Regarding Hezbollah and the suggestion that the country be partitioned, I taught at an international American school in Beirut, Lebanon for a year. This was after having taught at another American school in Saudi Arabia for 7 years.
I remember watching Hezbollah attacks against Israeli convoys in what was then occupied Southern Lebanon. Israel had occupied southern Lebanon as a safety buffer following the Syrian occupation of the rest of the country.
It was a very odd experience to live in Lebanon at that time. All major intersections were occupied by the Syrian Army. There was usually a tank or an armored personnel carrier with troops in a sandbagged emplacement. For the most part they didn't hinder traffic.
The local news portrayed Hezbollah as freedom fighters because they were launching attacks against the Israeli occupiers as well as the Christian militia which supported the Israelis.
I was in Beirut on the evening of the last day of school when Israeli jets thundered overhead and began bombing Beirut's infrastructure - electrical generators, bridges, cell phone towers etc. Having been a civilian veteran of the First Gulf War in Saudi Arabia where we (civilians) had to contend with incoming Iraqi scud missiles by seeking cover, at the sound of the first explosions followed by the ack-ack-ack of Syrian anti-aircraft gun crews (the nearest of which was just one block away from my faculty apartment); I rolled out of bed and crawled under the sturdy desk of my faculty apartment.
From my position under the desk, I could see orange tracer fire rising into the nigh sky. There were no civil defense sirens as there would have been in Saudi Arabia. There were instead the distant wails of first responders as police, firefighters, and ambulances responded to sites that had been bombed.
As I later found out, a lot of these first responders died that night. While they were tending to the wounded and putting out fires, a 2nd wave of aircraft hit the same targets.
Following these attacks, there was a lot of anger against Israel as well as the United States which was seen as an Israeli ally. For a time, my school was surrounded by an angry mob. It's fortunate that we had 9 foot walls topped with barbed wire. We also had security at the gates.
Despite this, someone threw a grenade over one of the walls. The detonation didn't hurt anyone since school was not in session.
A mob tried to storm the U.S. Consulate but was beaten back by the Lebanese police. Some of the rioters were shot and killed.
Although I had a two year contract to work in Beirut, as soon as the international airport opened a few days later, I self evacuated; hightailing it back to the states. I am now blacklisted by the ISS, International Schools Services, for having broken contract. (Eyeroll)
So ended my 8 year international teaching career. I have been stateside since June of 1999 and don't miss being in the Middle East.
What a lot of people outside Lebanon don't understand is that the Lebanese government is completely ineffective, more so since their economy imploded. Israel continues to blame the government for its failure to control Hezbollah but the reality is that the government has never had control over this group.
Lebanon was artificially created as a country by the French following the end of WWI. As part of the old Ottoman Empire, the French basically did a land grab and pulled disparate regions together to form Lebanon. The land grab included Druze, Muslim, and Christian areas. None of these groups really get along.
The country drafted its constitution in 1926. Given how there are 18 religious sects in the country, politics in Lebanon has always been a sectarian quagmire. The Lebanese Constitution for example states that the three key government positions of president, prime minister, and speaker must be split between a Maronite Christian, a Sunni Muslim, and a Shia Muslim. The seats in Parliament's have been equally divided between Christians, Muslims, and Druze.
While this mandate seems to share an equal distribution of power among some of the leading sects, the reality is that the government is weak, corrupt, and patronage based. Men in powerful positions have given government jobs to loyalist supporters. Promotion within the government has always been based upon patronage and loyalty (to the patron) as opposed to actual merit and skill.
A graphic example of government incompetence was seen in 2020 when a warehouse at a port in Beirut abruptly exploded with the force of 2,750 tons of dynamite. 218 people were killed. 20,000 were injured. 300,000 were rendered homeless. Property damage has been estimated at $15 billion.
The explosion occurred in Warehouse 12. For reasons unknown, someone thought that it would be a good idea to store ammonium nitrate and fireworks next to a massive grain elevator. The ammonium nitrate came from a freighter that had developed engine problems back in 2013. After offloading its cargo, the owners abandoned the ship and the fertilizer was allowed to sit in the warehouse for seven years.
From a safety viewpoint, the fertilizer should have been stored in a concrete non-combustible building. It was instead stored in a regular warehouse. When the fireworks caught fire, the heat caused the ammonium nitrate to release gases and to generate more heat. When enough heat was generated, there was an explosion which was magnified because of the nearby grain silo.
To date, nobody in the Lebanese government has ever been held accountable for this disaster.
The explosion coupled with the Covid pandemic have completely gutted Lebanon's economy.
An astounding half of all people in Beirut are unemployed. In March of 2020, the government defaulted on a $31 billion dollar debt. You may have seen on the news that Lebanese banks have made it increasingly difficult for depositors to withdraw money. As memory serves, there have been at least 2 bank robberies in which the robbers were only robbing the bank of money from their own accounts.
The banks have long since stopped lending money and given the circumstances, have been unable to attract new depositors. As if all of this wasn't bad enough, government insolvency has resulted in fuel shortages which in turn have led to rolling electrical blackouts throughout Beirut. Unless homes or businesses have their own generators, most neighborhoods only get 1-2 hours of electricity per day.
Fuel shortages have made it difficult for filtration plants to provide clean water. The lack of fuel has crippled the transportation sector's ability to deliver food and other supplies. Can you imagine the problems facing hospitals when they don't have the power to run incubators for premature babies or dialysis machines?
Lebanon is a failed state. I honestly don't know how it can recover under the current circumstances.
31 Dec 2023, 2:07 am
for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.
