At last, the fighting ceased, but not before some 1000 Lebanese civilians had been killed, hundreds of thousands left homeless and crippling damage had been inflicted on the country’s infrastructure. By that time, I was in Dar es Salaam for some consultancy work and it was not until 10 days later that I was able to contemplate returning to Tyre. Due to the continuation of the Israeli sea and air blockade, the only possible air route in was via Amman, from where MEA and Royal Jordanian Airlines were allowed to operate a shuttle service to Beirut. And so, on 26 August I set out from Dar es Salaam, via Dubai to Amman and Beirut. The journey from Beirut airport to the house, which had generally taken 50 minutes before the war, took 2.5 hours because of diversions, usually unsigned, around the damage to roads and bridges. The house had suffered no damage other than the front door but an apartment building about 700 metres away had been bombed and several buildings in the city had been destroyed.
As I wrote this, some two months after the cease-fire, Tyre was enjoying something of a boom from the influx of United Nations forces and many aid agencies. The rubble of the destroyed and damaged buildings had been removed and roads were gradually being repaired, although some major bridges on the highways would take up to 2 years to rebuild.
What did it all achieve?
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