry of Defense is located, the Military School, and the power station feeding Beirut and its surrounding mountains. The power station was targetted and hit, but there was a "mistake" and the shells reached the Military School and barracks surrounding it. 100 soldiers are now injured, a dozen are dead. The power station was hit and the larger share of Beirut is under the cover of darkness.

Air raids are also shelling the Beqaa valley. However, the most horrific news is that the inhabitants of 'Ayta el-Shaab (the first village where the IDF tried to make a land incursion but was swiftly defeated by Hezbollah) are being told by loudspeakers and other means that they should evacuate their village by dawn or else they will all be crushed by airplanes, tanks and shelling. It's like 1948 again... They want everyone out. The village has now 3,000 people still left. The elderly and the wounded have been evacuated to another village. It's the "buffer zone" they want to "clear". Most don't have cars to evacuate.
If you want to see a replay of the 1948 expulsion of peasants under fire, tune in to Lebanon. If you don't scream your outrage and make sure some things are NOT acceptable.

Love, Rasha.

Lebanon Siege: Day 4

2006-07-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

Things seem to heating up. Missiles hit Haifa and the shelling on the south and southern suburbs is unrelenting.

Scorched Earth Policy
Ehud Olmert promised scorched earth in South Lebanon after missiles hit Haifa. Warnings have been sent to inhabitants of the south to evacuate their villages, because the Israeli response to Hezbollah will be "scorched Earth". As major roads are destroyed and the south has been remapped into enclaves, it is not clear how these people are supposed to evacuate. And where to. It seems the "sensitivity training" that the IDF went through for evacuating the settlers from Gaza is really paying off, even on the "civilians" because Ehud Olmert offered the hapless inhabitants of the south shelter in Israel. Now that's leadership! Will they be sprayed by DDT as did the jewish populations shuttled from Iraq, Morocco and Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s? Will there be Maabarot (transit camps) ready for them? They want the 20 kilometers buffer zone and they will burn, destroy and maim to get it. Maybe they should build another wall?

Video-Clip
Al-Manar TV has a video-clip of possible, potential hits to Haifa. Impressive. A missile is loaded, the camera travels over arial views of occupied Palestine and stops at Haifa. The port. Zoom on the petro-chemical reservoirs. Cut to a hand pressing on a green button. The images are accompanied with text in Arabic and in Hebrew. They are conducting their war in images and video-clips.

Proud to be an Arab
I am still in awe with the response from Arab regimes, how utterly proud I am to be an Arab. From Abou Mazen, to the several moral and physical dwarf kings and queens (the Abdullahs and whatevers) to the un-democratically elected representatives, "chapeau"...
I think of all the streets, those who are watching Gaza, Iraq, and now us. Do we not deserve their outrage? Do we not deserve mass mobilizations? Should not Moubarak, and his band of bandits and thieves deserve to be put to shame for their endorsement of the Israeli response.
How does it feel, my beloved friends, Arabs and non-Arabs to watch Beirut go up in flames?
Meanwhile wall-to-wall coverage is only from al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya and the Lebanese TV stations. The "war" is only a news item on Abou Dhabi, MBC, and the other Arab stations...

The Lebanese predicament
So Hezbollah dragged us without asking our opinion into this hell. We are in this hell, caught in this cross-fire together. We need to survive and save as many lives as possible. The Israelis are now betting on the implosion of Lebanon. It will not happen. There is UNANIMITY that Israel's response is entirely, entirey, UNJUSTIFIED. We will show the Arab leadership that it is possible to have internal dissent and national unity, pluralism, divergence of opinion and face this new sinister chapter of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Dictatorships produce mute sheep and sheepherders and radical ideologies.

Lebanon Siege: Day 2

2006-07-28T12:31:00.001-07:00

It is now night time in Beirut. The day was heavy, busy with shelling from the air and sea, but so far the night has been quiet in Beirut. We are advised to be bracing ourselves for a bad night, although most analysis is more reading tea leaves at this stage.
I received a wide array of comments regarding my email yesterday. The comments stayed with me all day. I visited friends this morning at their house, people now gather in homes, most cafes in "West Beirut" are closed, streets are quiet. In times like these, the city huddles on its neighborhoods, main thoroughfares are avoided, side roads and back streets are trekked. Gatherings shift to the house of the member of the group whose neighborhood has electricity, whose elevator works, and who has elusive enough familial obligations to house an antsy crowd eager for social exchange.
Amongst that group, I was the only one who seemed to have experienced the weariness, to be genuinely frustrated with having to face another round of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Everyone seemd resigned to endure this dark and sinister moment. Everyone was busying themselves with analysis, speculation. Mind games, fictions, chimeras. I regretted expressing my weariness with the fight, with having to summon the energy to face Israel and defy the destruction of Lebanon. I felt I betrayed a principle, a value, disrespected people's pain and suffering. I know a great great number of people in Lebanon share my sentiments, and the political debates on TV seem to return to the question tirelessly. But still, I felt "smaller" than the historical moment demanded.
I wanted to write this, I needed to come clean to you all. I need to let you know that if you were intrigued/discomforted by the pettiness of my spirit. The cause of this is partly my refusal to acknowledge the gravity of the moment. I don't feel I am strong or courageous enough to face it, to take it all in.

Last night something quite fantastical happened. By this morning, the mood in the country and city was palpably changed. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that the leadership of Hezbollah are not acquainted with "The Society of the Spectacle".
Last night was a turning point in the confrontation between Hezbollah and the Israeli army. I ought to have drafted a note right after that moment, but I could not find the mental energy to do it. I was so scared and anxious that I became sucked into the pull of minute by minute news reporting and finally succumbed to exhaustion.
You probably all heard about the Israeli warship that was drowned. I am convinced that all of you not privvy to Arab media missed the spectacular staging of the drowning of that warship.
The "showcase" began with Israeli shells targetting Hassan Nasrallah's home in the southern suburbs. As soon as the shells exploded, the media reported them and waited to confirm that he and his family had survived. About half an hour later, the newscaster announced that Hassan Nasrallah planned to adress the nation and the Arab world by phone.
I never thought he was charismatic. A huge majority of people do. He's very young to hold the position of leadership that he does. He's a straight talker, not particularly eloquent, but speaks in an idiom that appeals to his immediate constituency in Lebanon but is also compelling to a constituency in the Arab world that harbors disillusionment, despondency and powerlessness with the failed promises of Arab nationalism to defeat Israel and restore dignity. He is not corrupt, he lives simply, and displays a bent on spartan ascetism. Although he's neither charismatic nor captivating, he has cultivated an aura of sorts, particularly since his son was martyred at age 18 in a commando operation in south Lebanon when it was occupied by the Israeli military. He survived the Israeli attempt on his life last night, and addressed the nation by phone, thirty minutes later. His speech was pragmatic, again spoken in his habitual simple (almost simplistic) idiom from within the Hezbollah rhetoric, obviously. The speech was intended to deliver a number of specific messages, answer back to pronouncements by regional leaders and clarify Hezbollah's strategy in the face of the unexpectedly barbaric Israeli attack.

He began by declaring an open war to Israel's assault. He summoned the Lebanese people to unite in this moment of confrontation, transcend petty divisions and rise to the occasion. He promised to deliver victory, based on the long record of victories by Hezbollah. Most powerful and compelling was his response to the Saudi, Jordanian and Egyptian statements issued earlier that day, blaming Hezbollah for bringing the tragedy on Lebanon. The Saudi statement had referred to Hezbollah's actions as "adventurous", the Jordanian as "irresponsible" and the Egyptian as something in both these veins. All three had invoked the pressing need to act reasonably. Nasrallah's response basically said that he is the leader of the only Arab and Muslim political movement to have defeated Israel militarily and forced it to withdraw, the only Arab leader to have been able to shell Israel and pose a serious military threat from without its borders. If his actions were "adventurous" he argued, they were certainly reasonable, but they did not comply to the reason that guides Arab leaders and Arab regimes, rather the reason that animates the common folk on the streets, the reason that defies defeat, the reason that brings victories, saves dignity and does not fear the enemy no matter how powerful his arsenal and allies. He called onto the Arab and Muslim world to stand in solidarity with the Lebanese as they faced, once more, the savagery of the Zionist machine.

His third message was to the "Zionist enemy". He reiterated that Hezbollah did not fear an open war. That they have long been prepared for this confrontation. Interestingly, he claimed that they possessed missiles that could reach Haifa, and "far beyond Haifa, beyond, beyond Haifa", thereby admitting that it was Hezbollah that fired the missile fired to Haifa (until then they denied having fired them). It is not clear what he meant by "far beyond Haifa". Did he mean Tel Aviv? It is not THAT far from Haifa. Did he mean Israeli interests and missions abroad? It was not clear. More terrains for speculators.

His conclusion was all about the showcase... In his message to the Zionist entity, he reminded his audience that he had promised to deliver many "suprises". And now the time has come for the first of the many surprises they have in store for the Zionist enemy, namely the warship that had bombed the southern suburb the night before and was casually sailing in the bay of Beirut was now in flames and its personel was drowning. "Look at it!", he said, this is one of the many surprises we have saved for the Zionist army... And he fell silent.

There is no film footage of the warship being hit because all the cameras had their lenses directed inland, focused on scouting for shells, destruction, victims and tragedy writ large. By the time he had spoken his words, it was too late to catch sight of the warship being hit, all that cameras captured was a huge ball of fire in the open sea, but not much else was clear. Rescue flares flew into the sky from around the ship. Ultimately, it would turn out that all except for 4 from the crew would be rescued/recovered.
The Israeli media began by denying the report, then confirming the warship had been hit, then claiming there were no losses, then admitting four sailors were missing, then claiming the ship was towed to the Haifa port, then admitting it had sunk in the sea where it was hit. This morning one of the three bodies was uncovered by Hezbollah.

The news of the downed warship spread fear in our hearts. We were sure the retaliation would be numbing in violence. Then Hezbollah fired rockets on some settlements in the Galilee and we were all bracing ourselves for a night of hell. Nothing happened in Beirut. The south was shelled, the north was shelled the Beqaa was shelled. Surgical assaults on roads, bridges and the communication network. Slowly but surely, in cold blood the country was being dismembered, ligament after ligament, inland, on the coast, and in the mountains.

In Beirut, the night was quiet. I could not understand how one downed Israeli warship could throw disarray into a military as powerful as the Israeli military.

Nasrallah's calls for solidarity resonnated loudly the next day. Immediately after the spectacular showcase, Hezbollah television was showered with phone calls from Saudi Arabia expressing their support. There were protests supporting him and his mission in almost every Arab city. They contrasted sharply with the reactions from Arab officialdom. He had won his first round against Israel and against the slothful, debilitated and stunted Arab leaderships.

Lebanon Siege: Day 3

2006-07-28T12:31:00.000-07:00

Today was a bad day. The shelling started from the morning countrywide and has not let until now. It was particularly brutal in the south. Marwaheen, a village in the south that had been under siege was showered with leafets from airplanes urging its inhabitants to flee because it would be bombed to the ground two hours later. As people gathered up stuff and began to flee, a few were not spared from the shelling, 12 children perished, burned alive on the road walking out of the village. A group amongst the fleeing villagers panicked and saught refuge at a UNIFIL (UN peacekeeping force) base on their road out of the village run by French army volunteers, but they were refused shelter and turned back. I don't know how unprecedented this is but it is certainly shocking.
Nearly all Lebanese ports were shelled today, Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, Tyre, Amshit and Jounieh. Christian areas are not being spared. The alternative road to Syria (via Tripoli and Homs) was shelled. Bridges in the north of the country and the south of the country were shelled and rendered unusable.

Tonight the shelling is again focused on the southern suburbs, Haret Hreyk and Bir el-Abed. The first neighborhood is where the headquarters of Hezbollah are located. They have been targetted several times and there is extensive damage. The leadership has not been harmed. A great number of the inhabitants have been evacuated, but the afternoon shelling targetted residential areas. I am up, anxious, writing. As if it served a purpose of sorts.

Foreign diplomatic missions are making plans to evacuate their nationals. They had planned to evacuate people by sea, but after today's shelling of the ports, they may have to rethink their strategy. Should I evacuate? Does one turn their back on a "historic" station in the Arab-Israeli conflict? If there is no cause that animates me, how do I endure this? (I could not give two rats' ass about the Iranian nuclear bomb or Hezbollah's negotiating power). I was shamed this morning for having these thoughts... And now, at 1:30 am, as the Israeli airplanes fill up my sky, I am writing them again.

There was much diplomatic activity today, almost all of it secured moral high ground for Israel to proceed with "scorched earth" policy, re-occupy the south to secure its own borders, and disarm Hezbollah after a fatal blow. The meeting at the UN security council yesterday provided Israel with a green light to pretty much do whatever it wished in this country. (My favorite was Bolton, who was focused on the necessity to "take down" Khaled Masha'al -Hamas representative- in Damascus.)
Then there was an emergency Arab League meeting that pretty much determined that the peace plan of the Quartet was defunct and the region was at the brink of an explosion and that they will call for a UN security council meeting at once. If international law was not respected, then the Arab League would resort to other means (and "arms" was not eliminated as an option). Did the Arabs declare war? We don't know, did they intimate war? It would be the most prudish, skiddish, repressed intimation ever in the history of wars.

For now it seems that the battle will take about two to three weeks to wane. There are stated aims and they are within the paradigm of 1559, namely that Hezbollah should give up its arms, and the southern Lebanese border with Israel be secured by the Lebanese army. Hezbollah are not suicidal, unlike the Bin Ladens of the world and other radicals, they want to negotiate a bigger share of the pie in Lebanon. They are aware that in the final count, they will have to give up something, so until a cease-fire seems like an amenable solution to them, they need to register as many victories as possible. The rockets that can reach Haifa is one such victory, because Haifa is an important petro-chemical base in Israel. The Israeli Patriot missiles planted on Haifa that seem not to work are also another small victory for Hezbollah. The drowned warship is another victory.

Israel's strategy is not only to dismember this country and cripple communication, but also to challenge internal support for Hezbollah. People like me for example, complaining about how my life is a small hell and I can't take it anymore, yesterday and maybe a little bit today, well I was an agent of Israel. I was executing the Israeli strategy to break the spirit of the valiant Arabs. In fact the Israeli ambassador to the UN quoted two Lebanese MPs citing how little support for Hezbollah there is in Lebanon. This is the rhetoric. But in point of fact it is true, that Israel has not spared an area at this stage, whether Hezbollah stronghold or not and they want to make us pay for housing Hezbollah in our parliament. Maybe they prefer an Iraqi scenario?

Forgive me if I am losing my mind. I need to end this long diary entry. I would like to end it by congratulating the president of Iran, to whom a nuclear bomb (like the president of Pakistan) is by far more important than his people walking barefoot, illiterate and hungry. But the kind and generous president of Iran "assured" the world that if Israel hit Syria, Iran would show them hell. Never mind Lebanon burning!

Until Day 4 of the Siege.

Lebanon Siege: Day 0

2006-07-28T12:30:00.000-07:00

From: Rasha Salti Received Friday, July 14th, 2006 at 10PM Dear All,
I am writing now from a cafe, in West Beirut's Hamra district. It is filled with people who are trying to escape the pull of 24 hour news reporting. Like me. The electricity has been cut off for a while now, and the city has been surviving on generators. The old system that was so familiar at the time of the war, where generators were allowed a lull to rest is back. The cafe is dark, hot and humid. Espresso machines and blenders are silenced. Conversations, rumors, frustrations waft through the room.

I am better off here than at home, following the news, live, on the spot documentation of our plight in sound bites.

The sound of Israeli warplanes overwhelms the air on occasion. They drop leaflets to conduct a "psychological" war. Yesterday, their sensitivity training urged them to advise inhabitants of the southern suburbs to flee because the night promised to be "hot". Today, the leaflets warn that they plan to bomb all other bridges and tunnels in Beirut. People are flocking to supermarkets to stock up on food.

This morning, I wrote in my emails to people inquiring about my well-being that I was safe, and that the targets seem to be strictly Hezbollah sites and their constituencies, now, I regret typing that. They will escalate. Until a few hours ago, they had only bombed the runways of the airport, as if to "limit" the damage. A few hours ago, four shells were dropped on the buildings of our brand new shining airport.

The night was harrowing. The southern suburbs and the airport were bombed, from air and sea. The apartment where I am living has a magnificient view of the bay of Beirut. I could see the Israeli warships firing at their leisure. It is astounding how comfortable they are in our skies, in our waters, they just travel around, and deliver their violence and congratulate themselves.

The cute French-speaking and English-speaking bourgeoisie has fled to the Christian mountains. A long-standing conviction that the Israelis will not target Lebanon's Christian "populated" mountains. Maybe this time they will be proven wrong? The Gulfies, Saudis, Kuwaities and other expatriates have all fled out of the country, in Pullman buses via Damascus, before the road was bombed. They were supposed to be the economic lifeblood of this country. The contrast in their sense of panic as opposed to the defiance of the inhabitants of the southern suburbs was almost comical. This time, however, I have to admit, I am tired of defying whatever for whatever cause. There is no cause really. There are only sinister post-Kissingerian type negotiations. I can almost hear his hateful voice rationalizing laconically as he does the destruction of a country, the deaths of families, people with dreams and ambitions for the Israelis to win something more, always more.

Although I am unable to see it, I am told left, right and center that there is a rhyme and reason, grand design, and strategy. The short-term military strategy seems to be to cripple transport and communications. And power stations. The southern region has now been reconfigured into small enclaves that cannot communicate between one another. Most have enough fuel, food and supplies to last them until tomorrow, but after that the isolation of each enclave will lead
to tragedy. Mayors and governors have been screaming for help on the TV.

This is all bringing back echoes of 1982, the Israeli siege of Beirut. My living nightmare, well one of my living nightmares. It was summer then as well. The Israeli army marched through the south and besieged Beirut. For 3 months, the US administration kept dispatching urges for the Israeli military to act with restraint. And the Israelis assured them they were acting appropriately. We had the PLO command in West Beirut then. I felt safe with the handsome fighters. How I miss them. Between Hezbollah and the Lebanese army I don't feel safe. We are exposed, defenseless, pathetic. And I am older, more aware of danger. I am 37 years old and actually scared. The sound of the warplanes scares me. I am not defiant, there is no more fight left in me. And there is no solidarity, no real cause.

I am furthermore pissed off because no one knows how hard the postwar reconstruction was to all of us. Hariri did not make miracles. People work hard and sacrifice a lot and things get done. No one knows except us how expensive, how arduous that reconstruction was. Every single bridge and tunnel and highway, the runways of that airport, all of these things were built from our sweat and brow, at 3 times the real cost of their construction because every member of government, because every character in the ruling Syrian junta, because the big players in the Hariri administration and beyond, were all thieves. We accepted the thievery and banditry just to get things done and get it over with. Everyone one of us had two jobs (I am not referring to the ruling elite, obviously), paid backbreaking taxes and wages to feed the "social covenant". We faught and faught that neoliberal onslaught, the arrogance of economic consultants and the greed of creditors just to have a nice country that functioned at a minimum, where things got done, that stood on its feet, more or less. A thirving Arab civil society. Public schools were sacrificed for roads to service neglected rural areas and a couple Syrian officers to get richer, and we accepted, that road was desperately needed, and there was the "precarious national consensus" to protect. Social safety nets were given up, healthcare for all, unions were broken and coopted, public spaces taken over, and we bowed our heads and agreed.

Palestinian refugees were pushed deeper and deeper into forgetting, hidden from sight and consciousness, "for the preservation of their identity" we were told, and we accepted. In exchange we had a secular country where the Hezbollah and the Lebanese Forces could co-exist and fight their fights in parliament not with bullets. We bit hard on our tongues and stiffened our upper lip, we protested and were defeated, we took the streets, defied army-imposed curfews, time after time, to protect that modicum of civil rights, that modicum of a semblance of democracy, and it takes one air raid for all our sacrifices and tolls to be
blown to smithereens. It's not about the airport, it's what we built during that postwar.

As per the usual of Lebanon, it's not only about Lebanon, the country has paradigmatically been the terrain for regional conflicts to lash out violently. Off course speculations abound. There is rhetoric, and a lot of it, but there are also Theories.

1) Theory Number One.
This is about Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah negotiating an upper hand in the negotiations with Israel. Hezbollah have indicated from the moment they captured the Israeli soldiers that they were willing to negotiate in conjunction with Hamas for the release of all Arab prisoners in Israeli jails. Iran is merely providing a back support for Syria + Hamas.

2) Theory Number Two.
This is not about solidarity with Gaza or strengthening the hand of the Palestinians in negotiating the release of the prisoners in Israeli jails. This is about Iran's nuclear bomb and negotiations with the Europeans/US. The Iranian negotiator left Brussels after the end of negotiations and instead of returning to Tehran, he landed in Damascus. Two days later, Hezbollah kidnapped the Israeli soldiers. The G8 Meeting is on Saturday, Iran is supposed to have some sort of an answer for the G8 by then. In the meantime, they are showing to the world that they have a wide sphere of control in the region: Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. In Lebanon they pose a real threat to Israel. The "new" longer-reaching missiles that Hezbollah fired on Haifa are the message. The kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia issued statements holding Hezbollah solely responsible for bringing on this escalation, and that is understood as a message to Iran. Iran on the other hand promised to pay for the reconstruction of destroyed homes and infrastructures in the south. And threatened Israel with "hell" if they hit Syria.

3) Theory Number Three.
This is about Lebanon, Hezbollah and 1559 (the UN resolution demanding the disarmement of Hezbollah and deployment of the Lebanese army in the southern territory). It stipulates that this is no more than a secret conspiracy between Syria, Iran and the US to close the Hezbollah file for good, and resolve the pending Lebanese crisis since the assassination of Hariri. Evidence for this conspiracy is Israel leaving Syria so far unharmed. Holders of this theory claim that Israel will deliver a harsh blow to Hezbollah and cripple the Lebanese economy to the brink of creating an internal political crisis. The resolution would then result in Hezbollah giving up arms, and a buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon under the control of the Lebanese army in Lebanon and the Israeli army in the north of Galilee. More evidence for this Theory are the Saudi Arabia and Jordan statements condemning Hezbollah and holding them responsible for all the horrors inflicted on the Lebanese people.

There are more theories... There is also the Israeli government reaching an impasse and feeling a little wossied out by Hezbollah and Hamas, and the Israeli military taking the upper hand with Olmert.
The land of conspiracies... Fun? I can't make heads or tails. But I am tired of spending days and nights waiting not to die from a shell, on target or astray. Watching poor people bludgeoned, homeless and preparing to mourn. I am so weary...

Rasha.