A Balcony Over Jerusalem Read online

  I did observe something interesting on this trip: while I was in an internet café trying to check my email, a couple of people in their 20s started talking about how restricted they were in terms of social media; they’d found themselves blocked by the regime. It was clear that there was much going on beneath the surface.

  We travelled to Aleppo – a grand city, which had been at the crossroads of trade for centuries. One memorable event was a rooftop dinner under the Aleppo Citadel, brilliantly illuminated. The Madina Souk of Aleppo was breathtaking in its grandeur. It featured giant chandeliers leading to a maze of cobbled streets where one found antique coffee pots, wooden boxes inlaid with mother of pearl, olive oil soap and a great deal of cloth. Aleppo beamed wealth and confidence.

  While travelling around with Fadi, we discussed the differences between Sunni and Shia Islam. We talked about the hostility between the two, and how it seemed to be escalating. So what, we asked Fadi, were the differences between the two branches of Islam?

  ‘There are two important differences,’ he replied. ‘The first is that for us Shias, our Ramadan goes for 29 days.’ And the second difference? ‘When Shias pray we go like this,’ he said, crossing his arms in front of him. ‘But when Sunni pray they put their hands by their sides.’ So that was it. Stripped of all the arguments since the Prophet Mohammed formed Islam in the seventh century, these were the main differences – according to Fadi.

  We returned to Syria with Jack’s older brother, Nicolas, then 24, an engineer living in Sydney, who joined us for our holiday. It was December, just a couple of days after Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation. This time we visited Palmyra – the spectacular ruins of an ancient city, including a monumental colonnaded street more than 1100 metres long and the great Temple of Ba’al.

  Within months of this visit, the Sunni–Shia tensions in Syria would escalate to the point where civil war broke out on 15 March 2011. According to the Syrian Centre for Policy Research, over the following six years, more than 470,000 Syrians would die, and the war’s economic cost would be US$255 billion – essentially wiping out the nation’s entire wealth.

  When Islamic State arrived in Palmyra in mid-2015, they would destroy the Temple of Ba’al and want to know where antiquities were hidden. Islamic State funds itself in part by selling antiquities. The professor who for 50 years had protected the city’s relics, 84-year-old Khaled al-Asaad, refused to tell them, so they murdered him. Islamic State beheaded him, then hung his body from a pole in the town square, his head stuck between his legs.

  From Syria, we went to Lebanon for Christmas. It’s an extraordinary country. It only has 4 million people, and 1 million of those have come as refugees from Syria. The population is divided into religious groupings called ‘confessions’. Under Lebanon’s constitution, each confession is entitled to certain positions. The Prime Minister must be a Sunni Muslim, the Speaker of Parliament must be a Shia Muslim and the President a Maronite Christian. The Parliament has 128 seats – Muslims must get 64 and Christians 64. Sunni Muslims must get 27 seats, Shias 27, Druze (a monotheistic minority faith) eight and Alawites two. The system is designed to avoid the type of violence that tore Lebanon apart during its civil war from 1975 to 1990.

  Memories of the trauma of that war meant that Lebanon would remain relatively stable throughout the Arab Spring. But the threat of violence was constant – as suggested by the national election I’d reported on in June 2009.

  Most of our time in Lebanon was spent in Beirut, a remarkable city. Thirty minutes’ drive from the luxury boutiques of central Beirut was the Shatila refugee camp. In 1982, Israeli soldiers who were fighting in Lebanon surrounded the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps on the outskirts of Beirut. Under the command of Ariel Sharon (who went on to become Prime Minister), the soldiers encircled the camps, while Phalangist Christian militia entered and conducted a massacre of between 762 and 3500 people. (According to the New York Times an Israeli investigative commission concluded in 1983 that Israeli leaders were ‘indirectly responsible’ for the killings and that Sharon bore ‘personal responsibility’ for failing to prevent the killings of at least 800 civilians.)2

  Sylvie and I wanted to visit the camps for a possible story. We decided to take Jack with us because we were on a family holiday and we thought it would be interesting for him to see a refugee camp in Lebanon. We had not expected to find such poverty and misery 25 years after the famous massacre. Jack later described the camp in his diary:

  The Lebanese will not let them [the Palestinians] have jobs outside of their camps, will not help them and does not care for them … It is just horrible to hear from some of the officials about the camp’s struggles. ‘We have the highest rate of breast cancer in the world,’ said one of the surgeons, ‘the highest rate of lung cancer and even one of the highest rates of anaemia in the world.’ The worst part is that one in every 10 babies is born dead. Hold it right there: think about it, this is a space of about 25,000 people, compared to 7 billion people in the world and it has the highest rate of all of these sicknesses and diseases. It is just horrible.

  Hezbollah was invisible in central Beirut, but no one should doubt its influence. Following an agreement in 2008, Hezbollah effectively controls the government of Lebanon: it has power of veto over major government decisions if it can muster two-thirds of the vote in parliament. This two-thirds support is automatic, because Hezbollah leads a coalition of Shia- and Syrian-aligned political groups.

  The previous Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, tried to wind back Hezbollah’s power: in 2008 he moved to close down its private communications network and to end its control over Beirut’s airport. Hezbollah took to the streets to shoot at pro-government militia. The army was not prepared to confront the better-resourced Hezbollah. The government was forced to back down.

  My first conversation with Hezbollah would be a disaster. Living in Israel, you realise that Hezbollah – meaning Party of God – is one of the few military machines that Israel takes seriously. The Israelis feel little threat from Hamas in Gaza; a war with Gaza is like a training exercise. But Hezbollah is a different matter. The last war Israel had with Hezbollah, in 2006, proved extremely costly for Israel, and its own official inquiry into the war (the Winograd Commission) found its military seriously unprepared.

  So, in April 2013, after speaking to several Israeli Army commanders about Hezbollah, I travelled to Lebanon to pay it a visit. As a visiting journalist, I knew I needed government accreditation, so I visited the press office in Beirut. Inside, a grumpy official who chain-smoked looked at my application. Finally, he stamped it.

  But the Hezbollah office acts like the real government. I telephoned Dr Ibrahim Mousawi, Hezbollah’s media officer. Mousawi has a PhD in Political Science from Birmingham University in the UK, and clearly likes to run his department like a military operation. Over the phone I requested a meeting.

  ‘Busy now, call tomorrow at two,’ he said.

  I called the next day; it was two minutes past two.

  ‘I told you two o’clock,’ he snapped. ‘It’s two minutes past two. Try tomorrow.’ He hung up.

  Hezbollah had just hung up on me; things were not going well. The next day I rang at two o’clock.

  ‘You rang on time,’ Mousawi said. ‘You can have 20 minutes with me tomorrow at three o’clock in my office.’

  ‘Where’s your office?’ I asked.

  ‘If you can’t find out where Hezbollah’s office is you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing,’ he said and hung up.

  My journey into Hezbollah’s stronghold, the southern suburbs, was fascinating. In the space of 30 minutes, I went from central Beirut, with its boutiques filled with millionaires from Saudi Arabia, into one of the Shia strongholds of the Middle East. The main road in this part of the city was lined with photos of ‘martyrs’ from the 2006 war with Israel. Journalists who pulled out a camera around here would often find Hezbollah police pulling up alongside them demanding Hezbollah media credentia
ls.

  I found the Hezbollah office in an old building. The previous office had been bombed by Israel, and apparently Hezbollah keeps moving so that the Israelis are never sure where they are. The only indication it was Hezbollah’s office was a logo in the foyer: a clenched fist holding an AK-47.

  Ibrahim Mousawi appeared and showed me into his office. On the walls were two huge posters: one of Ayatollah Khomenei and one of Ayatollah Khamanei. These are the two Supreme Leaders that Iran has had since the Shah was toppled in the ‘Islamic Revolution’ of 1979. It reflected the closeness between Hezbollah and Iran. ‘Great leaders!’ Mousawi said when he saw me looking at the posters.

  I asked about a recent speech in which Nasrallah had vowed to ‘change the face of the region’.

  Mousawi replied: ‘Israel has always been viewed as an army that cannot be defeated. Israel is looked upon now as the policeman of the region, the superpower, the one that can do what it wants. This will change.’

  Mousawi tried to convince me that Hezbollah was stronger now than during the 2006 war. ‘Hezbollah has been training thousands and thousands and thousands of people to defend their country. Hezbollah is ready,’ said Mousawi. If there was another war, he said, ‘we will do something that they will regret’.

  Then came two bizarre moments. Firstly, Mousawi said he’d been misquoted in an American magazine. ‘They quote me as saying that “Israel is a pimple on the face of the Middle East”. What I said was: “The occupation is a pimple on the face of Israel.” I’m going to send a letter to the editor because once a statement like that is out there it will be repeated by other journalists. But what if the editor refuses to run the letter?’

  For me this was extraordinary: the spokesman for a fighting machine with an estimated 100,000 missiles in southern Lebanon felt powerless to force the editor of a foreign magazine to run a letter.

  The second strange moment came when Mousawi wanted my advice. ‘I’ve had a couple of speaking tours to the UK which have gone well except for a few demonstrations,’ he said. ‘I hear you have a powerful Israel lobby in Australia – do you think there would be many protests if I visit?’

  At that instant I considered the fact that this office might well be monitored by the intelligence services of several countries, including the US, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan. The last thing I wanted to do was to give advice to Hezbollah. ‘That’s not for me to judge,’ I said.

  Suddenly, the ice-man of the phone call returned.

  ‘Stop sitting on the fence,’ Mousawi said. ‘As an Australian you can tell me your assessment of the reaction I would get.’

  ‘It’s impossible for me to judge,’ I said.

  Clearly, Ibrahim Mousawi realised I wasn’t going to bite. We shook hands, and as I was leaving he said: ‘Keep in touch.’

  The civil war in neighbouring Syria would give Hezbollah years of battlefield experience. However, it would also erode the organisation’s credibility in the region, putting Hezbollah in a situation where it was killing other Muslims – Sunni Muslims.

  The dominant battle in the Middle East today is the battle for Islam between Sunnis and Shias.

  Added to that are foreign influences like the US and Russia. But at its heart this is a historical battle within Islam that has now become entrenched in politics. It was originally a dispute over who was going to succeed the Prophet Mohammed, and the two sides then broke into two groups. Islam was divided from Mohammed’s death in the year 632. Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon are trying to preserve a ‘Shia crescent’ amid a Sunni majority.

  In the north of Lebanon, in Jabal Mohsen, about 50,000 Alawites – a version of Shia – live on a hill surrounded by about 500,000 Sunnis.

  Sylvie and I travelled there in April 2013 to research why people from the Sunni area below regularly shot up the hill at the Alawites, and vice versa. Below, we met Sheikh Bilal Radwan, a Sunni cleric. He saw the hand of Iran behind it all. ‘It is Iran which is supporting Syria,’ he said. ‘They are the big players who are giving orders to Hezbollah. And they in turn give orders to try to enslave all the people in Jabal Mohsen,’ he said.

  We met a Sunni barber, 27-year-old Ahmed Shaaban. ‘They start shooting by snipers and then the battle starts,’ he told us. ‘I finish whatever haircut I’m doing and run and get my gun.’

  We also spoke to Jihan Khodor, who lost her 21-year-old son in this war in Jabal Mohsen, a microcosm of the Sunni–Shia war. ‘In the last battle he put on his uniform and was going to work and they shot him in the heart,’ she explained. Mrs Khodor’s building was covered in anti-Assad graffiti such as ‘Bashar is an Infidel Pig’. She showed us bullet holes in the walls of her apartment.

  I asked Mrs Khodor what the war was about: ‘I really don’t know,’ she said. What message would she give the Alawites? ‘May God not forgive you for making me lose my son. This area is unbearable but I have nowhere to go.’

  Sylvie and I then drove up the hill to a world of Shia Islam. We met 10 men sitting in a café; not one had a job. A job would mean driving through Sunni areas, which they regarded as too dangerous. They rely on relatives who are able to work in the village or are prepared to cross the checkpoint.

  One man, Mohammed Rabee, showed us a bullet-ridden children’s bedroom. ‘They have no mercy on us,’ he said, looking down the hill. Like those below, nobody here knew why they were fighting – except that one lot were Sunni and the other lot were Shia.

  On another occasion, I went alone with a fixer to southern Beirut to meet Abu Jihad, a gun dealer. We met in the home of my fixer’s mother. When Abu Jihad walked in, he pulled out a gun; my fixer told me later he wanted to make it clear that I should not try anything silly.

  Abu Jihad was a devotee of Hezbollah. His phone rang frequently with calls from people wanting weapons. He set up a laptop and showed me videos of himself giving weapons training to Hezbollah militia. He said the Lebanese police were looking for him – ‘There are 46 warrants out for my arrest’ – but he believed that they would not dare to come for him because they were afraid of Hezbollah. I asked Abu Jihad what he would do to anyone who criticised Shia Muslims. ‘I would kill them,’ he said. ‘I do kill them.’

  Two days later I interviewed someone at the opposite end of the spectrum, who would delight in killing Hassan Nasrallah. In an apartment in Tripoli, Lebanon, Sylvie and I met Abu Bari, a commander of the al-Farouq Brigades, a Sunni group. He’d just returned from Syria for medical treatment. He pulled out his computer – laptops are as much a part of modern warfare as guns – and began showing us videos. In Syria, the al-Farouq Brigades had been fighting the Assad army and Hezbollah, and he played us a video in which missiles were being fired towards Hezbollah fighters. Just before one missile was fired, his troops shouted: ‘This one’s for Nasrallah!’

  Nearby, in a café, we met a recruiter for the Free Syrian Army. Like Abu Bari, he’d fought in Syria against the Assad regime, but was now wounded. He told us how one Australian man – a student from Sydney University – had contacted him and wanted to meet. But because he was recruiting Sunni fighters in Lebanon, a Shia-dominated country, he carefully vetted fighters. When the Australian came, the recruiter led him on a merry dance around Tripoli. The recruiter was watching as the Australian turned up at a café, but telephoned to send him to a different venue. They finally met, but then the recruiter drove around Tripoli, ensuring that no one was following. Finally, the recruiter gave the Australian instructions for who to meet once inside Syria. The Australian man went into Syria and the recruiter never heard from him again.

  One day the Lebanese police had come to arrest the recruiter but he’d been able to quickly marshal a mob of Sunnis to surround the building. The last thing the police had wanted was an open confrontation with Sunni militia, so they’d departed.

  Survival in Lebanon relies largely on how strong others perceive you to be. After 15 years of civil war, Lebanon is one of the most traumatised nations in the Middle East – which is saying something.
So traumatised, in fact, that its people are prepared to go to almost any length to avoid another war.

  CHAPTER 9

  ‘I Think Egypt is Going to Blow’

  30 January 2011

  WHEN SYLVIE, JACK AND I TOOK OUR FIRST FAMILY TRIP TO Egypt – in July 2009 – the country had appeared to be stable. President Hosni Mubarak had ruled as dictator since 1981, having come to power after the previous president, Anwar Sadat, was shot dead by Islamic extremists at a military parade. There had been a state of emergency in Egypt for 35 years, which meant that the security forces had complete power. Yet the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, banned in Egypt for more than 50 years, was becoming stronger. It seemed that change was in the air.

  Our journey to Egypt had been memorable in itself. We took a bus south from Jerusalem to the border with Egypt, where we passed through the Taba Crossing. Once on the Egyptian side, we boarded another bus for Cairo; the interior was covered with shag-pile carpet, and as we set off across the Sinai an Egyptian soap opera began playing on the TV. The six-hour trip took us across the Sinai Peninsula – a barren, inhospitable strip of land that has become etched into history for its military battles between Israel and Egypt.

  This was the place that sparked the decisive Six-Day War of 1967. Since the peace deal between Egypt and Israel in 1979, this slice of land had become a no-man’s-land. Egypt had very few soldiers here, and was only allowed to increase the number with the approval of Israel.

  The Sinai showed us how quickly things can change in the Middle East. Within a year of our trip, it deteriorated into a lawless zone. The proliferation of roaming Bedouin criminals and human trafficking gangs made it a no-go zone for tourists. We certainly decided that we would not take that trip again. While it was rarely reported, because few victims wanted to go public about it, there had been many instances in which Bedouin criminals had boarded a tourist bus, abducted two or three passengers and demanded large ransoms. Often the passengers had been Japanese or Korean, and their governments or families had paid.