Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | As the shells fall around them, Hizbullah men await the Israelis

Guardian Unlimited Special reports As the shells fall around them, Hizbullah men await the Israelis: "As the shells fall around them, Hizbullah men await the Israelis

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, south of Tyre
Saturday July 29, 2006
The Guardian


An injured Lebanese boy with his mother after their van was attacked by Israeli aircraft as they fled their village in Tyre, Lebanon. Photo: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/Getty



Inside a well-furnished apartment in a village on the outskirts of Tyre, with shelves of books piled from floor to ceiling, a black turbaned cleric and three men sit sipping bitter coffee. By the door is a pile of Kalashnikovs and ammunition boxes; handguns are tucked into the men's trousers. The four are Hizbullah fighters, waiting for the Israelis.
'Patience is our main virtue, we can wait for days, weeks, months before we attack. The Israelis are always impatient in battle and in strategy,' says the cleric, Sayed Ali, who claims to be a descendant of the prophet. 'I know them very well.'
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As if to make his point, the sound of Israeli shells blasting the surrounding hills shakes the door and shutters every few minutes. Ali does know the Israelis. He started fighting them at the age of 17 when they invaded Lebanon in 1982. Three years later he was arrested with two of his comrades and spent a few months in an Israeli prison. Within weeks of his release he was fighting them again.That's what he did for the next six years.
For the last five years he has been finishing his theology studies in Tehran. A month ago, he was asked by Hizbullah to return to southern Lebanon. He arrived a week before the fighting began.
Standing at the window, he points to the banana pla...