Report Number Five from Lebanon: Nabatiyeh By Samia A. Halaby

Report Number Five from Lebanon: Nabatiyeh

By Samia A. Halaby

Al-Jazeerah, September 25, 2006

Today we decided to use the public taxi called service to get to the southern village in the surrounds of Nabatiyeh where we were schuled to meet with the Nuclear Physicist, Dr. Muhamman Ali Qubeisi who claims that he found high radiation in some of the pits created by Israeli bombing in the south of Lebanon during the July 2006 attack.

Dr. Qubeisi was interested in telling us his history and his work record all of which were both impressive and interesting. He spoke English flawlessly as he told us all this including the fact that he was also a US citizen.

He began by giving us a background on the history of Israeli attack on the southern area of Lebanon. We knew from other interviews that in 1948, the Israelis had grabbed a large chunk of southern Lebanon which included approximately six villages. We knew that this fact was not well known because the villagers, in order to receive UNRWA help, said that they were Palestinian. Dr. Qubeisi then added to our knowledge that when the Israelis occupied the south of Lebanon in 1982, they began to build settlements near the Christian area and near the sea. Thus, when the people of the south became familiar with the continued Israeli attack on their lands, they thought of the Palestinians. They realized the importance of résistance and supported Hisbullah who supports the cause of the Palestinians. The people of the south know that the difficulties of Palestinian refugee life arise from the prohibitions of the Lebanese government. Dr. Qubeisi continued, that yes, the Palestinians should return to their homes as they want to, but treating them like animals is not right and does not send them home faster.

Qubeisi continued saying that when he saw Dahye (southern neighborhood of Beirut) after the war for the first time he immediately went to the Lebanese Council on Scientific Research, a council of which he is a member and which is part of the Lebanese Atomic Energy Commission. He asked that they meet to make a plan to test for chemical weapons and radiation. But as they did not reply, he published some of his finding on his own. This brought a huge negative and angry response from the members of the Council and the Commission. He feels that he must continue to do the research, get foreign interest, and publish findings and do so quickly for the safety of the residents.

Dr. Qubeisi said that he tested some deep pits made by Israeli weapons and that his results indicated that there is uranium in the soil. He measured 50 nsV in the outside rim of the pits and 300 nsV in the heart of most pits with the exception of one which measured 800 nsV. It was conjectured by Henk Van der Keur, a member of our delegation and staff member of the Laka Foundation (Documentation and Research Center on Nuclear Energy) in the Netherland, that if these measurements were taken from the first moment and included the ash that the higher measures could be due to the concentration of uranium in the ash – a natural process which does not indicated the presence of nuclear weapons on the use of Depleted Uranium. Van der Keur’s conjecture was based on measurements they took of Dr. Qubeissi’s many samples stored just outside of his house in the back yard.

A new delegation came and we went outside with Dr Qubeisi to meet them thinking of the importance of an expanded meeting. It turns out to be a press delegation from Austria. While we were meeting them, Dr. Qubeisi locked his house and apologized to us. We begged him to open it again for us to get our things. The other delegation and Dr. Qubeisi made their excuses and we were thus ejected. Being out in the country with no taxi information, we begged for a ride to the nearby town where we could find a taxi.

It was then merely 11:00 am and we were in the south without a car, but at least on the edge of a town that did have lots of transportation services. We decided to go to Bint Jubail for a second time and do a more thorough investigation and spend time walking around the most damaged downtown area. We took a service who asked us about a permit and we did show him ours. At the checkpoint, our permit turned out to be a three day permit instead of a 40 day permit as we had been promised by the police. The bureaucrat did not want to keep calling about us and our driver was impatient, so we were ejected, forced to pay our full taxi fare and stood in the sun while soldiers shunted us from spot to spot out of their way. Lost and a bit shocked we tried to flag various vehicles. Ten minutes after the departure of our taxi the bureaucrat waved to us that we could pass. So we sought another taxi going in our original direction all to no avail. Of course it all seems bleak as we stand there in total rejection between no no and then yes and maybe another no. One of the soldiers offered to flag us a cab and told us to wait in the shade of a road sign. The sun is hot beyond belief. The soldier succeeded where we had failed.

We were fortunate in the driver we got even though four of us sat in the back like sardines. He took us to his home in Hula and we talked with his mother and father in law and with his wife, all of whom had stayed in the area during the war. His mother in-law was easily the individual who controlled the conversation supported by the son-in-law to tell what she experienced. While we were there, the children came in ranging in age from the oldest approximately 12 to the youngest, approximately 2 years of age. The mother-in-law and the wife together told us the story of what happened to them.

At first, they were coaxed into going to a center for a few days where they would be cared for by the Red Cross. But there was nothing there but a bit of water to drink and no food and no facilities to bathe. They had been rushed out and had no extra clothes with them. After three days they braved the bombing and went home walking where they fixed breakfast, bathed, changed clothes, and cooked lunch. After lunch they decided to walk uphill from their house in the country surrounded by orchards and cultivated fields, and go stay with their in-laws up the hill in a house in town that they though was more able to withstand the bombing. On the way up the hill, they were pursued by missiles from the air and each time just escaped by mere yards. Approximately 4 to five missiles were aimed at them. One was so close that after raising her head from the spot she had hidden herself in, a spot to which she had run to thinking to throw her face onto the ground so that if the missile fire would reach her it would burn her back not her face, she could not see her husband as the air was thick with smoke and dust. She felt that she was blind. When she did find her husband, he had shrapnel injuries. They did reach their destination feeling great fright.

One night as they were in the basement of the house where they sheltered with their in-laws, a missile hit the house and damaged it. It had struck only meters away from the area they were sheltered in.

The mother told us bout the children, how they all suffered from diarrhea and vomiting and fever. The adults also suffered from it but not to the extent of the children. Once one recovered another would get ill again.

The driver talked about the Palestinian fighters in the 70 and about told us that he worked for Hizbullah in his youth but that now he had to leave it all because he needed to work and support his children. He said that they have to seed themselves and that they must have many children against the danger that the Israelis might kill a few. He asked us to consider, was it not better to sacrifice a few of the children now so that all may live in dignity and good health. He said that they considered how the Palestinians lived in their refugee camps, and that that miserable life was not a life fit for humans, and that it was better to sacrifice in order that the whole community might survive against the Zionist enemy.

About the Palestinian fighters of the seventies, our driver said that they were good and honest and brave but that by 1978-79 they began to be silly and exploit privilege, and that intelligence services had completely penetrated them and there was a successful divide and rule principle used against them. He was persuaded that most Arab government and much of the Arab population are more concerned with their own private pleasure and comfort than they were interested in honesty and integrity.

Samia A Halabi is one of the most influential Palestinian artists of our times after Ismail Shamoutt. She is now in south Lebanon, touring around so she can write reports about what she sees. Samia Halaby also used to teach at Yale university ,and she wrote a book on the Modern and Contemporary Palestinian arts, and the influence of the Mexican art movement of the early twenties on the political art of Palestine .She also put together the Show of made in Palestine with the help of the Station Museum (This bio was written by Naim Farhat).

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

Apartheid Wall


The Israeli Land-Grab Apartheid Wall built inside the Palestinian territories, here separating Abu Dis from occupied East Jerusalem. (IPC, 7/4/04).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03).

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah's.

editor@aljazeerah.info