Some 6,000 an hour return to rebuild ruined homes and farms

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Some 6,000 an hour return to rebuild ruined homes and farms

[Declan Walsh in Sidiqine and Conal Urquhart in Kiryat Shemona
Wednesday August 16, 2006]
Lebanese refugees flooded back to their homes in the war-ravaged south
yesterday as the truce held for a second day and Israeli forces began a
slow withdrawal.
People travelled south at a rate of 6,000 per hour, according to
Unicef, cramming into cars stacked with mattresses and bags in defiance
of renewed Israeli threats. Israeli planes dropped leaflets over the
southern city of Tyre warning refugees not to return home until a joint
Lebanese-international force starts to deploy later this week.

Red Cross ambulances raced through the crater-pocked roads carrying the
wounded or dead, while large aid convoys started to push into the
hardest-hit areas.

Refugees also had to brave the dangers of unexploded ordinance
scattered across fields and roads. In Tebnine, civilian vehicles and a
UN convoy skirted around three unexploded cluster bomblets on the main
road in front of the local hospital.

The intensity of the destruction was starkly evident in Sidiqine, a
bombed village near the massacre site in Qana.

Amar Balhas arrived at lunchtime with his wife and eight children to
find a ruin where his house once stood. An unexploded shell lay on the
broken concrete carpeting his front yard. A pile of embers marked the
remains of his incinerated tobacco harvest. "All this was green before.
Hard to believe that now," said Mr Balhas.

Israel had bombed his house twice before, he said, in 1996 and 1999.
Yet he would not hesitate to start again. "As we built before we will
build again," he said defiantly, an arm around his 10-year-old son.
"Israel wants us to crumble like the Palestinians did. But we won't
give in."

Others had more limited reserves of stoicism. Next door, 75-year-old
Fatme Azzam leaned through a bomb-blasted doorway and wept. "I lost 35
people from my family in the first Qana massacre," she said, rubbing
her worry-lined face. "Now this."

Inside the dust-caked house of warped walls and cracked corridors, her
young grandson lingered behind a door, tears welling in his eyes.

Down the street, Ali Bakri wrenched open the broken doors of his small
supermarket, clearing the fridges of food that had gone rotten over the
past month. About 80% of the village had been levelled, he estimated,
and 60 people had died. "The destruction is massive. It's as if a
tsunami or a second Hiroshima has hit."

The mournful demeanour was broken when he pulled out his mobile phone
to play a video clip of his two-year-old triplets - two boys and a girl
- splashing and laughing in the bath. "They arrived from Beirut at nine
this morning, thank God," he smiled. "If God is with us, we will
rebuild together."

In contrast, a trickle of residents returned to their homes in northern
Israel, despite government offers of free transport from their
temporary refuges.

Only a handful of passengers were aboard the buses that pulled into
Kiryat Shmona, which suffered more than 1,000 Hizbullah missile strikes
during the 34-day conflict. Many were unhappy with the outcome. "I am
very angry about the ceasefire. We should have continued the attack
because it will only happen again," said 74-year-old Janni Tzar as she
returned from Tel Aviv.

Closer to the border in Metulla, returning residents watched bitterly
as Israeli soldiers departed. Another war was inevitable, said
shopkeeper Sam Eccadif. "Never mind what the politicians say - we have
lost the war. We did not achieve a single one of our objectives ... The
only people that can defend Israel is ourselves."

An uneasy truce held in the pockets of southern Lebanon controlled by
Israeli forces. Near Bint Jbeil, four tanks loitered under a grove of
olive trees under the wary eye of Hizbullah fighters watching from a
nearby hilltop. Moments later, a Red Cross convoy and a long line of
civilian vehicles were held up as one of the tanks rumbled across the
main road, followed by a military bulldozer.

Israel's top general, Dan Halutz, who is under intense pressure over
his performance in the war, said Israeli forces could withdraw from
southern Lebanon within seven to 10 days, army radio reported.

Some forward positions may be handed to UN forces as early as tomorrow.


The Lebanese army was said to be preparing to send 15,000 troops south
of the Litani river in line with the UN ceasefire agreement. An
international force, probably led by France, is due to to be deployed
later this week.

Hizbullah's battle against Israel, the Middle East's most powerful
army, has emboldened the guerrilla movement's regional allies. Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad declared victory for Hizbullah and said the
Jewish state would think twice before pursuing "terrorist policies"
again.

The defiant statements ratcheted up tensions with Israel's main ally,
the US. On Monday George Bush described the fighting in Lebanon as
"part of a broader struggle between freedom and terror".

There were calls for General Halutz's resignation in the Knesset after
it emerged he had sold off 120,000 shekels (£15,000) in shares only
three hours after two Israeli soldiers were abducted by Hizbullah on
July 12, triggering the war.

The general admitted the sale but said it had nothing to do with the
prospect of a conflict, telling Maariv newspaper that he sold the
portfolio because he had made losses on it before that date.
(about the pic:Lebanese families carrying their belongings walk across
the destroyed highway on the Syrian border. Photograph: EPA
)

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