Peter Beaumont in Kfar Kila
Sunday August 6, 2006
The Observer
Kfar Kila ist so nah an der Grenze,dass man die Autos drüben sehen kann.Die Olivenbäume sind schwarz von dem Phoshorbrand,den die Israelis beim Rückzug gemacht haben,die Ernten vernichtet ,die Häuser in Ruinen,einige mit Blut beschmiert.Die Tiere in den Schuppen wurden von Schrapnells verletzt und schreien mit tödlicher Regelmässigkeit.Ibrahim Yahia,ein 26 Jahre alter Bauer ,führt uns zu einer friesischen Kuh,ein Auge vom Schrapnell getroffen,Blut fliesst aus der Nase.Als Yahia sie streichelt schlägt sie aus.Nichts erschüttert ihn mehr,er ist ein Mitglied von Amal,einer Widerstandsgruppe,die mit hizbollah kämpft.Gestern haben sie drei Panzer beschädigt und 2 Tage den Angriff der Israelis abgewehrt.
Ich bin nicht wie die Israelis sagt Yahia.Ich habe einen Grund zu kämpfen ,dies ist mein Land.Kannst du ruhig zusehen wie dein Land brennt,deine Kinder sterben?Die gesamte Bevölkerung hier leistet Widerstand.Nicht wie die Israelis,die nicht für ihre eigenen Häuser kämpfen.Sie rennen wie die Kaninchen wenn sie uns treffen....
Das ist es etwas,das einen stark berührt,die Männer ,die hier den Widerstand der Hizbollah bilden, sind keine religiösen Eiferer,viele sind ohne Uniform.Sie reden von ihrem zerstörten Eigentum,von dem Vieh ,das in den Bergen zerstreut ist.Religion ist für sie so wichtig wie ihre Häuser und ihre Familie....
When war came to the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila, a stronghold of the Hizbollah-led Islamic Resistance, it did not have very far to travel. A kilometre of olive groves, and decades of hatred and mutually divisive history, separate this impoverished mountain village from the uniformly red-roofed houses of Metula, Kfar Kila's nearest neighbouring town. Except Metula is in Israel.
They are so close that from the village you can see Israeli cars parked by their houses. So close that the border at one point - at the Fatima Gate - forms the eastern boundary of the village.
Now Israel is at war with Hizbollah, Kfar Kila is at the very front of the front line. The olive trees on the ridge above the village have been scorched black by the phosphorus flares Israeli soldiers used last week to set them aflame. Buildings have been smashed and ruined, set on fire. Some are stained with blood.
Farm animals, kept in sheds and yards behind the bigger houses, have been injured by the shrapnel from tank shells, which scream in with a jarring, lethal regularity. Ibrahim Yahia, a 26-year-old farmer and part-time defender of Kfar Kila, leads us to a Friesian cow, blinded in one eye by shrapnel. Blood streams from one nostril. As Yahia tries to take its muzzle and comfort it, the animal is spooked, and bucks and kicks.
But nothing appears to spook Yahia. A member of Amal, the group fighting alongside Hizbollah in the Islamic Resistance, he barely flinches as the Israeli shells crash in. The streets are open on one side to observation from the gunners around Metula. 'If they want to come, they'll come,' he said sombrely, showing off the rubble in his parents' house, where a shell had punched a hole through the wall. 'Then we will fight them.'
It is a confidence buoyed by the sense of victory that followed the fighters of Kfar Kila's first major encounter with Israeli ground forces in this war. The day before we spoke, the Israelis had tried to take the village with three tanks and infantry advancing from two directions. Over two days, Yahia and his colleagues fought them to a standstill.
One tank was disabled, by Israel's account - three according to Hizbollah's - before the Israeli troops pulled back from Kfar Kila across the fence, burning the olive groves as they went, to resume the business of hurling high explosives against the ridges above the village.
'I'm not like the Israelis,' Yahia said.
'I won't fight without a reason. But because I have a reason I will fight. Because this is my land, I am prepared to die for it. How could you stay silent when you see your land burn and your children get killed? The whole population here is now resisting.'
It is a crucial difference, he seems to suggest, which explains why Israel is struggling to make ground in this campaign - its soldiers are not fighting in their own villages to defend their homes. 'They hit and run,' Yahia said scathingly about the Israeli tactics. 'When they meet us they run like rabbits.'
It is something that strikes you forcefully when you reach the front line of this war. In these villages that form the strongholds of the Islamic Resistance, the men - many of them obviously fighters out of uniform - do not talk much in terms of ideology or religious fanaticism. They are not the zealots and jihadis that Israel claims. Instead, they talk about their damaged property and their livestock scattered by the shelling on the mountains. They talk about family who have fled and those who have stayed. And all the time they carefully skirt talk of the fighters. If they do talk politics it is sometimes with an unexpected spin. Several say that it is not so much the Israelis they blame for this - indeed, who they suggest would agree to a truce - but US President George Bush, who they claim is the real force behind the war.
While religion is an element, it is part of a much more complex formula. Yahia mentions that he follows Ayatollah Sistani, the moderate Shia leader in Iraq, and says he is prepared to be a martyr in this fight for his home. But it is said in a casual way. For Yahia, like the other men in the village, religion is important in the same way as his land, his home, his family and his people.The south of Lebanon, with its Shia majority, is both strongly observant and socially conservative. 'We do have time to pray while we are fighting,' said Yahia. 'Some of us defend while others pray and then we pray while others defend. If I get an hour of rest I will try to visit my family. Otherwise we eat sand and bullets!'
As we talk, Yahia's commander and another younger fighter arrive to examine a dud shell. The older man is bearded and in his late fifties. 'I don't want to say how many fighters we have in Kfar Kila, but it is a large number. If the Israelis come again they will not get in.'
All the evidence suggests that the commander is not exaggerating. While uniformed members of the Hizbollah missile brigades in the villages around the largely Christian town of Marjeyoun are almost invisible, evidence of their presence is not. It suggests that the fighters here are more numerous, better armed and better trained than Israel imagined.....the presence of Hizbollah is only discernible in the puff and whoosh of their missiles; by the scorched ground in the scrub where the launchers briefly halt to fire, and by their many bunkers, heavily camouflaged on the hillsides.Israeli jets drop their expensive US bombs, usually far from where Hizbollah has been firing. Tanks pound the limestone ridges and envelop them in smoke ('Shooting at ghosts and trees,' says Yahia wryly). In retaliation, Hizbollah fires its rockets blindly across the border, while Metula's sirens wail.....
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1838321,00.html
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