Fwd: Notes from the Siege 9&10
[more reports from Beirut]
[choice excerpt, from about 2/3 down:]
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.
[end choice excerpt]
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 address, 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 address
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.