While the ceasefire with Israel is laboriously maintained, we offer a report from the areas hardest hit by the war. The agreement was finalized on the day of a Marian feast, as happened in 2006. The damage caused by the very heavy bombings in the last hours before the truce came into force. A nun from Nabatieh says that “the whole city is dead, our school will not be able to reopen before February.”
Beirut () – “They feel victorious, because their spirit has not been broken. On the border they fought like lions.” Thus comments Habib N.
(Associate Professor at Saint-Joseph University of Beirut) the incredible festival of Hezbollah’s yellow flags that were displayed on all television screens on November 27, the morning that the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect. “A victory, but at what price,” he adds.
“It’s the feast of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal,” observed the WhatsApp message from a journalist friend early in the morning. “It’s a beautiful sign! It’s not a coincidence.” Do we owe the ceasefire to prayer? Maybe. Why not? In many parishes there had been incessant prayers for the Israeli air force to stop its deadly aerial ballet. A few hours later, a photo circulating on cell phones showed a dove-shaped cloud formation over Notre-Dame du Tell, in Zahlé, where half of the Shiite Bekaa had taken refuge. Another “beautiful sign.” “Indeed, the 2006 war ended on the day of the Feast of the Assumption, August 15,” recalls a consecrated laywoman from the diocese of Antelias. Filmed just minutes after the ceasefire came into effect by early risers inAl Manar Hezbollah’s television network, cars were speeding along the southern highway. It was a fascinating sight at dawn. Hearts were happy, but a few hours later traffic jams of several kilometers formed and Israeli warning shots and roadblocks by the army, which was beginning to deploy, prevented the inhabitants of the villages where Israeli troops are still stationed from returning to their homes. A photographer from Associated Press
He was injured in the leg when he got too close to a tank. “Have we fallen into a trap? Do they want to occupy the destroyed border strip?”
In the southern suburbs of Beirut, amid the roar of automatic weapons, cars move slowly through a sea of motorcycles and streets strewn with debris. The real inhabitants are distinguished from the young agitators in black shirts of the pro-Iran party. They even hand out yellow flags and sweet pastries. There is desolation everywhere, but the news of the ceasefire eases all pain. Two men can be seen hugging and crying, as if after a long absence, while others take photographs on the rubble of destroyed buildings.
The last day of the war was terrible. Twenty attacks in 120 seconds. The aviation was mainly focused on the branches of Hezbollah’s banking institution. “I saw my car burning on television,” a man commented into a channel’s microphone. “I shook like a leaf for two hours with the roar of the attacks,” Asma F tells me over the phone.
a university professor who lives in Hazmiyé, a neighborhood in the suburbs. “I didn’t sleep all night,” he adds.
Following the advice of Avichay Adraee, the Arabic (Jewish-accented) spokesman for the Israeli army, many Beirutians disoriented by the Israeli airstrikes slept in their cars parked in “safe places,” in Beirut’s Christian neighborhoods or in the Plaza de los Mártires, in the center of the city.
The return is massive and impressive, in all the regions attacked by the Israeli air force. The enormous craters left by the grenades on the road that separates the Lebanese and Syrian border crossings are being filled by trucks loaded with large blocks of stone from the quarries of the Anti-Lebanon Mountain Range, under the watchful eye of the Minister of Public Works and Transport , Ali Hamiyé, to allow displaced Syrian refugees to return to the battered Bekaa. In Tyre, Israeli raids have left some neighborhoods uninhabitable. You can still see ruined buildings with smoke coming out of them. “There is no water or electricity, not even the private generators work because they have cut the cables,” complains the owner of a “rest house” on the beach of Tire. Several buildings on the promenade, the jewel of the city, were destroyed. “There are no military objectives here. They wanted to hurt Nabih Berry. It’s pure evil,” laments the owner of an oriental pastry shop, his voice drowned out by the roar of the bulldozers. The mayor of Tyre, Hassan Dbouq, declared to the
AFP
that “more than 50 buildings between three and 12 stories high have been completely destroyed by Israeli attacks” and dozens of others were damaged by up to 60%.
The same thing happens almost everywhere. In Nabatieh, the Antonine Sisters school, which has 1,800 students from kindergarten to senior grade, was severely damaged. “There is no water, no electricity, no internet,” laments Sister Marie Touma, director of the institution. The whole city is dead. The children’s building was severely damaged by the explosions. Some pillars fell and the walls were destroyed. The school’s door and window frames disappeared. “It will take two weeks just to repair the windows. I don’t think the school will be able to reopen before February.”
The attacks continued on Wednesday until an hour before the ceasefire took effect. The last raid was against the neighborhood where the house of Anas Mdallali, a Syrian tailor who has lived in Tire for ten years, is located. “I cried with rage,” the 40-year-old says, looking at the piles of rubble blocking the entrance to his building. “Since yesterday I have been taking medication after the shock, I look at the destruction and my children’s toys and I cry.” The entire country is still in a state of shock.
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