Two huge holes were left by the missiles that pierced a small building in a narrow alley in downtown Baalbek, in north-east Lebanon. The Khala family’s clothes and photos lay strewn in the rubble of the partly collapsed building. Two women and four children were killed in the Israeli strike on the building on Monday, October 21. Coming to collect belongings from their home, rendered uninhabitable by the blast, neighbors refused to say whether the family had included a member of Hezbollah. Young members of the Shiite party were guarding the site and listening to conversations.
“These are the sacrifices we make for our fighters. We give them our soul and our blood. If we don’t defend our country, who will?” asked Oum Mohamed. The 43-year-old mother and headmistress of a secondary school in Hadeth, a southern suburb of Beirut, was taking refuge with her parents two houses down. She fled the Lebanese capital on September 25, under threat of Israeli bombardment. Her house and school were destroyed. Hezbollah promised to rebuild the houses, but Oum Mohamed was surprised not to have seen any aid distribution by the party in Baalbek.
Since Israel launched a vast offensive on Lebanon on September 23, local Hezbollah institutions have been systematically targeted. On Monday, the headquarters of Al-Qard Al-Hassan, Hezbollah’s microcredit organization, was bombed in Beirut. At the same time, its branch in Baalbek was wiped out too. The explosion also blew up the interior of the Al-Ajami restaurant, frequented for decades by the artists and political figures who flock to the July music festival, staged in Baalbek’s majestic Greco-Roman ruins. These two worlds have coexisted ever since the city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and former stopover on the pilgrimage route to Jerusalem, became a Hezbollah stronghold.
Not the time for criticism
Hezbollah was founded there in 1982, at the instigation of emissaries from the fledgling Islamic Republic of Iran. The movement’s center of gravity then shifted to southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut. Baalbek, however, remains an important Hezbollah stronghold, as does the Bekaa plain, through which weapons from Syria pass. In the city’s Shiite districts, the walls are covered with photos of “martyrs,” including Hassan Nasrallah, the former Hezbollah secretary general, killed by targeted Israeli strikes on September 27, and portraits of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Two-thirds Shiite, Baalbek is also home to a sizable Sunni and Christian minority. For the past two years, the city has been run by a Sunni mayor, Moustafa Chaal, who has been a member of the city council since 2004. “My turn has come, despite the unwritten rule that the mayor must be Shiite. The people of Baalbek have accepted me with open arms,” said the 66-year-old mayor, over coffee at the Palmyra Hotel, facing the imposing temples of Bacchus and Jupiter, the city’s two jewels. Once host to Charles de Gaulle, Jean Cocteau, Fairouz and Nina Simone, the establishment hasn’t had a single guest for a month and a half.
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