Word: hizballah
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...past two days, Ali Al Tawil has been trudging around the rubble of Haret Hreik, a Shi'a neighborhood in southern Beirut, wearing a Hizballah yellow vest and matching baseball cap that says "Jihad of Construction." Armed with only a clipboard, Al Tawil is one of about 1,500 Hizballah civil engineers who have fanned out across the country to survey the damage from over a month of war with Israel. For now, they are simply recording which buildings have been damaged, slightly damaged or obliterated. More detailed surveys will soon follow to determine what repairs need to be done...
...Hizballah are not only making sense of the rubble left from the Israeli bombardment; they are already doing an impressive job cleaning it up. After weeks in hiding or living as refugees, the Party of God has taken charge of the reconstruction of Lebanon with enough speed and organization to make any government envious. Almost as soon as the cease-fire went into effect on Monday, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah went on television to promise that all Lebanese whose homes were damaged or destroyed would receive at least $10,000 for a year's worth of rent, and during that...
...With funding that mostly likely comes from Iran, Hizballah appears to be in a hurry to make good on its promises. The party has set up what amount to claim centers in school buildings throughout the areas that have been heavily damaged - south Beirut, southern Lebanon, the Bekkaa Valley. And officials say there are going to begin handing out cash within 48 hours...
...inhabitants of each building, the size of their apartments, whether the resident was an owner or renter, and phone numbers of those who could afford phones. All a resident has to do is show up at the school -with or without identification, deeds, or leases -ˇ and a Hizballah representative assigned to their building checks to make sure that their claim was legitimate. Very few people try to make fraudulent claims, according to Munir. "People are very cooperative," he said. "We know who everyone is, and they trust us not to cheat them...
...That's bad news also for the Bush Administration, whose fantasies of leading an Arab front against Hizballah and Iran collapsed under pressure from Arab allies - Lebanon foremost among them - for an immediate cease-fire. The U.S. suffered diplomatically for its support of Israel's campaign - and may have made its work in Iraq that much more difficult - and was forced to settle for something less than the emphatic victory over Hizballah it had expected...