Destruction of El Khiam

Beirut, 19 August 2006

Thana Abu Ghyda is from the southern village of El Khiam and traveled there on Thursday.

“Approximately 80% of the homes were destroyed, and the rest were damaged. Fortunately, our house was among those damaged but not destroyed,” she said.

Today, her father returned to begin living in the village again. It is difficult due to water and food shortages.

“But Hizballah has been providing for people’s needs by placing water containers in public places where people can come and take from them. My uncle has a pickup and has been selling water to people also,” she said.

Although aid agencies in Lebanon have significantly ramped up activities since the beginning of the cease-fire, as of Thursday, none had made it to El Khiam, according to Abu Ghyda.

Robin Lodge is a UN World Food Program spokesperson based in Beirut. On Wednesday he said that since the beginning of the ceasefire, “no area of the country is no-go for security reasons, although we are still physically prevented from reaching some areas where roads are out.”

The Road to Khiam was cut by a downed bridge until at least Tuesday of this week.

El Khiam was host to a detention centre during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Since the Israeli withdrawal, the centre had been transformed into a museum. The Lonely Planet Guide to Syria and Lebanon, for example, invited tourists and backpackers to visit the site, describing it in these terms:

The prison is now run as a museum by Hezbollah (Party of God), to which a visit is a truly shocking experience. The appalling conditions provide a stark reminder of the horror of the invasion – the conditions before the Red Cross was finally allowed to inspect the centre in 1995 were shocking – and the minimal but eloquent interpretation (innumerable signs denoting where prisoners were ‘martyred’) is extremely moving. This place redefines one’s understanding what a museum can be.

No one will visit there anymore, however. The detention centre was reported destroyed by Israeli bombardment on 20 July. Abu Ghyda confirms that nothing is now left of it. Asked what she thinks about its destruction, she replies:

“The people in Khiam, they said that Israel wanted to hide what she had done. She didn’t want people to see how she tortured people.”

Bloggingbeirut.com hopes to visit the site tomorrow.