Prometheus 6

Winning the Peace with Hammer and Nails
Now that the shooting has stopped, Hizballah is moving fast to help rebuild southern Lebanon
By ANDREW LEE BUTTERS/BEIRUT

For the past two days, Ali Al Tawil has been trudging around the rubble of Haret Hreik, a Shia neighborhood in southern Beirut, wearing a Hizballah yellow vest and matching baseball cap that says "Jihad of Construction." Armed with only a clipboard, Al Tawil is one of about 1,500 Hizballah civil engineers who have fanned out across the country to survey the damage from over a month of war with Israel. For now, they are simply recording which buildings have been damaged, slightly damaged, or obliterated. More detailed surveys will soon follow to determine what repairs need to be done and what buildings need to be torn down. "Your mind can't comprehend the destruction," said Al Tawil.

And yet, he and Hizballah are not only making sense of the rubble left from the Israeli bombardment; they are already doing an impressive job cleaning it up. After weeks in hiding or living as refugees, the Party of God has taken charge of the reconstruction of Lebanon with enough speed and organization to make any government envious. Almost as soon as the cease-fire went into effect on Monday, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah went on television to promise that all Lebanese whose homes were damaged or destroyed would receive at least $10,000 for a year??s worth of rent, and during that time Hizballah would repair or rebuild all their homes. With Hizballah officials estimating that the Israelis totally destroyed 15,000 homes and partially destroyed another 40,000, that means that Hizballah has essentially promised to hand out at least $550 million in cash.