Report from the Mideast
Lebanon
Al Fatah smiles in death’s face
NABATIVE, Lebanon – From the door of the shelter, the two men can see the town being blasted to bits, block by block.
Houses, streets and shops disappear. When the smoke clears, there is only another square of garbage.
Shell after shell – perhaps 100 rounds – falls closer and closer, marching slowly up the hill toward the patio of the old stone villa under which the shelter was dug.
On the patio, near the shelter stairs, Sami is edgy. He takes a few steps, stops, looks toward the center of town, picks up his machine gun and puts it down again.
Sami is young, 21, he says, and he has been fighting for only three days. He is a Lebanese from the south, a lean, black-haired farm worker who look up arms only when the Israelis invaded Lebanon last week.
From the top step of the shelter, Shehabi, the other commando at the shelter door, tells Sami to get inside and settle down.
Shehabi is in his 30s. He carries a slight paunch as comfortably as he carries his rifle. He has been through many shellings in his six years with Al Fatah. "Take it easy," he tells Sami, "there's nothing you can do."
A far-off roar announces the approach of Israeli jets.
"Mirage," someone outside yells. "Everybody in. Down."
All scramble down the rough cement steps to the blackness below, in the heart of the hill.
The planes fly so high they are difficult to see. But the commandos insist that the air crews can see them on the ground if they move around in the open. So there are orders to stay underground, around the table littered with tea glasses and orange rinds, in the dank air that stinks of kerosene.
When the bombs hit, even though they are two-thirds of a mile away, the air in the shelter vibrates with a sound too low to hear. The glasses rattle. The talk stops.
When it starts again, the subject is how long the fight will go on.
Sami and Shehabi agree. "We will fight until they are finished," Sami says. "Out of the land."
Right now, for these two, there is no fighting to be done. The bombardment and shelling of this market town have lasted most of the day. The Israeli firepower is awesome. The invaders have emptied and smashed Nabatiye, at least for the moment, without setting foot within five miles of the town.
But the commandos are still here, in shelters like these, and Shehabi, the veteran, knows it is a victory of sorts.
"Look," he says, "you see what they can do. They may take this town, but how many times? How many soldiers do you think they will have to stay in all the towns?
"And for what?" he asks.
An artillery blast nearby fans the air of the shelter. "Look," Shehabi says, as if in rebuttal. "Here we are."
And for what?
