Beirut blast survivors lose hope as Lebanon lurches from one crisis to another

Images of victims of the Beirut blast displayed near the port. (Supplied)
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Updated 09 August 2021
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Beirut blast survivors lose hope as Lebanon lurches from one crisis to another

  • The disaster of Aug. 4, 2020, befell a population already reeling from months of hardship
  • Survivors look back on the past year with a mixture of sadness, bewilderment, anger and grief

DUBAI: A year has passed since an explosion devastated Beirut and the lives of its inhabitants. More than 200 people died and tens of thousands were left homeless when a huge cache of improperly stored ammonium nitrate ignited inside a warehouse at the Port of Beirut, triggering a blast from which the shockwave was felt as far away as Cyprus.

The disaster befell a population already reeling from months of hardship following the collapse of Lebanon’s banking system, multiple waves of COVID-19 outbreaks, and a government too paralyzed by infighting to respond.

Baydzig Kalaydjian, a Lebanese-Armenian teacher and journalist, was in Cyprus when the blast occurred. She quickly returned to Beirut and now volunteers at DAFA, a campaign group that provides food parcels, clothes, and helps renovate homes. 

“That day, as Lebanese, we were brutally killed,” said Kalaydjian, one of whose friends lost both eyes during the explosion. “No matter how much time passes, we still carry with us the need for truth, justice and accountability. What else can we do? We continue to fight for justice and demand for real change in the Lebanese political system.”

Indeed, to mark the first anniversary of the August 4 blast and to reaffirm their demand for justice, thousands of Lebanese spilled onto the streets of the capital, calling for the removal of the caretaker government.

In scenes reminiscent of the 2019 social movement known as the “thawra” — or “revolution” in Arabic — protesters once again clashed with security forces in downtown Beirut.

Survivors look back on the past year with a mixture of bewilderment, anguish, anger and even guilt. Marwa Darazi, 25, left Beirut and moved to Dubai in January 2021, where she works in public relations. The guilt of leaving her country behind weighs heavily on her conscience. “It doesn’t get any easier,” she told Arab News on the anniversary of the blast.

“August 4 changed the definition of what I thought life was. I was 24 and on the right career path. I had just rented my first apartment overlooking the port. I had my car, my freedom, my family – and my friends were around. I felt stable.

“Even though I knew my country wasn’t safe, the idea of it being my home automatically made me feel safe. But, in just seconds, it betrayed me.”

Darazi, who was seriously injured in the blast, was working for a luxury PR company in Beirut. But after the disaster, she began volunteering for Beb w Shebbek, a local charity launched by Beirut residents Mariana Wehbe and Nancy Gabriel to help rebuild people’s homes.

“I gave everything to Beirut,” Darazi said. “Every flight back I cry as if it is the first time I am leaving. There’s also the guilt of living here (in Dubai) while my parents are suffering without electricity in the heat, with rotting food in the fridge.

“Food is super-expensive now given the devaluation of the currency. Nothing seems right, no matter what I do or where I am. All I can do is sleep another night and pray the windows don’t explode. Is this normal?”




One year later, no politicians held to account and the country facing soaring poverty, a plummeting currency, angry protests and shortages of basic items from medicine to fuel, many blast survivors are simmering in the lead up to the tragedy's first anniversary.  (AFP/File Photo)

Annie Vartivarian, a Lebanese-Armenian gallerist and art collector, lost her daughter Gaïa Fodoulian, 29, in the blast. Vartivarian chose to stay in Beirut and continue her daughter’s work by launching AD Leb, an online platform for art and design that Fodoulian had been working on at the time she died.

Vartivarian held its first big exhibition in Beirut in April titled “Everyone is the creator of one’s own faith” — a reference to a Facebook post her daughter had published just hours before she was killed.

“After one year, I am not surprised we haven’t got anywhere,” Vartivarian told Arab News. “As a person who was born and raised in Lebanon, and lived through the whole civil war here, I know how the country operates, how things are done and how officials hide themselves.

“But this doesn’t mean I don’t have hope that things will change, especially with what Judge Tarek Bitar is doing.”

Bitar, the head of the Beirut Criminal Court, was appointed to lead the investigation into the blast in February 2021 following the removal of Judge Fadi Sawan. In early July, Bitar announced that he intended to question senior politicians and security chiefs and has requested their immunity be lifted. So far, officials have rejected his appeals.

Amnesty International, the international human rights-advocacy group, has accused Lebanese authorities of “shamelessly obstructing victims’ quest for truth and justice” in the months since the blast, actively shielding officials from scrutiny and hampering the course of the investigation.




Gaia Foudalian, the daughter of Annie Vartivarian, killed in the blast. (Supplied)

“I know that, whatever we do, Gaia will not come back,” said Vartivarian. “As a mother who wants her children to be happy, I just hope she is happy now wherever she is. But I think she will rest when there is justice for what happened, when the reality is known.”

Other survivors have chosen to leave Beirut behind. Walid Alami, a cardiologist at Beirut’s Clemenceau Medical Center, has decided to emigrate to the US. He recalls the carnage of that night one year ago.

“Within 10 seconds, the degree of destruction and the loss of life was something we hadn’t experienced even during the civil war or the Israeli invasions,” Alami told Arab News. “I was taking care of minor cuts, but my brother Ramzi, who is a surgeon, was also working throughout the night and the days and weeks that followed.”

Ramzi recently relocated to Washington D.C. “He is among thousands of doctors who have left,” said Alami. “Personally, I am working on moving back to the US because it is hard to live in Lebanon right now under these circumstances, not to mention our financial issues. Our salaries are now a tenth of what they used to be.”

He added: “It’s a dire situation and I don’t see a glimmer of hope. It will take a long time to work our way up from this deep, deep hole that we are in.”

Artist, curator and publisher Abed Al-Kadiri moved from Beirut to Paris in January 2021, but returned to Beirut to join commemorations of the anniversary.

“I wanted to be with my friends, colleagues and survivors,” he told Arab News. “We haven’t had the time or the circumstances to consciously face what happened and what we lost. I left. I was traumatized and broken. I haven’t been able to work much since leaving. I have been trying to heal. But it was really important for me to come back.”

Sarah Copland got a posting to Beirut to work in the Center for Women at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) with a focus on gender equality and women’s rights.

She was just weeks away from leaving Lebanon to return to her native Australia to give birth to her second child when the explosion happened. It killed her son, Isaac, who was just two years old.




The explosion killed the son of Sara Copeland, Isaac, who was just two years old. (Supplied)

“Isaac was struck in the chest by a piece of glass,” Copland told Arab News. “We rushed him to Rafik Hariri Hospital. I was also injured and had a lot of glass embedded in me, including in my face. Being heavily pregnant, they took me away to see to my injuries. My husband stayed with Isaac, but he died a few hours later.”

Copland is still with the UN but currently on leave in Australia. She does not plan to return to Beirut, as much as she loves Lebanon and the Lebanese.

“We don’t plan to go back to Lebanon. I don’t know how most Lebanese experience the trauma of seeing the remnants of the explosion every day. It just adds to so much trauma and I don’t think we can inflict that on ourselves.

“Lebanon has quickly declined since the explosion. It was already on the way, but now everything has gotten worse so much faster.”

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Twitter: @rebeccaaproctor


Donkeys offer Gazans lifeline amid war shortages

Updated 4 sec ago
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Donkeys offer Gazans lifeline amid war shortages

  • Donkey-pulled carts were a fairly common sight in pre-war Gaza
  • Displaced Gazans fleeing fighting or air strikes pile aboard them to rush to safety with their belongings
Deir el-Balah: Amina Abu Maghasib’s livelihood rests on one animal: a donkey that pulls the cart she uses to transport people around Gaza, where more than a year of war has led to a widespread shortage of fuel for cars.
“Before the war, I used to sell milk and yoghurt, and the factory used to take the milk from me,” she said from the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah, holding reins in one hand and a rubber stick in the other that she uses to maneuver her cart.
“Now, I have no income other than the donkey and the cart.”
Donkey-pulled carts were a fairly common sight in pre-war Gaza. But the lack of fuel and destruction in the territory since the conflict began between Israel and Hamas last year have made them one of the few remaining forms of transport.
Displaced Gazans fleeing fighting or air strikes pile aboard them to rush to safety with their belongings.
For others, a donkey cart is virtually the only form of transportation.
Marwa Yess uses a donkey cart to get around with her family.
“I pay 20 shekels ($5.40) for the cart to take me from Deir el-Balah to Nuseirat. The price is outrageous, but under these circumstances, everything seems reasonable,” she said. The distance is about five kilometers (three miles).
“I used to feel embarrassed to ride a donkey cart at the beginning of the war, but now there’s no other option,” the teacher and mother of three told AFP.

Soaring prices
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 43 percent of Gaza’s working animals — a category that includes donkeys, horses and mules — had been killed in the war by August 2024, leaving only 2,627 alive.
Abu Maghasib’s only running costs are fodder, she told AFP sitting on her cart, a few planks of wood held together by a metal frame and mounted on four wheels.
But the price of food for people and animals has soared.
After costs, Abu Maghasib has made a profit of 20 shekels at the end of the day from the clients who hop on and off from the roadside.
“I bought this donkey on credit, and the first donkey died in the war in Deir el-Balah after being hit by shrapnel,” she said.
The new one cost her 2,500 shekels.
Abdel Misbah, a 32-year-old man displaced with his family of 20 from Gaza City to the territory’s south, also made the livelihood switch to donkey transportation.
“I used to sell vegetables on a cart before the war. Now, I work in delivery,” he said, lamenting that “the donkey panics when the bombing gets too close.”
He too feels the pain of skyrocketing fodder prices.
“I make sure to feed it well, even though the price of barley (per sack) has gone up from three shekels to 50 shekels,” he said.

’More valuable than gold’
Israel imposed a near-total siege on Gaza in the early stages of the war last year, complicating aid and goods distribution.
The lack of fuel, war-damaged roads and looting, as well as fighting in densely populated areas and the repeated displacement of much of Gaza’s 2.4 million people, also contribute to the shortages.
A UN-backed assessment this month said famine looms in northern Gaza, and the United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said aid entering the territory had reached its lowest level in months.
Yusef Muhammad, a 23-year-old displaced from Gaza’s north to Khan Yunis in the south, said his donkey has become a “lifeline” for his family.
“When the war started, car fares were too expensive. I had no choice but to rely on a donkey. Thank God I had it when we were forced to evacuate.”
Beyond the widespread destruction, Israel’s military campaign has killed at least 44,211 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas government’s health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
When Israeli military evacuation orders, which usually precede fighting and bombing, send thousands of people and their belongings onto the road in an instant, donkey carts can be one of the only ways out of danger.
Hosni Abu Warda, 62, said his home was destroyed in the northern area of Jabalia, the scene of an intense Israeli military operation since early October.
When he fled, Abu Warda said he had no choice but to turn to four-hoofed transportation. He waited 14 hours for a cart before escaping with his family “packed like sardines.”
In times like these, “the donkey is more valuable than gold and even more valuable than modern cars,” Abu Warda said.

Mikati warns Israeli military action in Lebanon a rejection of political solution

Updated 59 min 40 sec ago
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Mikati warns Israeli military action in Lebanon a rejection of political solution

  • Borrell in Beirut: Pressure must be exerted on Israel, Hezbollah to accept US proposal
  • Israel steps up bombardment of capital’s southern suburbs

BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on a Lebanese army center on Sunday killed a soldier and wounded 18 others, the Lebanese military said, with the caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, calling the attack “a direct bloody message rejecting all efforts to reach a ceasefire.”

The attack came as top EU diplomat Josep Borrell called for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war while on a visit to Lebanon.

According to the Lebanese Army Command, the first adjutant, Diab Mohammed Jaafar, was killed when Israel targeted Al-Amariyeh checkpoint on the road between Tyre and the town of Naqoura.

In a statement, Mikati said: “Israel’s messages rejecting a solution are ongoing, and just as it turned against the US-French call for a ceasefire in September, here it is once again responding with Lebanese blood, blatantly rejecting the solution that is being discussed.”

He called on “the countries of the world and the relevant international institutions to assume their responsibilities on the issue.”

Mikati’s condemnation came amid growing concerns that the Israeli military is trying to solidify its westward incursion in the coastal town of Al-Bayada, located between Tyre and Naqoura, while facing strong resistance from the eastern side of the border area in its positions in Khiyam.

Israeli forces are trying to encircle the South Litani area from both sides.

Hezbollah said it “targeted a gathering of the enemy army s forces east of the city of Khiyam with a salvo of rockets,” and “a gathering of Israeli forces at the Metula site (Israel’s outlet toward Khiyam) was targeted with a volley of rockets followed by an aerial attack with a squadron of assault drones … hitting its targets accurately.”

The Israeli military said Hezbollah launched 160 projectiles toward Israel on Sunday.

Sirens sounded across northern and central Israel, reaching Tel Aviv at successive intervals, forcing thousands of Israelis to head toward shelters.

Footage from central Israel showed extensive material damage and fires.

The Israeli military issued further warnings to residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs to evacuate, targeting Bourj Al-Barajneh and Hadath.

Former Israeli minister Benny Gantz claimed that the Lebanese government “is leaving Hezbollah unchecked,” adding: “It is time to act against its assets forcefully.”

These developments came during a round of discussions conducted by Borrell, high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security policy, in Beirut with Mikati and Speaker Nabih Berry.

In a statement, Borrell stressed the need for exerting pressure on Israel and Hezbollah to accept the US proposal for a ceasefire.

Borrell emphasized that “the situation in the Middle East, particularly here in Beirut, presents a significant challenge to the international community. The international community cannot remain inactive in the face of these events. The absence of peace in the Middle East has reached an intolerable level, and people are dying under bombardment.”

He added that two months on from his last visit to Beirut, he now views Lebanon as on the verge of collapse due to the conflict, which has led to the devastation of numerous villages, as well as airstrikes aimed at Beirut and Baalbek. He also reiterated that “the human cost is exceedingly high.”

Borrell said Israeli airstrikes had claimed the lives of over 3,500 people in Lebanon, a figure three times greater than the casualties recorded in 2006.

The only viable path forward, Borrell said, is an immediate ceasefire and the full implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701.

Borrell praised the UNIFIL forces and confirmed the EU’s readiness to allocate €200 million ($208.3 million) to the Lebanese Armed Forces.

He emphasized the Lebanese need to “assume their political responsibilities by electing a president and putting an end to this prolonged power vacuum that has exceeded two years.”

Borrell said a ceasefire proposal for Gaza is pending Israeli government approval, and “we, as the international community, need to work to ensure the respect of international law, as we see famine being used as a weapon of war through international law violations, the complete siege imposed on Gaza and the number of people that are dying in Lebanon.”

He added that in his view the decisions of the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for Israel’s activities in Gaza were not politically motivated and had been made under international law, which applied to everyone. “We strongly support the court,” he said.


15 Turkish-backed fighters killed in north Syria clashes with Kurdish-led forces

Updated 25 November 2024
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15 Turkish-backed fighters killed in north Syria clashes with Kurdish-led forces

  • SDF fighters “infiltrated positions of the Turkish-backed” troops in the Aleppo countryside, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said
  • The SDF is a US-backed force that spearheaded the fighting against the Daesh group in its last Syria strongholds before its territorial defeat in 2019

BEIRUT: At least 15 Ankara-backed Syrian fighters were killed Sunday after Kurdish-led forces infiltrated their territory in the country’s north, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said.
Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who controls swathes of the country’s northeast, “infiltrated positions of the Turkish-backed” fighters in the Aleppo countryside, said the Observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
“The two sides engaged in violent clashes” that killed 15 of the Ankara-backed fighters, the monitor said.
An AFP correspondent in Syria’s north said the clashes had taken place near the city of Al-Bab, where authorities said schools would be suspended on Monday due to the violence.
The SDF is a US-backed force that spearheaded the fighting against the Daesh group in its last Syria strongholds before its territorial defeat in 2019.
It is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), viewed by Ankara as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which claimed the attack on Ankara.
Turkish troops and allied rebel factions control swathes of northern Syria following successive cross-border offensives since 2016, most of them targeting the SDF.


Israel moving towards a ceasefire deal in Lebanon, Axios reports

Updated 25 November 2024
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Israel moving towards a ceasefire deal in Lebanon, Axios reports

BEIRUT: Israel is moving towards a ceasefire agreement in Lebanon with the Hezbollah militant group, Axios reporter Barak Ravid posted on X on Sunday, citing a senior Israeli official.
A separate report from Israel's public broadcaster Kan, citing an Israeli official, said there was no green light given on an agreement in Lebanon, with issues still yet to be resolved.

 


Russian plane catches fire after landing in Turkiye but passengers and crew are safely evacuated

Updated 25 November 2024
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Russian plane catches fire after landing in Turkiye but passengers and crew are safely evacuated

  • “Eighty nine passengers and six crew members on board were safely evacuated at 9:43 p.m. (1843 GMT) and there were no injuries”

ANKARA, Turkiye: The engine of a Russian plane with 95 people on board caught fire after landing at Antalya airport in southern Turkiye on Sunday, Turkiye’s transportation ministry said. All passengers and crew were safely evacuated.
The Sukhoi Superjet 100 type aircraft run by Azimuth Airlines had taken off from Sochi and was carrying 89 passengers and six crew members, the ministry said in a statement.
The pilot made an emergency call after the aircraft landed at 9:34 p.m. local time, and airport rescue and firefighting crews quickly extinguished the fire, according to the statement.
No one was hurt, the statement said.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
A video of the incident posted by the aviation news website, Airport Haber, showed flames coming out from the left side of the plane as emergency crews doused the aircraft. Passengers were seen evacuating the plane through an emergency slide, some carrying belongings.
The transportation ministry said efforts were underway to remove the aircraft from the runway. Arrivals at the airport were temporarily suspended while departures were taking place from a military-run runway.