REPORTER: Nick Lazaredes
Before the war started, it took just over two hours to drive between Damascus and downtown Beirut. But the Israelis bombed several of the border crossings between Syria and Lebanon, and when I make the journey it takes seven hours. Once inside Lebanon, we find there's a lot more traffic heading away from the besieged capital than heading towards it. More than 1 million people have been displaced by the Israeli attacks, and the streets of Beirut are filled with refugees. At a transit point, families who have travelled from the south seek help and shelter.
MAN (Translation): He fell in the river. The cuts are from the fall. All of that is from the river. They couldn't carry him.
This family was trapped in a village near the Israeli border for 22 days while the fighting raged around them.
WOMAN (Translation): This decent, proud man never wanted to leave unless his head was held high. He spent his whole life clinging to his land, to his town, country and dignity.
The family's 11-year-old daughter has been missing since the war started.
MAURICE AL HADDAD, LOCAL GUIDE: This is Shiyah - they bombed two days ago, the closest to Beirut they have ever been.
My local guide, Maurice al Haddad, is taking me to the scene of a recent Israeli attack in the suburb of Shiyah.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: These were two buildings.
According to witnesses, a young man had fired at an Israeli drone flying overhead. The missiles struck minutes later.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: Between 40 and 43 people died, 100 wounded, mostly families, as you can see the buildings are turned to rubble.
Although the southern suburbs have been pounded by the Israeli Air Force for weeks, this was the first attack close to downtown Beirut. But this suburb is not considered a Hezbollah stronghold.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: They were never expecting it, these people were never expecting it, because this is respectively a safe area, you know.
REPORTER: They weren't warned at all.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: Not at all.
A few hours before we got here, leaflets were dropped warning of fresh attacks and most residents have fled. But in the ruins of a flat next to the bomb site, we find one man who's stayed.
REPORTER: Does he think there is going to be an air bombing raid tonight.
MAN (Translation): Yes, because they’re dropping leaflets.
We've heard the buzz of an Israeli drone flying somewhere nearby, often the only warning residents get of an impending strike. We don't want to take any chances.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: We don't want to be turned into a statistic, do we?
REPORTER: No, we don't.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: This is fucking crazy, man. The thing is this enemy is like fighting an imaginary enemy, you know what I mean? They've got air superiority, and you can never tell. The thing is, I was talking to people who were in Shiyah yesterday, and they told us they heard the sound like, 'vroom', that's it, like 10 seconds, 5 seconds, you can actually hear the bomb. Imagine how frightening it is for the people who actually, like, got wounded or died, you know? You hear it for 5 or 10 seconds and then you're dead. It's fucking crazy, man.
We've come to the Mount Lebanon Hospital to meet survivors of the missile strike in Shiyah. In one of the most awful tragedies of the war, Ali Rmeiti lost 17 members of his family in the attack.
ALI RMEITI, SURVIVOR OF MISSILE STRIKE (Translation): I started screaming and shouting until God sent some people who saved me. Also, as we were leaving, they got my wife out from under the rubble. I don't know who brought my son to hospital and the rest were all martyred.
Ali's large extended family was watching television when the building was struck.
ALI RMEITI, (Translation): I lost three children - a boy and two girls.
MAURICE AL HADDAD (Translation): And your relatives? You were at your mother's house?
ALI RMEITI, (Translation): All of them - my mother, three sisters and brother. And also my brother, his wife and daughter were killed.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: We're going to the ICU to check out the boy - the only, the only, son they have left.
9-year-old Hussein Rmeiti said he heard the sound of the missile just seconds before the building was hit.
MAURICE AL-HADDAD: He was under the rubble, and he was unconscious until he smelt the gunpowder - he was awakened by that smell - he was able to wave his hand, and the rescue team was able to find him then. They didn't know about him at all.
In a separate room downstairs, we find the boy's mother. She doesn't know that three of her children are dead - the doctors plan to break the news this afternoon.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: They're going to bring the psychotherapist, psychologist to help them tell her the story, bit by bit, to tell her that both of her girls and her son are dead, one of her sons is in intensive care, all of her family - the grandmother, the grandfather, three sisters and a brother - and most of her neighbours.
At the hospital I meet an American law professor, Franklin Lamb, who's also investigating the missile strike.
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB, PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL LAW: I want all the detail I can get while I'm here and really tell this story, this is iconic in the sense that no human being can accept this.
A former congressional aide and international law expert, he says America supplied the missiles used in Shiyah.
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB: Those are our weapons, our 155mm shells, our cluster bombs, our MK-84s, supplied to Israel and allowed to violate American law, which has strong prohibitions on our weapons being used to kill or harm civilians. And it's being done, in a sense, in our name.
Professor Lamb has written extensively about Israel's use of American weapons during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Now, on behalf of an American NGO, he's come back to look for fresh evidence which he hopes to present to the US Congress in an effort to halt further weapon sales to Israel.
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB: While we haven't made a conclusion yet - the overwhelming evidence is that there's been an awful lot of indiscriminate bombing with American weapons, indeed in south Lebanon.
He takes me back to the bomb site in Shiyah and sifts through the rubble, hoping to find some trace of the weapons.
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB: It appears that there were two MK-84 guidance bombs - the MK-84 is 2,000 pounds - there's some evidence they used two of those, but, frankly, we don't know for sure. Recently you may know the Israelis took delivery of 600 of those on a rush basis, and that's a fair guess of what was used here. But we won't know until we go into it very deeply.
It's not just Israeli bombs raining down on Lebanon. As we're filming refugees in Sanayeh Park, the Israeli Air Force drops thousands of leaflets over central Beirut. It's part of a bizarre propaganda campaign to turn the Lebanese against Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
MAURICE AL-HADDAD: Basically this is just another one of those leaflets they've been dropping for the past month now. It is part of the psychological warfare, that they are waging against the Lebanese populus and basically this one says, ‘bring back the scent of the cedars and you can rub off your shoulders the destroyer of Lebanon. It's written in Arabic. These are the air fresheners they've been dropping. This is Nasrallah’s face and this is the Lebanese cedar, and here it is written in Arabic which means, ‘go away with a good scent please.’ And these are the air fresheners that they have been dropping, and the police have been going around the park, alerting people not to hold them in their hands or smell them because they believe they might contain some hazardous chemical material or something like that.
POLICE (Translation): Please don't pick up anything that's fallen on the ground from the sky.
MAN (Translation): They show Sayyed Hassan coming out of a cedar tree.
WOMAN (Translation): Here, look.
If the reactions of the refugees are any guide, the leaflets are having the opposite of their desired effect.
MAN (Translation): What they're trying to show is that Sayyed Hassan destroyed the cedar tree, which means Lebanon. They're inciting the Lebanese people against the resistance. The more leaflets they drop like this one the more we support the resistance.
23-year-old university student Sarjoun helps coordinate relief efforts in the park. He says the growing hatred of Israel is a logical consequence of the war.
SARJOUN, REFUGEES RELIEF VOLUNTEER: This will cause a revenge in the long term, it won't cause a defeat.
REPORTER: What do you mean by that?
SARJOUN: I mean very simple thing you know. I want to ask Australian people - all Australian fathers - if someone has lost three kids - a wife, a father and a mother - six casualties in one minute - I just want to ask one question - will he be defeated or will he be tough and think about revenge? This is a question - this is a question for human psychology, not in a Lebanese way, in an international human way.
By day 30 of the war, with all major supply routes into Beirut cut, food supplies are dwindling. Just behind Sanayeh Park, volunteers load up food parcels to distribute to the thousands of other refugees spread out across the city. The volunteers take us to an abandoned building where a family of 23 people from South Lebanon has found shelter. The Makki family left their village three days after the war started, and they've been living rough ever since - under the guidance of the family matriarch, Amine.
AMINE MAKKI, REFUGEE GRANDMOTHER (Translation): We have no kerosene, gas, food, mattresses, quilts, mats. There's nothing to live on. We fled with just the clothes we had on. What do you expect when you flee out of fear?
The building watchman took pity on the family and allowed them to stay.
AMINE MAKKI (Translation): Are you with the resistance? Who else are we with? If not for the resistance we wouldn't be here. Should we give up our rights? How can they kick us out of our home? God be with you, goodbye.
Later that night, my fixer Maurice helps out a friend at his nightclub in the hills east of Beirut. Astonishingly, although the suburbs a few kilometres away are being bombed, some young Lebanese are still determined to let their hair down.
CHARLIE, BAR OWNER: After the civil war people got used to living in hard times, so they have a - they kind of developed this way of life to deal with it. So any time you find a conflict, you just find the Lebanese people ignoring it by going out, by having a couple of drinks, enjoying the atmosphere with their friends.
It's Monday morning, and the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah came into effect just two hours ago. We're on our way to South Beirut to assess the damage.
MAURICE AL-HADDAD: We're getting now into the heartland of the southern suburbs, basically. This is the entrance to Had Hareg - one of the areas that got heavily pounded.
This is a Hezbollah stronghold, and although journalists are welcome, we're only admitted after being cleared by their soldiers. It's a scene of complete and utter devastation. Dozens and dozens of apartment buildings have been levelled. The Israelis had dropped leaflets warning residents to leave the area during the bombing campaign, but everywhere, there is the stench of decaying bodies. Professor Franklin Lamb has also come to assess the damage first-hand.
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB: Seeing it on the television isn't the same as being here - it's hard to imagine the extent of the devastation. I'm very curious to know how many weapons it took to do this, how many bombs or missiles or artillery shells. I know they pounded it and pounded it and pounded it.
REPORTER: Does this look like precision bombing to you?
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB: No, no, it's carpet bombing. It's taking an area, whatever number of blocks it is, and bombing everything in it - the opposite of precision. It's comprehensive, it's planned, it's complete.
REPORTER: Now, the Israeli Air Force was bombing here last night, and as you can probably see just behind me, there's a plume of smoke from a bomb that was dropped just a few hours before the cease-fire. Families have started to come back, and it's still a little bit dangerous, as you can see this is a 12-storey building I'm standing on right now and families have come back to see what's left. Well, clearly, there's nothing much left. From here you can go 10 blocks in every direction and all buildings have been totally destroyed.
MAURICE AL-HADDAD: Basically he's not been able to locate his house - he's not been able to locate his house.
I also found Lebanon's Minister for the Economy, Sami Haddad, wandering around the rubble. He was just beginning to come to terms with the damage bill.
SAMI HADDAD, MINISTER OF ECONOMY AND TRADE: We're going to need a lot of work and we're going to be hand in hand to rebuild this as quickly as we can, but it will certainly need time.
REPORTER: Is this going to have to be completely knocked down and rebuilt?
SAMI HADDAD: I'm not an engineer, but it's obvious that many buildings will have to be knocked out before being rebuilt.
REPORTER: What's your assessment? Have you put a dollar figure on it so far?
SAMI HADDAD: Whatever figure you put, it's certainly in the several billions of dollars - at least $3 billion, $4 billion, just to repair what has been destroyed here.
One of the reasons the southern suburbs were punished so heavily by the Israelis is that Hezbollah reportedly used the area to launch rocket attacks on Israeli warships off the coast during the early days of the conflict.
REPORTER: Well Franklin, it’s all very well talking about American weapons, but surely the Israelis have got some deep concerns too about Iranian and Syrian made weapons.
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB: They do, that is their concern and I am no expert on the subject, but my narrow focus is American weapons. Certainly, there are other weapons - in '82 the Israelis said the same thing, when they use our weapons, they said, "Well, there's Chinese weapons here, my God, there's weapons from Czechoslovakia, there's Spanish weapons." Sure, there are other weapons, and someone should take up that cause, but our cause is our weapons because we've done 98% of the carnage in this part of the world with American weapons.
OK, well, I'm just sitting here on a pile of rubble. There are just piles like this everywhere. Every pile of rubble represents one building. People are pleading with us to tell the world the truth of what's happened here, people are making references all the time to September 11 and saying really that the world doesn't care about them.
MAN: So we're not a human being, and they are a human being in USA. So they can compare 11 of September to this destruction and they can tell us later about democracy, and the new Middle East.
SCREAMING WOMAN (Translation): Let the United Nations come and see. Where will the people go? Where? Where? Where? Where is the United Nations? We don't know where our home was! We don't know where our neighbourhood was! What book allows that? What law allows that? What law? What law? Are these residential houses? Where is Hezbollah here? Where is Hezbollah here?
Of course, Hezbollah was everywhere. This was the headquarters of al-Manar - the Hezbollah television station that Israel never managed to knock off the air. Next to the ruins I find Hezbollah member of parliament, Ali Amar. I asked him what right Hezbollah had to start a war with Israel in the name of all of the Lebanese people.
ALI AMAR, HEZBOLLAH MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT (Translation): Naturally, the Lebanese system is a democratic system. Our constitution guarantees the freedom of expression. But it has been proven through the solidarity of all the Lebanese people in confronting the aggression that all the Lebanese people, without exception, are rallying around the right of Lebanon to confront the Israeli aggression.
Certainly, as we walked amongst the ruins of South Beirut, support for Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was unanimous.
SHOPKEEPER (Translation): And if they want a part of our body, we'll give it to them too, not only our money. We sacrifice our money for the resistance, and if they want a piece of our body we'll give it to them. What can we say? I have two shops here and a depot underground over there. They're all gone. But I say, thanks be to God.
Even though this neighbourhood has been flattened, there's a sense of victory in the air. And even though the cease-fire resolution calls for Hezbollah's disarmament, the party says it reserves the right to attack Israel again.
ALI AMAR, (Translation): They have already committed a huge mistake in this war that they launched with American blessing against all of Lebanon, without exception. And now, any attempt by the Israeli enemy to violate the sovereignty, independence, freedom, and the people of Lebanon, naturally, the resistance reserves the right to respond.
When I catch up with the Makki family in their abandoned building, they are busy celebrating what they see as a great victory. There are tributes to the country's pro-Syrian President, Emile Lahoud.
LADY (Translation): I salute the President of the Republic, Emile Lahoud. I wish all the Arab presidents are as good as his boots.
Many believe Hezbollah provoked this war, which has caused untold suffering for the very people it claims to protect. But for this family, like for so many others across the Middle East, Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is a hero.
Reporter/Camera
NICK LAZAREDES
Editors
NICK O’BRIEN
ROWAN TUCKER-EVANS
Location Support - Beirut
MAURICE AL HADDAD
Subtitling
JOSEPH ABDO
Producer
AMOS COHEN
Before the war started, it took just over two hours to drive between Damascus and downtown Beirut. But the Israelis bombed several of the border crossings between Syria and Lebanon, and when I make the journey it takes seven hours. Once inside Lebanon, we find there's a lot more traffic heading away from the besieged capital than heading towards it. More than 1 million people have been displaced by the Israeli attacks, and the streets of Beirut are filled with refugees. At a transit point, families who have travelled from the south seek help and shelter.
MAN (Translation): He fell in the river. The cuts are from the fall. All of that is from the river. They couldn't carry him.
This family was trapped in a village near the Israeli border for 22 days while the fighting raged around them.
WOMAN (Translation): This decent, proud man never wanted to leave unless his head was held high. He spent his whole life clinging to his land, to his town, country and dignity.
The family's 11-year-old daughter has been missing since the war started.
MAURICE AL HADDAD, LOCAL GUIDE: This is Shiyah - they bombed two days ago, the closest to Beirut they have ever been.
My local guide, Maurice al Haddad, is taking me to the scene of a recent Israeli attack in the suburb of Shiyah.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: These were two buildings.
According to witnesses, a young man had fired at an Israeli drone flying overhead. The missiles struck minutes later.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: Between 40 and 43 people died, 100 wounded, mostly families, as you can see the buildings are turned to rubble.
Although the southern suburbs have been pounded by the Israeli Air Force for weeks, this was the first attack close to downtown Beirut. But this suburb is not considered a Hezbollah stronghold.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: They were never expecting it, these people were never expecting it, because this is respectively a safe area, you know.
REPORTER: They weren't warned at all.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: Not at all.
A few hours before we got here, leaflets were dropped warning of fresh attacks and most residents have fled. But in the ruins of a flat next to the bomb site, we find one man who's stayed.
REPORTER: Does he think there is going to be an air bombing raid tonight.
MAN (Translation): Yes, because they’re dropping leaflets.
We've heard the buzz of an Israeli drone flying somewhere nearby, often the only warning residents get of an impending strike. We don't want to take any chances.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: We don't want to be turned into a statistic, do we?
REPORTER: No, we don't.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: This is fucking crazy, man. The thing is this enemy is like fighting an imaginary enemy, you know what I mean? They've got air superiority, and you can never tell. The thing is, I was talking to people who were in Shiyah yesterday, and they told us they heard the sound like, 'vroom', that's it, like 10 seconds, 5 seconds, you can actually hear the bomb. Imagine how frightening it is for the people who actually, like, got wounded or died, you know? You hear it for 5 or 10 seconds and then you're dead. It's fucking crazy, man.
We've come to the Mount Lebanon Hospital to meet survivors of the missile strike in Shiyah. In one of the most awful tragedies of the war, Ali Rmeiti lost 17 members of his family in the attack.
ALI RMEITI, SURVIVOR OF MISSILE STRIKE (Translation): I started screaming and shouting until God sent some people who saved me. Also, as we were leaving, they got my wife out from under the rubble. I don't know who brought my son to hospital and the rest were all martyred.
Ali's large extended family was watching television when the building was struck.
ALI RMEITI, (Translation): I lost three children - a boy and two girls.
MAURICE AL HADDAD (Translation): And your relatives? You were at your mother's house?
ALI RMEITI, (Translation): All of them - my mother, three sisters and brother. And also my brother, his wife and daughter were killed.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: We're going to the ICU to check out the boy - the only, the only, son they have left.
9-year-old Hussein Rmeiti said he heard the sound of the missile just seconds before the building was hit.
MAURICE AL-HADDAD: He was under the rubble, and he was unconscious until he smelt the gunpowder - he was awakened by that smell - he was able to wave his hand, and the rescue team was able to find him then. They didn't know about him at all.
In a separate room downstairs, we find the boy's mother. She doesn't know that three of her children are dead - the doctors plan to break the news this afternoon.
MAURICE AL HADDAD: They're going to bring the psychotherapist, psychologist to help them tell her the story, bit by bit, to tell her that both of her girls and her son are dead, one of her sons is in intensive care, all of her family - the grandmother, the grandfather, three sisters and a brother - and most of her neighbours.
At the hospital I meet an American law professor, Franklin Lamb, who's also investigating the missile strike.
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB, PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL LAW: I want all the detail I can get while I'm here and really tell this story, this is iconic in the sense that no human being can accept this.
A former congressional aide and international law expert, he says America supplied the missiles used in Shiyah.
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB: Those are our weapons, our 155mm shells, our cluster bombs, our MK-84s, supplied to Israel and allowed to violate American law, which has strong prohibitions on our weapons being used to kill or harm civilians. And it's being done, in a sense, in our name.
Professor Lamb has written extensively about Israel's use of American weapons during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Now, on behalf of an American NGO, he's come back to look for fresh evidence which he hopes to present to the US Congress in an effort to halt further weapon sales to Israel.
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB: While we haven't made a conclusion yet - the overwhelming evidence is that there's been an awful lot of indiscriminate bombing with American weapons, indeed in south Lebanon.
He takes me back to the bomb site in Shiyah and sifts through the rubble, hoping to find some trace of the weapons.
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB: It appears that there were two MK-84 guidance bombs - the MK-84 is 2,000 pounds - there's some evidence they used two of those, but, frankly, we don't know for sure. Recently you may know the Israelis took delivery of 600 of those on a rush basis, and that's a fair guess of what was used here. But we won't know until we go into it very deeply.
It's not just Israeli bombs raining down on Lebanon. As we're filming refugees in Sanayeh Park, the Israeli Air Force drops thousands of leaflets over central Beirut. It's part of a bizarre propaganda campaign to turn the Lebanese against Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
MAURICE AL-HADDAD: Basically this is just another one of those leaflets they've been dropping for the past month now. It is part of the psychological warfare, that they are waging against the Lebanese populus and basically this one says, ‘bring back the scent of the cedars and you can rub off your shoulders the destroyer of Lebanon. It's written in Arabic. These are the air fresheners they've been dropping. This is Nasrallah’s face and this is the Lebanese cedar, and here it is written in Arabic which means, ‘go away with a good scent please.’ And these are the air fresheners that they have been dropping, and the police have been going around the park, alerting people not to hold them in their hands or smell them because they believe they might contain some hazardous chemical material or something like that.
POLICE (Translation): Please don't pick up anything that's fallen on the ground from the sky.
MAN (Translation): They show Sayyed Hassan coming out of a cedar tree.
WOMAN (Translation): Here, look.
If the reactions of the refugees are any guide, the leaflets are having the opposite of their desired effect.
MAN (Translation): What they're trying to show is that Sayyed Hassan destroyed the cedar tree, which means Lebanon. They're inciting the Lebanese people against the resistance. The more leaflets they drop like this one the more we support the resistance.
23-year-old university student Sarjoun helps coordinate relief efforts in the park. He says the growing hatred of Israel is a logical consequence of the war.
SARJOUN, REFUGEES RELIEF VOLUNTEER: This will cause a revenge in the long term, it won't cause a defeat.
REPORTER: What do you mean by that?
SARJOUN: I mean very simple thing you know. I want to ask Australian people - all Australian fathers - if someone has lost three kids - a wife, a father and a mother - six casualties in one minute - I just want to ask one question - will he be defeated or will he be tough and think about revenge? This is a question - this is a question for human psychology, not in a Lebanese way, in an international human way.
By day 30 of the war, with all major supply routes into Beirut cut, food supplies are dwindling. Just behind Sanayeh Park, volunteers load up food parcels to distribute to the thousands of other refugees spread out across the city. The volunteers take us to an abandoned building where a family of 23 people from South Lebanon has found shelter. The Makki family left their village three days after the war started, and they've been living rough ever since - under the guidance of the family matriarch, Amine.
AMINE MAKKI, REFUGEE GRANDMOTHER (Translation): We have no kerosene, gas, food, mattresses, quilts, mats. There's nothing to live on. We fled with just the clothes we had on. What do you expect when you flee out of fear?
The building watchman took pity on the family and allowed them to stay.
AMINE MAKKI (Translation): Are you with the resistance? Who else are we with? If not for the resistance we wouldn't be here. Should we give up our rights? How can they kick us out of our home? God be with you, goodbye.
Later that night, my fixer Maurice helps out a friend at his nightclub in the hills east of Beirut. Astonishingly, although the suburbs a few kilometres away are being bombed, some young Lebanese are still determined to let their hair down.
CHARLIE, BAR OWNER: After the civil war people got used to living in hard times, so they have a - they kind of developed this way of life to deal with it. So any time you find a conflict, you just find the Lebanese people ignoring it by going out, by having a couple of drinks, enjoying the atmosphere with their friends.
It's Monday morning, and the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah came into effect just two hours ago. We're on our way to South Beirut to assess the damage.
MAURICE AL-HADDAD: We're getting now into the heartland of the southern suburbs, basically. This is the entrance to Had Hareg - one of the areas that got heavily pounded.
This is a Hezbollah stronghold, and although journalists are welcome, we're only admitted after being cleared by their soldiers. It's a scene of complete and utter devastation. Dozens and dozens of apartment buildings have been levelled. The Israelis had dropped leaflets warning residents to leave the area during the bombing campaign, but everywhere, there is the stench of decaying bodies. Professor Franklin Lamb has also come to assess the damage first-hand.
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB: Seeing it on the television isn't the same as being here - it's hard to imagine the extent of the devastation. I'm very curious to know how many weapons it took to do this, how many bombs or missiles or artillery shells. I know they pounded it and pounded it and pounded it.
REPORTER: Does this look like precision bombing to you?
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB: No, no, it's carpet bombing. It's taking an area, whatever number of blocks it is, and bombing everything in it - the opposite of precision. It's comprehensive, it's planned, it's complete.
REPORTER: Now, the Israeli Air Force was bombing here last night, and as you can probably see just behind me, there's a plume of smoke from a bomb that was dropped just a few hours before the cease-fire. Families have started to come back, and it's still a little bit dangerous, as you can see this is a 12-storey building I'm standing on right now and families have come back to see what's left. Well, clearly, there's nothing much left. From here you can go 10 blocks in every direction and all buildings have been totally destroyed.
MAURICE AL-HADDAD: Basically he's not been able to locate his house - he's not been able to locate his house.
I also found Lebanon's Minister for the Economy, Sami Haddad, wandering around the rubble. He was just beginning to come to terms with the damage bill.
SAMI HADDAD, MINISTER OF ECONOMY AND TRADE: We're going to need a lot of work and we're going to be hand in hand to rebuild this as quickly as we can, but it will certainly need time.
REPORTER: Is this going to have to be completely knocked down and rebuilt?
SAMI HADDAD: I'm not an engineer, but it's obvious that many buildings will have to be knocked out before being rebuilt.
REPORTER: What's your assessment? Have you put a dollar figure on it so far?
SAMI HADDAD: Whatever figure you put, it's certainly in the several billions of dollars - at least $3 billion, $4 billion, just to repair what has been destroyed here.
One of the reasons the southern suburbs were punished so heavily by the Israelis is that Hezbollah reportedly used the area to launch rocket attacks on Israeli warships off the coast during the early days of the conflict.
REPORTER: Well Franklin, it’s all very well talking about American weapons, but surely the Israelis have got some deep concerns too about Iranian and Syrian made weapons.
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN LAMB: They do, that is their concern and I am no expert on the subject, but my narrow focus is American weapons. Certainly, there are other weapons - in '82 the Israelis said the same thing, when they use our weapons, they said, "Well, there's Chinese weapons here, my God, there's weapons from Czechoslovakia, there's Spanish weapons." Sure, there are other weapons, and someone should take up that cause, but our cause is our weapons because we've done 98% of the carnage in this part of the world with American weapons.
OK, well, I'm just sitting here on a pile of rubble. There are just piles like this everywhere. Every pile of rubble represents one building. People are pleading with us to tell the world the truth of what's happened here, people are making references all the time to September 11 and saying really that the world doesn't care about them.
MAN: So we're not a human being, and they are a human being in USA. So they can compare 11 of September to this destruction and they can tell us later about democracy, and the new Middle East.
SCREAMING WOMAN (Translation): Let the United Nations come and see. Where will the people go? Where? Where? Where? Where is the United Nations? We don't know where our home was! We don't know where our neighbourhood was! What book allows that? What law allows that? What law? What law? Are these residential houses? Where is Hezbollah here? Where is Hezbollah here?
Of course, Hezbollah was everywhere. This was the headquarters of al-Manar - the Hezbollah television station that Israel never managed to knock off the air. Next to the ruins I find Hezbollah member of parliament, Ali Amar. I asked him what right Hezbollah had to start a war with Israel in the name of all of the Lebanese people.
ALI AMAR, HEZBOLLAH MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT (Translation): Naturally, the Lebanese system is a democratic system. Our constitution guarantees the freedom of expression. But it has been proven through the solidarity of all the Lebanese people in confronting the aggression that all the Lebanese people, without exception, are rallying around the right of Lebanon to confront the Israeli aggression.
Certainly, as we walked amongst the ruins of South Beirut, support for Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was unanimous.
SHOPKEEPER (Translation): And if they want a part of our body, we'll give it to them too, not only our money. We sacrifice our money for the resistance, and if they want a piece of our body we'll give it to them. What can we say? I have two shops here and a depot underground over there. They're all gone. But I say, thanks be to God.
Even though this neighbourhood has been flattened, there's a sense of victory in the air. And even though the cease-fire resolution calls for Hezbollah's disarmament, the party says it reserves the right to attack Israel again.
ALI AMAR, (Translation): They have already committed a huge mistake in this war that they launched with American blessing against all of Lebanon, without exception. And now, any attempt by the Israeli enemy to violate the sovereignty, independence, freedom, and the people of Lebanon, naturally, the resistance reserves the right to respond.
When I catch up with the Makki family in their abandoned building, they are busy celebrating what they see as a great victory. There are tributes to the country's pro-Syrian President, Emile Lahoud.
LADY (Translation): I salute the President of the Republic, Emile Lahoud. I wish all the Arab presidents are as good as his boots.
Many believe Hezbollah provoked this war, which has caused untold suffering for the very people it claims to protect. But for this family, like for so many others across the Middle East, Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is a hero.
Reporter/Camera
NICK LAZAREDES
Editors
NICK O’BRIEN
ROWAN TUCKER-EVANS
Location Support - Beirut
MAURICE AL HADDAD
Subtitling
JOSEPH ABDO
Producer
AMOS COHEN