One in five Lebanese is now a refugee

By Ferry Biedermann in Sidon
Financial Times
Jul. 25, 2006

The old Lebanese port city of Sidon is bursting at the seams with refugees from the Israeli onslaught against Hizbollah in the south.

Schools, public buildings and private apartments are filled to capacity. Next will be the mosques, a miracle of sectarian goodwill as the local Sunni mufti has agreed to open the places of prayer to the overwhelmingly Shia refugees.

Mayor Abdul Rahman Bizri has set up a command centre at city hall to deal with the human tide that threatens to overwhelm his city. Sidon now hosts 40,000 refugees from the south, he says. It is the highest concentration outside the capital Beirut and a relatively much heavier burden on the population of 100,000.

"I don't get depressed until late at night before I go to sleep. Then I have time to think that maybe another 4,000 or 5,000 people will come," says Mr Bizri. Hisbig worry is an Israeli assault on the city of Tyre, further south, where 10,000 refugees have congregated. Sidon is 43km south ofBeirut and halfway between Tyre and Beirut.

At least half a millionpeople, about a fifth of the population, have been displaced by the violence. South Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut have been hit the heaviest in the 13 days of fighting.

Most of the displaced complain about being targeted as civilians but some reveal that there were fighters in their villages. During the weekend another surge of refugees fled the south, heeding Israeli warnings to get out of the way of the fighting and adding to the strain on resources.

The humanitarian situation has been made worse by an Israeli sea and air blockade and the targeting of roads and bridges that hinder the distribution of aid, both to the refugees and to the people who have stayed behind.

The UN has now established a humanitarian corridor to Beirut and hopes to get Israeli agreement for convoys further into the country later this week, said relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland in Beirut. He launched an emergency appeal for $150m for Lebanon, "to meet the needs of some 800,000 people over the next three months".

The main highway between Sidon and Beirut was made impassable by missile damage on the first day of hostilities. A car ride that used to take 20 minutes on the modern coastal highway now takes almost two hours along winding mountain roads.

Food is not a big problem for now but there are looming shortages of medicines for chronic illnesses and hospitals are starting to get worried about primary care drugs such as painkillers and antibiotics while they have to care for an influx of wounded from the south.

The refugees who make it to Sidon are exhausted by the long and stressful journey. Their stories are often similar and tell of days of Israeli shelling, shortages of water and food, power outages and cut phone lines.

The village of Aytaroun, right up against the border with Israel, has set up an office in Sidon city hall to help families reunite and co-ordinate relief. Of its 5,600 population, 4,100 have left. At least two families, one of 10 people, were killed when their houses were hit by shelling.

Haidar Mawassi, a farmer from Aytaroun, says that he, his wife and his eight children had to walk for kilometres on end to flee the village and they saw death and destruction, including "corpses", on their way out. But it was worth it because "for the last four days we could only give the children one dry biscuit a day."

Many also recount how they were first told by Israel to leave, only to be hit by Israeli shelling on the road to safety.

But one Shia woman who left the village of Srifa, where at least 10 people were killed in air raids last week, says that she and many other people were angry with Hizbollah's tactics. "The Israelis had spies and the moment a Hizbollah fighter would enter a house, it would get hit. They also hit a school where Hizbollah had made a base."

From a nearby hilltop, Hizbollah fired rockets at Israel. "Of course that is not good. I lost my house," she says.












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