Under “Attack”

Extract

After the cease-fire, I visited villages and towns in South Lebanon that suffered terrible destruction during the July 2006 war and that were facing the challenge of reconstruction. When I arrived to the border town of Bint Jbeil, I saw bulldozers demolishing beautiful, old stone structures. I stopped to inquire why; who authorized such actions and on what bases? With these questions, I approached the workers, the Council of the South (the government agency in charge of damage assessment and rubble removal), local residents, and the municipality. The answers varied: the structures were too damaged to save, we needed to widen the street, to build a better building, to erase the scars of war, to get full compensation, and so forth.