Southern villagers still homeless 1 year after war

Source: AFP, 14-8-2007
Jocelyne Zablit
FRUN, Lebanon: It has been a year since Rasmiyeh Mokdad`s home was leveled by "Israeli" warplanes. And it has been a year of waiting in desperation to see it rebuilt. Like thousands of villagers across South Lebanon displaced by the month-long war with "Israel", which ended on August 14 last year, Mokdad has all but given up hope of recovering her home in time for winter.
"Four months ago they began the first phase of reconstruction but I think it will take at least another year before it is finished," laments the 53-year-old. "In the meantime, I have to live with my elderly parents in conditions not fit for a dog."
Her village of Frun, located about 75 kilometers southeast of Beirut, endured heavy shelling during the war with about 95 of the 160 homes destroyed.
The houses or buildings that suffered lesser damage have for the most part been refurbished.
But bureaucratic red tape, de-mining operations and a prolonged political crisis in Lebanon have left people like Mokdad out in the cold.
The government has pledged a total of $40,000 to help her rebuild but so far only half the money has been forthcoming. The rest, she has been told, will be given at a later stage.
What she calls home today is two bare concrete rooms usually used for storage that she rents from a fellow villager for 130 dollars a month.
Her ailing 85-year-old father, wounded during the "Israeli" raid on their house, lays motionless in the stifling heat on a cot inside one of the rooms. Her mother has just been transported to hospital with heart trouble.
"Nothing has improved for me in the last year," Mokdad says bitterly as she chain smokes, holding back tears. "I used to have my dignity, my home and now look at me.
"I even have to go outside to wash my dishes. This is no life." Of Frun`s 2,000 residents, few have returned since the end of the war and an eerie silence hangs over the village. The only sound of life comes from bulldozers and the hammers of construction workers.
Along the winding mountainous roads leading to the village and surrounding areas, banners boasting of the aid Iran has given to rebuild roads, schools and medical facilities in southern Lebanon, where the Islamic Republic`s ally Hizbullah has a strong presence, are posted throughout.
In the village of Yohmor, the site of fierce fighting between "Israeli" troops and Hizbullah fighters, the scars of the war are still apparent and bomb disposal experts from the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) are hard at work.
"We began clearing operations here on August 15 of last year and we have since removed about 6,500 cluster bombs in the Yohmor region alone," said Youssef Hayek, a supervisor with MAG. "In one small field alone, we cleared 400 bombs."
He added that three teams of nine people each have been assigned to work at Yohmor and de-mining operations are expected to be completed within four months.
That`s not soon enough for residents like Saada Mohammad Dirani, 53, whose home and small shop were destroyed during the war and who has since been waiting to start again from scratch.
"Three weeks ago they began laying the new foundations of the house after clearing all the rubble and cluster bombs but it will take a while before I can move back in with my mother," she says.
In the meantime, she is renting part of her brother`s house located nearby and watches every day as workers lay concrete stones for what will become her new home.
Dirani said Hizbullah gave her $10,000 to help her survive after the war and the Lebanese government has pledged $40,000 to rebuild her house.
But that`s small comfort compared to what she lost, she says.
"My father built our house stone by stone with the sweat of his brow so that he could leave us something when he died," she said, her voice shaking. "All the money in the world can`t replace that."