The mood in south Lebanon is one of sombre defiance, writes Omayma Abdel-Latif from Bint Jbeil Along the road leading to Bint Jbeil's cemetery, posters of the town's 17 shuhadaa (martyrs) adorn the streets, among them Mohamed Abu-Toaam, a senior Hizbullah officer, 19-year-old Hussein Jomaa and the two Nidal brothers. On Sunday hundreds of Bint Jbeil residents flocked to the Haj Moussa Abbas complex near the town's cemetery to honour the memory of those who fell in the battles. Women in black gathered in the courtyard of the complex. It was an emotional moment; many could not hide their tears as they exchanged stories of suffering and the loss of loved ones during the 33 days of war. Um Bilal, 53, recounted how she and 43 members of her family survived 21 days under heavy bombardment with little food, moving from one house to another as they searched for shelter. She was crying while remembering. Her son Bilal joined the resistance, she said. "I was praying for him and for all the young men." Some of the fiercest battles in the war took place in Bint Jbeil. Um Bilal's house, located in the north of the town, was badly damaged by an Israeli missile. Two unexploded missiles can still be seen in her garden. But her morale is high. She decided to return to her house despite the fact that there is still no electricity or water. "Everything will be rebuilt. The most important thing is that we live with dignity," she said. It is a commonly heard line in the towns along Lebanon's border with Israel that were hit hard during the war and explains why, in Bint Jbeil, perhaps the hardest hit, 400 families have already returned to their homes. Not that those returning find much they can recognise in the town. "I can only think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when I see this destruction," said Khalil Al-Sagheer, walking through the rubble. Al-Sagheer, a Lebanese-American, flew from Dearborn, Michigan, to visit his hometown after the war. "It is like pilgrimage for me," he said. As he roamed the old town, completely flattened by the Israelis, Al-Sagheer recalled childhood memories when the now destroyed alleyways were his playground. "Abu Toaam died in this house in Haret Al-Jamaana," he said, pointing to a house that has been flattened. The scale of destruction suggests that the area was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in a town that many agree put up the stiffest resistance to the Israeli onslaught. Houses that had stood for hundreds of years are now piles of rubble and Bint Jbeil's residents, flocking back to check their homes, could not hide their shock, anger and sense of loss as they moved from one bombsite to another. Um Qassim, 75 years old, could not hide her tears as her son drove into the souq. "God destroy you Israel, you are the menace," she said. Shops, the library, the town's secondary school as well as the main Husseiniya have all been destroyed. The cemetery is littered with clustre bombs and unexploded missiles, as are the courtyards of those houses that have not been razed. Although official figures of the number of houses destroyed are unavailable, unofficial estimates say at least 2,000 have been damaged, of which at least 900 have been totally destroyed. Yet throughout the south of Lebanon the mood is of sombre defiance. Hizbullah's "victory" over Israel is proclaimed on the posters and banners that have appeared across the south. It is also reflected in the conversation of many southerners who insist that it is better to die in dignity than to live in humiliation. In Sedeqeen, Tyre, home to 5,000 people, not a single building -- house, mosque, school or hospital -- was spared the wrath of the Israeli war machine. Aita Al-Shaab and Al-Khiyam have both been turned into ghost towns. In such places tales of war and resistance battles are beginning to take on a life of their own, with the war, the victory and the heroism of the resistance almost the only topic of conversation. So how many fighters were there in Bint Jbeil? "Only 30 fighters," said one resident, whose son was with the young men. Only 30 fighters "who dealt a death blow to one of the strongest armies in the world because they had God on their side and they were fighting a just cause." Bint Jbeil's residents are under no illusions that the reason their town was hit was because of their support for Hizbullah. Israel wanted to demonstrate how costly that support could be, and the belief that Israel systematically targeted Lebanon's Shia is almost an article of faith here. Talk about the resistance and the victory cannot, however, disguise the sense of loss that has engulfed the south. Senior Hizbullah members admit that the situation in the south of the country is catastrophic, one reason why Hussein Ayoub, a journalist at the daily As-Safir, shies away from describing Hizbullah's achievement as a victory. "In a sense, you can say Israel was victorious because it managed to wipe many southern towns off the face of the earth, but on the other hand it failed to achieve the political goals of its military operation," he said. Ayoub, who lost his 80-year-old mother during the war, said that the Shia are torn between two responses. On one hand there is the enormous sense of loss. "For southerners the loss of their homes is not just a material catastrophe but a psychological one too. The house is the repository collective memories and most houses in the south were built on the back of decades and decades of hard work." On the other hand there is the spirit of defiance, expressed as solidarity with the resistance. The two, says Ayoub, co-exist, though it is the latter that remains dominant, a defence, Ayoub suggests, against what he describes as the prevailing sense among many Shia that they are facing attempts to marginalise them. "The outcome of this battle was crucial to the Shia. It has shown that attempts to marginalise them will fail. The battle has empowered them despite heavy losses. And despite the criticism and frustration about the effects and the cost of the war on Lebanon's Shia they will continue to rally behind Hizbullah since it is Hizbullah that secured this sense of empowerment."
