MIDDLE EAST: Just as Lebanon was set to prosper under peace, war with its bullets and violence has reprised its devastating role, writes Megan Stack in Beirut
After years of taking on debt, forgiving their neighbours and hiding the scars of civil war, the people of Lebanon are watching with dread as their carefully rebuilt country splinters around them.
The last five days of Israeli airstrikes have shattered bridges, bloodied children and wasted roads. But they also mark another cycle of destruction for this seaside city, forcing some to wonder whether their country is cursed to live in perpetual violence and others to gird their loins defiantly for another round of death and destruction.
"We feel raped," intoned Camille Younis. "We never, never, never expected anything like this."
It was Saturday afternoon, the city smothered in sticky heat. The deep rumble of explosions from the south shook the floor under Younis's feet. His car rental agency was the only shop on a strip of newly rebuilt downtown real estate that had bothered to open its doors under Israeli bombardment. The place was deserted.
Younis (50) sat glumly in his office, a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and an ashtray brimming with Gitanes butts before him. He had invested all his money in the business, he said. He borrowed money and invested that, too. When the fighting started, his livelihood began to melt away. Younis was disgusted with Israel and angry with Hizbullah.
"My God, we had a dream," he said, pointing out his window to the mosque and church that rose side by side across the street. "We had a dream of Lebanon, and I'm sorry it didn't work."
The torrent of air strikes has cut down a national wish that has sometimes seemed on the verge of coming true: that the people of Lebanon, with its mountains and cedar forests and sparkling beaches, could have a peaceful, prosperous country.
"We are in shock. Nobody is ready to go through this war," said Nayla Mouawad, the minister of social affairs. Like most Lebanese, she has been scarred by her country's cycles of bloodshed.
Her husband, President René Mouawad, was assassinated just days after taking office in 1989. She was an outspoken critic of neighbouring Syria's tampering in Lebanese affairs. And now she is facing a fresh round of violence. "People are depressed and more than depressed," she said. "They are desperate."
The history of this tiny coastal country is a tapestry of betrayal, assassination and patronage. Lebanon has been repeatedly divided. Animosity among its many religious sects and a shaky central government exposed it to foreign meddling.
The civil war that dragged on from the mid-1970s until 1990 split the capital in half and pitted Lebanese against one another amid intrusions by Americans, Iranians, Syrians and Israelis. Israel's presence didn't end until 2000, when it pulled its troops from southern Lebanon.
The years of fighting left a bleak inheritance: the nation was physically destroyed, nearly drained of citizens, deep in debt and known internationally as a haven for warlords and terrorists.
The war also left Lebanon under the absolute control of Damascus. Syria sent its soldiers to control the countryside, backed Hizbullah and exercised a puppeteer's control over the government in Beirut.
It took violence, too, to drive Syria out of Lebanon. When charismatic former prime minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated last year, enraged Lebanese blamed Syria and thronged the streets in mass protests. Under heavy international pressure, Syria finally withdrew from Lebanon in the spring of 2005.
A weak and fractious government was left to sort out its considerable political differences, including the fate of Hizbullah. The movement kept its weapons and became a partner in the new government.
"We have paid a price for this homeland with our blood and our souls," a grim-faced Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora told his country on Saturday night. "We will rebuild what the enemy has destroyed as we did in the past. Lebanon has bled before and today it is bleeding anew."
Just a few months ago, Lebanon seemed to be rising from the wreckage of its past. The sun-splattered maze of shops and cafes, mosques and churches, plazas and pedestrian walkways in the heart of the capital had been rebuilt, limestone block by limestone block. For the first time in years, there was no war or occupation. Tourists came pouring in to explore the hillside city at the lip of the Mediterranean.
When Beirut rose from the ashes, it did so with flair. Racing to outdo one another, Lebanese built gourmet restaurants, gleaming boutiques and pulsing nightclubs. The city became fashionable again, particularly among wealthy Arabs looking for a place to escape the oppressive summers of the Persian Gulf.
But Lebanon never decided what to do about Hizbullah. Leftovers of the civil war still clutter the country: the old, abandoned buildings with their walls laced by decades-old bullet holes, the dead family members, and the things that aren't said.
Still, many Lebanese youth were accustomed to speaking of war as a strange and dark national memory. Now they wonder whether they, too, are destined to watch Lebanon buckle in war.
"It isn't so much that we are scared, but that we are scared for the future," said Maya Boutros, a 21-year-old education student who sat on a cement bench, staring over the empty streets. "I'm studying now, but for what? We don't have a future."
In the midst of the bombing in Beirut's southern suburbs, two sisters hauled plastic chairs to their front door and settled in with a tub of garlic between them. A songbird whistled in a nearby tree. The women bent their veiled heads together, one sister peeling the bulbs, the other mincing them with a small knife.
It was a portrait of equanimity under fire, long a Lebanese trademark. But when they spoke, the women were tense. The bombings had gone on all night, shattering the windows along their street. Living in the shadow of Hizbullah's radio station, a likely target for Israeli missiles, they expected more to come.
"We are really afraid," said Fatma Hajima (40). "We hope there's a resolution, because it's not easy to live here and hear the Israeli jets." As she spoke, the war planes roared overhead.
Back in his downtown car rental agency, Younis mulled over a life spent fighting. He fought in the civil war, and then he fought to establish his agency. He drove the same road from his village to Beirut for years, and watched the faces and uniforms on the soldiers change - all the different armies that have sent their young men into Lebanon.
His car service was the best, he boasted. He gave his customers a CD to listen to, snacks and roadmaps. "Who else does that?" He blinked back tears. "It seems everything we've worked for has been destroyed," he said. "I feel betrayed."