| Tales of Resistance |
|
| Al-Ahram Weekly |
| Issue of 31 August
- 6 September 2006 (No. 810) |
|
Omayma
Abdel-Latif |
|
|
|
The mood in south Lebanon is one of sombre
defiance, writes Omayma Abdel-Latif from Bint
Jbeil |
|
Along
the road
leading to Bint Jbeil's cemetery, posters of the town's
17 shuhadaa (martyrs) adorn the streets, among them
Mohamed Abu-Toaam, a senior Hizbullah officer,
19-year-old Hussein Jomaa and the two Nidal brothers. On
Sunday hundreds of Bint Jbeil residents flocked to the
Haj Moussa Abbas complex near the town's cemetery to
honour the memory of those who fell in the battles.
Women in black gathered in the courtyard of the complex.
It was an emotional moment; many could not hide their
tears as they exchanged stories of suffering and the
loss of loved ones during the 33 days of war.
Um Bilal, 53, recounted how she and 43 members of her
family survived 21 days under heavy bombardment with
little food, moving from one house to another as they
searched for shelter. She was crying while remembering.
Her son Bilal joined the resistance, she said. "I was
praying for him and for all the young men."
Some of the fiercest battles in the war took place in
Bint Jbeil. Um Bilal's house, located in the north of
the town, was badly damaged by an Israeli missile. Two
unexploded missiles can still be seen in her garden. But
her morale is high. She decided to return to her house
despite the fact that there is still no electricity or
water.
"Everything will be rebuilt. The most important thing is
that we live with dignity," she said.
It is a commonly heard line in the towns along Lebanon's
border with Israel that were hit hard during the war and
explains why, in Bint Jbeil, perhaps the hardest hit,
400 families have already returned to their homes.
Not that those returning find much they can recognise in
the town.
"I can only think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when I see
this destruction," said Khalil Al-Sagheer, walking
through the rubble. Al-Sagheer, a Lebanese-American,
flew from Dearborn, Michigan, to visit his hometown
after the war. "It is like pilgrimage for me," he said.
As he roamed the old town, completely flattened by the
Israelis, Al-Sagheer recalled childhood memories when
the now destroyed alleyways were his playground.
"Abu Toaam died in this house in Haret Al-Jamaana," he
said, pointing to a house that has been flattened.
The scale of destruction suggests that the area was the
scene of some of the fiercest fighting in a town that
many agree put up the stiffest resistance to the Israeli
onslaught. Houses that had stood for hundreds of years
are now piles of rubble and Bint Jbeil's residents,
flocking back to check their homes, could not hide their
shock, anger and sense of loss as they moved from one
bombsite to another.
Um Qassim, 75 years old, could not hide her tears as her
son drove into the souq.
"God destroy you Israel, you are the menace," she said.
Shops, the library, the town's secondary school as well
as the main Husseiniya have all been destroyed. The
cemetery is littered with clustre bombs and unexploded
missiles, as are the courtyards of those houses that
have not been razed.
Although official figures of the number of houses
destroyed are unavailable, unofficial estimates say at
least 2,000 have been damaged, of which at least 900
have been totally destroyed.
Yet throughout the south of Lebanon the mood is of
sombre defiance. Hizbullah's "victory" over Israel is
proclaimed on the posters and banners that have appeared
across the south. It is also reflected in the
conversation of many southerners who insist that it is
better to die in dignity than to live in humiliation.
In Sedeqeen, Tyre, home to 5,000 people, not a single
building -- house, mosque, school or hospital -- was
spared the wrath of the Israeli war machine. Aita Al-Shaab
and Al-Khiyam have both been turned into ghost towns. In
such places tales of war and resistance battles are
beginning to take on a life of their own, with the war,
the victory and the heroism of the resistance almost the
only topic of conversation.
So how many fighters were there in Bint Jbeil?
"Only 30 fighters," said one resident, whose son was
with the young men. Only 30 fighters "who dealt a death
blow to one of the strongest armies in the world because
they had God on their side and they were fighting a just
cause."
Bint Jbeil's residents are under no illusions that the
reason their town was hit was because of their support
for Hizbullah. Israel wanted to demonstrate how costly
that support could be, and the belief that Israel
systematically targeted Lebanon's Shia is almost an
article of faith here.
Talk about the resistance and the victory cannot,
however, disguise the sense of loss that has engulfed
the south. Senior Hizbullah members admit that the
situation in the south of the country is catastrophic,
one reason why Hussein Ayoub, a journalist at the daily
As-Safir, shies away from describing Hizbullah's
achievement as a victory.
"In a sense, you can say Israel was victorious because
it managed to wipe many southern towns off the face of
the earth, but on the other hand it failed to achieve
the political goals of its military operation," he said.
Ayoub, who lost his 80-year-old mother during the war,
said that the Shia are torn between two responses. On
one hand there is the enormous sense of loss. "For
southerners the loss of their homes is not just a
material catastrophe but a psychological one too. The
house is the repository collective memories and most
houses in the south were built on the back of decades
and decades of hard work."
On the other hand there is the spirit of defiance,
expressed as solidarity with the resistance. The two,
says Ayoub, co-exist, though it is the latter that
remains dominant, a defence, Ayoub suggests, against
what he describes as the prevailing sense among many
Shia that they are facing attempts to marginalise them.
"The outcome of this battle was crucial to the Shia. It
has shown that attempts to marginalise them will fail.
The battle has empowered them despite heavy losses. And
despite the criticism and frustration about the effects
and the cost of the war on Lebanon's Shia they will
continue to rally behind Hizbullah since it is Hizbullah
that secured this sense of empowerment."
|
|
