Lebanon

18:00:45 o'clock BST
Hearing Exile on Main St - Rolling Stones

Kiruja has let me out today. I've been pestering him so much that I think I wore him down - that or he was hoping I'd get slotted by an Israeli missile so that he could get some peace.

Walking out of the hotel for the first time in two days I got an attack of pins and needles as the blood rushed into my feet and my head went all dizzy from standing up so quickly. I was as excited as a new-born lamb - and as about as coordinated.

I went to see an organisation funded by Christian Aid, called the Lebanese Physically Handicapped Union (LPHU).

They are having real problems dealing with all the chronically ill people and wheelchair users hit by this conflict - those who are paralysed, blind or in need of long-term medication.

Those lucky enough to get away have ended up in the capital, Beirut, and other towns and cities 'living' in schools and other places without their drugs, their wheelchairs and other equipment they need to survive.

Mohammed, who is blind and works for LPHU, told me of one man who is sleeping in a room full of other people who have fled the fighting. He has no privacy to take care of his special hygiene needs. He cannot move on his own and therefore cannot reach the bathroom. There are few toilets available to people anyway and thus he needs to be lifted and he must queue.

He also had to leave his water mattress behind and sleeps on the floor, unable to move. He has bed sores and they have become infected. Obviously, the centres where the hundreds of thousands of displaced people have fled to are not designed for disabled people.

Yet these are the lucky ones.

Mohammed is aware of at least 20 LPHU members (probably therefore the tip of the iceberg) trapped in the conflict zones who need help. "We cannot contact them," he told me. "They are probably dead."

Another Christian Aid-backed organisation, called Najdeh (which translates loosely as 'rapid response') runs a nursery in a Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon. The camp was bombed last night and the nursery was damaged.

It has closed and the 83 children who usually use it, plus all the children who have newly arrived to escape the fighting, have been turned away.

Meanwhile, the violence continues. A simple question: is it worth it?



Please donate to Christian Aid’s Middle East crisis appeal:

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/middle_east

 

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14:52:09 o'clock BST
Hearing Concierto de Aranjuez (Rodrigo)

It was a big night here in Beirut with a massive missile assault which started around 5am and everyone's nerves are frazzled.

During the bombing, I found myself getting angry over ridiculous, trivial things - like the fact that one explosion nearby set off all the car alarms outside my window.

I was swearing under my pillow about the noise of the stupid cars in the midst of a city-wide blitz which almost threw me out of my bed and in which, we hear, 15 people died.

I'm not sure what that says about my failing rationality. Perhaps it's just the brain's way of focussing on that with which it can cope and ignoring those facts which are impossible to process. In other words, maybe my brain was fiddling as Beirut burned.

Kiruja, the Christian Aid security guy, is being as even-keeled as you'd expect a naval officer to be (if you'll pardon the pun). I'm glad he's here. Not just because I can hide behind him when things go bang, but because he's calm and great company.

We were talking about our wives back home (I got married to Glenda in December) and he was telling me about his wife, his daughters (who sound lovely) and his upbringing in Kenya.

It's good to think about positive things here, otherwise you'd go mad. But of course we (in theory - if the missile strikes don't cut the roads off completely) can and will leave soon.

The utter desperation that is felt by people here who have done nothing wrong, who are dying, had their homes destroyed and lost all means of support, must be incredible. And it must feel exactly the same for those innocent Israelis (both Jews and Arabs - for BOTH communities are getting hit by Hezbollah missiles) trapped in northern Israel.

Today Christian Aid warned that displaced Lebanese civilians returning home after a ceasefire is agreed will need to be on their guard against unexploded cluster bombs and other munitions.

According to experts, Israeli forces have been firing around 3,000 rockets, artillery shells, cluster bombs and other munitions into Lebanon each day for the past 27 days of the conflict.

It's estimated that around 10 per cent of these munitions have not exploded, so it is likely there are more than 7,000 unexploded munitions across the conflict zone.

There is a danger that when people are able to return home they could be injured or killed by unexplodedordnance, including cluster bombs.

And more bad news - the UN has warned that there is only seven to eight days' worth of fuel left in Lebanon.

I will probably be gone before the fuel runs out as my mission comes to an end fairly soon. When I leave I know what to expect. I will be grumpy and guilty and feel grey and flat and will whinge about irrelevancies and then, suddenly, from nowhere, a few days later I will suddenly explode with rage and something completely irrelevant. Poor Glenda.

Normally, after a trip like this, I get angry at shampoo adverts. Don't ask me why. I just do.

 

Donate to Christian Aids Middle East crisis appeal:

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/middle_east

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15:08:37 o'clock BST
Hearing My favorite Ska collection

Kiruja, Kenya's answer to James Bond, is out and about fixing his phone (I think he forgot to pay the bill) and buying a refill for his flame-throwing pen. So I might sneak out and go for a walk in a minute.

I wanted to have a quiet Sunday, but no such luck. I spent the morning from 7am until noon at the makeshift BBC studio doing interviews with Radio 4 and BBC World.

If ever any of you in the UK think your licence fee isn't worth the money, you should see these guys work. They are putting in 16-hour days, in a war zone, running around like crazy horses to bring us the news.

The tension is palpable. The whole place was like a Buckaroo – that game where you have to balance little plastic tools on a spring-loaded plastic horse which would buck horribly and fling everything around when it is over loaded?

It was terrifying. Stressed journalists tripping over wires, body armour and assorted helmets squawking at each other: "GET ME A LEBANESE GENERAL ON THE PHONE NOW!"

And: "If I don't get an expresso this instance, I will simply DIE!!!"

It was terrifying.

The news of the day for me is that Christian Aid's director, Dr Daleep Mukarji, was phoned at home by Tony Blair this morning to get our views on the humanitarian crisis.

In recent weeks I have had my doubts about the PM, on a personal level, regarding his handling of the war. And so has Christian Aid.

I'm not saying this conversation will change anything. It might, it might not. But hats off to Tony. He didn't have to ring Daleep – it was off his own bat.

And Daleep was able to tell him a few things – that aid agencies need unfettered access to the south without fear of being blown up, that we need a full ceasefire and that, crucially, for any solution to work long term, the British government simply must help tackle the weeping
sore of the Israel-Palestine question.

I can't say what Tony Blair said, but Dr D was very positive and felt that the PM at least listened. We'll see what happens.

Now, I'm sneaking out for a bit before Kiruja gets back

Donate to Christian Aids Middle East crisis appeal:

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/middle_east

 

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13:15:08 o'clock BST
Hearing The Wedding Present's Ukrainian folk music album

It's been great to read all your comments, specially today when,because of the current heightened security situation here in Beirut and beyond, Kiruja - the Christian Aid security guru - has confined me to barracks.

He just soooo 'risk averse'. Keeps going on about 'not wanting my death on his conscience' and moaning that he might get in trouble with our director if I get killed.... blah blah.
    
This man was a commander of a Kenyan warship, a British navy-trained
diver, a parachutist and a military intelligence officer. He was hardcore. And yet these days he jumps if a car back fires. He's gone soft.
    
Thus, I've been stuck in my room all day watching BBC World, doing a couple of radio interviews on the phone for BBC Radio Scotland and drinking diet coke with my opposite number at Oxfam.
    
So your comments have been a godsend. Thank you.
    
What occurs to me is that I think some of you may believe I'm taking sides. I'm not. Maybe I should, of course but really, I'm only commenting on what I see and what I feel.
    
In recent days I've spoken to loads of Lebanese families who have fled the fighting, who've had their houses destroyed and seen their friends and family killed. They've battled north to Beirut or cities like Saida and are squatting in schools and parks and basements in grim conditions.
    
So I have to say I'm surprised at how lacking in anger most people are. I'd be going mad.
    
And I have noticed something else that should worry Blair and Bush. And please trust me, I make no comment about this - that is for you guys to debate. I'm merely reporting what people are saying.

Simply, loads of people have said they never, ever supported Hezbollah.
    
But they do now.

Hezbollah, like Hamas, offer social services and support to poor people
in the areas they operate - services their weakened governments have been unable to offer.
    
And rightly or wrongly, they have been seen as defenders of the people in the face of their all- powerful neighbour, Israel.
    
In the case of Hezbollah in this particular crisis, they are bringing food to people who have fled the fighting. They are also offering to rebuild people's homes destroyed by Israeli munitions.
    
As I say, I make no comment on the rights and wrongs of this. But people's reactions to this is, of course, positive. Their government is too weak to fight the Israelis and cannot feed them all. Remember 900,000 people have fled the war and need food, clothes, water, medicine and shelter.
    
So, put simply, Israel is recruiting for Hezbollah, not destroying it. It may win this battle. But it is unlikely to win the war.


Donate to Christian Aids Middle East crisis appeal:

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/middle_east

 

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00:36:28 o'clock BST
Hearing Calon Lan by Welsh Male Choir

Last night was by far the worst since I arrived in Beirut. And today was the worst day.

I had to be up early because Kiruja – the Christian Aid security advisor – and I were heading into southern Lebanon to try to get a handle on the humanitarian crisis facing people right in the middle of the conflict zone.

But there was little chance of any sleep anyway because the Israeli missile assault on the Lebanese capital was so awesome and shocking.

I awoke with a start in the small hours when an explosion shook my room. And then another and another.

I can't easily explain the feeling. The boom is so powerful it rocks you. And it is so incongruous that missiles should be hitting a city where normal people live. The idea that someone is trying to kill civilians – or at least is aware that in doing what they're doing
civilians are bound to die – strikes me as perverse. It goes against everything you're taught as a human being.

It must feel the same being in Haifa and the Israeli citizens there must be as afraid as we are.

Anyway, we headed south at 6am, avoiding all major roads in the city for fear of attack. Kiruja, who has three phones with him, started receiving texts and phone calls from his security colleagues at the UN and other agencies. There were unconfirmed reports that the only serviceable road north from Beirut out of the country had been just
been cut by missile strikes.

The safety of this road, as far as we were aware, had been guaranteed by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to the United Nations. Blowing it up changed everything.

It meant that that aid could not move into the country from abroad by road, and that our secure evacuation route out was no longer safe.

As things stood, we were trapped.

It's been a day of furious email, telephone and text exchanges. But Kiruja has now mapped out options for our evacuation should we need to move. And he has also identified under what circumstances we would move.

Suffice to say, while I still feel safe-ish, as I prepare for bed I am far less confident tonight than I was this time yesterday.

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17:34:15 o'clock BST

I've been thinking while here that pre-judging people – prejudice – is one reason why the Middle East is in so much trouble.

Forgive me while I make massive generalisations here – but they are generalisations based on years of working in the Middle East. I find Arabs welcoming, kind, sharing people. They take pride in hospitality. As, of course do Jews.

A few years ago, I had been working in the Palestinian West Bank – in Bethlehem as it happens - at a tense time.

So when I walked into a bookshop owned by an intelligent Jewish man in Jerusalem the afternoon I got back from Bethlehem, he was astonished to find I had been among Palestinians only hours before. He asked me:

"Did they try to kill you?"

Oddly enough they didn't.

And Palestinians and Arabs in other countries sometimes think that all Israelis want to kill them and take their lands.

This simply isn't true. I don't imagine Israelis like this war any more than the Lebanese do. Their sons and daughters are being called up to fight in the Israel forces.

Lebanese children have been killed and forced to sleep in parks and schools and had their homes destroyed by Israeli warplanes.

Kids are not born haters. They learn it from experience. Kids in Haifa are probably learning to hate the Lebanese and Lebanese kids are learning to hate Israelis.

I'm lucky. I get to cross borders with my British passport and meet both 'sides' and I get to  see that Jews and Arabs are people first.

No more and no less. I get to choose whether I decide to hate or like them. And for me, I like them. All of them. Why wouldn't I?

It's a bit naff to say this. But I honestly think if everyone could just take a step back and meet and chat and stop being scared of what they don't know and learn that no one wants to hurt anyone, peace might just break out.

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14:26:32 o'clock BST
Hearing Blondie
Do I look like a spy? I must do. Having been detained by Lebanese
soldiers at passport control for having my camcorder on display, today
I went down to what is known as the security area and got interrogated
again.

This is a district of Beirut which is unofficially run by Hezballah.
It is also the area which has been most hit by Israeli missiles - for
obvious reasons.

There's nothing remarkable here - shops, apartment blocks and a
motorway flyover that rises above the district linking the city with
the airport. Except now, of course, it's mostly rubble.
   
We drive past a two-storey shop and on the second floor the wall and
windows had been destroyed - seemingly surgically. It looks very
clean and neat. There is a row of manikins with all their clothes sucked
off, I imagine in a blast. But the dummies are untouched.

So there they hang, above the street, blowing in the breeze, strung
up by the neck like dead bodies. It reminds me of the song Strange
Fruit, which I think was about African Americans being hanged from
trees in the deep south. Among all the blown out buildings and suffering
here, it's odd what images stay in your mind.

As we drive around with a Lebanese colleague from Association Najdeh,
an organisation that Christian Aid is funding and which is helping
people who have had to flee their homes to avoid being killed by the
bombing, a fat man in a beige tee-shirt waves at me from the passenger
seat of his beaten up Mercedes.

I assume he wants to be on TV or something so I carry on.

A minute later he whizzes past and pulls us over. I assume this
might be a Hezballah chap so I try to look normal and calm and
confident.

This is something we're taught on security courses at Christian Aid -
don't frighten the horses. Though, if I'm honest, I tend not to notice
these dramas unfolding and don't therefore think to panic.

For example, once when we got held up in the mountains in Afghanistan
by a known bandit who had already some weeks earlier killed the cousin
of my Afghan colleague who was with me at the time, I got out of the
car. I thought we were having a break so lit a fag and stretched out
on the grass and had a quick power kip.

Only after did I discover that there were 10 bandits pointing guns at
us and who were about to kidnap us. Luckily, my Afghan colleague,
unbeknown to me, talked us out of the situation.

Anyway, the Hezballah chap was joined by several others - three more I
think - and they ask to see what I was filming, so I replay it to
the boss man. He then makes a phone call to, I guess HQ. They all
seem very disciplined, which is a good thing.

My colleague, Kiruja, the Christian Aid security guru gets out of the
car. He's great in these situations. He seems to be taking it all in
but not doing anything obvious. As it turns out he was checking
windows for snipers covering us and working out an escape route.

I love that guy.

But they let us go, quite happily and on good terms if I promise not to
film any more. I make the promise and we all shake hands.

When Kiruja gets back in the car he said he thought we might have been
whisked away, chained to a radiator and fed bread and water for a
month.

I think he was joking.

What's odd - and dare I say it, almost sweet - is that I was filming
blown-up bridges and houses so I could get the images out onto the
Christian Aid website. But they were worried that I was filming for
the Israelis. Fair enough - they need to be cautious, I guess. They're
the ones suffering and being bombed, not me.

But there are Israeli spy drones flying over head and spy satellites
which can probably read the newspaper the Hezbollah man was holding
before he's even checked the football results. I really don't think
they need to worry about me.



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11:05:29 o'clock BST
Hearing Billy Bragg

Today was a bad day. I went to meet Leila El-Ali, a Palestinian woman by origin who lives in Beirut. She's never been to her home, because the Palestinian and the Israeli governments won't allow it. It's a crazy world.

She runs an organisation called Association Najdeh. Najdeh means something like 'rapid response' and they work with Palestinian refugees forced out of Israel.

But now Leila and her colleagues are spending their days - and nights - helping people from Lebanon who have been forced out of their homes by the Israeli bombing.

Leila chain smokes French cigarettes and drinks shots of Turkish coffee. She laughs a lot too, which surprises me.

One of her colleagues took me to see three families Najdeh is helping.

It was grim.

Below one of their offices is a cellar. There are no windows and it is dark most of the time because the electricity keeps failing in Beirut - especially since the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict started.

It's hot and humid and smells damp.

But here live three families. They are related and the head of the group are Mr Ghazwan Moushraby and his wife, Soaud. His son and daughter and their spouses and children aged one to 10 years live there too.

Ghazwan and his extended family live in south Beirut. They fled on 12 July after the first Israeli airstike hit. They ran in the clothes they were wearing and walked around the city all day looking for a place to stay.

They found Najdeh by chance and now at least, they are safe. Less than 20 minutes after they fled, a missile struck the area they were standing in. Had they not run they would be dead.

A car alarm is going off as I write, making me angry. This is a sign of stress and I recognise it from past trips to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. It is because I am finding it hard to process what I've seen.

Ghazwan says the children sleep fitfully. They moan and grind their teeth all night and it's so hot the parents fan them to keep them cool so they don't wake up in the dark, dungeon of a basement.

They're scared and want to go home and they ask if the bombing has stopped yet. But the adults don't even know if their houses are still standing.

Ghazwan's son, Walid, tried to go home to see if the place was still standing but he couldn't find his street because the area had been destroyed. He can't acknowledge that his home has gone. But it's obvious it has. No one has the heart to tell him. Everyone looks at
their feet.

They have no money left and no food and they can't work because their jobs have been destroyed with their homes.

In two days' time Najdeh, which has already clothed them, will give them a basic food ration. Until then they will go hungry. They tell me this as they make me coffee. I am a guest and they will not let me refuse to take what little they have.


Donate to Christian Aid’s Middle East crisis appeal:

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/middle_east

 

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13:56:24 o'clock BST
Hearing Mozart

When you first arrive, Beirut looks really cool. It’s a bit like Paris or Geneva with chic boutiques and a picture postcard beach. Not that it was easy getting here, we started on Monday in the Syrian capital of Damascus. My Christian Aid colleague, Kiruja, who is a former commander in the Kenyan navy, has come along as our security advisor. He made plans to leave at 5am. We had maps, water and food and we had taxis organised (yes - you can get taxis into war zones - if you have enough dollars). But then we had to wait for colleagues from aid agencies from Northern Europe to arrive - Norwegians, Danes and Swedes.

 

The problem was, they were late and also more Danes turned up than we expected. So, as any military man will tell you, the best plans don’t survive first contact with the enemy. Although this time, it was more a case of friendly fire. It meant we had to find another taxi at 4am to take us to war zone central.

 

The previous night the Israelis had bombed the main road from Damascus to Beirut. Even if we could get round the huge holes in the highway, Kiruja was worried we’d be hit by a missile and end up filling in one of the holes ourselves.

 

So we had to drive the long way around, north along the border with Syria and right down the western coast of Lebanon to Beirut. A two-hour journey suddenly became an eight-hour journey… and that was before I was arrested.

 

Lebanese soldiers on the border didn’t take kindly to me carrying a video camera. I was ‘interrogated’ for an hour in Arabic. However, they let me go when I showed them the tape which was empty. I, pathetically, had a hissy fit. But on reflection, these guys and their families are being bombed to kingdom come and I suppose I could have been taken as an Israeli spy. You can’t blame them for being sensitive.

 

Before we started Kiruja had interviewed the drivers and had taught them the subtleties of tactical driving awareness. These guidelines include driving within sight of each other, but far enough apart so that if one of us got hit by an Israeli missile, we wouldn’t all die. Also avoiding trucks and trailers at all costs because they were being targeted by Israeli F-16s as potential missile carriers. The drivers ignored all this and drove bumper to bumper at 90 miles an hour the whole way. I closed my eyes and listened to Mozart’s horn concerto on my IPod.

Please give to Christian Aid's Middle East Crisis Appeal:

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/middle_east/index.htm

 

 

 

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