Hezbollah handed out bundles of cash on Friday to people whose homes were wrecked by Israeli bombing, consolidating the Iranian-backed group’s support among Lebanon’s Shi’ites and embarrassing the Beirut government.
”This is a very, very reasonable amount. It is not small,” said Ayman Jaber (27), holding a wad he had just picked up from Hezbollah of $12 000 in banknotes wrapped in tissue.
Israeli and United States officials have voiced concern that Hezbollah will entrench its popularity by moving fast — with Iranian money — to help people whose homes were destroyed or damaged in the 34-day conflict with Israel.
Hezbollah has not said where the funds are coming from to compensate people for an estimated 15 000 destroyed homes. The scheme appears likely to cost at least $150-million. The Lebanese government has yet to launch anything similar.
Its reconstruction chief said Israeli bombardment had inflicted a ”disastrous” $3,6-billion worth of physical damage on Lebanon from which it could take years to recover.
Al-Fadl Shalaq, head of the Council for Development and Reconstruction, said the devastation from the five-week conflict exceeded that caused by Lebanon’s 1975 to 1990 civil war.
”I have witnessed all the wars in Lebanon but I have never seen a war this fierce and I do not see a response to clearing the rubble of war to match it,” he told Reuters in an interview.
Trying to bolster a five-day-old truce, Lebanese troops moved deeper into the south and about 600 deployed in Shebaa village, near the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms enclave, a key source of tension between Israel and Hezbollah before the war.
Guerrilla haven
The Lebanese army has had no presence in the area since an Arab decision allowed Palestinian guerrillas to operate there nearly 40 years ago.
Israel’s 1982 invasion expelled the Palestinians and Hezbollah took over the ”Fatah-land” region after the Israeli military ended a 22-year occupation of the south in 2000.
On Thursday, the Lebanese army began deploying a force that will eventually number 15 000 soldiers south of the Litani River, about 20km from the border with Israel.
The same day France dealt a blow to hopes of building a strong UN force to back the army as Israeli troops withdraw.
The United Nations said it had received substantial troop offers, but was disappointed that France only planned to send 200 additional soldiers to a force it had been expected to lead.
Italy’s government approved sending troops and the defence minister said his country might eventually lead the mission. Officials have said Italy might contribute up to 3 000 troops.
France’s reticence to contribute more troops follows disastrous peacekeeping missions in the past. It lost 58 paratroopers to a suicide bomb attack in Beirut in 1983 and 84 soldiers in Bosnia in the early 1990s.
French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie recalled ”the experience of painful operations where UN forces did not have a sufficiently precise mission or the means to react”.
Hezbollah fighters have melted away as the Lebanese army arrived, but they have not left the south or given up the rocket launchers they used to bombard Israel during the conflict.
International and Lebanese government aid efforts risk being overshadowed by Hezbollah’s swift action on reconstruction.
Hezbollah said it had so far given the one-time cash payment to 120 families whose homes in the southern suburbs of Beirut were destroyed in Israeli air strikes. The money is to help families rent and furnish alternative accommodation.
Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah promised the compensation in his first speech after the truce took hold, and has said Lebanon will be rebuilt ”better than before”.
Hezbollah has an extensive social welfare network as well as 14 members in the 128-seat parliament and two Cabinet ministers. At least 1 181 people in Lebanon and 157 Israelis were killed in the conflict that erupted after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinian militants near Bethlehem after a nearly two-hour stand-off, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said. — Reuters