Israel’s ongoing attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, which have taken hundreds of civilian lives, elicits a sense of déjà vu. Indeed, we have been here before–in 2006, when Israel invaded Southern Lebanon, destroyed East Beirut, but was forced to withdraw in defeat. I visited Beirut then as a member of a peace delegation and wrote about what I saw: the massive destruction caused by Israel’s air force, the national unity that the invasion forged behind Hezbollah, Hezbollah’s political and military tactics that enabled it to win the war, the first major defeat inflicted on Israel.
The following account, based on several reports I filed for Focus on the Global South during that trip, shows why I am convinced that the outcome of the struggle between Israel and Hezbollah will be a repeat of 2006.
One cannot go to the Middle East and seriously grapple with its many challenges without encountering the oppressive reality of Israel, an apartheid state that not only has its jackboot on the neck of the Palestinian people but is a threat to its Arab neighbors as well. This fact seared itself permanently in my consciousness when Focus on the Global South put together and led a 12-person international solidarity mission to Lebanon in mid-August of that year. We had been asked by friends in Beirut to come and witness what Israel was doing to their country and how the Lebanese were resisting.
Israel Makes the Rubble Bounce in South Beirut
By the time we arrived in Beirut, the Israelis had been pounding South Beirut for nearly 30 days but had been fought to a standstill in Southern Lebanon. As an excuse for its aggressive actions, the Israelis said that Hezbollah, the radical Islamic force that had a carved out a strong presence in Lebanon, had staged a cross-border raid and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. But everyone saw through that rationale and knew that the aim of the Israeli invasion and bombing was to crush Hezbollah before it became a force that could stand up to it.
Our friend Nahla Chahal and our other hosts lost no time in bringing us on a tour of South Beirut on the morning of August 13, one day before a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah and the government of Lebanon would take effect. The destruction was horrific. Whole high-rises had been reduced to rubble, whole neighborhoods were flattened. Although the Israelis had issued advanced warnings to the population to leave weeks earlier, this was the economic equivalent of the collective punishment that the Nazis had dealt whole communities in occupied Europe where German troops had been killed by resistance forces. South Beirut was a Hezbollah stronghold, so non-combatants must be punished for “sheltering” Hezbollah fighters—that was the logic. But as in rural Southern Lebanon, collective economic punishment simply stiffened the resistance. Hezbollah retaliated with guerrilla raids and long-range and medium-range rocket attacks deep into Israel.
As around 20 of us, including media people covering our mission, poked around the ruins of a 12-story building in the neighborhood of Haret Hreik, I came across a teddy bear, a child stroller, and books. One had to be careful not to slip and fall into the cracks of ruined structures. The silence was eerie; these were streets that only a month before had been bustling with traffic, noise, and life. We were also mindful of the Israeli drones hovering overhead since all we could go on in terms of assurance was the expectation that Israel would not dare fire on civilians and foreigners investigating the wreckage and create another crisis on top of the one it already had. They would hold their fire until after we left. Sure enough, two hours after our departure, the Israelis again bombed the neighborhood we had visited, apparently with no other aim but to make the rubble bounce.
After our visit to South Beirut, we went on to Beirut University General Hospital. We briefly interviewed Firas Chahal, a 27-year-old man suffering internal and external wounds after being thrown out of a minibus when an Israeli jet bombed the bridge at the Casino du Liban. Confined in a nearby room was Khaleek Mahmoud, a 68-year-old grandmother whose legs were shattered after the roof of her house collapsed on her when Israeli warplanes pounded her village in South Lebanon. “Israel is a tyrannical state,” she told us. “You should go down there and see for yourselves.”
After visiting the hospital, we hurried to the Ecole El Ghoul in downtown Beirut, which served as temporary quarters for 355 people from 66 families from the South. One million Lebanese had been displaced by the war, so the conditions of the people we met were typical of those of a full third of the country. “The integration of the refugees into old neighborhoods brings its share of problems,” said Nahla Chahal. “Hezbollah, however, is trying its best to provide the social services to support the people in this school.”
Children and adolescents filled the courtyard and greeted our delegation with glee, taking advantage of every photo opportunity. For a few moments, confronted by this sea of smiles, the war seemed far away. The younger ones readily broke out into cheers when Vijaya Chauhan, one of our delegation members who worked with women and children in India, waved and talked to them. Then they broke into a chant that invoked the name of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that translated roughly into “Nasrallah, we’re with you/ You can bomb Tel Aviv.”
We then spent most of the afternoon with Lebanese NGOs assessing the scale of the humanitarian and ecological disaster and looking ahead to post-cease fire cooperation. Two massive blasts interrupted our discussion, but our Lebanese hosts continued talking, assuring us that the sounds came from Israeli Navy boats shelling South Beirut a few miles away.
A Brave, Stoic People
At dinner at a restaurant later that evening, the continuing sounds of explosions in South Beirut did not deter people at a nearby table from continuing to carouse loudly. The Israelis were bombing up until the last minute to terrorize the Lebanese. It was not working. They were very angry, but the Lebanese were used to war and were not about to let it get in the way of living their lives. They are brave, stoic people, I thought.
The next morning, at around 6 am, I was roused from bed by two massive blasts. They sounded very close, but they were probably coming from South Beirut. I was in a hotel in Central Beirut, which being Christian and cosmopolitan, the Israelis had exempted from the shelling. With the ceasefire due to take effect in less than an hour, the Israelis were still trying to get their punches in. These guys are unbelievable, I thought. But they had already lost.
The bittersweet mood in Beirut on the day when the ceasefire took effect was perhaps best expressed that morning by Rahul, a taxi driver, who told me, “We won, but at what cost? So many people displaced, so many dead, so many buildings destroyed.” The final toll of this war was still being counted, but experts from NGOs said it was likely that the death count would go above 1,400 and the economic damage would reach $6 billion.
But the Hezbollah were still standing. They had accomplished what was hitherto thought impossible, so I decided to make a detailed account of what people told me and what my impressions were during that historic day and the rest of my stay in Beirut.
As soon as the cessation of hostilities came into effect at 8 am, cars and vans and trucks started to roll down to the south as people who took refuge in Beirut and other parts of the country went back to their homes. “They’ll most likely find their houses gone, but their lands will still be there and there’s really no place like home,” said Anwar El Khalil, an MP representing the area of Marieyoun, the site of the strafing of a civilian convoy by Israeli planes last week, who himself was eager to return home. With a full third of the country’s inhabitants having been displaced from their homes, a massive civilian movement was expected to bring traffic along the country’s main highways to a crawl in the next few days.
Why Hezbollah Won the War
There was no doubt about who the loser was in the war. Everyone we talked to on that day of national pride agreed with the editorial in the Daily Star, Lebanon’s liberal English language paper, that asserted, “The Israeli government has been discredited and serious wrinkles in the US-Israeli relationship have been exposed. The Israelis now have to contend with a political arena that is in disarray.” With even members of the government of then Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert saying that Israel had lost the war, the Jewish state was indeed plunged into its worst political crisis in years.
In Lebanon the situation was different. In the 30-day war, most of the country’s political groups and most of the country came together to support the struggle against Israeli aggression led by the Shiite Muslim-led organization. First among these was the country’s Maronite Christian President Emile Lahoud, who was not shy about praising “the leadership of Hezbollah in the national resistance.”
Everybody acknowledged that Hezbollah’s sterling military performance was the source of what the Daily Star called the “unprecedented level of solidarity” of Lebanese society today. Domestic critics who, at the start of the war, accused Hezbollah of dragging Lebanon into war by capturing two Israeli soldiers for prisoner-exchange purposes were quiet in those heady days of national pride.
If anything had been put to rest by the events of the last 30 days, it was the lie that Hezbollah was a terrorist organization. Deliberate Israeli targeting of civilian targets while Hezbollah fighters focused on fighting Israeli soldiers put the shoe on the other foot. Indeed, there was now a massive clamor among international civil society groups to try the Israeli political leaders and the army for war crimes and state-sponsored terror.
It had not only been Hezbollah’s military prowess that was on display but also its tremendous capacity to provide welfare services, in this instance, for the country’s displaced population. Indeed, in a country whose social services, especially for the poor, are very backward, Hezbollah’s social infrastructure was a model of efficient modernity. It ran, for instance, 46 medical centers and a hospital.
Hezbollah experts explained to us that there were three main reasons for Hezbollah’s victory. One was the employment of rockets to neutralize Israeli airpower and give Hezbollah an offensive air capability without airplanes. The second was Hezbollah’s use of guerrilla warfare, which stymied an Israeli Army used to fighting conventional Arab armies. Third was the Hezbollah fighter who was “not only a guerrilla trained in self-reliance but is also filled with ideological conviction that he is on the right track.”
“An Arab Che Guevara”
Beirut on the evening of August 14 was a city filled with sorrow and pride, with the latter clearly dominant. Throughout the city, there were motorcades celebrating Hezbollah and its General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah. Everyone tuned in when Nasrallah came on television at 9 pm to announce what he considered a “tremendous strategic victory for Lebanon” and announced Hezbollah’s preparedness to withdraw its fighters behind the Litani River.
As he spoke, a high official of the Lebanese Communist Party, perhaps the epitome of secular politics in Lebanon, said of the man who was the face of Islamic politics, “There is our Arab Che Guevara — with a turban….”