Lens on Lebanon interviews Saida residents: I was affected financially and psychologically. I have no money at all. Psychologically, I have two sons. They don’t want to stay in the country anymore. They want to immigrate now after they realized there is no safe area in Lebanon. My little daughters have a phobia. When they hear any bombs, they just hold in the arms of their mother and can’t move. As for work, there is nothing. Everything has stopped after the Israelis bombed all bridges. I went one month without any job. Now some fishermen have started getting fish from Syria, so I started to clean the fish to survive. Read more about "As long as you are alive, you can regain everything." 

This siege note is dedicated to Akram. Akram was my first friend from Saida. I had visited Saida before I met him, but it became a whole other story after I went there with him, and after I became familiar with his work. Akram is also one of the constitutional elements of my life in Beirut. Our friendship is peculiar because it has carved a world specific to it, a language of its own, replete with metaphors, a stock of memories, and piles and piles of images and stories. I like to think of it as a space, a retreat, like a small interior garden where a deeply anchored quietude prevails. Read more about The Bougainvillea Are in Full, Glorious Bloom 

As I write this message, the southern suburbs of Beirut are still under attack with air raids from Israeli warplanes and villages in the south on the border are all under heavy artillery. Tens of buildings of eight and ten story height are all leveled to the floor. The aim is to empty the area of any inhabitants and supposedly be able to isolate the resistance fighters. In Beirut, they bombed the port once again targeting the wheat containers also killing on individual. In the Beqaa they bombed a plant of dairy products called Liban Lait, a gas station, and a school. Read more about Another day of devastation and destruction 

Yesterday was focused on killing civilians in South Lebanon, Baalbek and the southern suburbs of Beirut. Israel continuously bombed homes and buildings. One set of bombings killed over 20 people when Israel targeted a twelve story building in Tyre (Sour) and leveled its top four stories. Another near Jibsheet village targeted people’s homes. Reports of bombs with ugly gas smell were confirmed by the Lebanese army, indicating that the IDF may be using phosphorous and other types of bombs outlawed internationally. At the Jieh power plant that Israel bombed on July 16, fuel tanks are on fire. Read more about Not a spontaneous response 

I am writing this by candlelight in a family living room in the Palestinian West Bank town of Saida where I am currently under military-enforced house arrest, along with 3,500 others. The living room of my adopted home is packed full of people. They have no choice but to stay inside. If they open their front door they will be confronted by the machine gun of one of the hundreds of heavily armed Israeli soldiers who invaded and occupied this sleepy farming town three days ago. Donna Mulhearn has spent the last week in the Palestinian West Bank town of Saida under curfew and military occupation with its people. Read more about Saida's Six Days of Curfew