A
City Lives On With Its
Ill-Fated Charm
By Dahr Jamail
05 August, 2006
Inter Press
Service
BEIRUT, Aug 5 (IPS)
- The poster on the corniche near the American University campus in
Beirut has become justly well known. It shows a Muslim woman in full
black abaya walking next to a slender woman in a bikini. Together, they're
the face of Beirut.
Again this weekend Israeli
jets bombed the Muslim areas of Beirut, 'Hezbollah strongholds' as Israel
sees them. It also bombed a bridge in the Christian area of the city
in recent days. But attacks on a Christian area are rare; Beirut is
not quite one in getting shattered.
This has been a city with
two faces, Christian and Muslim. The distinction between the two has
not always been that sharp. Beirut at its most charming merges the two
entirely. But it is in that division that Beirut has found its troubles,
and also overcome them.
It's the conflict between
Christian and Muslim groups that ripped Beirut apart over years of civil
war through the seventies and eighties. It was ignited when a militant
group of Christian right-wingers massacred all 27 Palestinian passengers
in a bus Apr.. 13, 1975. Reprisal killings followed, setting off a spiral
of violence that continued 17 years.
Beirut was before then a
city that had merged two faces, even two worlds. The West gave it the
title 'Paris of the Orient'. Its white villas with those red tiled roofs
sent well-heeled shoppers to the chic shopping districts downtown. It
was a city on holiday.
Beirut drew Westerners who
could ski on Mount Lebanon overlooking the city by day, and drive down
to a seafood feast on the warmth of its beaches by the crystal blue
Mediterranean in the evening. Odd, how this little country of less than
four million has managed to include so many contrasts.
Western influence has been
strong on a large middle class. Many parents have traditionally sent
their children to the West for higher education. Many young Lebanese
married abroad, and carry two passports. And in turn their children
are often raised both in Lebanon and the West.
Over time, that became more
the pattern for the Christian than the Muslim population. And among
Muslims, Shias have grown to almost 60 percent of the Lebanese population
now. With the growth of Shias came the rise of the Hezbollah to counter
the Israeli threats from the south.
Within the country religious
groups began to splinter in the early seventies. Sunni and Shia Muslims,
displaced Palestinians, Maronite Christians, Druze groups, all began
to go their different ways; they often found themselves in the way of
others, and others in theirs. The bus massacre only gave this explosive
mix the ignition.
Syrian intervention, followed
by an Israeli invasion in March 1978 brought yet more killing. It reached
a point where several countries including France and the United States
had to send in peacekeepers. But they too became targets; in 1983 220
U.S. marines and 21 other servicemen were killed in their barracks in
Beirut in a terrorist attack. The peacekeeping forces withdrew.
The civil war claimed 18,000
lives in Beirut alone.
The Taif Accord, signed in
Taif in Saudi Arabia Oct. 22, 1989, reduced some of the disproportionately
high power that Maronite Christians held, and provided for a Cabinet
divided equally between Christians and Muslims. But that arrangement
still did not make room enough for the growing power of the Shias. At
the same time the government could do little to counter Israeli threats.
The Hezbollah that rose in
the eighties proceeded to become a militant power stronger than the
Lebanese military. The Hezbollah were the ones preparing to take on
Israel.
But even so, after a couple
of years of the signing of the Taif agreement, peace had become fairly
stable. Trade picked up, and tourism began to flourish as it had in
the Beirut of the years between World War II and the early seventies.
Israel continued to occupy portions of southern Lebanon, but the people
of Beirut began to wipe off the dust, and began to rebuild.
That was until the new destruction
began last month, that has made about a quarter of the population refugees
in their own country. The Shatila camp too has become a refugee camp
again. This is where Israel-backed Christian militiamen killed close
to a thousand Palestinian refugees in 1982.
Once again Lebanon has fallen
just as it had begun to rise again. Before this round of Israeli bombing
of Beirut began Jul. 12, you could pass a shelled building, with its
walls pockmarked by shrapnel and bullets from the civil war days, standing
next to a gleaming shopping centre with workers polishing the glass
for the perfect shine. The new bombing is providing more such contrasts.
You can still pass villas and fashionable restaurants, not far from
the born again Shatila refugee camp.
Old Mercedes taxis, many
more than 30 years old, belch out black smoke as they get overtaken
by new Mercedes cars driven by chic young Lebanese on the roads that
are still motorable. That contrast Beirut has lived with. The new one
between the destruction of southern Beirut and the rebuilt smartness
of central and Christian Beirut will be a lot harder to bridge.
Beirut still boasts some
of the finest restaurants around the Mediterranean. And it has exported
its traditional salads, rice and lamb dishes and its kebabs and hummus
around the world. But it lives with 20 percent unemployment. The old
civil war drove capital away from the city; the new one is likely to
drive back much that had come in after the Taif agreement.
It's the Shia population
shattered most. Through these days of destruction, Hamra, a ten-minute
drive from the southern districts where most of the Shia population
live, presents a face of life as usual. Joggers are doing their rounds
at the coast as usual, shops remain open, the streets are clogged with
traffic. Israel has chosen with some care the face of Lebanon that it
has picked to bomb.
Hamra remains pleasant, but
under the cloud of war. The waves of tourists have been replaced by
a trickle of journalists. Electricity supply is sporadic, queues for
petrol are lengthening. Beirut - and Hamra too - are on a precipice.
The way down from the cliffs this time may not end with seafood on the
Mediterranean coast.