February 9, 2000 - New York Times
 

By JOHN F. BURNS
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 8 -- After the Israeli air raids that lighted
the midnight sky, the people of Beirut returned to time-tested
routines today, firing up generators, lighting candles, putting new
batteries into flashlights and preparing with quiet stoicism for the
expected months without a regular power supply.
One of the three power stations severely damaged by the raids is
at Jamhur, in a valley six miles east of the city that runs into
snowy mountains that reach toward Syria. It was reduced to a
smoldering mass of blackened transformers, still pushing a pall
of black smoke into the sky nearly 12 hours after the raids. This
was the third time in less than four years, and the second time in
a little more than seven months, that Israeli planes have hit the
plant.

Each time, Israeli officials have said the raids were prompted by
attacks on Israeli targets by Islamic militants from Hezbollah, the
Party of God, with the support -- or at least the acquiescence -- of
the governments of Lebanon and Syria, which is the dominant
power here.

But ordinary Lebanese ultimately pay the price. And after nearly
30 years of turmoil, starting with the civil war that began in 1973,
and the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon from 1978, the
mood is embittered resignation.

"Don't forget, we've lived like this for 25 years and more --
bombings, killings, snipers, blackouts," Houssein Alameh, owner
of a taxicab service, said as he cruised down Hamra Street in of
old Beirut.

Merchants were tending portable generators humming on the
sidewalks.

"It's my story," Mr. Alameh said. "It's everybody's story. It's an
old story."

Still, there is something especially poignant about the aftermath
of the new raids, occurring at a time when Lebanese have taken
to celebrating the tentative rebirth of their country, or at least of
Beirut. The city shows fewer scars every month from the brutal
street-to-street warfare between Christian and Muslim militias
that had reduced much of it to rubble by the time that the
16-year civil war exhausted itself in 1989.

A visitor these days can only marvel at the new expressways, the
spanking new sports stadium, the chic boutiques and restaurants,
the new high-rise apartment blocks that lookout toward crystal
beaches busy with joggers, dog walkers and pickup games of
soccer. Wide swatches of open ground and rubble still exist, of
course, and building facades pockmarked with rifle and
machine-gun fire are no rarity. But over all, the city has cause to
vaunt its renaissance in its glossy magazines.

Yet like an old fighter who staggers to his feet only to be
knocked back down to the canvas, the people of Lebanon yearn
now for nothing so much as an end to it all. Many began finally
to believe that might be possible last year, when Ehud Barak was
elected prime minister of Israel on a pledge to end the southern
Lebanon occupation and to broaden the Middle East peace
agreements by reaching a land-for-peace deal with Syria.

After the air raids on Monday, with the towers of flame and
smoke from the Jamhur plant, few people seemed to know how
to assess the strikes or the Hezbollah attacks on Sunday and
Monday that provoked them.

In the first attack, Shiite Muslim militants killed a top
commander of the Israeli-backed Christian militia force, the
Southern Lebanon Army. Twenty-four hours later, they ambushed
an Israeli patrol garrisoned at an old crusader fort in the area,
killing five Israeli soldiers and wounding many others.

Was all of this, some Lebanese wondered, part of a deadly
endgame, a necessary show of strength by old enemies -- Israel,
on one side and Hezbollah, Syria and the Lebanese government
on the other -- that prefigured a deal that will move Israeli troops
out of Lebanon by July 1, Mr. Barak's self-imposed deadline? Or
was it, on the contrary, new evidence that the enmities are too
deep, the basis of trust too shallow or nonexistent for the great
leap that Mr. Barak and President Hafez al-Assad of Syria
seemed to be working toward when the Syrian-Israeli talks broke
down last month?

What seems clear, beside the rubble of the power stations, was
that many Lebanese harbor a jumble of feelings -- anger at Israel,
certainly, for hitting installations on which all Lebanese depend
and for its 22-year occupation of a major section of their country.
There is also a degree of sympathy, or at least respect, for the
Hezbollah guerrillas, who have promised to end the occupation
and paid a heavy price in casualties, like the Israeli troops and
settlers, for their cause. There is also a deep desire for a
generation of bloodshed and hatred to end.

At Baalbek, a predominantly Shiite Muslim town 70 miles
north-east of here that has been a Hezbollah stronghold, Ali
Jaafar, 56, a grandfather, seemed to reflect all these emotions as
he consoled members of his brother's family.

They became refugees during the night from the ruins of their
own house, one of perhaps 12 reduced to chunks of concrete and
broken furniture by the missile attacks on the Baalbek power
plant. Residents were among the 17 civilians said to have been
injured in the raids.

"We don't need bridges," Mr. Jaafar said. "We don't need water.
We don't need power. We need to resist."

Then he added, "We will resist until we see the end of the war
between Lebanon and Israel."

His niece Karin was one of three sisters who were asleep in their
nearby house when debris from the exploding power station hit
it. She offered a less tempered view. "I don't like Israel," she
said, glancing shyly at her father as he prompted her to spread
two fingers in a "V" for victory sign.

The director of the state electricity utility, Goerges Moawad, said
the damage at Jamhur and Baalbek and at the third plant, at
Deir Nbuh, outside Tripoli, would take months to repair, at a cost
of $35 million to $40 million. Electricity Minister Suleiman
Traboulsi estimated that half the population of 3.5 million would
be without power for some or all of the time until repairs were
finished.

After the last attacks on power plants, in June, much of Beirut
and its surrounding region was without power for four months.

Then, as now, the government ordered rotating rationing. At
Jamhur, which had returned to near full capacity, engineers said
the damage this time appeared to be far worse. Because the plant
is old, the operators cannot obtain spare parts, and the
government might have to scrap the plant, they said.

Among top Lebanese officials, at least publicly, there was no
reproach for Hezbollah for having ignored Israeli warnings of
new attacks if the guerrillas' strikes on Israeli soldiers and their
allies in the south continued. There was only condemnation of
Israel.