Lebanese Residents of Atiri: Living Between the Lines

Text and photos by JoMarie Fecci

The corrosive effect of the conflict in south Lebanon on the civilian population in front-line villages is clearly illustrated by the struggle for survival of a village called Atiri.

Before the Israeli occupation, Atiri was a typical farming village populated by large extended families—with residents of all ages participating in the back-breaking work of continuous planting and harvesting cycles. Today, however, the place’s very existence rests in the unsteady hands of 70 elderly people who refuse to abandon their homes despite their location in the center of a very active combat zone.

The village is just inside what the U.N. refers to as the “Israeli-Controlled Area” (and what Israelis call their “Security Zone”), in a section of the zone that overlaps the U.N.’s area of operations.

“Other villages outside this pocket have at least some benefits of government services, but the people in places like Atiri are in really dire circumstances,” said Major Kieran McDaid, of UNIFIL’s 84th Irish Battalion.

Proudly, Haj Lutfi Kassem picks a few bunches of grapes from the trellised vines that shade his front yard, passing them to patrolling UNIFIL soldiers. “Without UNIFIL we couldn’t live here,” he explained, expressing the village’s gratitude. During the routine patrol, the peacekeepers relayed a message informing one resident of his son’s marriage in Beirut. Forbidden by the nearby SLA militiamen to have cell phones, the villagers’ only contact with the outside world is provided by UNIFIL and the International Committee ofthe Red Cross—making Atiri a very lonely place.

It is also a very dangerous place. The facade of an abandoned tire dump hides the bustle of SLA militiamen in the underground bunkers of the Haddata Compound that commands the heights overlooking the village. A tank juts out the back of the compound, reigning menacingly over the rubble of homes.

“Almost every night there is shelling,” said Haj Kassem. He related a typical incident which occurred the night before. The village was hit by stray shellfire around 2 a.m. A donkey was killed, and a woman sleeping too close to a window was cut by shrapnel and shattered glass when one shell landed near her home. She could get no help until the morning UNIFIL patrol came and arranged to medevac her. Had her wounds been more serious, she would have died. The danger of roadside bombs makes it impossible—even for UNIFIL—to move in or out of Atiri from dusk until daybreak, when the road is swept for explosives.

“Inshallah, everybody hopes to see peace and the return of the Lebanese government to this area soon,” Haj Kassem said. “We are very tired.”

Most days groups of villagers sit calmly drinking tea and gossiping among themselves. Although many are stooped with age, they do their best to continue cultivating their land and keeping their village alive.

“We try to keep some of the people in the village,” said Ali Hassan Fakih, mukhtar of Atiri. “But the youngest resident is about 60 years old.”

Years spent experiencing fear and intimidation on a daily basis, combined with the more obvious effects of the conflict, such as shelling, shrapnel and bullets, have driven away most of the inhabitants. But the remaining residents cling even more stubbornly to their land. They have learned to live with the bullets and shells. Now their greatest fear is being made to leave their homes.

The arbitrary nature of the occupation has made even the simplest tasks complicated. For example, last olive season a group of 10 villagers had gone to a neighboring town inside the Israeli-occupied zone to press their olives. When they didn’t return the next day, relatives of the missing implored UNIFIL to find out what had happened to them.

Meanwhile, the disappearance of her neighbors made Marian Fakih afraid to go to the olive press at Saff al Hawa. However, if the 25 sacks of olives—her entire harvest for the season—were not pressed soon, they would rot. She went to UNIFIL for help and the peacekeepers brought her and her olives to a press on the “liberated” side, and then returned her to Atiri safely.

Meanwhile, UNIFIL presented an inquiry regarding the “missing” villagers via liaison procedures to IDF representatives. By the following afternoon the “crisis” was over. Shelling and military activity in the area had been the cause for the villagers’ “detention”—as the local security officials didn’t want the seven elderly women and three men inadvertently walking into a fire fight.

Residents’ concerns about “detentions” and expulsions are not without merit. They believe that the SLA/IDF would like them all to leave so the village could be razed. This view became more prevalent after the village mukhtar went to Beirut for a heart operation in June of 1998, and was prohibited from returning by the SLA.

It took five months of meetings with the IDF by UNIFIL before the mukhtar was allowed to come home.

“I hope this is the last year for the occupation,” said the 70-year-old mukhtar. “But so far I haven’t seen any changes. I’ve only heard about it on TV.”

According to him the SLA militiamen are still coming down from the compound to Atiri in search of phantom Hezbollah men whom they do not find. Though SLA patrols have been known to harass the elderly villagers on occasion, sometimes breaking down doors of those unlucky enough not to be home when they come calling, they’ve found no evidence of armed resistance activity.

UNIFIL cannot interfere with the SLA patrols, but it can and does observe and record SLA activities, thereby deterring acts of random violence and harassment against the residents. “All we can do is try to make the people’s lives a little easier. We regard this as an important part of our job. If we don’t do it nobody else will,” said Major Brian Lenihan of the Irish Battalion.

The little indignities suffered by these old farmers are not as dramatic as the Qana bombing, or even the volleys of Katushya rockets that sometimes fall in northern Israel. But day after day, year after year, they eat away at the human spirit. These people are old, not political, and they certainly are not guerrilla fighters. It is just the misfortune of the elderly residents of Atiri to live between the lines.

JoMarie Fecci is a free-lance photojournalist based in the New York City area.