Okay, I feel like posting something I wrote three months ago, February 20, when I first got back to Beirut. I didn't post it because I didn't want to freak out my mom. But I sent it to my friend, Emery, so you can confirm with him that I didn't just now write this.
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The last time I came back to Beirut was a year and a half ago—September after the July War. The first thing I noticed that was different was that the price of servees went up to 1500 Lebanese Lira (1 US$) from the 1000 it had been since the beginning of time. (Servees being the shared taxi that will get you most places in Beirut.) Everybody was complaining about an overall rise in prices—milk, food in general, the necessities of life.
And the already horrendous traffic became incomprehensibly worse. The roads and bridges Israel took out for the most part still have not been fixed. Any trip through Beirut will most likely meet two or three places that require detours that take at least 20 minutes.
So what’s different this time around?
The electricity is worse. Four months ago, it came in four-hour shifts. Off before 10, on from 10-2, off from 2-6, on from 6-10, and the off; it switched the next day. Living on the 8th floor required remembering this schedule. But it still wasn’t perfect. Even with good planning, I’d end up climbing those stairs. Ramadan, however, was an exception. Somehow it was pretty much on all the time. But now, when it’s supposed to be on, it flickers, or “Tacks” as they call it. So if you’re watching TV, it goes off about every five minutes and then you have to turn it back on. I just wonder what’s going to happen to my laptop batteries and other electrical appliances.
They fixed one intersection, and it actually looks and feels modern. The road there is straight and paved. It won’t bust up your car, like the rest of Lebanon. (I read a statistic that 70% of the cars in Lebanon are over 20 years old. . .Well, why would anyone spend money on a car here when the roads will just eat it up? But since this is such a display culture, there are rich people who do drive around in fancy vehicles.)
But here’s what’s REALLY different this time around. I’ve been back for 4 days. And I’ve heard the phrase, “If anything happens. . .” or “If war breaks out. . .” way too much. I’ve never heard Lebanese people talk like this before. They’re making contingency plans; talking about not being able to go to certain areas; even expressing concern about being able to see certain friends. We went to visit my Druze friends in Aley yesterday, and my fiance’s dad expressed concern about us going up there. “Wouldn’t it be better if they came here?” My Druze friend mentioned how her 11-year-old has some Shia friends. He asked if he could put away the picture of Walid Jumblatt, displayed prominently on top of the TV, when they came over. “Of course, Habibi.” The situation is very tense.
Black Sunday happened January 27, 2008. There were snipers around the Mar Mikhael church. That’s intensely symbolic and significant for the Lebanese. The Mar Mikhael church is on the Green Line, the border that divided “Muslim” West Beirut from “Christian” East Beirut—that no man’s land during the 17-year Civil War, littered with snipers. Yesterday, I heard that a Palestinian got killed by some followers of Hariri. I haven’t heard the news to be able to confirm—but it doesn’t really matter. If people are talking about it, that’s enough. The general consensus among the Lebanese is that the Civil War officially began when a bus passing through Ain El Remaine (the neighborhood of the Mar Mikhael church) was stopped and attacked by masked men who have never been identified. 17 Palestinians were assassinated.
Of course, Lebanese politics is too complicated to be Muslim vs. Christian. It wasn’t that simple for the first Civil War. And the Western Press will make this one out to be Sunni vs. Shia. They do that for Iraq. Eventhough when I ask my Iraqi refugee friends here in Lebanon what they are—Sunni or Shia? They say that question doesn’t make sense. They never identified themselves as either. If you go back to their grandparents, they were both. But of course the Western media likes to make it out like this. They like maps showing areas of Sunnis, and Kurds, and Shias, and some Christians. Though have you ever seen a map of Los Angeles in a Western paper showing Black areas, and White areas, and Korean areas, and Mexican areas? It’s good for Westerners to make out that “Eastern” or “foreign” places are inhabited by people who are just innately savage. Then they don’t have to take any of the blame for themselves.
But it’s not Sunni vs. Shia. The Christians are diverse and split. Even some of the Druze are with the opposition, but they are mostly with the Sinoura/Hariri (both Sunnis) government. It’s far more complicated than the Western press will be able to depict.
Was the cause of the Civil War in Lebanon a bad constitution that put a minority—the Christians—in charge and gave them a disproportionate amount of power? Not really. It wouldn’t have caused the Civil War. It was the Palestinian problem. Yasser Arafat had created a fiefdom in Beirut, and that was causing too many problems for Israel. Israel joined with their historic brothers, the Christians ??? to fight their mutual Muslim enemies. (Wait. Aren’t there Palestinian Christians??)
But make no mistake. The first Civil War was an offshoot of the Israeli agenda to take and steal land from native Arab people. The Lebanese point out that religious Israeli Jewish people consider their Promised Land to extend all the way to the Litani River, which includes all of southern Lebanon. This was the area that Israel occupied from 1982 to 2000, when Hizbollah claims they successfully kicked them out.
What else is different after the July War of 2006? Israel destroyed the Khiam prison. Good thing I went a couple years ago. It was a museum run by Hizbollah, displaying the medieval torture devices that the Israelis used against innocent Lebanese people who had never been given a trial. Just for living in south Lebanon —they were associated with terrorism. When the Israelis left, all of Lebanon watched with tears the liberation of the prison. It’s celebrated as a national holiday. May 25 is Liberation Day.
After my first two weeks in this country back in September 2004, I was standing outside during a break with my students. I heard a loud noise.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s just the Israelis flying their planes illegally over our air space, making those sonic booms, just to intimidate us.” The look on their faces and the tones in their voices said the rest— “Those assholes.”
The Lebanese give the Palestinians in their country a very hard time. They haven’t made them citizens. They still live in refugee camps, and this past May there was a two-month standoff with the Lebanese Army, where the Army basically bombed and destroyed Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian camp, near Tripoli. Why? Because the camp was harboring al-Qaeda-ish terrorists.
These people, many of whom were born on Lebanese soil, are not given Lebanese citizenship; they cannot own property; they can only work 17 prescribed jobs.
Are the Palestinians to blame for the Civil War? Some Lebanese think so. But are they going to blame the victim? Most people say it’s Israel. And after the 2006 War, why wouldn’t they? Israel destroyed in 2 days what it took 15 years to rebuild. And the country will take a VERY LONG TIME to recoup. As the economy gets crappier, the shebab (those unemployed, futureless young men who make civil wars) get more and more antsy.
Some would blame the state of the economy on Hizbollah. Their strike against the current US-backed government has stopped all the business downtown. This is horrible and has completely ruined many people’s lives and have put many people out of work. Some Lebanese say Hizbollah started the war, by kidnapping those two Israeli soldiers. Others say those soldiers were on Lebanese soil, and the Israelis had already planned the war with the US back in March.
Hizbolla keeps saying they are the Resistance. They are resisting Israel, who at any moment will wantonly try to come to Lebanon to grab land and water and wantonly destroy property and kill people. Nasrallah has repeatedly said that none of their guns or arsenal will ever be turned against their fellow country men. Hey, he was friends with Rafik Hariri. Those guns and that arsenal (he claims to have nukes) are pointed against Israel—as a defense, as a resistance.
The Israelis again will start another war in Lebanon, just so they can take. Oh wait, maybe I mean Syria. It’s Syria, isn’t it, who’s created all the havoc since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, three years ago on Valentine’s Day? There have been 18 political assassinations since, to bolster their pawns/clients in the Lebanese government—Hizbollah.
Either way it’s the foreign influence, be it Syria, Israel, Iran, or the US that will bring about another Civil War in Lebanon.
People say, “If anything happens. . .” And then promptly follow it with, “But nothing’s going to happen.”
Nothing’s going to happen.
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