Jihad al-Bina's Reconstruction Terrorism
Interview
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(Click here to read the full interview) (...) So you’ve been operating in this development capacity since 1988, yet suddenly your identity as an organization changed to “terrorist” in 2007. Why today? Perhaps from the outset of the Israeli aggression in 2006, the U.S. administration took the front seat in achieving Israel’s goals. Condoleezza Rice announced that the creation of a new Middle East—read Israeli control of the Middle East—had to pass through Lebanon and the 2006 war against the Lebanese Resistance. This was not a traditional war: scorched earth in the form of wanton destruction of entire villages, towns and civilians (footnote 5). Israel and the U.S. bet all their chips on destroying the Resistance and its pillars of popular support, hoping that people would rise against it in disgust. They brought so much destruction assuming that residents of south Lebanon would be unable or would be reluctant to return to villages turned into mere rubble and to lands carpeted with 4 million cluster bombs. Israel and the U.S. were hoping to sow the seeds of popular dissatisfaction with the Lebanese Resistance. The other objective was to depopulate the region south of the Litani river in order to create a natural shield for Israel’s north. JaB was in direct contact with international organizations to facilitate the delivery of relief operations and material during the war. As an organization of 300 engineers (plus 900 volunteers in times of crisis), we later assumed the daunting task of helping hundreds of thousands of the internally displaced return to their destroyed towns from the first day of cessation of hostilities: rubble removal, road clearance, engineering the transportation for a massive return of people, collecting donations, recruiting volunteers for community services, technical damage assessment house by house, tallying the lists of financial reimbursement to owners of damaged real estate, closely coordinating relief efforts with local and international organizations, including UNDP, ESCWA and EU, linking such groups with hundreds of municipalities and agricultural co-ops in the south, and most importantly, announcing and executing the task of rebuilding what the Israeli war machine had destroyed. We lived up to our commitments. These were the reasons for pinning JaB with the “terrorist” label. We were wholeheartedly there for our popular base during difficult times in the aftermath of the war. We disrupted the Israeli and American agenda of demoralizing our people and attempting to turn Lebanon’s Shi’a population into refugees. (...) (Click here to read the full interview) _______________ Footnote 5: On 13 July 2006 the Guardian reported that “Israel’s army chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, said his military would target infrastructure and ‘turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years,’ ” as Israel prepared to launch a ground and air assault on Lebanon. |
