A Piece of History

The British gained their mandate over Palestine (now, modern-day Israel & the Palestinian Territories) in 1922 but by 1947, one year before it ended, they had had enough. They were not able to find a solution to the integration of “a national home for the Jewish people” in the region, and during the mandate period, had faced revolts by both the Arabs and the Jews.

Whilst in the home of a Palestinian family in the Beirut Palestinian camp of Sabra & Chatila, I was shown a passport that the family had kept from their father. I found this document incredible. I had heard of Palestinians keeping the keys of the homes they had fled in 1948, on the creation of the Jewish state, but I hadn’t thought of the documents that were issued during the period of British rule.

I was asked if with this document, it gave them, the children, and now grandchildren of its bearer, the right to immigrate to the UK, but reading the small print in the back of it, this was not the case.

The passport was issued in Jerusalem, and printed in English, Arabic and Hebrew. It bore the stamps of arrival in Lebanon, newly independent after the French mandate of Lebanon & Syria.

The preamble to the passport is practically identical to my own, current, passport:

By His Majesty’s High Commissioner for Palestine.

These are to request and require in the Name of His Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford him every assistance and protection of which he may stand in need.

The Palestinians of Lebanon now have little chance to “pass freely without let or hindrance”.

Sabra & Chatila Palestinian Camps

Looking over West Beirut at sunset from the fourteenth floor of St. George’s Towers, seeing the new high-rise blocks and the floodlights of the Camille Chamoun stadium rising in the skyline next to Sabra & Chatila, it’s hard to imagine what it would have looked like 28 years ago, when columns of smoke would have been climbing into the sky under the incessant Israeli shelling.

I got a little obsessed with a book by Robert Fisk whilst I was in Lebanon. I was up until the wee hours every night, reading Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War, learning about the events that passed here, and how this one journalist witnessed it all.

In his book, Fisk often refers to the Beirut districts of Sabra & Chatila, the now infamous Palestinian refugee camps. Long before the massacres — led by the Christian Phalangist militias — they bore the brunt of the Israeli shelling & air-raids on the city. Arafat had his PLO headquarters based there.

Twenty-eight years after these events, I spent the afternoon in the camps, their borders now somewhat blurred. I had spent time with Palestinians in Syria and in Jordan, and now I wanted to see how life compared for those living in Lebanon.

There is still violence in the camps, although nowadays the danger comes from the friction between the Lebanese poor — whose shanties border Chatila — and the Palestinians. Every night, I was told, there is gunfire and “bombs” (although I suspect that the “explosions” are from somewhat smaller arms). Talking with people, I discovered that the night before I arrived, two Lebanese men had been fatally shot. News of this didn’t really make it out of the camp.

Walking into the area from the south, I first crossed a neighbourhood controlled by Amal, the Shi’a militia movement. Not far down the road, it is Hezbollah who control the streets. I sat for a while with two guys, talking about life here. Diib, the “boss” of this little quarter, says he wants to get out. “Fuck Lebanon.” He is fed-up of the poverty and the violence. As he says this, he pulls out a flick-knife and chases off a guy who took a liking to my watch and who talked back to him.

As I walked north towards the Palestinian camp, he advised me not to go there. “Dangerous people”, he said. Talking with Palestinians in the camp, they had the same advice about going south, back down to the Lebanese.

I was led-up onto the roof of a block of apartments, from which the expanse of the camps was pointed out. He indicated that this was Palestine. In the streets, posters of Arafat are ubiquitous. Opposite, lay the huts of the Lebanese. The concentration of people in this small area is astonishing. Drinking tea back in an apartment, the electricity often cuts out.

But the atmosphere here, particularly along the main street, is lively. A fruit & vegetable market is bustling with people, and in a small street I sit in a small canteen opening out onto the street, watching the life of the quarter. Whilst the old lady running the place was surprised to see me here, a Westerner ordering a bowl of fuul, she was very welcoming and happy to see me here. No, I was not an aid worker, nor a journalist. I am just here. “Bravo”, she said.

Some days later, I re-watched Waltz With Bashir, the acclaimed Israeli documentary/film that treats the events surrounding the massacre. Whilst it has been criticised for down-playing the Israeli/IDF involvement in the killing of so many innocents, the depiction of certain parts of what I now recognised in Beirut was disturbingly accurate.

» See more photos from Sabra & Chatila.

Identity

I get the feeling that the Lebanese want to shun their Arab roots.

They already have quite a mixed identity; having been under Ottoman rule for 400 years, the French “created” the state, and then the republic, as part of their mandate for Syria following the First World War. They gained independence from the French in 1943, although the French influence is still very present.

The country’s top-ruling positions have to be occupied by people from specific religious groups: for example, the President has to be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker of Parliament a Shi’a Muslim. The religious make-up of the country is diverse.

Add to this the vast numbers of Palestinians who arrived following the creation of Israel, and the subsequent Arab-Israeli wars.

Due to the fifteen year-long civil war, a third of the population was wounded, and estimates of fatalities range from 130,000 to 250,000. As a result of this, many Lebanese fled the country, and so other nations’ cultures play a part in the make-up of the country. Brazil has a huge ex-pat Lebanese population.

In the Achrafiyeh district, everybody, it seems, speaks French. And I’m not talking about people having it just as a second-language; I would often hear groups of Lebanese speaking French amongst themselves. Similarly in Hamra, as I sat in a café, English was spoken between friends.

Billboard posters often appear only in English or French, advertising the shops or banks in the language of the country from which they came. A job advertisement in the window of a restaurant only appeared in English.

This was all epitomised when I overheard a conversation in a café. The (Lebanese) waitress was saying to a (Lebanese) customer, in English, that she had the same computer, but that hers was “better” because the keyboard was only in English; there were no Arabic characters.

Whilst the global export of our culture can certainly lead to good things, certain freedoms and rights, above all, I don’t think that other societies should embrace it as whole-heartedly, and packaged, as they seem willing to do.

The photo, above, reads “Beirut” in Arabic. Let’s hope it stays this way for a little while longer.

To Beirut

The bus from Damascus to Beirut first slogs its way up to the Anti-Lebanon mountainside, then creeps through the long stretch of “no-man’s land” between the Syrian and Lebanese border posts, before winding along the roads surrounding Lebanese ski-resorts and snaking its way back down to sea level to this troubled capital.

Along the mountain roads there were several army checkpoints, the soldiers huddling near to their wooden cabins in between stopping vehicles. I had grown used to the frequent sight of guns displayed by Syrian police, army and mukhabarat, but here, things seemed to take on a different dimension. The checkpoints here seemed fiercer than their Syrian counterparts; arriving into Beirut, there was a tank positioned under a flyover. But then Lebanon has a much more troubled, recent past. It was only three and a half years ago that the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War gripped the south of the country, and southern Beirut was targeted. The evidence of fighting in the capital is visible nearly everywhere. Bullet-holes pock-mark buildings, whilst other still stand derelict, bearing the scars of shelling, presumably from the Lebanese Civil War.

But the city is undergoing huge amounts of construction; Downtown has been completely renovated, and the shell of the Holiday Inn, which was under heavy sniper fire in the civil war, is now flanked by other hotel giants.

Before I had come here, I had heard people speak of another war with Israel being “imminent” — it is only a month away, I had been told — but that doesn’t seem to stop the investment. Talking with more people in Lebanon, there are those who say that “Israeli troops are massing on the Southern border, and they have called up their reservists”, but then others who say that this talk has been going on for a year or so. “There will always be an invasion next month.” (Neither Hezbollah, nor Israel, would be particularly keen on a war right now. If one comes, it is likely to be due to Israel’s strategy on the Iranian nuclear issue, and Hezbollah’s ties with the country.)

On many counts, Beirut does seem to have it all. The city sits on the Mediterranean, is flanked by mountains (with ski-resorts less than an hour’s drive away), and not far north from the capital is some renowned hiking. Downtown & Achrafiyeh are definitely Western-facing; the old souk district is awash with occidental brands and shops, the clock-tower in the Place d’Étoile bears the Rolex brand. The student population around the Hamra & Ras Beirut districts create a little niche of cool little cafés, and in Gemmayzeh there are some very nice bars. The cuisine is divine. People are friendly, although a little too m’as-tu vu for my liking in certain districts. After having spent the last few months in Damascus, I felt much more comfortable in the bustling, populaire Muslim quarters.

Despite the mass of concrete, I find the city has an aesthetic charm.

Basing myself here is not inconceivable…

A fitting end

“Over there we’ve got some fuckin’ Yankees, and you’re a fuckin’ Brit” an old guy at Damascus’ Karajat Samariyeh said as I queued to buy my ticket for Beirut. He has one leg, fewer teeth, and talks in a broad Arabic-Brooklyn accent, having learned all his English from American sailors that were posted over here. “Fucking Al Capone style” he says, when I comment on his brogue.

Talking of the British and American troops he had met during their time in his country, he says “you Brits are so cool”, referring to the “cool & calm” nature in which we deal with things. “That’s smart”. According to him, “[the] Yanks are all fast money and fast cars”.

Fuckin’ ay.