I am down to one last breath...and i never thought i'd be here.

And so i stand, trying to prolong this as long as i can. I dont know if i will survive this, maybe it will consume me completely, maybe it will give me something i can cherish for life.

But i also have this insatiable desire to make this the most meaningful, most beautiful experience of my life. So, I am doing every single thing I can to look for that silver lining. I am standing on my toes, trying to reach for that sky that holds my dreams. I am bending on my knees so i can convince Allah ji to let me go on. I have my eyes closed, following a path i have no clue about. I dont know what will happen, reason tells me it's everything that requires fortitude, blind faith. My heart just urges me to stay and to try...just a little more, every single day, every single moment.

I have looked for certainities my whole life, and now my life, my heart and my soul are all focused on the most uncertain of the uncertainities i could have created for myself. And i just dont know what to do with myself???

In the past two weeks that I have been in Lebanon to cover the Israel-Lebanon war, I have seen many faces of Israel. Unfortunately none of them is pleasant. But I will admit this much; sometimes I feel awe at the sheer audacity of its lies.

Take for instance the fact that every time it kills civilians under the pretext of combating Hizbollah guerillas, all it has to do is shrug it’s shoulders and say...’oops’.

Ok so I am being a little glib here but I have my reasons. The first example I can quote is when four unarmed UN observers were killed in Lebanon on July 26, 2006 in southern city of Khiyam. Daniel Ayalon, Israel’s ambassador to United States had this to say…

"UNIFIL obviously got caught in the middle" of a gunfight between Hezbollah guerillas and Israeli troops”

Really, that is just so obvious that the United Nation’s post got in the way of Hizbollah and Israeli troops. How transportable of the UN post!

Kofi Annan’s protest over this issue wasn’t very well received either. Though he was ‘deeply distressed’ over the ‘apparently deliberate’ strike on a well marked UN post, this was the response of Dan Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador to United Nations:
"I am surprised at these premature and erroneous assertions made by the secretary-general, who while demanding an investigation, has already issued its conclusions,"
My second example comes from an Israeli strike on a UN Convoy on 29th July, 2006.
A rescue convoy bringing civilians from a village near the Lebanon-Israel border came under fire from Israeli forces. A cameraman for a German network and his driver were lightly injured and their car destroyed when it was struck by two mortar rounds. Then on 6th August 2006, a vehicle just ahead of a United Nations humanitarian aid convoy in Lebanon was hit during an air strike by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). During the incident, which occurred just north of Tyre, the two occupants of the vehicle were killed.

Israel shrugged these instances of by saying that they were ‘tragic mistakes’.

My third example is probably the bleakest in this war. The second massacre of Qana on July 30th, 2006. to the best of my knowledge, this is the most grim repetition of history ever. Same town, same assailants, a different time and different faces. This attack bordered on war crimes, but Israeli spokesperson only had these words to offer.

‘We are deeply deeply sorry…this was a tragic incident’.

Following the Qana Massacre, Israel decided to take it easy on Lebanon for forty eight hours, and start and inquiry to understand how that specific building in Qana, housing over 100 people came under attack by mistake.

Those 48 hours never happened. Only a few hours later, Israeli cabinet decided to expand its ground offensive. Naquora was attacked, Al-mansouri saw air strikes near dawn, Litani river was raided by Israeli troops while al-owaida hills were fiercely shelled. And so far I have only cited incidents from the first eight hours of August 1st, 2006.

And by the way, that investigation into Qana Massacre by Israeli authorities….never happened.

Only a few days back while Rice was visiting Israel for a possible negotiation on ceasefire, Ehud Olmert said that Israel needed another 7-10 days for it’s military operations. Now ten days later, Ehud Olmert after meeting with Israeli Security cabinet has said that it will take another month for the military operations to achieve the desired results. Amnesia anyone?
And only in the early hours of 10th August, 2006, after Washington told Israel to hold back on its offensive, Israel decided to stop expanded attack on Lebanon in order to negotiate on ceasefire and give the United Nation’s a chance at true diplomatic efforts. Well, that didn’t work either. This morning twelve air strikes were carried out on Deir Antar, fur near northern Balbaak and just by 0815 a.m., Israeli forces had entered Marjeyoun, Burj-ul-Mouluk and al-Qalaya.
By noon it has attacked the oldest Lighthouse in Beirut and thrown leaflets around the city telling people to evacuate.
Quite a long narrative but what am I getting at? I wish I knew. I am only trying to figure out what it is that Israel possesses that it can get away with just about every war crime possible and still be on top of its game. Your guess is as good as mine.

All aggressors look for impunity in war. Israel is no exception.

As world leaders meet in the comfortable surroundings of the United Nation’s offices in New York, the Arab League in order to show its solidarity with Lebanon in this crisis is holding a special session in Beirut. Rice has addressed a special press conference to speak about the Middle East Crisis and wants UN to vote quickly on a UN Resolution. All these ‘special’ measures are being taken and the result is Zilch!

Nabih Barri, the Shi’ite parliamentary Speaker has thrashed the UN draft prepared after lengthy deliberation and careful consultations by France and US in these words during a press conference.

“Lebanon, all of Lebanon, rejects any talks or any draft resolution that does not include the seven-point government framework”.

Earlier Fouad Siniora had denounced the UN draft Resolution in similar words. Even Amr Moussa of Arab League has called the resolution ‘unacceptable’.

This is the summary of World’s Diplomatic efforts to find a solution to this raging crisis.

But in realty these are just words… words that have so far been unable to save a single life in this 25 day old crisis.

Estimates show that close to a thousand people have perished in these days. Over three thousands are injured, one-third of them kids. Close to a million are homeless now, constantly threatened by Israeli attacks. 80% of them are the Southern Population. Most of them have no where to go with little or no money. The Lebanese infrastructure has been damaged beyond recognition. Discounting the loss out of tourism industry, one of Lebanon’s primary industries, the infrastructure has been damaged to a safe estimate of 2 billion dollars.

As I type these words, Beirut for the first time has come under attack in broad daylight. Night or early mornings were the prime timings for Israeli air force to bomb the suburbs of Beirut but apparently it has opted for daylight saving method as well. Another underpass has been destroyed. According to the Ministry of Public works, 150 bridges in Lebanon have been ruined. Factually speaking, Northern Lebanon has been cut off from Southern part and the link to Syria barely exists. Lebanon is now literally and geographically cut off from the rest of the world.


These are just numbers…hard and cold numbers. None of these numbers truly reflects the misery of the Lebanese people.

What it does reflect on is the fact that Israel has succeeded in buying the time it wanted through these diplomatic efforts that are really getting nowhere. Through the conflicting statements and preparation of drafts and waiting for council to vote…Israel continues its assault on Lebanese land.

On Saturday, as France and US deliberated over ‘complete cessation of force’ over ‘immediate cessation of force’ Israel continued bombing Lebanon. Syrian Kurds who worked as seasonal farmers lost their lives because the world powers wanted to get the words just right.

The draft that has is come out is more of a ‘token’ gesture rather than a true solution to stop this war. The solution is really simple. If this war is to be solved through talks…stop the war and get Lebanon and Israel on one table. Stop killing people, stop killing a country. Lebanese don’t think that this draft will solve anything. It really is more of a wishful thinking on these world powers’s part.

By the time Arab League meets and UN votes on the resolution, more people will have died, more will be orphaned, more will be homeless. The human cost of this war will rise. But I doubt anyone of these world bodies will hold Israel accountable.

All aggressors look for impunity in war. Israel is no exception. What, however is exceptional about Israel is…that it has found it.

Growing up in Pakistan, I have always heard of two places brutalized…Kashmir and Palestine. Kashmir is our own story. Everyone knows it. Palestine, however given the geographical distance is mentioned usually only in public rallies and in the ‘Khutba’ during the Jumma prayers. In Lebanon, the ordeal of Palestinians becomes a reality.

While passing through the Syrian-Lebanese border, I witnessed their misery for the first time. While the Lebanese passed through the border without any major hassle, over a hundred people were stopped from entering the territory. They had only one problem with their papers…they were Palestinians.

While I tried to find some people I could communicate with, someone shook me from behind. Maysa, whose name in Arabic means ‘someone who walks proud’, was a shriveled old lady with very sad eyes. She however had strength enough to shake me and turn me around. ‘Look at this!’ she said while showing me her Palestinian ID card, ‘this is my crime…the crime of my children and their children’. Her voice grew stronger as she continued,’ Russians can enter Syria, Americans can enter Syria, everybody but Palestinians can enter Syria…what did we do to deserve this?’

Maysa moved to Lebanon in 1957 and since then she occupied a Palestinian Refugee Camp near Beirut. The night Beirut was bombed, their neighborhood was shook up very badly. She and her family left with all they could and now they’re trapped with no where to go.

I kept thinking about Maysa, and the ordeal of her people. Apparently it’s a double jeopardy, being a Palestinian. You can’t live in Palestine safely and outside you don’t have any dignity to live at all. They’re second rate citizens everywhere.

Yesterday I met Hiba, a 21 year old English Literature Graduate residing in Omar Hamd School with her family. She used to live in Dahir, the area targeted by Israelis on a daily basis. They left because they feared for their life and rightly so because now, their apartment has been reduced to rubble.

Hiba seemed very bright and eager to help me. Even though I have met and spoken to a lot of people in Beirut, I haven’t met many people my own age so her company was very welcome. She was interested in knowing about my work and given her curiosity, I suggested that she should become a journalist. She shook her head in negative.

‘You don’t understand, I am a Palestinian. Here in Lebanon, if you’re a Palestinian Medical graduate, you can’t even start your own clinic. We live in Dahir,’ she continued, ‘that’s where most of the Palestinians live. That’s our world. We’re not welcome outside’.

Her statement came as a great surprise. I agree that I have seen people keeping their distance in Lebanon based on their sects, but Lebanon also has a tendency to overcome this bias. And yet, this form of discrimination not only exists, but has become a norm, a way of life.

And this discrimination isn’t new. Since 1948, after Israel started to push Palestinians out, they poured into neighboring Arab countries. Arab countries then had a unique opportunity to help these refugees either through force or through diplomacy. Instead they offered them resettlement schemes sponsored by UN Refugees Rehabilitation Fund. Palestinians accepted this along with Egyptian President Nasser’s claim that all traces of Zionism will be swept away.

Palestinians are a nation that has truly come this far on hopes and empty statements. They have suffered badly in this region; have been marginalized for decades now because their leaders mostly made all the wrong moves. PLO supported Iraq in Gulf War and thus the Kuwaiti reprisal came against the Palestinians settled in Kuwait. Things have been no different in Lebanon.
Palestinians have rarely been granted citizenship; most remain stateless treated as foreigners. Only in 1994, 25,000 of the 300,000 Palestinians were given citizenship… a small number present in Lebanon. They’re denied government jobs, getting into colleges and universities is tough. If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was a history lesson out of freedom movement by Muslims against British Colonial Rule in the Sub-Continent.
And yet, while I was still contemplating this discrimination, I found out something that warmed my heart to the core. Palestinian Refugee Camp in Rachidiye is accommodating Internally Displaced Lebanese with what little facilities they have. They have opened their homes to these people in their time of need. Over 1000 displaced southerners now live in school under the protection of people they had thus far considered refugees on their land.
For some people this maybe considered a humbling experience for Lebanese but I see it as a great gesture on Palestinians part. It is only through these little acts of humanity, that one truly starts believing in the beauty and cohesion of Muslim Ummah. And it is when I see these acts of faith that I believe these people will make it through this crisis as well.

I remember reading a Latin quote once "Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum."
Loosely translated it means ‘Therefore, whoever wishes for peace, let him prepare for war.’
It’s been a week since I came to Beirut and for the first time in my life, I have a glimpse of what war can be like. Having spent most of my life in Islamabad, peace is not a word but a reality in my life.
The people of Lebanon have grown up in a world where war and warring factions have been all too real. They don’t read about them in the newspapers or watch reports on CNN and BBC about a far off place where fighting is taking place and people are dying. They live in a country which has seen wars in almost every decade of its existence. The current generation of Lebanon grew up in the shadows of civil war. War is not a word but a reality for the Lebanese.
Before I left Pakistan, I spoke to Khalil Mohammad who is a Lebanese Diplomat. ‘Lebanon is a country of 18 sects, the only country in the world with this big a number’. He obviously knew his country well. I have tried to interact with people my age to see how life differs here. I met Ebad Saleh, a 29 year resident of Saida who was driving his family out to Beirut. He and his family held dual citizenship and were planning on leaving the country for good.
‘My family is important to me. We left the country when I was two during the Civil war and we only came back five years ago. Now we can’t stay here anymore. Our lives come first’.
While Ebad and people like him are leaving, there are those that say they will fight to the death. On my trip to Ghezei, I was escorted by a Hizbollah Volunteer Ali El Maktub but liked to call himself T2. He looked like any other teenager wearing a tee and baggy jeans. But unlike most teenagers, music and computer games were not his biggest concern. ‘This is my land, these are my people. If I don’t fight for freedom…who will’?
Today, I met Beila Khatim, an Economist who studied in US on Fulbright Scholarship and works in a local bank. I had met her a few days back and wanted to meet her again to ask her about her opinion on this war.
‘I don’t even know what this is all about’ Beila told me, ‘we have no part in this war and yet we are suffering just as much. I am scared of even coming down to Beirut for work now.’
Ebad and Ali belong to two different sects in Lebanon, Sunni & Shia while Beila is a Christian and wanted to be referred to herself as a party instead of a sect. These three are unique individuals in their own rights, with different backgrounds but they’re all Lebanese. Their opinions are a reflection of one of the problems Lebanon faces…finding a unifying identity.
This problem isn’t new. In 1919, King Crane report highlighted this very issue. The dominance of sectarian differences has long been a hurdle in formulation of political options. While Sunnis largely support Syrian influences, Hizbollah remains mostly a Shia’ite organization that want an independent Lebanon. Catholic Christians on the other hand want no part of this conflict. They want an independent Lebanon with no geo-political glitches. I asked Beila as much, why people in such a small country seemed to have such diverse political choices?
‘We say we are a secular country but we are not. We say that religion isn’t important in our national decisions but it is. At the end of the day, it is our religious affiliation that guides us’
Lebanon so far has been a country of contrasts for me. While on one side I see Mosques and churches in the same neighborhood, I have come to know that religious tolerance is not just about inhabiting the same area. That can happen out of indifference as well. While presence of Israel continues to be a threat to Lebanon’s national and economic survival, it also needs to find more than just a nationality to bind its people together. If Lebanon wants peace, it has to fight a war as ‘Lebanon’ not as different sects. Even when a ceasefire takes place and Israeli troops withdraw, Lebanon certainly has much bigger and more vital challenges lying ahead.

History repeats itself. Nowhere is this maxim more cruel than it is in Qana, Lebanon.

It’s been some three hours since I came back from Qana and I still can’t get the images out of my head. Today was probably the toughest day of my life in terms of taking control of my emotions.

We started off early since we wanted to get to Qana as quickly as possible. We drove through Beirut onto Saida and further into Tyre. This city too has been brutally assaulted by the Israeli fighter planes. Parts of the road have literally been spooned out. Banana plantations too bear the brunt of Israeli aggression.

‘We are just small farmers’ said Mohsen Qayyam, a local plantation owner. ‘This was all we had’

But destroying this area has obviously not been enough for Israel. We drove onwards to Qana, taking detours, passing through emptied houses and derelict villages. I almost immediately knew when we entered Qana…the place was dead silent.

For as far as I could see, there were building reduced to rubble. Remnants of a community that breathed and thrived in this area were speckled all around.

I saw UN Peace Corps personnel in the area and asked them to direct me to the building. I was guided by Andreas. As we came in front of a building with a massive crater at the entrance, I caught my breath. ‘Unbelievable, isn’t it?’ said Andreas.

And it was. The crater was easily twenty feet deep. I stood there…silent, almost petrified by the sight. My colleague Yasir Qureshi asked me to pick up my steps. We needed to get to the building which was the site of this Qana Massacre.

I walked with heavy feet till I noticed that there was buzzing noise in the air. I asked Andreas what it was and he told me that there was bombing going on in the area. ‘It’s in the Naqoura close to this place’.

The noise grew loud and resulted in sounds of blasts. I kept looking up trying to see the planes for myself but they were probably at very high altitude.

We walked till we came upon the building we were looking for. And my spirits dipped to an all time low. I know that I am a journalist but at that moment I found it very difficult to act accordingly. Maybe it were the Israeli planes flying over head or the proximity of the bombing or maybe it was the silence around the building that was getting to me.

I just wanted to stand still and not feel anything. But I had a job to do. My emotions will have to wait for a while.

I moved around the building which has been ruined beyond words. Strangely there were no blood stains anywhere. I learnt later on that all those who died, actually suffocated to death under the rubble.

Qana must have been a good place to live once for it’s twelve thousand inhabitants. I could see fig, olive & pomegranate trees in front yards, the entrances were covered with grapevine. There were some tobacco plantations as well. The houses and businesses remain, the owners are gone.

There were text books in almost every deserted house; some kitchens had groceries left outside, fridges open. Closets had been left ajar, few clothes probably taken out in a hurry. I moved from house to house, looking for some signs of life. There were none.

I then moved back to the warehouse in Qana where World Food Program was unloading the relief goods for the neighboring villages. Somehow the warehouse had survived the bombing.

I found a few locals who were Harkat-ul-Amal volunteers. I wanted to know how they felt. Fouad Kais spared no words in expressing his thoughts. ‘I don’t care…I don’t care anymore. We have lost everything’. I asked him about his family to which he replied’ yes! I am married, I have three kids, I want peace, my children want peace but we don’t care anymore after what we’ve seen’.

We moved towards the memorial for the 1996 Qana Massacre. 106 people buried in mass graves. I found a tablet which read ‘The New Holocaust. April 18, 1996’. I stood thinking, how will the massacre of 2006 be remembered?

I am back now, trying to complete my day’s assignments as a journalist should. I admit there, for a few minutes I lost my professional composure. But when all is said and done, I admit that even journalists are only human. Sometimes, we are only all too human.