Human lives in Lebanon

The flight was quiet. The flight attendants were friendly as always, the passengers were lost in thought, sleep or quiet conversations. Only two babies protested loudly during take-off and landing – when the pressure on the little travellers’ eardrums is said to be painfully high.
  The pilot could not have been quieter. Apart from the scheduled instructions to the flight attendants before take-off and landing, nothing was heard from him during the entire flight. The slow approach to Beirut International Airport led from the Turkish Mediterranean coast over the island of Cyprus.
  Gigantic towers of cloud loomed over the island, the northern part of which has been occupied by Turkey since 1974. In contrast to the black clouds that the air strikes by Israeli fighter drones and fighter jets cause to rise over Lebanon, the cloud towers over Cyprus in the late afternoon were coloured in a warm red by the setting sun.
  Only shortly before reaching the Lebanese coast did the pilot steer the aircraft southwards to head for Rafik Hariri International Airport. Lights flashed along the coast, over the harbour of Beirut and over the city that the plane reached at Ras Beirut. The passengers were silent, all trying to catch a glimpse of their battered country through the windows. The landing was hardly noticeable, only the sharp braking indicated that the pilot did not want to let the aircraft continue southwards. Deep darkness prevailed to the south and east of the airport. This is Dahieh, the southern suburbs of Beirut, which the Israeli army has been attacking since the end of September.

Target number one for Israeli attacks

Not a single shot, rocket or mortar shell has been fired at Israel from here, and yet the population of these neighbourhoods has become Israel’s number one target. More than a million people from Dahieh and the south of the country now live as internally displaced persons in the north and east of Beirut, in villages in the Lebanese mountains or north of the port city of Tripoli. Tens of thousands have fled across the border to Syria, along with more than 400,000 Syrian refugees who initially fled to Lebanon to escape the Syrian war. Now they are returning to their war-torn homeland to seek safety from Israeli attacks. Israel has bombed two of the three official border crossings between Lebanon and Syria. In Syria, the Israeli bombardments continue. In north-east Syria, the Turkish army is bombing Kurdish positions, and in eastern Syria along the border with Iraq, the US army is bombing. Depending on the situation, the attacks are justified with weapons smuggling by Hizbullah (Israel), a threat to national security (Turkey), attacks by Iranian militias or an attack on the Islamic State (USA). The security of the population in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq has long ceased to play a role. And if they fight back with so-called “non-state” actors – because their national armies are too weak and poorly equipped – they are released for shooting down as “terrorist organisations”.
  It all began with the division of the region after the First World War and the destruction of Palestine by the Zionist colonial settler project called Israel, which began at the end of the 19th century and whose brutal character is clearly visible in the Gaza Strip today. Israel is supported by its great role models Great Britain, France, Germany and above all the USA. Their colonial past is the textbook of the war of annihilation that is being waged against the Palestinians and the Lebanese before the eyes of the world.

A day in Beirut

The flight lands in the early evening hours of 17 November 2024. Entering Lebanon with a German passport is normally not a problem. But during the war, foreign travellers are asked about their profession, and journalists must first present themselves to General Security – the Lebanese secret service – in order to present their letters of accreditation. During the waiting time, dozens of blue helmet soldiers arrive in the waiting hall and pass – past the waiting author – in orderly rows through the passageway for diplomats and UN personnel. The small flags sewn onto the shoulders of their uniforms identify the soldiers as Spanish.
  On the journey into the city, driver A. and the author exchange the first news. Mohammad Afif, head of Hizbullah’s media office, was murdered in a targeted drone attack in the early afternoon. In the evening, an Israeli drone attacked a flat and a computer shop below it with missiles in the densely populated Mar Elias neighbourhood. A. and his brother B. – the names of both are known to the author – have found refuge in a village in the mountains east of Beirut. Their parents’ house in a village south of Sidon was partially destroyed in Israeli air raids. They have had no news from their hometown for more than a month. The brothers are receiving support for themselves and their families from relatives living abroad. A common saying in Lebanon is: “To whom Allah loves, he gives relatives abroad.” As young men, A. and B. supported their families during the civil war by working abroad. Now it is the task of the next generation of the family to help their relatives.

Destruction everywhere

Every free space along the roads from the airport to the city is parked up with cars. The internally displaced persons from South Lebanon and Dahieh are not poor; many have worked for decades somewhere in the world in order to build a house back home with the proceeds of their labour. They have opened shops, a hotel or sports facilities, or they have planted fruit plantations to supply the local market. The most important thing for people was and is to invest their hard-earned money in such a way that it enables them, their children and their parents to have a better life. Now they are spending their savings on emergency accommodation.
  The night remains restless. Israeli drones and fighter jets unload their deadly cargo over the southern suburbs of Beirut in two heavy waves of attacks. Due to the massive and deadly attacks the day before on the neighbourhoods of Mar Elias and Ras el Nabeh, not far from the French embassy and the French hospital, the Ministry of Education declares the closure of all schools in Beirut for two days. Both neighbourhoods are within the official administrative boundary of Beirut and the bombings were carried out by Israel without any warning.
  In Mar Elias, the main router for the internet supply of the affected street and side streets was destroyed in the attack, reports C., who had to flee with his family from a village in the southern province of Nabatieh. His name is known to the author. He was finally able to attend school online again, as he told the author. As it is his last school year before the Baccalauréat, comparable to the German Abitur, the lessons are of existential importance to C.. Now the connection to the online lessons has been cut, and it will be a while before the responsible organisation can repair the damage.
  The first trip of the morning takes the author to a photocopy shop to make copies of her passport with an entry stamp and the newspaper’s credentials for the Ministry of Information’s press centre. On the way, the skies over Beirut open their floodgates and it pours so heavily that buying an umbrella (made in China) is the order of the day. The internally displaced people, especially the men sitting outside the houses where they have found refuge, retreat into the entrances. How will the families who are holding out in homemade tents on the seafront or along the streets protect themselves? Where will they sleep when the rainy season begins in winter?
  Equipped with the necessary official papers, A. travels with the author in the afternoon to the places that were bombed the day before. In Mar Elias, the building with the computer shop and the flat where two people were killed by the Israeli drones is covered in black soot. As if it had been enveloped by a fireball. Cars parked in front of the building are destroyed, the police and army have cordoned off the street, where passers-by stop to look at the destruction. Everyone here knows the computer shop. It is said that the owner was the brother of an official in Hizbullah. Apparently reason enough for Israel to destroy both men and their life’s work.

Dying has become commonplace

Finding the site of the attack in Ras el Nabeh/Ras Nabaa is like searching through a labyrinth. The neighbourhood, which is close to the French University of Saint Joseph, the French hospital and the French embassy, consists of seemingly countless narrow streets and alleyways in which high-rise buildings of up to 20 storeys tower over low, historic Lebanese townhouses. Finally, A. finds the alleyway that has been cordoned off by the police and army in front of the destroyed building. The target of the attack was the house of the Syrian Baath Party, a three-storey historic building with green shutters. The Israeli missiles hit the top floor, fired from a drone that had identified its target without warning. Mohammad Afif, head of the Hizbullah media office, was killed. Five other people died with him.
  Afif was an intrepid journalist and media professional who had been using his knowledge and courage in favour of Hizbullah for many years. Western journalists were outraged by his public press conferences among the rubble of Dahieh. Hizbullah’s media office had also been the target of Israeli attacks. Only a few days before his assassination, he had held another open-air press conference there, knowing full well that Israel had threatened to assassinate him. Referring to Israeli threats to destroy Hizbullah, known in Lebanon and beyond as the “resistance”, Afif had declared: “The resistance is a nation, and a nation will never die.” On the website of the news channel Al-Manar, which Afif had helped to set up, it was said in memory of Afif that he had been “a lion in the media sector”, an outstanding personality.

Injustice, injustice, injustice

Articles in the Lebanese media raised the question of whether such a vulnerable person should even be allowed to live in neighbourhoods where they “endanger everyone”. Kazim Issa, an 80-year-old retired teacher and neighbour of the house attacked, said in response to a related question from the author: “If someone is accused of a crime – rightly or wrongly – it is not permissible to attack a house, a crowd or anywhere in civilian life at will in order to kill that person.” In other states, there would be an arrest warrant, an arrest and a trial to determine the person’s guilt. He grew up in this neighbourhood and learned from his parents as a child what respectful and peaceful coexistence looks like. “There we have a church, there we have a mosque for Sunnis, and here we have a mosque for Shiites,” says the man, describing his neighbourhood. He has learnt – and also taught his students – that there are rules for warfare and for peaceful coexistence.
  “Let’s say I want something from you, then I can’t just take it. I can’t just kill your family who live there.” Today, these rules are obviously unknown to the powerful and rich, the teacher continues. They are greedy, they steal, they use people only for their own interests, and they don’t care about their lives or their fate. Faith and conviction are unknown to them, they are only interested in money and power. When asked whether the “powerful and rich” have a nationality, Kazim Issa waves it away. They have no nationality, no religion, no values of the kind that human civilisation has produced for living together. He then thanks the author for travelling a long way to talk to him, a simple Lebanese man, and to hear what he has to say. “It’s good that you don’t just believe what the media report.”
  It is slowly getting dark when the author and A. reach a camp for 3,000 internally displaced persons in the newly restored historic centre of Beirut “Downtown”. The people are housed in an office building of the former Antra Bank and are being carefully looked after. In conversations with a group of students, a teacher and the head of the centre, many details and problems are mentioned that will be reported on later.
  In the evening, the author again receives news of an Israeli rocket attack in the centre of Beirut. The student C., who has found refuge in Mar Elias, reports that he was on his way back from the mosque when two rockets, fired from a drone, hit a nearby building in Zokak el-Blat. “Again, this horrible noise and terror”, writes C. And another acquaintance reports shortly afterwards: “The target was the headquarters of the aid organisation Al-Zahra. The building contained food, mattresses and blankets for the displaced people.” The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported five dead and at least 18 injured people who had been working in the facility.
  18 November 2024 in Beirut comes to an end with the news that Israeli missiles have once again struck the city centre. This time it hit a building not far from the headquarters of Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who is only temporarily in charge until a new president will be elected. Mikati and his team were presumably preparing for a meeting with US President Joe Biden’s special envoy, Amoz Hochstein, who is expected in Beirut on Tuesday 19 November. The meeting is rumoured to be about a ceasefire. •

First published by https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=125054 of 21 November 2024

(Translation Current Concerns)