Sur la piste de J-P

La guerre entre Israël et le Liban se joue aussi dans la blogosphère. Au lieu des missiles et des bombes, les mots pleuvent. Les Libanais assiégés racontent leur calvaire, comme dans le blog Lebanese Political Journal. Voici comment ce blogueur libanais, habitant Beyrouth, était désespéré dans la nuit du samedi 15 juillet. La seule solution qu’il envisageait, son dernier recours, était malheureusement de se décider à essayer de fuir en Syrie:

Saturday, July 15, 2006, 4:59 AM.
Becoming a Refugee
We have no sympathy for Israel’s position right now. None.

We have sympathy for the Israeli civilians being hit by Hezbollah bombs, but there is no justification for Israel’s action. It’s abusive. The United States did not hit civilians or civilian escape routes out of the country like this when invading either Afghanistan or Iraq.

Israel made its statement. We cannot tolerate any more. We understood what they were doing. We understood why they needed to do it. But now, there is no sympathy left. Hezbollah is not a mortal danger to you. It has the potential to be, but we Lebanese have been trying to change that internally, through UN resolutions and peacefully.

The bombing has gone on for too long. It’s too fierce. Hezbollah has lost morale. The Shia have lost morale. The Lebanese have lost their country.

This is a fight Israel cannot win. Everyone in Lebanon knows that Hezbollah cannot win, including Hezbollah. There is nothing Israel can do to get the soldiers back through force. But this isn’t about soldiers or Israeli defense any more.

You’ve made this country unliveable for the people fighting to disarm Hezbollah.

Guess what? I’m leaving. Yep. Me.

Where am I going? Syria. Didn’t want to, but I have to. The people we marched against are the ones you sent us begging to. The people who assassinated our leaders, kept us from having an operating democracy, and who armed Hezbollah are laughing it up because they’ve won the game because of you.

Bashar Assad said Lebanon would be destroyed if he left. I didn’t know the Israelis would play into his game. It’s not surprising that Syrian-allied Hezbollah started the mess, but you guys are just vicious.

All my Hezbollah supporting friends are sticking around. They call the rest of us cowards. I guess we are. We want to do scientific research. We want our children to learn how to play the piano. We want to watch our stock porfolios burgeon. We can’t do that here any more.

I tried to sympathize with you. I didn’t support Hezbollah, and if you look at the posts before this conflict began, I was maligning the political parties that oppose Hezbollah for not doing enough.

I even gave you guys the benefit of the doubt at the beginning of this, as did most Lebanese. Even the Shia, Christians, and Druze in South Lebanon understood your position. Not any more.

Oh, well. I’m a refugee.

À peine quelques heures plus tard, notre type a vécu les premières menaces des bombardements par Israël sur sa ville. C’est hallucinant!

Saturday, July 15, 2006, 7:29 AM.
Israel to Bomb Beirut
Panic. Now!

Israel just dropped fliers on the American University of Beirut campus and in the surrounding neighborhood.

The fliers are in English and say something to the extent of:

“The Lebanese people protect Hezbollah and will face consequences. Please, get out of Beirut.”

This is from a 16 year old Lebanese American playing soccer on the field at International College next to the AUB dorms who told a friend who told me.

This is where I live.

Jesus Christ, it sounds like they just bombed a building behind me. That’s the downtown!

I live on the top of my building!

Update: Only one bomb heard.

Supposedly, the flier was in Arabic, and did not say “Please, get out of Beirut.” The first half was correct, but the second half was merely cautionary.

Regardless, I’ve got to pack and get out of here if they’re now dropping leaflets on my neighborhood.

Puis le lendemain, dimanche 16 juillet, notre blogueur attend impatiemment de pouvoir fuir vers la Syrie:

Sunday, July 16, 2006
Bombs in Blue Skys
It’s a beautiful morning in Beirut.

At 6am, I heard loud explosions. The booming stopped within half an hour.

The night was quiet. It’s quiet now.

My taxi is coming in from Syria. We’ll see if I’m leaving.

The Irish are evacuating by bus through Syria.

There are still clouds on the horizon. Yesterday was particularly cloudy. The wind had changed, so all of the explosive powder and dust from the assault on Dahieh was in Beirut. Eyes, noses, and throats stung with irritation.

At first, we worried that it was gas, either the result of a chemical weapons attack or the result of a bomb vaporizing ammonia. The rumors that Israel used white phosphorus against villagers in the south heightened concern about a chemical attack.

We’ll see what today brings.

I’ll try to get pictures along the road.

Les israéliens ont aussi leurs blogueurs qui suivent de près la situation. Par exemple, cette blogueuse israélienne, Lisa Goldman, trouve absurde ce qui se passe actuellement. Elle écrit dans son billet que les deux pays voisins, peuplés d’individus qui vivent dans la même région, qui écoutent les mêmes émissions des médias et qui se côtoient presqu’au jour le jour, se lancent maintenant des bombes par la tête! La situation est assez folle en effet. Maudite guerre!

We watch them and they watch us
by Lisa Goldman on Sun 16 Jul 2006 06:38 PM IDT

I took this photo just a few minutes ago, of Israel Channel 10’s news coverage of our little war. It shows Zvi Yehezkeli, who covers Arab affairs and has been giving excellent summaries of the Arab media (Noorster and I have a huge crush on him). Al Manar TV, Hezbollah television, is showing Zvi live while he is in the Tel Aviv studio. They are broadcasting our broadcast in real time, from Beirut, translating from Hebrew into Arabic what Zvi is saying, and responding in real time. “We can see you!” said the Al Manar moderator, mockingly, as he smiled into the camera.

Zvi is listening to the whole thing via his earphone, and he even posed a question in Arabic.

This is just one example of how mad and complex this conflict is: We watch each other’s television broadcasts, we talk to one another, and then…we bomb each other.

This morning a friend of mine called from Gaza. He’s not a journalist, not a politician - just an ordinary Palestinian guy in his twenties. He lives down the street from the offices of Hamas’s Ministry of the Interior in Gaza, which was bombed a few days ago by an Israeli fighter plane. He has about two hours of electricity a day in his house and about as much running water. But he called me to ask if I was okay, after he saw on Al Jazeera television that Nasrallah was threatening to bomb Tel Aviv. “I’m worried about you,” he said.

And late, late last night I chatted via Instant Message with this Lebanese blogger, while he sat on the roof of his apartment building and watched Israeli fighter planes bomb Beirut.

Ce lien pointe vers l’évolution du conflit vu par différents blogueurs du Moyen-Orient. Le blog Lebanese Bloggers témoigne aussi du conflit tel qu’il se déroule à l’intérieur du Liban. Ces sources d’informations sont très intéressantes puisqu’elle ne sont pas censurées par les grands médias et les différents partis politiques. La puissance de la blogosphère réside donc dans la publication de plusieurs petites parcelles d’authenticité ou plusieurs points de vue sur des évènements. La diversité et la rapidité avec laquelle les gens peuvent couvrir un évènement et diffuser l’information sont aussi des points forts de ce nouveau moyen de communication. Le moins que l’on puisse dire est que les historiens du futur auront du matériel à se mettre sous la dent.

Mise à jour, 22 juillet: CNN a fait un reportage sur un blogueur près de Beyrouth qui décrit les évènements et publie des vidéos des attaques qu’il filme lui-même: Lebanon Israeli Crisis.