A Border Ready To Erupt

Ahmed Quraishi, 22 August 2006

The tanks stopped for a while and then disappeared behind town houses. The Hezbollah boys heaped a sigh of relief and the funeral in Bint Jbeil went ahead. My team and I had just arrived here. Out of nowhere a young Lebanese man violently pushed me from the back. He was a Hezbollah cadre and was standing behind me guarding a cluster bomb lying on the roadside, right next to a parked car, apparently a leftover from an Israeli air raid. He had marked the bomb by placing stones around it. I almost stepped on it as I moved backwards to make place for the black chador-clad women passing by me.

This was another sign of how well organized Hezbollah is: despite the destruction all around us, and despite the funeral, their cadres were still well organized: now in plain clothes and not brandishing any weapons. These young members of the militia were busy pulling out bodies from under the rubble, arranging funerals, cleaning the debris on major roads, and watching out for cluster bombs left behind by Israeli soldiers.

It’s a truce, or a “cessation of hostilities” as the United Nations has called it. But the Hezbollah fighters, all young men, know it’s a fragile one and could reverse back into war any moment. My team and I wanted to see the Israeli soldiers still in the area, still on the Lebanese territory. We drove up the mountain, toward Maroon El Ras, leaving Bint Jbeil behind us. For all of you political buffs who watched the war, these two towns where the first in Lebanon to receive Israel’s wrath in the 33-day war.

No sooner we reached the main road passing through the town, my Lebanese driver, Abu Esaam, refused to drive and stopped the car. “There’s not a single human being here,” he shouted. I have not seen him this scared when Israeli fighter jets were pounding parts of Beirut close to where he went to sleep every night. “The Lebanese army has not cleared the area. There could be unexploded bombs everywhere.”

There was another problem. Israeli soldiers were not very far. If we ran through them, we’d have to talk to them, or they talk to us. There were a few Hezbollah boys hiding in the nearby houses. Someone was bound to see us and we’d get into trouble on our way back, when the militia cadres would intercept us, thinking we’re collaborators.

So my team and I left Abu Esaam in the car, and walked into Maroon El Ras. This was the most haunting experience of the war. Houses are standing quiet. No sign of life. Just a breezy wind and maybe a stray cat. All buildings riddled with bullets. Not a single house in the town standing intact. And a cow lying on the ground with just her face recognizable. She was apparently hit by something that burned the middle part of her body and left the sides intact. Maybe a small rocket.

There are so many details here that I want to keep for another day. The point that needs to be made here is how fragile the border area between Lebanon and Israel is. In Bint Jbeil, it was amazing to see Hezbollah cadres taking out a joint funeral for several fallen comrades. There were no mediamen here except for my team of three PTV Network journalists and another Canadian television team. The Hezbollah cadres we saw are tough young men. They are not brandishing any weapons now in public after the Lebanese army has decided to deploy troops in Hezbollah areas of the south adjacent to Israel. They are well trained and well organized. And they know the war is still not over.

The Israeli soldiers are also not very far from their Hezbollah enemies. Both sides are hiding inside abandoned houses and, in Hezbollah’s case, in underground bunkers. The Lebanese army, which has supposedly begun deployment in the area in compliance with a U.N. resolution, is nowhere to be seen near the border areas with Israel. And it has not begun collecting Hezbollah’s weapons. Nor is the expanded international force anywhere in sight. This is the force that is supposed to assist the Lebanese army in disarming Hezbollah. This is adding to Israel’s frustration.

Moreover, in the border areas with Israel, Hezbollah is sending a tougher message to Lebanon’s government and to the international community. This message is far harsher than the more nuanced and diplomatic statements made by its officials in the capital, Beirut. “Any hand that tries to disarm us is an Israeli hand, and we will chop it off,” says a Hezbollah banner in one of the border towns we passed through overlooking Israel.

The Lebanese people have seen so many wars that they have developed a sixth sense that alerts them beforehand when things are not good. And they are not good at this moment. U.N. resolution 1701 is just a temporary relief for all sides until new hostilities break out.

And the signs are clear: the Lebanese government has sent its army to the south but appears to have balked at disarming Hezbollah, especially after Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah’s angry speech last week when he warned that disarming his militia was not a proper way to “talk to the winners” in the war.

This has led Beshara Charbel, the chief editor of the daily al-Balad, owned by the assassinated former premier Rafic Hariri, to make this sarcastic comment in an editorial over the weekend:

“All we ask of the government [of Lebanon] and of Hezbollah is to tell us clearly where they stand … [so that] we, the ordinary people, can begin to plan what to do next. Either we dig out a trench and prepare for another war, or simply beg a foreign embassy for a visa to get out of the country. Or simply get drunk and laugh at the situation and enjoy the beauty of this confusion.”

The writer was a PTV World correspondent in Beirut during the conflict. This report was first published by Pakistan’s The Nation daily newspaper.