Lebanon life between the battles

Three air-to-surface missiles were fired into the top of this 11-storey building

By Hilary Andersson in south Lebanon

I stood on the edge of a hill looking far into the valleys. It was prayer time in south Lebanon and the call to prayer rose through the valleys, echoing weirdly as if from another world.

The sky was a brilliant blue and a vast expanse of the Mediterranean glistened to my left. The villages here which border the Israeli-occupied south Lebanon reminded me of rural southern Europe in the summer - they overlook fields of orange and lemon trees, the abundant fruit hanging heavy on the branches.

There has been war in south Lebanon for 20 years

This was the most beautiful war zone I had ever been to.

It is the war over this land that has prompted some of the heaviest fighting in months between Israel and the Islamic resistance movement, Hezbollah. Israeli planes and apache helicopters have torn across Lebanon bombing power stations, radars and buildings.

The raids were carried out in response to a number of successful attacks by Hezbollah. In just two weeks the guerrillas - fighting to oust Israel from the bit of Lebanon they occupy - killed the deputy leader of the Israeli allied south Lebanese army and six Israeli soldiers.

For the people on the frontline this was just another bad week in which bullets might fly through their sitting rooms.

The Israeli jets came over Mas del Zoun, right on the frontline, the day I was there. Children rushed out of their homes in excitement pointing at the sky, shouting: "Here they come, here they come!" An old man herded his goats through the centre of the village and did not bother to look up.

I was invited into someone's house. Out of the sitting room window, as clear as day, was a military position. It was so close you could see the Israeli military vehicles driving by. I could not believe anyone could live in a place as exposed as this.

The owner, a mother of five, showed me three bullet holes in the window above her sofa and she tut tutted at it in the same way a British mother might about an annoying coffee stain on her carpet.

There has been war in this area for more than 20 years. For the people on the frontline this was just another bad week in which bullets might fly through their sitting rooms.

War-torn lives

I drove on the windy roads a few miles up to another frontline village. Again the Israeli positions loomed on the higher hills above.

From the road a 70-year-old man could be seen poking around in the smoke in his first floor sitting room which had no walls, his scarf wrapped tightly around his wizened face. His house had been nearly ripped in half when an Israeli helicopter flew by in an air-raid the day before.

I began to talk to him. His name was Murtada Haider. During the raid he had cowered in the next door room hiding under a mattress with his wife.

He was so scared during the attack that he could not stand up afterwards - his wife had some sort of fit, he said, and was in hospital now paralysed.

He was a farmer and had fled his original home in the area occupied by Israel just a few miles away several years back. Since then the war had forced him to move houses three times. His son had been killed in fighting. His daughter had been wounded.

My mind flashed back to Israel where my journalist's beeper was surely showing a message right now from the Israeli airforce saying: "Planes attacked terrorist target and returned safely to base." So this is what they mean.

Many soldiers on both sides are young men

Just a few miles away on the other side of the hills in Israel, three Israeli soldiers were being buried.

They had been killed by Hezbollah. One woman - probably a mother - was screaming, her face to sky. She wailed the awful words: "He's gone, he's gone," her features contorted in anguish. Another woman collapsed, ashen faced.

Many Israeli soldiers fighting in Lebanon are about 18 years old. They are not ideological - some are scared to death. They do their obligatory military service, and then join the rest of the world going to university, becoming computer consultants and moving on.

With the seeming ordinariness of the people on both sides I could not help but wonder what madness it is that keeps this war alive. Like so many wars it is based on fears, arrogance and in this case the miserable legacy of history.

Buffer zone

Israel occupies southern Lebanon as a buffer zone to protect its own border towns from attack by Islamic militants like Hezbollah. Hezbollah says its war is aimed at stopping the Israeli occupation.

Because Hezbollah is backed by Iran and Syria the war is also happening against the backdrop of the entire Middle East conflict - Israel's existence, its occupation of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem.

The war is based on fears, arrogance and the miserable legacy of history

I was in a bar in Beirut the next day discussing it all with some young Lebanese men.

The unspeakable was said. Who cares about the Golan? Who cares about Jerusalem? they said. This war is a war amongst an old generation of politicians who will soon die out.

Their thoughts may well have been echoed by the 18-year-old Israeli soldiers sitting reluctantly in those positions on those hills not far away.

In this age we care about economics, communications, the internet and real life, they said. If there was real peace, one man said, it would not matter which politicians, which race was in charge of these bits of land. I tried to absorb his amazing notion but it was not easy.

Still, what a dream - a peace like that.