Three Lebanese soldiers and a journalist died Yesterday in a “border incident”. My wife cried. “They’ve all got mothers” was her simple yet heart-stoppingly painful assessment.
Four years ago, I met my wife at Heathrow, off a flight from Damascus; she had no makeup, no luggage and had had little sleep and less to eat for twenty-four hours. She’d run from the bombs and rockets being rained on Lebanon by the Israeli war machine, after having first ensured her children and grand-children had been safely evacuated to Saudi Arabia. Two hundred thousand pieces of ordinance (the majority cluster bombs with multiple anti-personnel war-heads) were fired into Lebanon in the 2006 conflict, and, states a report on Mine Action’s web-site, many did not explode and are still causing casualties, in spite of significant and continued efforts to clear affected land. My wife didn’t run for nothing. In previous incidents (the Israeli invasion of 1984 for example), she’d retreated to Baghdad, to Riyadh and to London; and sometimes she’d stayed, like when the electricity power plants had been taken out about ten years ago, bombed by, yep, you've guessed it Israel.
Have a look at any of the news web-sites, the belligerent rhetoric has been ratched up a good few notches in recent weeks and many people here are wondering if this is merely sabre rattling or a pre-cursor to hostilities – certainly the verbal preparations are being made for the “I cannot tell a lie, I did nothing, it was all his fault, he started it” sort of statements, should the worst happen.
There’ve been more or less successful efforts to divide and conquer the Lebanese on previous occasions, but there’s something different about the climate this time. Today, the country’s President called on all Lebanese to be prepared to make “huge” sacrifices in resisting attacks, and the head of Hezbollah “put all its resources at the disposal of the army”, both according to the agency LibanCall. This comes only a couple of days after a highly visible mini-summit of the heads of state of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), Syria and Lebanon, held on Lebanese soil. Solidarity seems to be breaking out.
The economy is enjoying a healthy growth rate, tourism alone seeing an increase of 27% in the first five months of this year according to one major bank’s weekly reports. Tower cranes abound, Beirut real estate prices are still rising rapidly and a massive new shopping centre has appeared in the downtown area, host to Vivienne Westwood and Stella McCartney labels amongst others. Is there some truth in the oft repeated suggestion that there is jealously from Lebanon’s southern neighbour whenever success threatens? I’ve always dismissed this as paranoia before, and yet, and yet …
It is vital to differentiate between a state and its government. Germany has recovered from Hitler, Russia from Stalin and China from Mao Zhadong and his little red book; all have learned to live with, even embrace their neighbours and thrive. Is it too much to hope that Israel may one day learn from their examples?
An Israeli soldier died too in yesterday’s clash. And the whole incident was about a tree. Let’s all recognize that each death is not just a statistic but a tragedy. Every single one is one too many: remember that in peace sons put their fathers to rest but in war fathers mourn their sons.
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