Suspicion, resentment, trauma, destruction – Beirut on the edge
Beirut, Lebanon – “No phones!” barks a burly man as he sails past us on his scooter. I’m out in the city working with Al Jazeera’s correspondent, Ali Hashem. His friend and fellow journalist, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who is with us, has just taken a picture of a beautiful old building, nestled among the usual shopfronts and apartments in a busy street in Basta, central Beirut.
Although the man is clearly a civilian – not an official of any sort – Ghaith is quick to heed his order. He apologises and puts his phone away, but the angry man has already turned the scooter around and is approaching, demanding to see the phone and the offending picture.
This kind of tension is more than just bubbling under the surface in this city. Beirut is on edge. In the past month, the city’s residents have experienced one traumatic event after another. First, there were attacks in mid-September as thousands of pagers and walkie-talkie radios belonging to Hezbollah commanders exploded in homes and public places, killing 32 people and leaving thousands injured.
This was followed by countless air strikes on what Israeli forces claimed were Hezbollah targets starting on September 20, mostly focused on Dahiyeh in the south of the city, next to the airport. On September 27, Hezbollah’s leader of 32 years, Hassan Nasrallah, was confirmed dead after Israel dropped 85 “bunker buster” bombs on a southern residential suburb of the city.
Surreal scenes of an assassination
The September 20 attack ensnared many innocent civilians, including the family of Al Jazeera cameraman Ali Abbass who lived in the building adjacent to the strike. His son, Mohammed, describes being thrown off his bed as the apartment was engulfed in dust – and then hearing the terrible screams of the injured. Ali immediately moved his family to a hotel where Al Jazeera staff were staying, his wife arrived shaking, still suffering from shock.
A day later, Hezbollah’s media relations unit grants journalists a tour of the destruction and recovery work.
Correspondent Imran Khan and I find ourselves waiting in the dusty street where the strike hit with local journalists and TV crews, before being joined by some of the international Western broadcasters, to make one large media scrum.
Dahiyeh is quieter than usual. There is less traffic but many residents still line the streets, some to observe the media; others, including Ali, are returning to their homes to salvage what they can. Some shops have been forced to close but others are still trying to continue, business as usual.
After a few hours of waiting, we are suddenly given the signal by Hezbollah media officers to approach and we hurry towards the blast site, cameras desperately scrambling for the best position to survey the carnage.
At first, it’s not entirely clear – through the noise and mess of the diggers, workers and wreckage – exactly what we are looking at.
The building in front of us appears to be about seven storeys high and 50 metres wide. But all around its base is an enormous crater exposing its skeletal foundations. The basement looks completely gutted, as does the ground floor and two or three of the floors above it.
Higher floors are curiously intact and yet the building still appears solid enough, despite the gaping damage it has sustained. I wonder how it can still be standing.
The Hezbollah military commander, Ibrahim Aqil, had been in the basement of this building and the Israelis had once again made use of powerful ammunition to assassinate him, taking out 30 nearby civilians as well.
Almost as soon as I begin to make sense of this scene, the officials who brought us here are shouting at us to move on.
Imran and I hastily shoot a report and some very rushed pictures as my camera is repeatedly and angrily pushed down by media officers and we are led away from the block, feeling harassed and confused, back to the narrow street outside. Some of my local colleagues tell me later that this type of contradictory behaviour towards the press is typical in Lebanon.
‘You’re British’ – resentment and anger
In Beirut, we found that our newsgathering attempts are continually dogged by difficulties.
This happens while we are covering aid distribution by UNICEF at a shelter for displaced people outside Beirut in the mountains of Bsous a few days later, on September 26.
On this occasion, I’m immediately stopped by a Hezbollah official demanding to see my media accreditation, and then trying to find fault with it. Our producer, Zeina, makes some hasty phone calls to her contacts and, after a few anxious minutes, the man relents and allows us to continue.
Despite that, however, we are still not allowed to enter the shelter itself and have to settle for filming outside where there are a few displaced people from the south of Lebanon and volunteers unloading aid, water, mattresses and food.
We notice many suspicious looks from several clearly disgruntled people, both volunteers and the displaced, unhappy to see TV crews trying to capture their misery. This has become a pattern in Lebanon; organising to film somewhere only to discover that once we arrive, those in charge have changed their minds.
There is resentment, too. One young man asks me in perfect English: “You’re British, why does Britain support Israel?”
The mood does not improve when UNICEF officials show up with an American TV crew in tow.
Sealed boxes of aid are carefully arranged, stacked behind the UNICEF officers as they smile and pose for the photo op.
But a feeling of animosity hangs in the air and one man angrily shouts: “You Westerners supply Israel with bombs and all you can give us are a few blankets?”
The UNICEF smiles quickly turn to anxious looks. This is not the reception they were expecting. Dorsa Jabbari, our correspondent, wisely decides that there is little value to be gained from remaining and we head back to our office in Beirut.
On our return, we become aware of a constant low buzzing like a malevolent lawnmower. Searching for the source of the noise we crane our necks, gazing up until we can just about make out an Israeli drone circling in the uncontested skies above.
Israel’s total control of Beirut’s skies allows their planes to roam and target freely and repeatedly. We have lost track of the number of assassinations of Hezbollah leaders and commanders as the drones move on from Dahiyeh and occasionally stray into central Beirut.
On October 11, we headed out to the site of another strike the night before in the neighbourhood of Basta. A thick cloud of dust has enveloped the street, covering cars, pavements and people like fine snow.
As Ali Hashem and I get closer to the centre of the strike, we see cars flung against buildings, even on top of other cars, and at the epicentre, only smoking wreckage where a building once stood.
A JCB digger shovels handfuls of twisted metal and concrete, barely scratching the surface of this great pile of destruction under which countless people may be trapped.
In all directions, the surrounding buildings are heavily scarred, giant holes blasted through walls and one block now resembling a macabre dollhouse. Inside, window frames, shutters and doors have burst out from the force of the blast, flung across rooms like lethal projectiles.
‘They’re spies!’
It is after surveying this damage while walking back to our car in a sombre mood that Ghaith takes the picture of the beautiful building – a sign of hope amid such desolation – which so enrages the man on the scooter.
He turned around and rushed back towards us in a rage. “Give me your phone!” he demands as we try to calm him.
Before we can hand over the phone, he punches Ghaith hard in the side of the head – brutal and sudden violence which seems to underline the trauma this neighbourhood has already experienced in spades.
Initially, passersby and onlookers rush over to help. Somebody holds the man back. But, despite Ali being Lebanese he is not from this neighbourhood; we are all strangers.
“They’re spies!” the man on the scooter shouts, and then some of the others turn to question us as well. “Are you spies? Why did you take that picture?”
Just as it feels as if the crowd could turn against us at any moment, the aggressor breaks free and lunges once more to fight, but fortunately we are able to make our escape down the street and don’t look back.
Amid the death, destruction and displacement of people that we have witnessed here, suspicion and distrust are mounting and, as the war continues, it seems to us that these fears will only become more entrenched.
