A car trip from the Israel border at Rosh Hanikra to this luxury bedroom suburb just south of Beirut, on a beautiful hilltop overlooking the international airport, reveals a patchwork, piecemeal sort of war.
The road followed the coast, at times almost on the beach itself; at other places on cliff sides high above the blue Mediterranean. Sometimes for two or three kilometers (a mile or so) the narrow two-lane roadway is undamaged. Orange and fruit groves are dusty in the summer heat but unharmed. Farm buildings and villages are whole, with bright flowers or vines trailing over them.
But then you come to a stretch of road– a few kilometers–pockmarked by shell and bomb craters. The buildings along the roadside are heavily damaged. Some look completely destroyed.
Telephone and electricity wires trail along the ground. Pylons and phone polls are shorn off by shellfire or blast. The carcasses of damaged or burnt-out cars litter the roadsides.
Some of the vehicles were propelled by the blasts on top of the rubble of what once was a house.
TRUE PICTURE OF LEBANON
The difference — between the undamaged areas and the evident signs of war — shows where the advancing Israeli forces had to use their heavy fire power of the Air Force to silence or overcome pockets of terrorist occupation or resistance.
The Lebanese will tell you that this is a true picture of their country under Palestinian and Syrian occupation. They all appear to agree that hope for the future of their beautiful but unhappy country lies only in the rapid departure of “all foreigners and that includes you Israelis as well as the Palestinians and Syrians.”
The road from Rosh Hanikra to Beirut passes through a number of villages and two main towns — Tyre and Sidon — and a third, smaller town, Damou, some 10 miles south of Beirut. It is in all three that war damage is most evident, and civilian casualties reportedly the highest.
The damage and the casualties were not caused in the week of fighting because Israel sought to reak vengeance on the Lebanese, but because it was at these spots that Israel had to fight against well-armed opposition, even if terrorist forces were not airegular army.
TYRE, TWO-THIRDS, DESTROYED
According to a local civil engineer from Tyre, almost two-thirds of the town was destroyed by air raids, artillery and tank fire. But he said the casualties were “remarkably small.” The Israelis dropped leaflets in Arabic before making their assault, warning residents to take refuge outside the town or in the Red Crescent section of the town. But even so, the number of civilian dead runs into the several hundred in Tyre.
Damage was especially heavy in the port area where small vessels were sunk near the breakwater and buildings on the waterfront were severely damaged or completely destroyed.
In Sidon further to the north the second largest town in Lebanon, property damage in the central downtown and commercial area was the most severe. Large parts of the long central street will have to be razed and rebuilt because the buildings are beyond repair. But it is surprising that the damage and casualties were not higher, for Palestinian arms and ammunition dumps were found in the basements of high-rise buildings along the street. The residents say they were aware that they were living on terrorist and guerrilla arms dumps, but claim they could do nothing about it.
“They kept promising to remove them, but never did anything about it. And when the air raids started, we even took shelter in the basement, among the ammunition and bombs stored there,” one woman resident told newsmen.
The new men visited the arms dump, next to the building now housing the Israel army’s “town major” trying to restore civilian life to damaged Sidon. They could see the descriptions on the boxes, in English, Russian and Chinese, showing the countries of origin of the material. Some had been shipped from Libya, and some boxes, painted white, read “medical supplies” though they contained mortar bombs.
About 30 such arms caches have been found, all in the basements of residential buildings. The assault on Sidon, and the battle to gain possession, was heavy because Sidon was a main center for the Palestine Liberation Organization’s occupation of Lebanon.
Although casualty figures have not yet been released, they were probably lower than they might have been because of Israeli warnings, transmitted through the Red Cross and other organizations, to the townfolk to take refuge on the beach, where they would not be harmed while the Israelis dealt with the Palestinians.
Some 70,000 of the over 100,000 residents spent days and nights on the beach, and some were still there this week, unable to return home because their dwellings no longer exist. They are living under the pine trees on the shore, surrounded by crudely strung plastic sheets, without any sanitary facilities and little more than the clothes they wear on their backs. Their children play naked in the fly ladden filth around them.
The visible damage in Sidon, and the refugees still on the beach, have given rise to a serious credibility gap between Israeli officials and government spokesmen and newsmen who, visiting southern Lebanon, have and can still see the widespread damage and talk to the beach refugees. But officials, including the chief army spokesman have claimed that “damage in Sidon was confined to the streets” and that no refugees were to be seen still on the beach.
Damage in the town of Damour was heavy because this township, originally Christian and dominated by a church, was forcibly taken by Moslems during the civil war and occupied by Palestinians a few years ago, with its Christian residents expelled. It was accordingly regarded as a prime terrorist center by the Israelis and again further damaged in new fighting for its possession.
But despite the suffering and damages caused by the fight against the Palestinian terrorists and guerrillas during operation “Peace for Galilee,” talks with Lebanese in the streets disclose remarkably little bitterness or rancor, even by Moslems harmed during the fighting.
They do not know whom to blame for their plight: themselves for not having spoken out against the Palestinian presence earlier; their government for being too weak by tradition; or the Israelis for rolling northwards with awesome fire power and strength.
There appears to be a 100 percent consensus that all foreigners should leave the country and that includes Syrians, Palestinians and Israelis and allow their country to rule itself as best it can. Readiness to leave Lebanon and come back home is a sentiment shared by all Israeli soldiers, now resting after battle, or maintaining and repairing their fighting vehicles and equipment.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
