Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/world/middleeast/30bekaa.html
July 30, 2006
Bekaa Valley
In Devastated Lebanese Town, Signs of Hezbollah in the Streets and in the Shadows
By JAD MOUAWAD [israel’s 2-front war] [began around 7-12-06] [Israel has encountered fierce fighting from Hezbollah] [perhaps unanticipated] [Hezbollah has conitued to rain down rockets deeper and deeper into Israel: now between Haifa and Tel Aviv] [pushed back toward the bekaa valley and syria’s warm embrace!] [***************]
BAALBEK, Lebanon, July 29 — Baalbek, the City of the Sun in Roman times, was once best known for the glory of its ancient ruins.
Now, the death toll here stands at 38. Nearly 70 percent of the town’s 125,000 residents have fled, and the mayor makes bitter jokes about a new kind of ruin.
As in most places where Hezbollah has a significant presence, it is both invisible and ubiquitous.
The main road is lined with Hezbollah’s yellow flags and pictures of the party’s leaders. [***********]
There are also a few posters of the father of Iran’s revolution, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini. At the entrance of town, a captured Israeli tank from the 80’s is displayed as a trophy perched awkwardly on a column. Farther in, a traffic circle has a golden model of Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem; a sign reads, “Jerusalem, capital on earth, capital in heaven.” [***************]
Out of nowhere, party officials pop up to check on inquiring visitors. Others, dressed in civilian attire but armed, keep a distant watch. Some neighborhoods are out of bounds, they say.
The signs of Hezbollah stand out against the ravages of war. In the center of town a handful of buildings have been bombed by the Israeli Air Force.
One has been shaved in half by a series of bombs. Half of it is intact; the other dangles out.
Everywhere the eye turns is debris: pieces of furniture, some toys, a picture of a Lebanese soldier. The windows of the courthouse have been shattered outside, and legal papers litter the empty streets.
Stores are shuttered. Half a dozen service stations have been blown up, as was a bridge leading into town. Farther north, another bridge was hit Saturday morning. A school and a supermarket, both run by Hezbollah, were flattened in a nighttime attack, residents said. On Saturday, four men searched through the supermarket’s rubble for a body they thought they smelled.
Thousands of plastic chairs crowd near a stage between the temples of Bacchus and Jupiter for an annual festival that will not be held this year. Across the street, at the venerable Palmyra Hotel, Ghassan Karaa, the hotel manager, sat behind his empty desk and stared at two old-fashioned dial phones that stopped ringing more than two weeks ago.
Baalbek lies 80 miles north of Israel, in the heart of the Bekaa region, where smuggling and drug trafficking have long lined the pockets of local residents. On Saturday, its mayor, Mohsen al-Jammal, admitted that Hezbollah had a strong influence in town, but he said there were no fighters here. [***************]
Three days ago, two bodies were found inside under a building, a week after a missile hit a neighborhood outside town. Residents and the mayor said there had been no fighters in the building, either.
“The inhabitants would never accept to have fighters and missiles, small or large, in their midst,” Mr. Jammal said. “They know it would endanger them.”
The many “security officials” that roam Baalbek have sealed the area off because, they say, some of the bombs that fell had not exploded and were still dangerous.
Not everyone here is a Hezbollah supporter. Mohammad Osman still shows up daily at his computer repair store, even if his glass windows have been blown up and his store is coated with dust. He was supposed to get married this month. Now, he is waiting. “The party will be much bigger after this is all over,” [*********]he said.
Mr. Jammal was elected mayor two years ago as an independent candidate. He won, he said, because Hezbollah did not field anyone.
He pointed out where some of the cracks in the pillars have widened at the Temple of Bacchus.
“Now we have two kinds of ruins in Baalbek,” Mr. Jammal said. “Those that were created by earthquakes in past centuries and those that were created by bombs in past days.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company