Lebanonwire, November 30, 2002

The Daily Star

Adnan El-Ghoul
Special to The Daily Star

After more than a half-century of turmoil and neglect, residents of Meiss al-Jabal have not forgotten their once-prosperous and vibrant past.
The southern border town, like the entire frontier district, saw better times during the British Mandate in Palestine.
The creation of Israel in 1948 signaled the beginning of trouble for the southern Lebanese and the thousands of Palestinians who fled advancing Jewish troops during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
The onset of the Palestinian liberation struggle waged from South Lebanon in the mid-1960s and the often heavy-handed Israeli retaliation caused thousands of southerners to move to the southern end of Beirut, creating the so-called “Belt of Misery.”
The beginning of the civil war in 1975 cut the southerners off from Beirut, a situation that was reinforced with Israel’s first invasion of Lebanon in 1978 and the creation of its security zone operated by Lebanese militia allies.
The South remained a zone of conflict for the following two decades until liberation in May 2000.
The central Lebanese authorities officially suspended municipal spending and activities during the final years of occupation, but actual municipal work was never significant under occupation. Although the South received special attention immediately following its liberation, results generally fell short of promises.
Newly elected councils, however, have taken matters into their own hands in efforts to revive the South, despite limited resources. According to Mayor Mohammed Hijazi of Meiss al-Jabal, “southerners are participating enthusiastically and generously in rebuilding their worn-out communities.”
Meiss al-Jabal is a classic case of the region’s struggle. The mayor said: “We had to start with the basic needs of rehabilitating water and electricity supplies, and inner roads to catch up with population growth resulting from the return of displaced families. At the same time, infrastructure is needed to compensate for decades of abandonment, to boost socioeconomic growth and encourage the ongoing return of residents.”
Fortunately, a previous non-spending policy left more than LL1 billion in the town budget. The council established an accelerated plan to repair water and electricity networks, and began constructing and refurbishing roads. According to Hijazi, more than 65,000 square meters of roads and 2,700 square meters of support walls have been completed, including new farm roads to aid agricultural development.
As for water, the mayor was “puzzled by influential people, inside the village and at government levels, who stood strongly against digging a well to boost water supply, claiming that the village had enough water and that the Wazzani project met the needs of the village.”
At one point, the Jabal Aamel Water Board surprised the town by cutting off its water supply, requiring an appeal to the highest level to reverse the board’s decision, according to the mayor. Local inhabitants were forced to purchase drinking water for even common uses, paying up to LL450 million annually.
“Despite the Wazzani’s recent additional supply, the village still suffers from water shortages. We need to complete the unfinished well project, which has cost the municipality a great deal of money and labor and has reached its final stages. We have already obtained the permit to exploit the well, and we intend to use it,” Hijazi said.
Meiss al-Jabal also faces the challenge of reviving its educational institutions. According to the mayor, “many changes were made to local schools to suit the Israelis and their collaborators. We had to restore our curriculum and teaching methods, and expel the personnel who could not be reformed.”
After education deteriorated to its lowest level in decades, Mayor Hijazi, a university professor and academic administrator himself, developed a strategy to enhance teaching methods and restore student performance to the national average. The new approach encourages parents to interact with teachers and get involved in the educational process on a daily basis.
To meet logistical needs, the municipal council paid registration fees and supplied the schools with an electricity generator to compensate for continual electrical outages.
In addition, the council arranged after-school sessions for needier students, established a public library on the school premises, and organized educational trips to other regions in Lebanon previously unknown to many students born during Israel’s occupation.
One of the town’s principal demands for some time has been to establish a qada center.
“We have requested the establishment of a ‘civil status registrar’ in Meiss al-Jabal, and have received initial approval from the Interior Ministry,” the mayor said.
“The officials asked the municipality to provide the building that will house the center, and we have done that but are still waiting for action on the government’s part,” Hijazi added.
Local citizens are forced to travel to Marjayoun to obtain civil status documents, which results in delays and additional expenses.
The municipality did receive LL640 million from the World Bank in a loan intended to develop new roads, support walls, sidewalks, and street lighting. But according to the mayor, the outside funding has not covered all the town’s infrastructure needs. The mayor offered the Telephone Board a building to construct a main exchange switchboard to serve all neighboring villages.
And while there are no existing plans for a sewage system, the mayor said they had allocated 8,000 square meters of land to build a waste-recycling facility with the help and contribution of USAID and the YMCA. The facility, which serves four other nearby villages, is now operational and being run by volunteers from the YMCA.
Construction in Meiss al-Jabal has grown considerably during the past two years, raising concern about urban sprawl that is eroding the town’s countryside image. Numerous vineyards and orchards are falling prey to uncontrolled development.
“When we issue building permits, the council tries to convince citizens not to spread chaotically, and we encourage them to choose appropriate plots to build houses away from green areas,” the mayor said.
The source of the problem, however, is the absence of zoning guidelines for residents to follow. “Land properties are not yet surveyed, and without this survey, we cannot apply urban planning regulations,” Hijazi explained. “Nevertheless, we try to get similar results through informal guidance and persuasion.”
The mayor has approached Speaker Nabih Berri, who promised to discuss the land issue in future sessions. Berri confessed to the mayor, however, that land surveying will take a long time and may not materialize in the foreseeable future. Until then, most border villages will be on their own in their efforts to control unregulated growth.

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