LEBANON: Beirut's residets try to live their life as normal as possible and are preparing for a long conflict with Israel

Life in Lebanon under siege may seem like normal on some streets of Beirut, but residents are preparing for a long conflict and taking every opportunity to leave. Traffic on Dora street, the main road out of Beirut to the northern town of Jounieh was heavy, but few shoppers visited the nearby shopping mall. A family prepared supplies for the journey out of Lebanon and some people already had tickets to leave. "Of course I will leave Lebanon. Would you leave if you had the chance? What guarantees do I have for a life here? The country is falling apart, the politicians care about themselves now, they're using us. It's better to go," said a woman while packing a cart full of food. "I'm leaving to France in a week. Maybe if the situation in Lebanon gets better, I will return," said Sara Hajjar who has a dual Lebanese and French citizenship. But Tommy Tabib, the manager of a bar in the Jemaizeh neighbourhood is ready to stay rather than live the life of a refugee. "(I'm not leaving because) I'm Lebanese and nobody will treat me like a refugee around the world. Second of all, money. For the last fifteen years we had a very bad economy, we're paying a lot of taxes, we're earning so little, so I don't have any savings. I prefer to stay here, struggle, fight to live and be in my house, with my friends, my family rather than going abroad and be like the people we used to see on TV. I can't imagine that we might live through what people from Iraq or the tsunami lived. We used to look at it on TV and say: poor little people. I'm afraid to have this," he said. Now twenty eight, he was six when Israel first invaded Lebanon in 1982 and says he lost his childhood during the civil war. "I don't want to live my childhood again, it's really terrible. I lived it in a shelter while everybody where getting music, books, going to libraries, getting cd's, checking out new movies, going out with the first girlfriend," he said. Thousands of Lebanese civilians fled north on Friday after Israel warned them to leave border villages and called up 3,000 army reserves in a possible prelude to a major ground offensive against Hizbollah guerrillas. Amid mounting world alarm at the crisis, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to leave for the Middle East on Sunday in what diplomats called a bid to reduce the fighting. Israel has so far failed to stop Hizbollah cross-border rocket attacks, despite a 10-day bombardment which has killed 345 people in Lebanon, forced half a million to leave their homes and destroyed many of the country's vital installations. Israel's main ally, the United States, has rebuffed Lebanon's appeals for an immediate U.N.-backed ceasefire, saying this would not last unless Hizbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, is prevented from attacking the Jewish state. Families with possessions packed into cars and pickup trucks clogged roads to the north after Israeli planes dropped leaflets warning residents of south Lebanon to flee for safety beyond the Litani river, about 20 km (13 miles) from the border. An estimated 300,000 mostly Shi'ite Muslim Lebanese normally reside south of the Litani. There was no word on how many have already fled the bombing and fighting of the past few days. Air raids have wrecked many roads and bridges in the region.

ITN Source | July 22, 2006

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