2023-08-04 23:54:35
On August 4, 2020, the port of Beirut witnessed a huge explosion that shook the city’s pillars, causing great human and material losses, and economic, social and political effects. The accident killed two hundred people and injured regarding 6,500 people, including a thousand children. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said at the time that as a result of the explosion, more than ten thousand Lebanese children became homeless, and their families lived in harsh conditions with electricity and water cuts, while thousands of residential buildings and shops were completely destroyed by the severity of the explosion. Had it not been for God’s mercy, there would have been nothing left on the ground in Beirut.
The Lebanese were beset by death, and they entered into interconnected crises, which reflected more chaos in the management of many political, social, judicial and environmental files, with the leakage of dangerous chemicals into the air, and the accumulation of more than 800,000 tons of building debris and glass on the ground. What Lebanon witnessed was a real catastrophe in the followingmath of the popular movement that the country witnessed since October 2019, as the flames of the explosion surrounded the slogans of angry citizens once morest the political elites and their demands and protests once morest them, calling for accountability, fighting corruption, building constitutional institutions, and achieving development and social justice. And there were those who wanted to divert the attention of the Lebanese from the internal situation in a circumstance that witnessed Lebanon’s economy in free fall. The World Bank estimated the losses caused by the explosion at between $3.8 billion and $4.6 billion, with the declaration of Lebanon’s need for international aid and various investments.
The Lebanese did not respond to the calls of the world following all that they saw and witnessed, and they did not withdraw from all the scourges they had experienced, and they mocked themselves more, and the world mocked them, and their extremism (Hezbollah’s Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, is proud of the end of the days of humiliation, and gives the continuous impression that Iran and its militias have reached unprecedented strength, at a time when Lebanon is dying, and ambiguity surrounds the issue of saving it, and it is revisiting the situation in Yemen, Bahrain and Syria), while the rulings of the rulers remained captive to the phrase of former President Michel Aoun: “Lebanon is going to hell.” They quit all incidental affairs.
For years, Beirut has become an indication of bad conditions in the Middle East and instability
The media circulates pictures of the explosion once more, and the families of the tortured / poor victims gather, raising pictures of their children and their names, in front of political leaders who put their fingers in their ears, arrogantly over the event, and paralyzed the work of the judicial investigation judge Tariq Al-Bitar. The investigation practically ended on the second day of French President Macron’s visit to Lebanon, as some of them consider it to have served the purposes of those who caused the port explosion, extended it to Lebanese politicians, and extended the elections to them as reasons for their remaining red-handed in the crime (and other crimes), in bringing in huge quantities of chemicals ( It was discovered in 2018, and regarding 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded from it.
Three years before the horror of the event, many countries expressed their solidarity with the Lebanese people, and provided a lot of humanitarian aid from all over the world. Civil rights / humanity. The result is that the lesson is not understood, and they (the politicians) are striving to obstruct what they used to do, and they turn away from political solutions, so Lebanon’s crises come from all directions. The Lebanese political actor with its various components has not yet understood the lessons of the disaster, amid attempts by the people to push for an unlikely international investigation, (regarding 150 experts from France, the United States, Turkey and Russia, and Czech, Greek, Dutch and Polish rescue teams participated in the search operations in the port), as a guarantee to uncover the truth. , and provide remedies and compensation to the victims.
No infrastructure following years of reconstruction, no green spaces, no electricity, no clean air, and none of the conditions for a normal, happy life in Beirut.
Beirut has become, for years, an indication of bad conditions in the Middle East region, and of instability, affected and not affected, a title of loss and chaos, in light of the blockage of the political horizon that is difficult to overcome, and the disruption of the work of institutions and the structure of governance itself. The Beirut port explosion (not just a port on the Mediterranean shore, but rather a symbol of a rich era in the history of Lebanon and the region, and the factors of its commercial, economic and financial prosperity between the eastern and western Mediterranean), was an embodiment of the failure of this state with all its components. This necessitated the movement of French diplomacy, with its familiar emotional dynamism, on the path to limiting the political and economic repercussions, also related to France’s need for Lebanon to play a mediating role in the context of the conflict between international and regional powers in a region undergoing vital transformations. But not as he thought. It is France Macron from one failure to another (Niger). Then, the Lebanese will be the people most sensitive to the existential threat to their existence. This did not happen, it would not have generated a historic opportunity, and what would save Lebanon would have grown. Nobody does his job in Lebanon. The government is not a government, representatives are not representatives, parties are not parties, the city is not the city, the central bank is not a bank, and its ruler is leaving it besieged by investigations in Europe on charges of embezzlement and money laundering, and being targeted by two international arrest warrants from France and Germany. He leaves office following thirty years, in another reference to a symbolic end to political Harirism, and to the era of the late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who built Beirut (currently the most expensive city in terms of food prices, tourism, luxury, restaurants and cafes, compared to its counterparts in Paris and London), where there is no infrastructure. After years of reconstruction, there are no green spaces, no electricity, no clean air, and none of the conditions for a normal, happy life in it!
Lebanon is still living on the impact of the massive explosion, and a series of far-reaching financial, political and security explosions
The explosion turned into something like a “Guernica” painting, in which the young volunteers, who took to the streets to clean up the traces of destruction, placed all the dramatic symbols of the dead, flying and fragmented parts, flesh and blood, broken glass panes, vague storms and hell. Reconstructing the port requires more than eight billion dollars, amid international competition for geopolitical investment, of this or that scale. However, Lebanon is still living on the impact of the massive explosion, and a series of far-reaching financial, political and security explosions.
The eruption of the conflict in the Palestinian camp of Ain al-Hilweh may be part of that disastrous series, once morest the background of future regional conditions, most likely the details of which will be targeting the Fatah movement and its Sunni surroundings in Lebanon, placing the camps under the control of the Shiite duo, and enforcing the policies of demarcating sea and land borders. While fires are raging in the crowded camp, ambiguity surrounds the work of the “Doha Five” concerned with ending the presidential vacancy in Lebanon, and the search for a mechanism for implementing the initiative put forward by the French presidential envoy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, to convene a “work table” among the Lebanese parties, in order to discuss The item of electing the President of the Republic, and searching for magic that will lead to an agreement on the name of the next president.
The Lebanese are “drunk, not drunk,” wanting to live following all that has happened and is still happening.
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