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Israeli
Missiles Still Crash into the Memory of What Once Was
By BARUCHA CALAMITY
PELLER
Beirut.
Five hours after the ceasefire between
Israel and Hezbollah. In a village just north of the Litani River
I walk over houses, houses that have become ruins of what once
was. Here are prayerbeads still in their box, there a single
shoe, a little farther-a babywalker. Lift up this foam mattress
and there is the blood of the child who slept there when the
missile hit.
Walking through the rubble
I come across something more lying there, something somehow familiar.
They are two photographs -- moments frozen in time, something
that once was, suspended in my shaking hand. A woman with black
eyes like arrows piercing space, lips set and her hand motionless
holding a piece of fruit. The next photograph is a group of people,
men, women, girls and boys, posed with hands on each others'
backs in the foyer of a home.
A man walks through the rubble,
he picks up pieces here and there and drops them again. Suddenly
he walks towards a bulldozer with a Hezbollah flag waving from
the top and directs the driver towards one end of the wreckage
before walking back in my direction. His mother, sister, nephew
and cousin were asleep where this home once stood when the Israeli
missile struck fierce a few nights ago. The ceasefire has permitted
him to come back to the site to silently sift through the remains
of his family.
I stumble over the ruins to
him and gently hand him the photographs. He shuffles slowly through
the pictures of his family, one over another, three times, and
puts them in his pocket. He looks at me, looks through me, eyes
empty.
There is a ceasfire, but how
to put the pieces back together?
Twenty minutes before seven
am, when the ceasefire was scheduled to take effect, Israeli
bombing could be heard in all directions, near and far, and the
missiles seemed to race against the last seconds of war. Fifteen
minutes before ceasefire, one of these missiles hit a home outside
of Nabitiye and killed a forty year old disabled man who lived
alone. His neighbors did not rejoice in the ceasefire-they were
busy collecting the man's body parts. His head was found severed
with a single finger in the mouth. Today many Lebanese people,
displaced by the four week war, left the schools, centers, and
parks housing refugees in the north to return to their homes.
Many of them did not know if their houses were still standing,
and what had become of family members and friends left behind
in the villages. Some, whose homes had been destroyed, remained
in the centers, or arranged to stay with relatives.
Because Israel bombed virtually
all of the roads and bridges in the south of Lebanon and over
the Litani River, those returning spent hours on the road as
a makeshift bridge was hastily constructed.
There was some joy, though
not entirely celebratory, visible on the roads and entrances
to towns. Hezbollah flags were held in passenger's hands and
the portrait of Nasrallah a common sight in rear windows. As
the Israeli soldiers retreated from southern Lebanon with occasional
glances over their soldiers, and missile-launching planes vanished
from the sky, people felt at ease on their land again. After
the destruction of two Israeli warships, fourteen tanks, and
the deaths of over 70 soldiers, all culminating in a somber Israeli
retreat, Hezbollah claimed the ground war victory. For many Lebanese
this was predictable. If during its 23-year occupation here Israel
was unable to defeat Hezbollah and the Lebanese resistance (finally
being pushed out by Hezbollah in 2000), then how could Israel
expect to disarm and crush Hezbollah in one month? Yet amongst
the relief of the Israeli retreat, there is an utter sadness
of returning to places in the south where there were once parks,
stores, homes, schools and entire villages, where now only a
few houses remain and the rest is flattened, where histories
have become totaled beneath cement. Some villages stink with
the decomposition of bodies, and as the cleanup continues, the
Lebanese civilian death count will surely multiply. And from
within the anguish of the rubble and lives lost there is danger:
undetonated grenades, cluster ammunitions, and fragmentations
illegally used by the Israelis. In the first day of the ceasefire
a few people returning to their homes and a red cross worker
have triggered these weapons.
As a United Nations MAC worker
(part of a mine cleaning team) put it: "We just finished
cleaning these things up in the south from the last time the
Israelis used them. They (Israelis) even gave us maps of where
they were. Now they scattered them everywhere all over again.
It's like going right back to zero."
The families must start all
over again as well. A group of sisters and their small children,
who have been living in a refugee center in Saida, plan to stay
with relatives in Beirut. They survived the bombing in their
village on the Israeli border for twenty days. When the house
they were in got hit the women called out the names of their
children and where able to find the ones that survived.
One woman with her children
was unaware that her sister was only meters away for an entire
week obstructed by the rubble that had fallen between them. Another,
who was seven months pregnant with twins, gave premature birth
into the toilet while the village burned and bombs fell continuously.
Among the sounds of bombs were her cries and those of the first
baby she birthed,a girl who came out feet first and died instantly.
A boy was birthed afterwards and died 24 hours later. She had
been trying to concieve for four years before the war. The sisters
were able to walk with their children to another village, and
then another, under impossible circumstances of air bombardment
and artillery fire of soldiers crossing over from Israel, and
were eventually evacuated by the Red Cross to Saida.
In refugee centers in Saida
survivors of the first Qana massacre in 1996 await return to
Qana once again, where this month an Israeli missile killed 41
people, mostly children. A family with eight children from a
village outside of Nabatiye will stay with relatives -- their
house was destroyed by a missile and they hid out for a week,
as two of the children fell very sick from having no water or
food, until escaping the bombardment to arrive to relative safety
in Saida.
There is a ceasefire, but how
to put the pieces back together?
Families shattered, scattered
from graveyards to the long highway home. Eyes tatooed with scenes
of horror. Bodies waiting beneath wreckage to be named and buried.
Homes gone. Yes, there is a ceasefire. A ceasefire that cannot
stop the pain.
Dahiye, the southern suburbs
of Beirut, is a city of rubble. People appear miniscule walking
amongst the skyscraping ruins. Even in the chaos of wreckage-
clothes and toys strewn about, rebar twisting towards the sky,
mountains of concrete and remains-there is a certain absoluteness
to destruction, somehow everything that is still remaining becomes
the same -- gone.
The walls of homes that once
protected families and cradled their lives are now in pieces,
shreds, fine dust. Sift through the rubble. Kick the rubble.
Stand still, silent, alone with the absoluteness of destruction
and accompanied by the millions of shattered pieces of everything
that was here before. Leave the rubble. Try to forget. Walk away
from the terrible sight. But your mind is in pieces, lives in
pieces, people who never again will stand in the doorway with
greetings. You can walk away. There is a ceasefire. But missiles
fall, they fall, not from the skies, but behind Lebanese eyes,
they fall forever in memory, they are still crashing into what
once was.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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