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Friday 5 September 2008

The Lebanese really blame Hezbollah

Michael Young says that some of Beirut’s citizens even welcome the Israeli bombardment, praying it will bring to an end the suffering caused by the Islamists

The Lebanese Prime Minister, Faoud Siniora, has said that ‘the gates of hell have been opened up in Lebanon’ — and it’s difficult to disagree. But what has not been so widely reported is that while officials will blame Israel for the misery and chaos, a substantial number of Lebanese — in some cases, ironically, the officials themselves — have a more nuanced view. Of course the people here are angry and anxious about the possibility of a widening of the Israeli attacks, but their rage, as they see the country being taken apart, is often directed against Hezbollah.

The Lebanese people have watched as Hezbollah has built up a heavily armed state-within-a-state that has now carried the country into a devastating conflict it cannot win and many are fed up. Sunni Muslims, Christians and the Druze have no desire to pay for the martial vanity of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Nor will they take kindly to his transforming the devastation into a political victory.

Some even welcome Israel’s intervention. As one Lebanese politician said to me in private (but would never dare say in public) Israel must not stop now. It sounds cynical, he said, but ‘for things to get better in Lebanon, Nasrallah must be weakened further’.

Even some Shiites are beginning to have doubts about Nasrallah. If interviewed on television they will praise Hezbollah, but when the cameras are off, there are those who will suddenly become more critical. Many have had to flee, leaving behind their homes and possessions with no hope of recovering anything of any worth.

One evening this week I looked out of my apartment window in the Christian neighbourhood of Ashrafieh and saw an Israeli shell exploding on top of the grain silo at Beirut port. The colossal concrete silo got the better of that exchange, but in the Shia quarters of southern Beirut the bombs have won outright. Hezbollah’s so-called ‘security perimeter’ — the party’s sanctum sanctorum, where Nasrallah and his officials lived and worked — has been reduced to a smouldering wasteland. Displaced Shia families have moved into Beirut proper, taking refuge in schools, public facilities and empty apartments.

Here in Beirut, Nasrallah is also blamed for the suffering in southern Lebanon which, under heavy fire from Israeli cannons, has suffered in the same way as the southern half of the city. On Tuesday, a family of nine died after air strikes in Aitaroun; another family was killed in Tyre. It’s difficult for journalists to gain access to the south since the Israelis have bombed all the roads and bridges, but local television crews on the ground record an exodus of refugees northwards. Now that Israel has started targeting transport trucks — in the hope of preventing the movement of weapons to Hezbollah — it is becoming increasingly difficult for even UN aid to get through.

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