From uucp Fri Mar 12 10:30 EST 1993 >From jad Fri Mar 12 10:27 EST 1993 remote from ckuxb.att.com From: jad@ckuxb.att.com Date: Fri, 12 Mar 93 10:27 EST To: jad@hopper.acs.virginia.edu Received: from ckuxb.att.com by hopper.acs.virginia.edu.ACS.Virginia.EDU; Fri, 12 Mar 1993 10:30 EST Content-Type: text Content-Length: 6385 Status: OR ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PAMELA COOPER, ENGLAND ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THUS, I THINK THAT ONE OF THE GREATEST EVILS WHICH ISRAEL HAS WROUGHT UPON LEBANON IS THE FOSTERING OF SECTARIAN AND RELIGIOUS DIVISIONS WHICH THAT COUNTRY HAS TRIED SO HARD TO HEAL SINCE GAINING INDEPENDENCE. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Our lifespan is too brief, at least for most of us lesser fry, to completely discard the ideologies and beliefs of our forefathers, yet, despite the peculiarly unpleasant moment of history we have to endure in the 1980s, in Europe we seem to have arrived at some degree of mutual religious tolerance and respect. As Christians, we have a duty to love our neighbour, since our loyalty is to a loving God. Thus, I think that one of the greatest evils that Israel has wrought upon Lebanon is the fostering of sectarian and religious divisions which that country has tried so hard to heal since gaining independence. Israel, under Prime Minister Begin and his cabinet, has become increasingly a confessional state. Like the Turks, he would like to divide the rule, to see Lebanon slit up into canons of Maronite, Melkite and Orthodox Christians, and Sunni, Shia Moslems and Druzes, retaining a prevailing influence and cooperation with the richer Maronite community. During the six weeks I lived in besieged West Beirut, where the Israelis doubtless had spies, but held no sway, there was an air of what I can only call brotherhood, a belonging, which I personally had never experienced before. As the guns bombed from the sea, the rockets and shells hit us from the south and from the hills to the southeast, Lebanese and Palestinians toiled tirelessly together for the dispossessed and the wounded, helped by a small force of doctors and nurses from almost every European country, Australia and New Zealand. As representatives of OXFAM, my husband and I were closely allied throughout to the joint Lebanese/Palestinian Committee, with a smaller group to help administer OXFAM funds. These dedicated men and women, Christian and Moslem who had stayed on in the western part of the city, became our close friends. As the siege tightened its grip, as the merciful black market withered, when the International Red Cross and the UNRWA supply lorries were held up and the fruit and vegetable vans were burned or denied access through the only three crossing places across the Green Line, then with them we were able to buy from local warehouses emergency foods such as sardines, humus, beans in tomato sauce which did not have to be prepared with the dwindling stocks of fuel. We employed women to sew sheets and diapers for the hospitals and the families in the high-rise blocks, and made emergency purchases of medicine and bandages. One of the biggest privations was lack of water to drink or for laundering. In underground hospitals, excavated as garages for the Mercedes of the departed Lebanese, the Belgian, French and Norwegian surgeons operated and amputated limbs under appalling conditions caused by cluster bombs, phosphorus bombs and artillery shelling. It might be a child or an old man pulled out of the rubble of a building that had been hit by the most up-to-date, deep-penetration weapon. As the perimetre of the city to the south and east was hit again and again, so more Lebanese and Palestinian families moved into the shrinking centre. In the Rue Clemenceau, there was a new block of flats housing a hundred families of refugees, not far from the coast and the American University. In the basement garage, a young Finn had set up a small clinic, and I arranged that an equally young English doctor, who had arrived from Athens as a volunteer, should visit twice a week or when a child or woman need hospitalisation. Except that there was no fuel to pump water to the flats so that it perversely ran down the walls of the clinic garage, the families had settled in gratefully, one to a room, with rolls of bedding and a few cooking pots which UNRWA distributed. Like most Palestinians, when given the chance, they kept the overcrowded rooms neat and clean, while every new arrival to this precarious and dangerous family life was welcomed with a welter of affection which I was also expected to contribute to. One morning at 4:30 A.M., I awoke to the sound of the now familiar salvos fired from the Israeli gunboats off the coast, followed by the crash of falling masonry. The shelling continued for most of the day. When we were able to reach the Rue Clemenceau, I saw the pathetic Red Cross flag tattered, but still flying to advertise the little clinic. The entire surface of the street was covered with broken glass. One shell had hit the two UNICEF water tanks set up across the street. Another shell had taken out the entire front wall of one floor of the building. But on the floor above, the customary colourful array of washing hung along the balcony. In the clinic, an exhausted and despairing Finn, with one or two helpers, told us that they had lost only one life, but had seventy casualties and only five beds. In the lower garage, which was dank and dirty but which had saved so many lives, many families were still sleeping, but others had returned to their blasted flats. This was the week of some of the cruelest bombardment, so that had there been anywhere to move them to, it would have been a risky undertaking. As I watch from the safety of S.W.1 scense of the P.L.O. fighters, maybe fathers and sons of some of my hundred families embarking for Cyprus, a question haunts me. When the siege is lifted and the Phalangist and Kataeb militias once again move around the devastated streets of West Beirut, will they purposely destroy those bonds of mutual trust, the fabric of social welfare and service which these Christian and Moslem, Lebanese and Palestinian men and women have woven so strongly through their suffering? Will that sense of "belonging" I am already lonely for, along with the smelly streets, the rotting and burning piles of refuse, the rats and the broken sewers, and those gallant children who all day carry water containers beyond their strength down the streets and up the stairways to their mothers and grandmothers nursing a new baby, be irretrievably lost?