Death comes calling again on a Crusader castle

Robert Fisk

   "We were just across the valley from Beaufort Castle when the mortar round landed. The 12th-century keep lay partly in shadow, the early spring mist rising around it, and there was just a low rumble of sound that spread across the hills. In southern Lebanon these days, that is just a heartbeat.

So we were sitting in the little frontline village of Baraasheit when the first "Israeli" jets flew over, a whisper, then a crash of sound that had the scraggy goats running across the road and the chickens squawking and old Ibrahim Basil looking up intently at the pale blue sky. "When we go out to our fields," he said, "we take our coffins with us."

If his fear seemed over-imaginative, it was given substance by the little red flash on my mobile phone. Yes, mobile phones are part of modern warfare. The "Israeli" soldiers across the valley use them to order hot food from their side of the border – or to detonate their roadside booby-traps. The Hizbullah use them to bring their guerrillas into the wadis – and, like the "Israelis", to explode their roadside bombs. And we reporters, of course, use them too. "Watch out Robert," read the message box from a colleague in Beirut. "One "Israeli" dead at Beaufort Castle, one wounded. "Israelis" bombing near you."

The ground shook. The air pressure – how familiar it all becomes after so many years in this sad, beautiful land – changed imperceptibly, just a slight flattening of the wind. On the road beside us an old BMW with smoked-glass windows and a staring, bearded driver at the wheel turned the corner into the village so fast that the wheels spat stones into the chicken coop owned by the Farhat family near the mosque. I told Ibrahim Basil that an "Israeli" was dead and he shrugged his shoulders. "I left here when they bombed the power stations this week," he said. "I came back today to feed my donkeys and cows. Now I shall have to leave again."

Above Baraasheit loomed the massive "Israeli" gun-platform which has dominated this Shia Muslim-Christian village for more than 20 years, its artillery silent for the past four hours, another fortress built by conquerors – crusaders from a different age but who, like the old French warriors of Beaufort, were losing their war in Lebanon. The Hizbullah claimed a direct hit on the castle and the "Israelis", after trying to keep the news secret in their own country though military censorship, acknowledged their dead and wounded.

The seventh "Israeli" occupation soldier to die in Lebanon in just over two weeks. We all knew what that would mean. The UN radios up the road were crackling with "sitreps" and "alpha-ones" and map collaterals. "Some air activity," said a voice, possibly Irish. We couldn't see the jets in the high, bright sun but we felt the distant concussion of their bombs around the Zahrani river. The Hizbullah would have fired their mortar from the wadis there and the "Israelis" were trying – vainly as usual – to strike at their tormentors.

Across the ravines to the west of Baraasheit another drama was now being played out. The five-power monitoring committee had gathered a few hours earlier at the UN's headquarters at Naqoura, on the Mediterranean coast, to discuss the events of the past week.

Under the terms of the 1996 Understanding which created the committee, "Israelis" and Hizbullah can kill each other inside Lebanon. But neither side is allowed to fire at civilian targets or shoot across the border.

And since the Hizbullah had attacked only "Israeli" soldiers inside Lebanon and the "Israelis" had dropped their bombs on three massive civilian targets – Lebanese power stations – it promised to be an interesting meeting. Yet when the Syrian, Lebanese, French and American delegations turned up for the conference, they found the "Israelis" still closeted in their committee room. First the Americans went to ask them to join the meeting. Then the French. And then, as news arrived two hours later of the soldier's death at Beaufort, Brigadier-General Dany Arditi stood up and told the Americans: "I'm leaving."

So the "Israelis" walked out. Later Ephraim Sneh, the "Israeli" deputy defence minister, said that there was "no point" in talking when the Hizbullah were "busy breaking the rules". But of course the Hizbullah were – tragically for "Israel" – well within the rules of the April 1996 ceasefire, as the French were among the first, privately, to admit. It was the "Israelis" who had changed the rules. And it was Mr Sneh and the "Israeli" army chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Shaul Mofaz, who said on Thursday that the "rules of war" in Lebanon were being changed.

So where is the next target in soft old Lebanon? We drove back yesterday evening through orchards that shone gold with oranges and glowed with almond blossom. Could the road bridge north of Tyre now be a target? The oil terminal at Zahrani, perhaps, with its ramshackle California-style villas above the tanks? Or the new motorway south of Beirut? The list seemed endless. Just like the list of "Israeli" casualties inside its occupation zone.

1- Independent, 12-2-2000.