.AP Blog: Dispatches From Mideast Conflict
AP correspondents are in Lebanon and Israel covering the fighting and its effects on the people. Here, in a combined web log, they convey the impressions and challenges of their assignment.
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Monday, July 24
HAGOSHRIM, Israel
Hezbollah has posed little more than a random threat so far with its daily rocket attacks on Israeli land. You see fires burning in open fields and bare mountaintops across northern Israel, and wonder what the guerrillas were even aiming at. You have to be spectacularly unlucky to be killed by a Katyusha here.
But on their own ground, the guerrillas are proving to be formidable enemies.
"They're good, aren't they?" one soldier asked as he prepared his tank for inspection. He said he'd been into Lebanon in the morning, and it didn't go well.
One of the things you'll hear most in talking to Israeli soldiers about Hezbollah is, "They're smart." The guerrillas know their own territory, and they've devoted much of the last six years to preparing for this fight. I asked a soldier who had crossed over today how Hezbollah moved and fought, and he said he didn't know.
The soldiers don't see Hezbollah fighters much, he said, all they know is they're getting shot at.
At least 20 Israeli soldiers were wounded today in sieges on two Lebanese villages across the border, and two were killed in a helicopter crash on Israeli soil.
We go to the crash site, now engulfed in flames. Small parts of the helicopter are stuck in a nearby fence. There's a wheel and part of the axle that spun off and lie partway buried in a watermelon patch. On the radio, they say two soldiers were hurt. Everyone around knows they were killed, but it's censored until the families can be told.
From the beginning, the soldiers have been convinced that this fight was just and necessary. But as Israeli casualties mount, they're getting more curious about what the world thinks. They crowd around reporters and pepper them with questions about what's being said outside, how's the war going, when will it end?
They seem not to know anymore.
- Benjamin Harvey
---
Monday, July 24
ON THE ROAD TO TYRE, Lebanon
It's just past noon when we head south from Sidon to Tyre in southern Lebanon. The delay was the road. It's a stunning stretch that winds and weaves along the Mediterranean.
But these days it is more like a game of Russian roulette. The road has been the target of Israeli bombs and rockets in recent days. We wait to find out whether there have been any reports of strikes on the road. Still not able to get an answer from Tyre, it's decided to head out.
It's a striking scene off to my right. The Mediterranean is a deep blue and there are whitecaps on the edge. It looks so peaceful, so normal.
Suddenly the car swerves avoiding a giant crater caused by a 500-pound bomb dropped by Israeli jets days earlier. Not far beyond a bridge lies in ruins, another victim of a bomb.
We're on some small secondary road. The main highway to Tyre is closed. It's visible from a distance. It looks to be a modern four-lane highway though it is difficult to tell from our vantage point on a narrow two-lane road several feet below and several more feet away.
Soon the pavement ends and we're bumping along an even narrower road-cum-sandy pathway. On the side are dust-covered vehicles. I count 20 of them. It's hard to tell how long they have been there but it looks like they just gave up on some past journey, perhaps to escape the bombing further south. One car is without a tire, but the others look like the passengers just left them where they stopped.
We keep a steady pace making it to Tyre in good time. Tyre is an ancient city founded in 2750 B.C. The Greeks believe their civilization is rooted in Tyre. Even in ancient times Tyre was a prize. In the 6th century B.C., Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, laid siege to the city for 13 years.
Alexander the Great had a turn at Tyre, assaulting it without success for seven months.
Once in Tyre, we go right to the port to see the evacuation of trapped expatriates aboard a ship destined for Cyprus. But more harrowing was a visit to Najem Hospital in the heart of Tyre.
The streets around it are pockmarked from rockets and across the street all that is left of a jeep hit by an Israeli rocket is its charred, hulking skeleton.
Inside the hospital there is a one-day-old baby fighting for his life in an incubator. An eight-year-old girl is sobbing and terrified of every sound she hears because of the planes she heard overhead before they bombed her family's car the day before.
A striking nursing director, Inaya Haydar, takes us on a tour. She is filled with compassion as she strokes the young girls head trying to comfort her. At the end of the tour after telling the sad stories of her patients she tells of her own heartbreak. Just three days earlier six members of her family were killed in an Israeli bombing raid on their village.
"It's not easy for me to talk about my family," she says very close to tears.
Inaya could leave Lebanon if she wants. Her fiance lives in Sweden, wants her to come there. But she refuses.
"I love my country. I can't leave. We need to help our country now."
- Kathy Gannon
---
Sunday, July 23
THE ISRAEL-LEBANON BORDER
There are killing machines lined up in the most serene of places: in an apple orchard, atop a hill overlooking Lebanon, at the foot of a rocky incline. They're everywhere here.
You hear them fire hundreds of times each day, each explosion aimed to kill someone or destroy something.
We find a tank with its turret pointed at Lebanon. The commander comes out to talk and says he's already killed four Hezbollah, and it isn't even noon yet. I ask him how he killed them, and he says it doesn't matter. He gestures to the ground around him, littered with both large munition shells and bullet casings. The commander is covered in dust. He warns us to stay away from the border, because it isn't safe yet.
On top of the tank, a soldier's lips move as he reads a prayer book.
The commander tells us that at noon, he's going up the hill, to try to get shot at and draw Hezbollah fighters into the open. At 11:58, he starts moving. The tank makes a tremendous amount of noise as it lumbers up the hill, sending dust into the air, and we wait not far off behind an Israeli military defense post. Close by, on the other side of the border, a Hezbollah flag flaps in the wind.
Soon the valley is alive with the sound of explosions and machine-gun fire.
- Benjamin Harvey
---
Saturday, July 22
TO THE ISRAEL-LEBANON BORDER
The hotel is surrounded with the thumping sound of explosions when I arrive around 2:00 a.m. The man working the late shift doesn't speak English, and I don't bother to ask for a room. I ask for the bomb shelter, and he points.
Twenty minutes later I'm asleep on top of a table inside a room with reinforced walls.
Later that morning, we're on the Lebanese border, looking up to the village of Maroun al-Ras. Situated on a hilltop overlooking the valley into Israel and flanked by fields and orchards, Maroun al-Ras looks from below like it would be an idyllic place for a rich man's country home.
All day it gets pounded from the air by Israeli tanks, artillery and an F-16. The impacts send little mushroom clouds of smoke into the air, but besides that, Maroun al-Ras doesn't seem to react much. It seems an incredible amount of force to use on such a tiny place, but from below we can't see what's happening inside - in the valley and in between the houses. We can only hear the explosions and cackle of heavy guns.
Soldiers roll up slowly to the village in armored personnel carriers, face no resistance on the way up and then disappear. When they come back, they act like they've just returned from hell.
Israel said it took control of Maroun al-Ras, but you could still hear fighting going on inside when the day ended.
- Benjamin Harvey
---
Thursday, July 20, 9 a.m. localTHE SYRIA-LEBANON BORDER
On the road from Damascus to Beirut, we swerve around bombed-out trucks along the way. One charred frame has the remnants of its load in the back - either sacks of potatoes or sandbags. Was it carrying food into Lebanon, struggling under Israel's blockade of its ports and bombing of its only international airport? Or was it carrying sandbags to fortify bunkers for guerrillas fighting in the south? I can't tell as we whiz by fast.
Another truck looks like a missile hit straight through the windshield and exploded between the driver and passenger seats. Broken glass covers the pockmarked road, and a red-checkered khafiyeh - an Arab man's headdress - dangles limply over the driver's side mirror. I wonder where its owner is. My driver Mahmoud tells me.
"Look at this one - that driver died. Why do they do this?" he asks half in English, half in Arabic. Mahmoud has been shuttling journalists along the Beirut-Damascus highway - the main lifeline between two ancient cities - nearly every day, and makes a tally of new carnage along the way.
As wreckage accumulates, the price of a taxi ride along this beautiful half-desert, half-mountain road goes up. We pay $650 for the 2 1/2 hour journey. Three days ago, a colleague paid $400. A week ago, a friend got a bargain at 50 bucks - plus a $5 tip.
As eerie as they are, the bombed-out trucks are safety for us - they won't be hit again. Mahmoud has instructions to quickly pass any trucks rumbling along the way - the live targets. That brings its own treachery, as he pulls into the opposite lane to quickly overtake them. I wonder what would be worse - a head-on collision or an air strike. I put on my iPod to distract myself.
We're taking as many back roads and winding mountain passes as we can, and we phone colleagues in Beirut every hour, asking for news about attacks. And we stop along the way, chatting with a hotelier who hasn't seen visitors in days, about what lies ahead.
The man - a middle-aged Christian with an easy smile - pulls up a chair and pleads.
"How long will this last?"
I wish I had answers for him.
- Lauren Frayer
MyWay
---
Monday, July 24
HAGOSHRIM, Israel
Hezbollah has posed little more than a random threat so far with its daily rocket attacks on Israeli land. You see fires burning in open fields and bare mountaintops across northern Israel, and wonder what the guerrillas were even aiming at. You have to be spectacularly unlucky to be killed by a Katyusha here.
But on their own ground, the guerrillas are proving to be formidable enemies.
"They're good, aren't they?" one soldier asked as he prepared his tank for inspection. He said he'd been into Lebanon in the morning, and it didn't go well.
One of the things you'll hear most in talking to Israeli soldiers about Hezbollah is, "They're smart." The guerrillas know their own territory, and they've devoted much of the last six years to preparing for this fight. I asked a soldier who had crossed over today how Hezbollah moved and fought, and he said he didn't know.
The soldiers don't see Hezbollah fighters much, he said, all they know is they're getting shot at.
At least 20 Israeli soldiers were wounded today in sieges on two Lebanese villages across the border, and two were killed in a helicopter crash on Israeli soil.
We go to the crash site, now engulfed in flames. Small parts of the helicopter are stuck in a nearby fence. There's a wheel and part of the axle that spun off and lie partway buried in a watermelon patch. On the radio, they say two soldiers were hurt. Everyone around knows they were killed, but it's censored until the families can be told.
From the beginning, the soldiers have been convinced that this fight was just and necessary. But as Israeli casualties mount, they're getting more curious about what the world thinks. They crowd around reporters and pepper them with questions about what's being said outside, how's the war going, when will it end?
They seem not to know anymore.
- Benjamin Harvey
---
Monday, July 24
ON THE ROAD TO TYRE, Lebanon
It's just past noon when we head south from Sidon to Tyre in southern Lebanon. The delay was the road. It's a stunning stretch that winds and weaves along the Mediterranean.
But these days it is more like a game of Russian roulette. The road has been the target of Israeli bombs and rockets in recent days. We wait to find out whether there have been any reports of strikes on the road. Still not able to get an answer from Tyre, it's decided to head out.
It's a striking scene off to my right. The Mediterranean is a deep blue and there are whitecaps on the edge. It looks so peaceful, so normal.
Suddenly the car swerves avoiding a giant crater caused by a 500-pound bomb dropped by Israeli jets days earlier. Not far beyond a bridge lies in ruins, another victim of a bomb.
We're on some small secondary road. The main highway to Tyre is closed. It's visible from a distance. It looks to be a modern four-lane highway though it is difficult to tell from our vantage point on a narrow two-lane road several feet below and several more feet away.
Soon the pavement ends and we're bumping along an even narrower road-cum-sandy pathway. On the side are dust-covered vehicles. I count 20 of them. It's hard to tell how long they have been there but it looks like they just gave up on some past journey, perhaps to escape the bombing further south. One car is without a tire, but the others look like the passengers just left them where they stopped.
We keep a steady pace making it to Tyre in good time. Tyre is an ancient city founded in 2750 B.C. The Greeks believe their civilization is rooted in Tyre. Even in ancient times Tyre was a prize. In the 6th century B.C., Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, laid siege to the city for 13 years.
Alexander the Great had a turn at Tyre, assaulting it without success for seven months.
Once in Tyre, we go right to the port to see the evacuation of trapped expatriates aboard a ship destined for Cyprus. But more harrowing was a visit to Najem Hospital in the heart of Tyre.
The streets around it are pockmarked from rockets and across the street all that is left of a jeep hit by an Israeli rocket is its charred, hulking skeleton.
Inside the hospital there is a one-day-old baby fighting for his life in an incubator. An eight-year-old girl is sobbing and terrified of every sound she hears because of the planes she heard overhead before they bombed her family's car the day before.
A striking nursing director, Inaya Haydar, takes us on a tour. She is filled with compassion as she strokes the young girls head trying to comfort her. At the end of the tour after telling the sad stories of her patients she tells of her own heartbreak. Just three days earlier six members of her family were killed in an Israeli bombing raid on their village.
"It's not easy for me to talk about my family," she says very close to tears.
Inaya could leave Lebanon if she wants. Her fiance lives in Sweden, wants her to come there. But she refuses.
"I love my country. I can't leave. We need to help our country now."
- Kathy Gannon
---
Sunday, July 23
THE ISRAEL-LEBANON BORDER
There are killing machines lined up in the most serene of places: in an apple orchard, atop a hill overlooking Lebanon, at the foot of a rocky incline. They're everywhere here.
You hear them fire hundreds of times each day, each explosion aimed to kill someone or destroy something.
We find a tank with its turret pointed at Lebanon. The commander comes out to talk and says he's already killed four Hezbollah, and it isn't even noon yet. I ask him how he killed them, and he says it doesn't matter. He gestures to the ground around him, littered with both large munition shells and bullet casings. The commander is covered in dust. He warns us to stay away from the border, because it isn't safe yet.
On top of the tank, a soldier's lips move as he reads a prayer book.
The commander tells us that at noon, he's going up the hill, to try to get shot at and draw Hezbollah fighters into the open. At 11:58, he starts moving. The tank makes a tremendous amount of noise as it lumbers up the hill, sending dust into the air, and we wait not far off behind an Israeli military defense post. Close by, on the other side of the border, a Hezbollah flag flaps in the wind.
Soon the valley is alive with the sound of explosions and machine-gun fire.
- Benjamin Harvey
---
Saturday, July 22
TO THE ISRAEL-LEBANON BORDER
The hotel is surrounded with the thumping sound of explosions when I arrive around 2:00 a.m. The man working the late shift doesn't speak English, and I don't bother to ask for a room. I ask for the bomb shelter, and he points.
Twenty minutes later I'm asleep on top of a table inside a room with reinforced walls.
Later that morning, we're on the Lebanese border, looking up to the village of Maroun al-Ras. Situated on a hilltop overlooking the valley into Israel and flanked by fields and orchards, Maroun al-Ras looks from below like it would be an idyllic place for a rich man's country home.
All day it gets pounded from the air by Israeli tanks, artillery and an F-16. The impacts send little mushroom clouds of smoke into the air, but besides that, Maroun al-Ras doesn't seem to react much. It seems an incredible amount of force to use on such a tiny place, but from below we can't see what's happening inside - in the valley and in between the houses. We can only hear the explosions and cackle of heavy guns.
Soldiers roll up slowly to the village in armored personnel carriers, face no resistance on the way up and then disappear. When they come back, they act like they've just returned from hell.
Israel said it took control of Maroun al-Ras, but you could still hear fighting going on inside when the day ended.
- Benjamin Harvey
---
Thursday, July 20, 9 a.m. localTHE SYRIA-LEBANON BORDER
On the road from Damascus to Beirut, we swerve around bombed-out trucks along the way. One charred frame has the remnants of its load in the back - either sacks of potatoes or sandbags. Was it carrying food into Lebanon, struggling under Israel's blockade of its ports and bombing of its only international airport? Or was it carrying sandbags to fortify bunkers for guerrillas fighting in the south? I can't tell as we whiz by fast.
Another truck looks like a missile hit straight through the windshield and exploded between the driver and passenger seats. Broken glass covers the pockmarked road, and a red-checkered khafiyeh - an Arab man's headdress - dangles limply over the driver's side mirror. I wonder where its owner is. My driver Mahmoud tells me.
"Look at this one - that driver died. Why do they do this?" he asks half in English, half in Arabic. Mahmoud has been shuttling journalists along the Beirut-Damascus highway - the main lifeline between two ancient cities - nearly every day, and makes a tally of new carnage along the way.
As wreckage accumulates, the price of a taxi ride along this beautiful half-desert, half-mountain road goes up. We pay $650 for the 2 1/2 hour journey. Three days ago, a colleague paid $400. A week ago, a friend got a bargain at 50 bucks - plus a $5 tip.
As eerie as they are, the bombed-out trucks are safety for us - they won't be hit again. Mahmoud has instructions to quickly pass any trucks rumbling along the way - the live targets. That brings its own treachery, as he pulls into the opposite lane to quickly overtake them. I wonder what would be worse - a head-on collision or an air strike. I put on my iPod to distract myself.
We're taking as many back roads and winding mountain passes as we can, and we phone colleagues in Beirut every hour, asking for news about attacks. And we stop along the way, chatting with a hotelier who hasn't seen visitors in days, about what lies ahead.
The man - a middle-aged Christian with an easy smile - pulls up a chair and pleads.
"How long will this last?"
I wish I had answers for him.
- Lauren Frayer
MyWay
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