 |
An unidentified fighter scouts the surrounding area at the southern Lebanese border. (Photo: Hassan Bahsoun) |
A sad tune emanated from a car parked on the main road of Ain Ebel in Lebanon’s deep South.
“Lebanon is a tear in my eye. For children whose laughs have faded. For men whose cries have diminished. Through martyrdom they paid the price for you. To become a home for freedom. Approaching, I carry a candle. For eyes longing to be free...In a land protected by soldiers. Our soldiers, O Lebanese,” a woman’s voice sings.
At first, one might think the song was new, recorded in solidarity with the Lebanese army after the latest clashes in Beirut and North Lebanon. That thought is reinforced after seeing a large portrait of Lieutenant Colonel Ibrahim Salloum Rifaat, a resident of the village.
The poster had been hanging in the church’s courtyard since his death five years ago in the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp war along with a number of portraits of General Francois al-Hajj, the former Lebanese army operations chief who was assassinated in 2007.
But it did not take long to discover that the song is part of a campaign around the “Day in Solidarity with the Lebanese Forcibly Deported to Israel,” scheduled to be held on June 2. This year, the slogan “Lebanon Is a Tear in My Eyes” commemorates 12 years of “displacement.”
The townsfolk are organizing a Mass and gathering in the pine forest, where the families of the deported will be speaking. Also on the occasion, Ain Ebel will light candles and ring its church bells, along with 12 other towns, to salute the families “exiled” to Israel.
Presiding over Mass will be Cardinal Boulos Sayyah who is expected to be appointed by the Maronite Patriarch Bishara Rai as General Patriarchal Deputy in a few days.
The event is the first of its kind and comes a few months after parliament passed a law regulating the affairs of those who fled to Israel. However, the town residents aren’t too eager to talk about the upcoming event.
Many are very cautious and prefer to remain silent. They defer to the priests. “We delegated them to speak in our name and follow up on our cause,” they say.
In this framework, Patriarch Rai held a congregational visit to the nearby village of Alma al-Shaab a few months ago. It was an opportunity for the families to discuss the issue of the approximately 100 men – many with their families – who fled during the liberation of the South in 2000 and remain in Israel.
Today, the village remembers the occasion, praying for its son Nassif al-Haddad who returned home a corpse through the Ras Naqoura crossing. He was not the first to return in a coffin. His relatives pray he will be the last.
On the other hand, some women and children have been returning, leaving behind husbands, brothers, fathers, and mothers. Two sisters returned before the July 2006 Israeli assault.
“They barely made it,” says a relative, pointing to the “repercussions of that war and the discovery of networks of collaborators. It impacted negatively the Lebanese in Israel and sustained the animosity towards them back home.”
One of the sisters tried to break the isolation from her surroundings imposed by her “profile” and enrolled in an academy in Sour to continue her studies.
She reintegrated in her original home as a young woman living in multireligious and multicultural environment after spending 6 years growing up in hostile surroundings.
She does not tell the new friends she made that she is “the daughter of a collaborator and that her family is still in the occupied land.”
While this young woman was able to settle in her home environment, many who return “do not have the courage” to do so.
Last March, four women returned. One was from Adaisseh and three from Jezzine. They went directly to Beirut to stay with relatives and did not even pass by their villages.
Before that, a woman from al-Bayyada returned after four years and joined her family who live between Sour and Beirut.
On the Adaisseh–Kfar Kila road, along the separation wall being built by Israel, people get tongue-tied when asked whether they will participate in the solidarity day called by Ain Ebel.
Collaboration with Israel, before and after liberation, transcends sects and towns. Fifteen of Adaisseh’s residents are still on the other side of the border. Ten of them had fled following the July 2006 war. Kfar Kila has ten also, and from the southern district of Marjayoun, there are more than a hundred.
Villages in the districts of Sour and Bint Jbeil, such as Naqoura, Rmeish, Dibil, Aytaroun, on the borders with Israel, also have their share.
An old man sits across from a sculpture unveiled recently to commemorate the martyrs of the battle between the Lebanese Army and Israeli occupation forces in Adaisseh. He sighs and takes his time elaborating that a “lifetime of resistance and collaboration will not be erased in 12 years.”
His neighbor ponders the issue for a while. “Only a few will dare participate, even from the Christian villages. Even if many of them remain nostalgic for the time of occupation due to the state of bliss they lived in compared to the era after liberation.”
At a local cafe popular with residents, visitors, the army, and international peacekeepers alike, a local resident points at the owner of the cafe and says, “He is a former collaborator and comes from a family rooted in the field.”
When asked about the manner in which he is treated by people here, he replies that “people forget and forgive as they wish.”
Referring to some wealthy individuals and members of parties and security forces, he says, “people blocked out their past and opened a new page for them. They integrated them in the country following liberation, as if blood was never spilled.”
Source
No comments:
Post a Comment