Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Adventurer]

Decades later, some Lebanese can't go home

Shiites' return after '06 war reminds Christians that they're still waiting.
By Raed Rafei
Special to The Times

January 2, 2007

KFARMATA, LEBANON � As Hala Haddad watched thousands of families return to their towns and villages in southern Lebanon last summer after a devastating war between the Islamic militant group Hezbollah and Israel, she remembered the night she was forced to flee her home.

After bombing intensified over their village, her father summoned Haddad and her four siblings to leave everything behind and run away. An 11-year-old then, she had to walk for miles, as her tiny, slippered feet swelled with pain.

That was 23 years ago, as fighting raged between leftist Druze factions and Israeli-backed Christian militias during Lebanon's brutal civil war. Haddad hasn't seen her hometown since.

Unlike the Shiite Muslim population of the south during the recent conflict, Haddad and members of hundreds of other Christian families were never able to go back to their homes and properties in Kfarmata, a picturesque town overlooking Beirut from the Mount Lebanon range.

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/latimes700.html