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<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 face=Georgia><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Georgia;font-weight:bold'>September 3, 2006</span></font></b></p>
<h1><NYT_HEADLINE type=" " version="1.0"><b><font size=6 face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:21.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Besieged </span></font></b></NYT_HEADLINE></h1>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 face=Georgia><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Georgia;font-weight:bold'><NYT_BYLINE type=" " version="1.0">By
SCOTT ANDERSON</span></font></b></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'></NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>Things were
getting back to normal in </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>. The bomb craters in the main streets had been
filled in with dirt, which slowed traffic but at least made passage possible.
Some of the town’s more spectacular ruins were already being shoveled
into great heaps of rubble. Under the blanching sun of late August, the
Lebanese port city — 12 miles north of the Israeli border on the
Mediterranean coast — was returning to its usual dog-day rhythms. In the
mornings and again in the late afternoons, shoppers crowded the central market,
families strolled the corniche, the old seaside promenade, and traffic along Jal
al Baher Street, the main thoroughfare on the east side of town, was a honking,
barely moving mass. The </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>midday</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'> hours, however, were given over to a heat-imposed
somnolence. In the old city, residents settled in their leafy courtyards or
brought chairs out to the narrow alleys to while away the time with neighbors.
The outdoor cafes along the marina filled with men who appeared able to muster
only enough energy to smoke. It was a city at rest. Even </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>’s multitude of cats took
part, gathering in bunches to sleep under the shade of parked cars. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>But there was also something new
in </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>. Spanning the highway at the
northern outskirts of the city stood a high, triumphal arch quickly constructed
from wood and yellow cloth. That color featured prominently on the scores of
new posters and banners that lined Jal al Baher Street — that were to be
found on lampposts and billboards throughout the east side of the city, in
fact. The images on these posters varied, as did their slogans, but all ultimately
echoed the same thing: praise for <ORG value="arts, automobiles, books, business, college, dining, education, fashion, garden, giving, health, jobs, magazine, movies, multimedia, nyregion, obituaries, realestate, science, sports, style, technology, theater, travel, us, washington, weekinreview, world:::More articles about Hezbollah:::http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/hezbollah/index.html" idrc="nyt-org"><ALT-CODE value="Hezbollah" idsrc="nyt-org">Hezbollah</ALT-CODE>,
praise for “the divine victory” just won. </span></font></ORG></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>It was Aug. 8, and the city had
been under attack for 24 days. Sitting on the veranda of her elegant house
overlooking the marina of old </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>, 46-year-old Madona Baradhi was extolling the
virtues of her hometown. From a prominent Christian family whose members can
trace their roots in </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:
Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>
back centuries, Baradhi, an effervescent and congenitally cheerful
customer-service representative for the Libano-Française bank, explained that
she had traveled much of the world and found no place better. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>“Always when I am on
vacation,” she said, “the last few days, I just want to come home
because I miss </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> so much.” She waved a
hand out over the bay. “Every day I swim, I walk to my job in downtown, I
go to the market. And the people here are wonderful — very tolerant and
easygoing. We’ve never had any of the difficulties between the different
groups like other places in </span></font><ALT-CODE value="Lebanon" idsrc="nyt-geo"><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font></ALT-CODE><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Three days earlier, Baradhi’s
veranda had afforded her a panoramic view of a predawn, three-hour battle
across the bay. Israeli commandos, apparently dropped by helicopter, attacked
Hezbollah positions, killing at least eight, then covered their withdrawal by
strafing the oceanfront promenade a half-mile away with helicopter gunships.
The previous afternoon, she watched as four apartment buildings in the
northern, predominantly Shiite suburbs were brought down by heavy Israeli bombs
in great clouds of black smoke and brown dust. Even on that early evening, as
she sipped espresso on her veranda, the concussion of the explosions on the
east side of town, two miles away, were powerful enough to occasionally rattle
her home’s windowpanes, to cause its old joints to creak. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>“My friends in </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Beirut</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> keep calling me,” she
said. “ ‘Come stay with us. </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'> is so dangerous.’ But no. How can I leave
all this?” She waved her hand again over the picturesque marina: no one
was moving on its stone walks; the colorful fishing boats had sat in their
moorings for weeks. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>What appeared to be an almost delusionary
optimism may actually have been a practical fatalism, an understanding of the
city’s violent history. </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>’s very geography was formed by war. During
the Phoenician era, the heart of the city was an impregnable island fortress
just off the coast that withstood countless sieges — until 332 B.C., when
one of its besiegers, Alexander the Great, came up with the idea of building a
massive stone causeway to the island. The city fell to his men, and over the
centuries, drifting sand built up around his causeway, forever linking the
island to the mainland. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>’s history is a dizzying
saga of rise and fall, periods of splendor followed by ones of abject ruin; the
Egyptians, the Romans, the crusaders and the Ottomans all passed through the
city, and all left their mark for good or ill. This march of civilizations and
armies made Tyre into a complex mosaic of cultures, religious sects and ethnic
groups, a multicultural checkerboard that is both the enduring promise and the enduring
tragedy of the place: promise because the city’s extraordinarily
resilient people always rebuild and patch things over; tragedy because they
always have to. In just the past 31 years, the city has endured a civil war, a
foreign military occupation, a half-dozen air or naval bombardments and at
least two massive <ALT-CODE value="Suicides and Suicide Attempts" idsrc="nyt-classifier">suicide</ALT-CODE>
bombings. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Despite this sad legacy —
perhaps because of it — </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'> has long had a reputation as a relaxed and
open-minded place. Residents of all sectarian and political stripes tend to
echo Baradhi’s view of their city as a haven of comity and tolerance.
What’s more, until mid-July of this year, </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> appeared on the cusp of a very
bright future, about to catch the economic boom that had so transformed </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Beirut</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> and other Lebanese coastal
cities in recent years. Designated a <ORG value="arts, automobiles, books, business, college, dining, education, fashion, garden, giving, health, jobs, magazine, movies, multimedia, nyregion, obituaries, realestate, science, sports, style, technology, theater, travel, us, washington, weekinreview, world:::More articles about United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO):::http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations_educational_scientific_and_cultural_organization/index.html" idrc="nyt-org"><ALT-CODE value="United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization" idsrc="nyt-org">Unesco</ALT-CODE>
World Heritage site for its profusion of Hellenic, Roman and Byzantine
monuments — among other archaeological highlights, Tyre can lay claim to
the world’s largest Roman hippodrome — the municipal government had
just embarked on the construction of a new stretch of oceanfront promenade
along the neglected south shore of the old city, workers laying tiles and
erecting lampposts. Along </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Jal al Baher Street</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>, construction was under way on
a modern shopping mall, while on </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>’s south bay a small vacant lot had just sold
to a hotel consortium for nearly $2 million, a figure that astounded locals but
testified to the city’s growing tourist industry and dearth of decent
hotel rooms. </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> did not yet have a <ORG value="SBUX" idsrc="NASDAQ"><ALT-CODE value="Starbucks Corp" idsrc="NASDAQ">Starbucks</ALT-CODE>
— so far in </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:
Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:
Georgia'>, those symbols of the arriviste city were limited to </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Beirut</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> — but by this summer it
was easy to imagine that that blessed day was close at hand. </span></font></ORG></ORG></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>And then, quite literally, a bomb
dropped. It happened at about </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>5:30</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'> on the afternoon of Sunday, July 16, while Madona Baradhi
was swimming with her nieces and nephews at the fine, white-sand beach beside
the Tyre Rest House, the city’s most exclusive hotel. “It was a
very nice day,” she recalled, “hot but not too humid, and a lot of
people were in the water. Suddenly, we heard a very loud boom, and when I
looked to the city, I saw this great cloud of black smoke rising up from
downtown. That’s when we knew </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'> was to be targeted also.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>The signal event that set this in
motion came four days earlier, when Hezbollah guerrillas launched a bold
assault on an Israeli Army border outpost, killing three soldiers and taking
two others prisoner. The Israeli response was predictably swift, if
unexpectedly fierce. That same day, the Israeli military carried out airstrikes
on some 40 suspected Hezbollah strongholds throughout southern </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>, then expanded their targets
the following day to include the runways of </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Beirut</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>’s international airport and highways and
bridges throughout the country. When the heavy bomb dropped on Sunday afternoon
— it destroyed the top four floors of an apartment building and killed at
least 11 — the residents of </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'> knew that, once again, war had come for them. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>“Within minutes,” Baradhi
said, “everyone had left the beach, and by that night, everyone was
leaving </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>. I could see them from
here.” On her veranda, she pointed to a headland four or five miles away.
“A solid line of red taillights, everyone going north.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>As it turned out, Baradhi’s
decision to stay was not based on simple blithe disregard. By way of
explanation, she led me into her study and took a framed photograph down from a
bookshelf. In the fall of 1982, when fighting between Israeli troops and
Palestinian guerrillas turned the old city of </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'> into a pitched battlefield, the Baradhi family was
evacuated to the Tyre Rest House. The photograph was taken there: her father
looking somewhat befuddled in the foreground; a pensive, young Madona behind;
and in the background, a large crowd of other displaced people. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>“We were only there a few
days,” she said, “but even that was enough to show me what it was
like to be a refugee. When we returned, the house had been badly damaged
— you can still see the crack in the wall outside. This is why I will not
leave now, because in </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:
Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:
Georgia'> you can leave your home and never come back.” She carefully set
the photograph back on the shelf. “I look at it very often. I always keep
it close to me.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Baradhi’s decision also
pointed up one of the fault lines that runs through the city. In the days after
that first bomb was dropped on </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>, and under a rain of Israeli leaflets ordering its
inhabitants to leave, an estimated 95,000 of the city’s 110,000 residents
fled north. The pattern of exodus was not uniform, however; instead, it
appeared that many calculated who this war’s principal victims were
likely to be and made their choice accordingly. The overwhelming majority of
Shiite civilians living in the Hezbollah strongholds at the east end of town
— close to 100 percent in some districts — understood that they
were at ground zero and left. In other parts of the city — in al-Bass,
the Palestinian refugee camp closer to downtown, and in the Christian quarter
at the westernmost tip of the coast — perhaps half the population
remained. As time went on and the violence intensified, this phenomenon lent </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> a surreal quality: vast urban
stretches where nothing moved and no one was seen interspersed with pockets
where a modicum of normal life continued, where stores were open and old men
gathered in cafes to observe the destruction occurring elsewhere. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>To the question of why she
supported Hezbollah, Amira Khassem, a 58-year-old shopkeeper, seemed perplexed,
as if the answer was utterly self-evident. “Because they are the
resistance.” She shrugged. “Because they have brought order.”
Khassem evidently saw no contradiction between those two words,
“resistance” and “order.” Nor did she seem to
appreciate that the “order” Hezbollah had brought to south </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> had precipitated a war that had
turned much of the region into a battlefield and all but crippled the small
grocery store that she and her husband ran in downtown </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>. Just around the corner from
their shop on </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Abu
Deeb Street</span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>,
two weeks into the war, Israeli warplanes flattened a six-story building reported
to be one of Hezbollah’s local command centers, turning the surrounding
commercial district into a ghost town. For Khassem, “order” was a
good deal simpler. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>“As a woman, I used to be
very afraid walking alone around here after dark,” she told me in the
fourth week of fighting. “With Hezbollah here, I know that now I am
completely safe, that nothing will happen to me.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>When I asked her who patrolled the
streets prior to Hezbollah, Amira shrugged again. “No one.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>One of the consequences of the
18-year cat-and-mouse war between Hezbollah and the Israeli occupying army in
south </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> was the collapse of virtually
all Lebanese government institutions in the region. It was a void Hezbollah
deftly filled. Using money funneled from </span></font><ALT-CODE value="Iran" idsrc="nyt-geo"><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Iran</span></font></ALT-CODE><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>, Hezbollah established an
elaborate social-welfare apparatus — schools, soup kitchens, medical
clinics, even law enforcement — designed to meet the needs of its Shiite
constituency throughout the country, but most especially in the war-torn south.
By the time </span></font><LOCATION location-code="world, us, nyregion, washington:::More news and information about Israel.:::http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/israel/index.html|||travel:::Go to the Israel Travel Guide.:::http://travel2.nytimes.com/top/features/travel/destinations/middleeast/israel/" code-source="nyt-geo"><ALT-CODE value="Israel" idsrc="nyt-geo"><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font></ALT-CODE><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> finally withdrew from </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> in 2000, Hezbollah had become
the de facto government in the region. The party had already joined the
Lebanese political process; today, with a tenth of the seats in Parliament,
Hezbollah has earned a place in the current coalition government and also,
given </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>’s political patronage
system, the ability to ensure that greater economic benefits flow to its
supporters. In essence, then, the <ORG value="arts, automobiles, books, business, college, dining, education, fashion, garden, giving, health, jobs, magazine, movies, multimedia, nyregion, obituaries, realestate, science, sports, style, technology, theater, travel, us, washington, weekinreview, world:::More articles about Party of God:::http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/party_of_god/index.html" idrc="nyt-org"><ALT-CODE value="Party of God" idsrc="nyt-org">Party
of God</ALT-CODE> (the literal translation of Hezbollah) has emerged as the
bringer of order and services to a chaos and ruin it helped create. </span></font></ORG></LOCATION></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>And yet, according to many
residents I spoke to, until mid-July of this year, Hezbollah was neither
particularly popular nor trusted in the progressive and easygoing streets of </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>. While Hezbollah members were
respected for their social-service programs for the poor and their personal
code of conduct — as part of a general morality checklist, members are
not supposed to smoke or drink — many city residents felt a lingering
unease over the party’s ultimate intentions. The Party of God had long
since muted its more radical rhetoric, including its call for an Iranian-style
Islamic government in </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:
Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:
Georgia'>, but was it all a ruse to lull their opponents to sleep? </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Such fears extended into the
Shiite community. In the most recent elections for Tyre City Council, Amal, the
other principal Shiite political party in </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>, ran a quiet scare campaign suggesting a Hezbollah
victory would mean segregated beaches and a ban on outdoor cafes serving
alcohol. The tactic apparently worked; in the council elections, the Amal slate
(with the support of the Christian minority) swept Hezbollah. Even into the
first days of this summer’s war, some in </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> admitted to a quiet
satisfaction that, at last, Hezbollah was getting theirs, that however hard the
Israelis might strike their enemies, the Party of God had brought it on
themselves by their reckless cross-border adventurism. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>That attitude soon changed. With
Hezbollah giving Israel a far better fight than anyone had anticipated, and with
Israeli warplanes engaging in what most in Tyre viewed as the wanton
destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure — highways, bridges, gas
stations and power plants throughout the country were bombed — national
pride and national anger fused together in support of Hezbollah. In </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>, the catalyzing moment came
with the July 16 apartment-building bombing; the following day, three children
were critically injured when Israeli warplanes blew up the canal they were
swimming in. After that, even most Hezbollah critics in the city came to regard
the Israeli offensive as an attack on the entire Lebanese nation. The
militiamen who launched their Katyusha rockets on </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> from the farm fields
surrounding </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> were no longer viewed as the
cause of the city’s woes, but as the city’s only defenders. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>This sense of civic unity played
out in myriad ways. After keeping a lower profile in the early days of the war,
the Hezbollah auxiliaries — the teenage spotters on their motor scooters,
the bearded functionaries in their 20’s with their walkie-talkies —
suddenly were to be found throughout the city, lounging on street corners,
calmly walking past police checkpoints. Defiant posters bearing the Hezbollah
logo or the likeness of its bearded and bespectacled leader, Sheik <ALT-CODE value="Nasrallah, Hassan" idsrc="nyt-per">Hassan
Nasrallah</ALT-CODE>, were pasted to more and more walls and city monuments.
Even Chucrallah Nabil Hage, the Maronite archbishop of </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> and a man who would seem
unlikely to be a fellow traveler of Islamic fundamentalism, allowed that
Hezbollah was now seen as the chief protector of the city and the nation.
“I’ve always had very good relations with them,” he explained
to me as we sat in the stone courtyard of his church in the Christian quarter.
“They are very forthright and decent men.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>What did not change was the
elusiveness of the actual fighters. As arguably the world’s most
disciplined and hierarchical guerrilla organization, Hezbollah’s military
wing operates with both a cell structure and a pyramid structure: small units
of salaried “soldiers” maneuvering independently of one another,
occasionally coming together for joint missions ordered by the next rung up the
chain of command, their security and secrecy maintained from below by an army
of spotters, couriers and neighborhood patrolmen. A walk down a city street
that might conceivably lead to a Hezbollah outpost would invariably end —
for a journalist, anyway — in a young unarmed man stepping from the
shadows to politely, but very firmly, announce that the path forward was
“blocked.” In this war, the fighters in the streets were determined
to remain almost as invisible as their enemies in the sky. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>This vast “neighborhood
watch” apparatus also made it very difficult to tell where support left
off and coercion began. Any interviews attempted in public settings — in
a refugee camp, for example — would usually lead to a young man with a
close-cropped beard suddenly appearing at the periphery, casually taking note
of the questions asked and the answers given. Even Hezbollah supporters who
lauded the movement’s social-services programs in their district became
visibly nervous if asked for help in locating an actual recipient, as if even
this benign peek into the organization might be a breach of the rules on the
street. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Perhaps the most intriguing aspect
of this code of silence centered on the conflict’s victims. In their
“all front” war with </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>, Hezbollah had meticulously planned for the
psychological dimension, and it appeared that a crucial component in this was
to minimize the reporting of their battlefield casualties. On this front, they
were able to rely on the support — or acquiescence — of the local
medical establishment. While journalists were routinely allowed access to those
hospital wards containing wounded women and children, other wards —
presumably those housing adult males — were off-limits, blocked by
orderlies or the requisite bearded young men. The same pattern extended to the
dead: occasionally ghoulish public displays of the torn bodies of obvious
civilians and a curious absence of those of fighting-age men. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Each car in the long convoy was
crammed to overflowing — women, children, the elderly — and as they
passed, all stared back with wide, uncomprehending eyes. They were coming from
a cluster of villages at the extreme southwest corner of </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>, flush on the border with </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>, and for the past two and a
half weeks, they had sheltered in basements and root cellars as their
communities on the war’s front lines were pounded into rubble. Taking
advantage of a lull in the fighting, they had chosen that day — July 31
— to make their escape, fastening strips of white cloth to their
cars’ antennas and falling in behind a small <ORG value="arts, automobiles, books, business, college, dining, education, fashion, garden, giving, health, jobs, magazine, movies, multimedia, nyregion, obituaries, realestate, science, sports, style, technology, theater, travel, us, washington, weekinreview, world:::More articles about the United Nations.:::http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html" idrc="nyt-org"><ALT-CODE value="United Nations" idsrc="nyt-org">United
Nations</ALT-CODE> convoy heading for Tyre. </span></font></ORG></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>The reason for the lull was itself
rooted in tragedy. The previous morning, Israeli warplanes bombed a home at the
edge of Qana, a small town eight miles southeast of Tyre, in the basement of
which two extended families had taken shelter; by the time rescue workers were
finished, 28 bodies — 16 of them children — had been pulled from
the ruins. By perverse coincidence, Qana was the same town where Israeli
artillery killed 108 residents seeking refuge in a United Nations compound
during the 1996 incursion known as Operation Grapes of Wrath. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>In response to the outcry over the
bombing, </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> had announced a 48-hour
suspension of “offensive” aerial operations. While no one was quite
sure what that meant, throughout south </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>, rescue workers struggled to reach those who had
been trapped by the fighting and get them out. Where many of them were taken
was to the four-story U.N.-administered school in al-Bass, the Palestinian
refugee camp in </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> that had long ago become more
like a Palestinian neighborhood. If it struck anyone as ironic that Lebanese
should seek sanctuary in a Palestinian refugee camp, it was actually an irony
that didn’t end there; al-Bass was originally a refugee camp for
Armenians escaping the genocide in <ALT-CODE value="Turkey" idsrc="nyt-geo">Turkey</ALT-CODE>
in 1915, a purpose that changed only with the flood of displaced Palestinians
into Lebanon following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Farouz Atamian, a 51-year-old
sanitation worker for the municipal government and one of the last Armenians in
al-Bass, has lived there his entire life. “It’s very nice
here,” he told me during the war, while sitting in the small garden of
his ramshackle home. “We have more room than most of the others because
we are one of the original families in the camp.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Among the estimated 10,000
Palestinian inhabitants of al-Bass, there seemed to be a kind of collective
discomfiture over what was happening in their adopted home, a sense that while
this wasn’t technically their fight, perhaps it should be. After all,
Hezbollah was taking on the “Zionist entity” and doing very well,
and this was the same enemy the Palestinians had battled with far less success
for 58 years. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Their sideline status in this
fight could partly be attributed to the historical schism that runs through
Islam — Hezbollah is Shiite, Palestinians are overwhelmingly Sunni
— but it also underscored the troubled position they hold generally in
Lebanon. Seen by many Lebanese of all persuasions as a destabilizing force in
the country, Palestinians are often held to blame for the 1975 civil war and
even more for historically using </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'> as a base to attack </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>, then offering only feeble
resistance in the face of </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>’s periodic and ruinous retaliatory attacks.
As many Shiites in Tyre will point out, usually with a touch of pride, it was
the Palestinian presence that provoked the 1982 Israeli invasion that so
devastated their city, while it was Shiite militiamen — precursors to
Hezbollah — who dealt the invaders their greatest blow: the successive
bombings of Israel’s two command centers in downtown Tyre in 1982 and
1983 that together killed 135 Israeli soldiers, events still referred to in
Israeli military circles as the first and second Tyre catastrophes. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>“In this war against Israeli
aggression, we all have our roles to perform,” explained Abu Hussein Ali
Salem, a craggy-faced man of 66 who is one of the “civic leaders”
of al-Bass camp. “So far, Hezbollah has taken the lead on the
battlefield, and we” — the Palestinians — “are
contributing from behind: by taking care of the wounded, the refugees. That, of
course, could change at any time. If we feel our place is on the battlefield,
we are all prepared to go.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>As a younger man, </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Salem</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> explained, he had been a
fighter for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the militant
Palestinian guerrilla organization responsible for many of the more spectacular
terror attacks against </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:
Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:
Georgia'> in the 1970’s. He claimed to have taken three Israeli soldiers
prisoner during the bitter battle for </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'> in 1982 and subsequently to have executed them.
“It was at the north end of the city,” he said, “and I was
cut off from my unit. The Israelis were advancing, and I had to leave, so I
just turned to them with my machine gun — pffft.” He swept a
gnarled finger before him. “I had tried to talk to them before, but they
never said a word. They died right there.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>There was something slightly
unconvincing about this story — or perhaps it had just dulled in the
telling over the years. In any event, </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Salem</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'> professed to be more interested in the future.
“If the Israelis come to al-Bass, it will be their graveyard. All of us
here are ready to fight — and we will fight them as well as
Hezbollah.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>During </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>’s air-war suspension,
several thousand refugees had come into </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'> from the southern villages. Most continued up the
coastal highway to </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:
Georgia'>Sidon</span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>
or </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Beirut</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>, determined to get as far away
as possible from the principal battle zone, generally delineated as everywhere
south of the </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Litani</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>River</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>. Nevertheless, a more buoyant
mood began to spread among many who remained in </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>, a seeping optimism that the
respite might be the harbinger of a general cease-fire. Those hopes ended when,
just before the close of the 48-hour window, </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'> resumed its airstrikes on the city’s
outskirts. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>On the first day of the resumption
of the fighting, I dropped by the U.N. school in al-Bass camp to talk with some
of the newly arrived refugees. Each classroom had been taken over by several
families — usually grouped together by their home village — and set
in neat stacks were whatever meager belongings they had managed to grab up in
their flight: blankets, plastic bags filled with clothes. In the corridors
outside, a surprising number of elderly women paced or sat slumped against the
walls, many of them muttering to themselves or to anyone who came into their
range. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>At about 4 p.m., the building
reverberated from the sound of four very loud bangs — apparently nonlethal
concussion grenades detonated close by — and at one corner of the school
courtyard, girls began running into one another’s arms, screaming and
crying. More girls kept rushing in to join the group, the hysteria infectious,
until perhaps 40 of them were mashed together in one small, screaming knot. A
man hurried over and began pulling the girls free, yanking them from each
other’s arms one by one, as if he were breaking up a fight. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>On the morning of Aug. 3, a small
crowd of doctors, orderlies and volunteers from the Lebanese Red Cross milled
about the parking lot of the government hospital in al-Bass. They had gathered
there to perform a mass burial. Muslim custom holds that the dead should be
buried in their home villages, and quickly — on the day of their death
whenever possible. But that tradition had now collapsed in south </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>. Because of both the sheer
numbers of victims and the exodus from the region that the war had sparked
— often, there were no family members around to perform the ceremony
— bodies were being brought to the government hospital in al-Bass and
warehoused in two refrigerated trucks outside its gates. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Hospital administrators had
already performed one mass burial in late July. A backhoe had cut two long
trenches in a nearby field, the 72 dead were set down in neat rows — each
coffin identified by a number so it could eventually be reinterred in the home
village of the deceased — and then the trenches were filled in, the whole
task completed in a couple of hours. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>By early August, however, the
trucks were full again. Off to one side of the hospital parking lot, stacks of
coffins for future victims were piled five and six high, maybe 100 in all. As
proper wood had long since disappeared from </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>, these were made from cheap shelving material
— particleboard topped by a thin veneer of white plastic — and
affixed with simple stainless-steel door handles for lifting. The local
Palestinian carpenter who had constructed most of the coffins, Ali Hussein Firmawi,
estimated that they cost $40 apiece and that he had already built around 185. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>“They only take about 10
minutes to make,” he said. “A little longer for the children,
because those sizes aren’t standard.” He was not at all proud of
his work, he explained — to build a proper coffin took weeks — but
the need was urgent, and he had no choice in the matter. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>After much conferring, the
hospital administrators decided to postpone the burial because of “the
security situation”; there was a lot of shelling around the city that
morning, and a large gathering of people might draw the notice of the Israeli
warplanes and drones overhead. Over the coming days, there would be more
postponements, and the odor emanating from the trucks would grow until it
permeated a wide swath of al-Bass camp. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> now became a city closing in on
itself. Against the near-constant thrumming of invisible Israeli spy drones
— a sound very much like a lawnmower — the Hezbollah fighters on
the outskirts of town and in neighboring villages launched ever more Katyusha
rockets toward Israel, drawing ever more Israeli bombing raids in response. As
the city grew increasingly isolated from the outside world, rumors became the
currency on the streets: there was about to be a peace deal; </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> had finally launched its
much-delayed ground offensive; Hezbollah had Israeli forces pinned down just
inside the border; the Israelis were sweeping north and might be in </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> within hours. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>The pace of events only added to a
general sense of fatigue and disorientation. In the predawn of Aug. 5, there
came the Israeli commando raid that Madona Baradhi witnessed, and later that
same morning, a missile attack on </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Jal al Baher Street</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> that killed two young men on
their motor scooters. The next afternoon, Israeli missiles hit several cars on
the coastal road, their occupants apparently trying to run the gantlet out of
the city. Rumors floated back that a family was killed trying to follow an
International Red Cross convoy out of town; an alternate rumor held that the
car had been coming the other way and traveling alone and that the missile had
wounded two. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Along with a cluster of doctors
and nurses and other journalists, I was waiting by the emergency-room entrance
of Jabal Amel hospital for those coastal-road casualties to be brought in when
there came a terrific bang very close by. Two hundred yards down </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Jal al Baher Street</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>, two Israeli antipersonnel
missiles had exploded, and amid a swirl of brown dust and leaves torn from a
nearby tree, a wounded man lay on his back in the street. He had just raised
his right arm and appeared to be trying to stand when a third missile came in,
lifting him six feet in the air and catapulting him face down onto the
sidewalk. Incredibly, the man still clung to life, his mouth gasping for air,
his severed right arm lying amid a sprawl of plastic coffee cups and shredded
leaves. Within minutes, an ambulance arrived to take him up to the Jabal Amel
emergency room, where, with one last shudder, he finally died. Nurses quickly
wrapped his body in thick plastic sheeting. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>The situation just kept getting
worse. On Aug. 7, the Israeli military announced a ban on all vehicular traffic
south of the </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Litani</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>River</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>. The sole exception, they said,
would be medical vehicles with prior approval — although </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> wasn’t giving approval to
anyone, so the point was moot. The ban meant that the city’s problems,
already dire, were about to have a cascading effect. With all gas and oil
deliveries cut off for nearly a month, its hospitals and ambulances were
operating on emergency backup supplies — and they, too, would start
running out in another week or so. With stores of insulin dwindling, </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>’s <ALT-CODE value="Diabetes" idsrc="nyt-classifier">diabetics</ALT-CODE>
might soon start dying. With thousands of refugees crowded into the
city’s schools and the sanitation system collapsing — to say
nothing of the still-unburied bodies decomposing at the edge of al-Bass camp
— there was growing concern of an <CLASSIFIER class=Topic type="Topic" value="health:::Recent and archival health news about epidemics.:::http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/epidemics/index.html" idsrc="nyt-classifier"><ALT-CODE value="Epidemics" idsrc="nyt-classifier">epidemic</ALT-CODE>.
</span></font></CLASSIFIER></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>“So right now, we’re
experiencing a humanitarian crisis,” Dr. Ghassan Farran, a member of </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>’s city council, told me
on Aug. 8. “Very soon, it will be a catastrophe.” Somehow things
got worse yet — Israeli warplanes destroyed the last small bridge across
the Litani. A fallen tree was maneuvered into place to span the breach, but
even this merely underscored a remarkable fact: the only way in or out of a
city that had once been home to more than 100,000 people was now across a
single 18-inch-wide log. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>And then on Aug. 12, the Israeli
and Lebanese governments finally agreed to a U.N.-brokered cease-fire,
Resolution 1701. After one last furious exchange that continued right until the
moment the cease-fire took effect, the guns and rockets and warplanes fell
silent over southern </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:
Georgia'>Lebanon</span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:
Georgia'>. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>Within the air-conditioned confines
of her office in the Libano-Française bank, Madona Baradhi was in a fine mood.
Just over a week into the cease-fire, most of the residents of </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> had come back from their
temporary exiles. The central market was filled with shoppers, and the candy
vendors had returned to their little stands on the northern corniche. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>“Everything must come to an
end,” she said, “and so it has with this war.” Still, Baradhi
admitted, it had been a trying week. Each day since the bank reopened had
brought a steady stream of people into her office who had lost everything and
were trying to figure out how to rebuild their lives again. “They are
taking out their savings, their pensions, trying to arrange loans — so
many people. That is why I say the Lebanese are both the winners and losers in
this war. We are the winners because we resisted </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>, but we are also the losers for
how much we suffered.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>As to the question on
everyone’s mind — whether the cease-fire would lead to an extended
period of peace, or was merely a prelude to the next round of war — Baradhi,
like many in Tyre, was philosophical. “Of course, I hope for peace, but
it depends on the people, the choice they make.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>In the Shiite neighborhoods on the
east side of </span></font><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Tyre</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>, that choice appeared to have
already been made. With its “sacred victory” over Israel, support
for Hezbollah had soared, and the Party of God was riding that crest both by
maintaining its defiant stand and by, once again, being seen as the chief
provider to those in need. In the war-damaged neighborhoods, as in the ruined
villages throughout the south, Hezbollah engineers were surveying the damage
that had been done and drawing up blueprints for reconstruction, while the
party’s field representatives were handing out cash payments to the homeless.
As for Hezbollah ever surrendering its weapons to the incoming Lebanese Army
and U.N. peacekeepers — both the most crucial and contentious point in
the debate over Resolution 1701 — the idea was met with derision by the
group’s supporters. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>“Why should the winners give
up their weapons?” asked Moen Zaidan, an orange-juice seller on </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Abu Deeb Street</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>. “That never happens in
war. No, Hezbollah knows it must keep its weapons to prepare for the next
war.” As for when that war might come, Zaidan claimed to have a reliable
guide. “We’ll know it’s starting by what happens in Kiryat Shemona,”
he said, referring to the town in northern </span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia'> that has been a frequent target of
Hezbollah’s rockets. “Because we are in a balance with them. If the
Israeli Army moves back there, then we’ll know it’s about to
happen.” </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>In this part of town, few seemed
to doubt that war would break out again; the real topic of discussion was when.
Perhaps this cease-fire would last for a few weeks, perhaps for a few years,
but at some point, the missiles between Hezbollah and </span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Israel</span></font><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'> would start flying again. In
the meantime, Ali Hussein Firmawi, the Palestinian coffin maker, was staying
busy. With the cease-fire, his open-ended work order with the municipal
government to build temporary coffins had come to an end, but, he said, he had
recently been commissioned to build 40 more. </span></font></p>
<p class=NormalWeb1><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia'>“For Hezbollah,” he
explained outside his small carpentry shop in al-Bass. “These are to be
of much better quality than the other ones. And the good thing about Hezbollah,
they always pay upfront, and in cash.” </span></font></p>
<NYT_AUTHOR_ID>
<p class=NormalWeb1 id=authorId><i><font size=4 color=black face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Georgia;font-style:italic'>Scott Anderson
has covered numerous wars for the magazine. His last article was about National
Guardsmen returning from </span></font></i><i><font face=Georgia><span
style='font-family:Georgia;font-style:italic'>Iraq</span></font></i><i><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia;font-style:italic'>.</span></font></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> </span></font></p>
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