Agony in the Arqub

By William Stewart

In 1973 Moslem observance of the month of fasting called Ramadan coincided with Yom Kippur, Judaism's most sacred day. So did the start of the October war. This year Ramadan coincided with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year's Day. There was no recurrence of open warfare, but Israeli jets did attack villages in the mountainous border region of southern Lebanon known as the Arqub. Since 1969, this area, which fans out from the slopes of Mount Hermon, has been known as "Fatahland" because Palestinian guerrillas regularly cross it from havens in Syria to infiltrate the Israeli border. In reprisal for fedayeen raids, or to deter recurrences, Israeli aircraft, artillery and armored columns have regularly punished the Lebanese countryside. Last week's bombing of Hasbaya, Rashaya Fukhar and four other villages, according to the Lebanese government, marked the 65th Israeli air attack on southern Lebanon; in addition, there have been more than 1,000 artillery barrages and 222 armed border crossings.

Civilian Victims. The Israeli assaults are designed to keep the fedayeen off balance and to cut the so-called "Arafat trail" between Syria and Israel. They also serve a second purpose: putting pressure on Lebanon to police the Palestinians. But the main victims over the years have not been the mobile commandos but the Lebanese families who live in the border villages. Among the victims of last week's raids was the septuagenarian mukhtar (headman) of Hasbaya; he was the 137th civilian to be killed so far. In addition, 402 Lebanese have been wounded and 91 have been captured and forcibly taken across the border into Israel for interrogation.

Almost every village in southern Lebanon has its variation on a common theme of misery. Last week TIME Correspondent William Stewart visited Rashaya Fukhar in the heart of the Arqub and sent this report:

As the road from Tyre turns inland at Naqura, the scenery suddenly changes from lush and crowded to barren and empty. As it wound through Dhayra, Awad Dib, a 35-year-old tobacco farmer and father of nine, could be seen doggedly rebuilding his house. One April night last spring, after the fedayeen raid on Qiryat Shemona that killed 18 Israelis (TIME, April 22), an armored column rolled into the village. "About 35 men came to my farm," he told me. "They said I helped the fedayeen. They took all the furniture in my house and piled it in one room. Then they took my family outside and they blew up the house. My brother and I and two others were kept in Israel for two months."

At 'Udaysah, the Lebanese road parallels an Israeli road across the barbed-wire border. Israeli automobiles zoom along past rich orchards and a soldier grins and waves. Rashaya Fukhar is slightly different from other villages in the Arqub. For one thing, most of its inhabitants are Christian. For another, every structure in the village is made of stone, which can save lives. Almost every house has doors off hinges, cracked walls or damaged roofs; some have been totally destroyed. Two months ago, a villager named Elias Gibran was caught in the fields during an air raid and killed. He was Rashaya Fukhar's third fatality in such attacks; 25 others have been wounded. A widow and seven children survive him.

Black Hulks. Rashaya Fukhar was once populous and happy. But 2,500 of its people have emigrated to Europe and the U.S. in the past 20 years or more. In a second wave of emigration, another 1,000 have fled the bombings since 1970. Only 500 villagers remain. Recent raids have turned their 1,000-year-old olive trees into twisted black hulks and churned their fields full of bomb craters.

The settlement is dying economically as well as literally. "Fukhar" means pottery in Arabic; there used to be 70 kilns in the village, employing 500 people. Now there are only two. Farmers are afraid to work their fields for fear they will step on an Israeli antipersonnel mine. At night, most of the villagers huddle inside the thick walls of St. George's Greek Orthodox Church for sanctuary. From St. George's terrace, Father Moussa Khoury points out the only glow visible in the valley below. It comes from Qiryat Shemona, the Israeli town 13 miles away. Looking at the silhouette of a giant oak tree near the terrace, Father Khoury reflects: "It's been here for a thousand years, they say. But then so have we. And here we stay."

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