I am finally back in the United States. After spending ten days in Syria, helping my family cope with the loss of their lives in Lebanon, I am back to my own life over here.
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Both my brother and sister had to leave loved ones behind, who sought the safety and comfort of their families. My brother is now on his way to London; his long-time girlfriend to Australia. My sister is on her way to Dubai; her long-time boyfriend is staying behind in Lebanon to salvage what remains of his business. Both their sets of friends are dispersing all over the world. The networks of relationships that were such a crucial part of their lives are now broken. They have to start their lives from scratch.
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Despite all this, our family ranks among the lucky few. Yet even the "lucky" among us now have to deal with disrupted lives, in all senses of the phrase: broken relationships; shattered livelihoods; failed investments and much, much more. All we have left is hope: hope that we will be able to rebuild what has been destroyed, and hope that the situation will not deteriorate any further.
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A couple of days before the doors of hell opened in Lebanon, I visited a pub that a high school friend of mine had just launched in the Jemayze neighborhood of Beirut. He had worked an entire year to line up partners, get the permits, renovate the building, and actually build the pub from the ground up. All his work summed up to naught. For even if the war were to come to a close tomorrow, he would not be able to operate because his clientele no longer exists. They boarded those ships, and paid between five hundred to a thousand dollars for rides to Damascus, where they boarded planes and flew to whatever part of the globe they could get to. I wonder how he is doing.
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I want this war to end now. The last thing I want, however, is a return to the status quo ante so that we face another wave of destruction five, ten, or fifteen years down the road. And in all honesty, I simply don’t want to give Israeli generals another reason to flex their destructive muscles at our dire expense.
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Lebanon will never recover from this brutal blow unless Lebanese are assured that such a calamity will not befall them again. The worst outcome - the absolute worst outcome - would be if all this destruction and death comes to naught, and a real political change for the better does not materialize in Lebanon and the region.
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25 comments:
Welcome back Raja, we missed you terribly.
Dear Raja
i am profoundly saddened by the loss and heartbreak that you describe..
i am however profoundly encouraged by the strength and the hopes that you convey..
i join your dreams of a better future..
may none of us.. or our kids or kids' kids for generations to come.. see any destruction ever again
Peace
lirun
tel-aviv
www.emspeace.blogspot.com
the eastern mediterranean has cried enough..
Raja,
It is good to know you are safe.
I came first to your blog at the beginning of the war, via the blog of an Ami Ben Basat, an Israeli blogger.
and i was reading your informative, objective reports with a lot of respect for your calm and your trying to be as objective as possible.
AND I WAS happy to learn that most of Lebanese people are just like most of us Israelis -we want to live our lives, we want to wake up in the morning and go to work, and spend time with friends and family and go to pubs, of cinema, or theatre at evening and rejoice life.
It is shattering to see how a "hand full" of extremist that are motivated constantly by hatred and a will to kill are forcing you Lebanese and to a certain degree us Israelis =to be their hostage
I am sorry to see the destruction of civilian life in Lebanon, each civilian, each baby that is being killed or wounded from our side - is indeed terrible.
and so unfair!!!!
it is unfair that Hizbulla is hiding inside Mosques, inside civilian houses putting their life in jeopardy.
It is unfair they are not letting the sane people try to make their living and grow their children
it is unfair that a 18 israeli soldier has die to protect the land that had already shattered so many lives.
Lebanon has to eliminate Hizbulla destructive power
Or
as you choose to say it:
"I want this war to end now. The last thing I want, however, is a return to the status quo ante so that we face another wave of destruction five, ten, or fifteen years down the road. And in all honesty, I simply don’t want to give Israeli generals another reason to flex their destructive muscles at our dire expense."
Be well
We hope here after destroying Hizbulla inciative we can make The middle east the paradise it can become
Get rid of Hizbollah and it's over.
Raja: "The last thing I want, however, is a return to the status quo ante so that we face another wave of destruction five, ten, or fifteen years down the road. And in all honesty, I simply don’t want to give Israeli generals another reason to flex their destructive muscles at our dire expense." Have the Israelis done enough, yet, to prevent that "return to the status quo ante"?
Amir Taheri in the Times today (and I would be interested to know if Mr Taheri has the details, particularly those in the third and fourth paragraphs, right):
"According to Naim Kassem, Hezbollah’s number two, the party has an annual budget of £279m, much of which comes from businesses set up by the movement. These include a bank, a mortgage co-operative, an insurance company, a travel agency specialising in pilgrimages to Muslim holy places, several hotels, a chain of supermarkets and a number of urban bus and taxi companies.
"In its power base in southern Lebanon, particularly south Beirut and the Bekaa valley, it is possible for a visitor to spend a whole week without stepping outside a Hezbollah business unit: the hotel he checks into, the restaurant he eats in, the taxi that takes him around, the guide who shows him the sights and the shop where he buys souvenirs all belong to the party.
"Hezbollah is a state within the Lebanese state. It controls some 25% of the national territory. Almost 400,000 of Lebanon’s estimated 4m inhabitants live under its control. It collects its own taxes with a 20% levy, known as “khoms”, on all incomes. It runs its own schools, where a syllabus produced in Iran is taught at all levels. It also runs clinics, hospitals, social welfare networks and centres for orphans and widows.
"The party controls the elected municipal councils and appoints local officials, who in theory should be selected by the central government in Beirut. To complete its status as a virtual state, the party maintains a number of unofficial “embassies”: the one in Tehran is bigger and has a larger number of staff than that of Lebanon itself."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2281184_1,00.html
I am glad you are safe.
I would be really scared if Hassan Nasrallah was out of the picture. As Rafiq Hariri did to a lot of potentially fundamentalist Sunnis, Nasrallah in my mind bears the credit for changing Hezballah from a scary bunch of kidnappers into the disciplined force that it is today. A force capable of NOT launching a single one of its 20,000 missiles until heavily provoked by Israel bobming Lebanese civilians. I may not agree with all his policies, but the alternatives in the Shiite communities would be far worse.
-Walid
Walid,
The first step in handling your LSD addiction is admitting you have a problem.
We love you Walid.
fga: When time comes for other countries (not Israel) to deal with iran (as letting this faschist regiem have nuclear weapons is maddnes), we do not want to deal with both palestinian suicide bombers, HA's rockets, and who knows iranian what.
fga,
I think although HA will obviously loose significant military and economical strength, it will GAIN political power in Lebanon as a result of this conflict like it happened with Hamas on the Gaza strip.
i wouldnt count on israel fading my friends..
while i am against the continuation of the violence it is difficult for me to read such disparaging remarks about my country whenthey are not true..
we keep getting told to examine history and that there are precedents for countries "like ours" crumbling..
well why should i look at the history of others.. some of you are forgetting who we are.. we are the jewish people.. the same people who lived here over 4000 years ago and who were kicked out again and again - only to return rebuild and prosper..
we are one of the most resilient nations on earth.. not only have we maintained our identity but we have preserved and resurrected our ancient tongue while modernising it sufficiently to give birth to the worlds most active technology industry.. we are vastly industrious.. and as you type words that speak of our demise.. and as your people flee danger.. ours continue to arrive..
93 rockets were sent into israel today and 99 people or so were hurt..
nevertheless.. 250 families from the west immigrated to israel only a few days ago and many of these went to the very areas being hit and left their villas in paris and ny and elsewhere because we're not going anywhere.. and our faith and strength is indifferent to the threats..
the more you isolate us the more you challenge us to adapt.. evolve and improve..
we are a tiny nation in the scheme of the world.. but you look the percentage of jews awarded nobel prizes for achievement every year and you will not how impossible it is to ignore the disproportionately large representation that we have.. and its not like norway loves us so much..
despite what many hotheads say on this site.. i believe my nation genuinely seeks peace.. for even my radically racist cousin (she's a dr) treats arab terrorists whose missions have failed with dedication and affords them top notch medical attention when they get wheeled inand kept on life support after they detonate themselves with a view to slaughtering her me and anyone we know..
you show me one person on the other side of the fence that would keep me alive and give me state of the art medical attention at an enormous cost to the country..
so yes i agree we're not angels.. but neither are our attackers.. we could spend till the rest of time trying to reconcile the books on who has hurt who more.. and we still would never reach a conclusion..
so again.. i call out ENOUGH..
i dont want blame and i dont want excuses..
i just want peace and i want it now..
lirun
telaviv
www.emspeace.blogspot.com
because the eastern mediterranean has been soaked by too much blood..
The goverment of Olmert will not last anyway, because his agenda was one-side withdrawings, and the day HA acted - this agenda became irrelevant
Like you can predict something over here...
fga,
I think Nasrullah gaining political power might be the only thing that can move him away from terrorism. Give the man a nice salary, a big office with a view to the sea, a black car with a driver… Maybe the will to blow himself up will just fade away… In other words, give the man something to lose.
Glad to know you're safe Raja.
nip,
Yes, corruption was a big issue, but I think the PLO 'allowing' Israeli tanks roam the streets of Gaza was more significant to the Hammas rise over the PLO. No?
Actually Wallid has the chrononlogy right. I think he means the rocket attacks on Israel after the bombing started. The first attack involved the military being kidnapped, and a rocket being lainched as cover. After that, there was no attack on Israel. Then the bombs came to Lebanon. Then the rocket attacks. But believe what you want. At this point, the scale is so crazy, it should be stopped right now.
fga - we too have families suffering.. i think what you need to understand about those people in israel who support the completion of the campaign is that they do not infact enjoy this situation.. they HATE it.. they are very eager for it to end.. we have close to one third of our country that has either been evacuated.. is sleeping in bunkers or security spaces or has remained at home in terror.. elderly who cannot access proper medical attention.. children who are bunker-ridden.. you are not the only ones suffering..
i yearn for peace immeasurably.. but i also believe that lebanon needs to wake up to the pain that its complacancy has caused and is causing israel.. its aa vile form of passive aggression and - while i believe it has been unintended - recklessly impacting israel while lebanon gradually progresses to its democracy..maintaining secterial balances at the expense of our security has been the root of our problem..
obviously our conflicts on this side of the blue line are relevant to some of your sects and have fanned their fires..
but the point is that no one owns all the pain..
the point of this campaign was not just to slap naughty little lebanon on the bottom.. but it was to vastly dillute the network of cells that has been launching unprovoked attacks against us incessantly for years.. so sending our youngest and finest men into the traumatic hotbed of our national nightmares - was done for a very significant cause.. it was not mere gesture..
it would appear that the abandonment of that campaign therefore - would require for that cause to be duly addressed.. because the general israeli concern with a ceasefire.. is that if lebanon was not responsible for these attacks because it was not yet able to control HA.. then what will change now..
the proposed NATO force (in my mind) is to be injected as a factor of change.. i dont know how effective they are able to be on the ground in terms of controlling weapon flow.. but i do believe that they may effectively give us a chance to test eachother's goodwill.. and - if successful - build the trust necessary to support a mutual declaration of peace..
we all need to rise up to this opportunity.. it is something too precious and to vital to be neglected.. let's secure the peace we and our region deserve..
wish both trust and peace to all of us..
lirun
tel-aviv
www.emspeace.blogspot.com
because the eastern mediterranean deserves peace..
When two people arguing become entrenched in their positions, the argument will never stop.
When two peoples become entrenched, the war will never stop.
Both sides think they are fighting an honourable and noble cause.
Both sides believe they are in the right.
Both sides can only see the injustive done to them.
Both sides see their attacks as being made in self-defence.
Each attack leads the other side to become further entrenched in their position.
Religion is petrol to the flames.
So, men, women and children will continue to die - for what?
Peace can only come when both sides are prepared to step out of their trenches and do a deal.
someone has a greatness complex and an animosity against those who sleep.. she speaks for all - great and small - young and old - she is we - god bless her cotton sox
anyway - as fate would have it - our leaders have finally allowed diplomacy to surface from its hidden depths.. i'm sure it was going on before too by the way - and olmert has declared that a peace keeping force would be acceptible under certain circumstances.. this is a blatant softening of stance.. and it fills me with hope that maybe we are not as entrenched as it appeared just a few days ago..
hopefully our region will again see calm times and the rotten 10% can return to their caves - godwilling for good this time..
wishing you all safety and peace..
lirun
tel-aviv
www.emspeace.blogspot.com
(i reckon the eastern mediterranean comprises at least 50% tear water)
~~~~~Raja:~~~~~~~All we have left is hope:~~~~~
Four candles were quietly burning. The wind was calm so that it was possible to hear their conversation.
The first candle said: “I am Peace, but no one seems to be able to keep me lit forever, so I think I am going to be put out.” Then, its glow started getting dimmer until it completely extinguished.
The second candle said: “I am Faith, and I don’t find myself necessary anymore; there is not point of my staying lit any longer.” Just as it finished saying this, a strong wind blew and put the candle out.
The third candle sighed sadly and said: “I am Love and I don’t have the strength to stay lit, because people have placed me aside and don’t understand my importance anymore; they even forget to love the closest people to them.” So the third candle went out too.
Suddenly a little kid walked in and saw that the three candles were not lit. He asked them “why did you go out, weren’t you supposed to stay lit until the end?” and he broke into tears.
Just then, the fourth candle spoke and said: “don’t be sad my friend, because as long as I am lit I can light the other candles as well. I am Hope.” The kid’s eyes sparkled; he took the fourth candle, and with it he lit the other three candles- Peace, Faith, and Love!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tse.
Hope it will end soon, and hope it will end to a better situation.
There are few scenarios at this point... The situation is very delicate.
The End of War scenarios
Simon:
It's obvious that a deal needs to be made. I could see one easily being made between the Lebanese government and Israel. It's not too hard when the two parties are yearning for peace above all else, as I believe they both are.
But do you think that HA would ever make a deal with Israel (or Israel with it)? A long term deal, as opposed to a short term ceasefire for tactical advantage?
I personally don't think they ever would: they're too committed to the total destruction of Israel. Same thing for Hamas. I can't imagine any deal while these guys loom large in the picture.
That's why I'm hopeful that the current war will be the end to HA's strategic relevance, and that the tragedies that are happening every day now will be the prelude to a peaceful future. Also: that Dr. Rice can help put together something that will be really effective.
What I'm fearful of: that, after all the pain and death, we'll still be in the same situation as before. Or that one of Lebanon's neighbors moves in to "help out" and it's actually worse than before.
The worst outcome - the absolute worst outcome - would be if all this destruction and death comes to naught, and a real political change for the better does not materialize in Lebanon and the region.
I agree. Which is why this is the best option for Lebanon today.
The Lebanese must ask for help. Best to do it openly. Even if that involves the sacrifice of a few politicians, Hezbollah will have to show its face as much as the Syrians did last year, and everyone will know that Lebanon is truly a captive state, not a failed one.
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