Thursday, July 27, 2006

A letter from Maureen

Surviving Beirut

I am back home from Beirut, much to the relief of friends and family. My passage out, courtesy of the British Navy, came with an hour’s notice and time spent under the blazing mid-afternoon sun while, what would later become a well oiled machine, slowly ground into action.

My passage was the first British operation out of Beirut’s beleaguered harbour – it had been hit two days before in an Israeli strike - on a grain silo – which had also killed two innocent truck drivers. We made it to the boat with seconds to spare. The British Navy, indeed the British Government, was beholden to Israeli powers-that-be for a two hour window which granted us safe passage through the coastal blockade. There was clearly great nervousness that we would miss our slot. What would have happened if we had is anyone’s guess. As it was the ship maintained full speed ahead for two solid hours in order to clear the Israeli exclusion zone. Below deck we passengers, courteously referred to as ‘guests’ by our sailor ‘hosts’, waited anxiously knowing battle stations were fully manned. Would the Israelis really have wanted to initiate a spat with the British Navy? I doubted it but after what we had witnessed over the last few days, anything was possible…..

I guess the menacing whine of an approaching fighter jet is at its most potent at 4 in the morning. As the fitful city holds its breath, the planes pass overhead circling slowly time and again preparing to drop their pay load. The sickening thump of the bomb hitting the ground passes right through the body, jarring the nerves and pummelling the stomach. As one boom dies away, the next one comes. Some nights a dozen strikes would hit Beirut’s pulverized southern suburbs. Others were eerily quiet, the silence almost as threatening as the sound of the planes, their non appearance felt like some sort of crazy . stunt dreamed up by the psych-op merchants to drive us mad with anticipation? Then just as dawn was breaking, the naval bombardment would start with blasts that reverberated through the pink-grey haze rattling windows and tearing the nerves. Each volley sounded as if it had landed in the street behind, though in truth my area was considered ‘safe’ – too near Beirut’s proud American Universities and too far from Hezbollah traditional strongholds.

How strange, indeed how surreal it was to wake up in my comfortable London bed a few days later to that same unmistakable sound of jets. Where was I and what was happening? There was even a siren to complete the picture and some muffled booms. How disturbing that downwind from Heathrow, I could be tricked into thinking I was back in Beirut. Will I never hear the sound of a jet engine without thinking of the destruction of poor, courageous little Lebanon.

In the midst of one bombing raid, in anger and frustration, I wrote a paragraph to friends. I had just seen on breaking news the utterly ignominious Yo Blair exchange and read the transcription on the net. So Bush really is as simplistic as he appears and Blair has indeed lost all his dignity – but how could they laugh and joke about what I was witnessing? I let rip:

If anyone wants to know Israel has shattered 42 vital bridges and 38 roads. It has decimated parts of the south. It will reoccupy parts of the south. It has hit power stations, communications antennae, fuel storage tanks, water treatment plants and endless gas stations. It has hit the airport no less than six times. I ask you, how many times do you need to hit an airport? It has told people to get out but made the roads impassable and without petrol how are they supposed to get out, walk with their every possession on their heads? It hit the grain silo of the port - deliberately - it has blockaded the entire country so humanitarian relief cannot come in and Bush Blair applaud it. I have never been more disgusted by these leaders and their politics than at this moment and if anyone is in any doubt, let them analyse that pathetic exchange between them starting with 'yo Blair' and ending with 'gotta get home, have something to do tonight'. Meanwhile, the death rate is in excess of 10 to one for civilians

Some twenty people were on the receiving end and bless them, they forwarded my little tirade far and wide. My anger and frustration travelled through cyberspace and several more people got the picture of what ‘disproportional’ response really means. I had neglected to include the dairy farm, the lighthouse and the car recovery truck mistaken for a missile launcher. The TV transmitter, the Sidon mosque and the several mini buses filled with refugees, had not been hit yet, nor had the southern city of Tyre, nor the army base, but Israel was sticking to its promise to bomb Lebanon back 20 years.

What will happen when all you ‘whities’ have left, wrote one Lebanese friend unable to get back home to her beloved Beirut. As those who could not leave watched our evacuation gaining momentum, they feared the worst for what was to come. We left with heavy hearts, impotent to do anything if we stayed, but filled with guilt to be getting out.

Whether we ‘whities’ were there or not, the dye was cast – George, Tony, Condi and Co had greenlit this atrocity and no matter what the rest of the world felt, it was going to run its course.

The latest figures put casualties on both sides at over 400 – it is STILL 10 to 1 folks! Rockets from Iran, rockets from Syria, it’s a sort of mantra by now. But hey, where do the F16s, the Apache Helicopters and the express delivery, precision bunker buster missiles come from? It’s a bit of a no brainer. Which is why Condi says no ceasefire without meaningful plans and Tony was at a loss for words when an Arab journalist asked him if he was seriously suggesting that the killing should go on while he thought about the bigger picture. I am gearing up to try to raise money for the three quarters of a million displaced people scattered in schools, hospitals, beaches and parks across Lebanon. I wonder to myself how and where you remove all that rubble that was once the southern suburbs and home to thousands of families, and I try to work out where those who have been permanently exiled from their South Lebanon villages in yet another Israeli land grab are going to live. That is a lot for one simple mind to contemplate – I hope others better qualified than me will be giving it serious consideration!

Maureen Ali, July 2006

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