MIDDLE EAST: Lara Marlowe passes bombed-out vehicles before arriving in Beirut, which has reverted to its sad, war-torn appearance
While I wait for my taxi to Beirut, Albert Aji, the director of the Orient press centre in Damascus, explains Syria's policy towards the war between Hizbullah and Israel: "We are 100 per cent behind the resistance," Aji says, referring to Hizbullah.
Advertisements in the morning newspapers provide a telephone number for refugees from Lebanon to call. Syrian radio broadcasts "Sowa Rebina" (We live together) and songs glorifying the "resistance".
A high-ranking Syrian official tells me over the phone how his wife - an upper middle class lady who paints in her spare time - is looking after 350 Shia refugees from Beirut's southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley town of Baalbek.
President Bashar al-Assad must be delighted. Serge Brammertz, the Belgian prosecutor who was investigating the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, has been evacuated to Cyprus, and the inquiry is stalled. With Lebanese refugees flooding across the border, Syria's image has swung from that of bully to protector.
The price of taxi fares between Beirut and Damascus is a frequent subject of conversation. Rumour may have exaggerated the $6,000 (€4,700) fare paid by one desperate Lebanese man when the conflict started. On Wednesday, the fare dropped to $300 (€236), because drivers gambled the Israelis would not bomb the highway while an international conference convened in Rome to discuss Lebanon. The price shot back up to $600 yesterday, after three vegetable lorries, a Syrian aid truck and one civilian car were bombed between Damascus and Beirut on Wednesday evening.
I can vouch for the vegetable lorries, because I saw them, on the heights of the Mount Lebanon range. Two had the carbonised look of other vehicles bombed earlier in the Israeli campaign, but one had stopped at an angle on the mountain road, its roof and windshield gouged by a missile, its vegetable cargo intact. "The driver died," my driver Adeeb intoned solemnly.
A few minutes later, when we overtake a lorry laden with cauliflower on a hairpin curve, Adeeb is scandalised by such gross irresponsibility. "Isn't he afraid?" he asks. It doesn't seem to occur to Adeeb that he is tempting fate to drive through a war zone twice daily. In his closest call, a lorry was bombed 300m behind him.
The Bekaa Valley was always Lebanon's bread basket. This time of year, its vineyards and olive groves are resplendent. Though the main road is cut by a giant bomb crater at Chtaura, forcing drivers to take a back road past Zahlé and Mount Tarchich, Bekaa farmers and their customers on the other side of the mountains are making no concession to war.
Like all Lebanese born before the civil war ended in 1990, Adeeb's life has been shaped by conflict. A Christian from a village on the hills overlooking the Shia southern suburbs, he fought with Dany Chamoun's Tigers militia throughout his teen years "but I quit when I got a brain", he says. "They told me the Palestinians wanted to take my village. They lied to me. Today, I wouldn't fight, not for $100,000."
Adeeb's brother was killed in fighting between Christian militias, and the businessman-turned-taxi driver raised his orphaned niece. "She is 26 now. She was supposed to get married next month, but I don't see how . . ."
Adeeb adores his three children, twin boys and a girl, aged 10 and seven. "My blood is boiling. I cannot live in my house, because my children cannot sleep for the bombing."
So he took his family up the coast, to the Christian heartland, far from Hizbullah. But Adeeb couldn't escape the war. The Israelis bombed the television transmitter for the Christian station LBC, near his in-laws' house.
Maronite Catholics like Adeeb allied themselves with Israel during the 1982 invasion. "Only because we had a common enemy in the Palestinians," he explains. As we start down the western flank of the Mount Lebanon range, Adeeb stops chain-smoking, heaves a sigh of relief and turns with a grin to shake my hand: "We're safe," he announces. "They don't bomb here." In every village there are little alcoves with statues of the Virgin Mary. The hillsides are covered with sunburnt grass, umbrella pines and boulders; the Biblical land of Canaan.
As they did in 1982, the wealthy have retreated to the safety of Faraya, which is a ski resort in winter, Broumana and Beit Merri, to swim and tan while Lebanon is at war. This time, however, there are Sunni Muslims among the Christians. It is a different planet from the southern suburbs, where the Israeli chief of staff has promised to destroy 10 buildings for every building hit by Hizbullah.
The 12 o'clock news on the car radio tells of more Katyushas fired by Hizbullah at villages in northern Israel. Israel has vowed to flatten every village from which a rocket is fired, says Sawt al Lubnan (The Voice of Lebanon). The inhabitants of Christian villages in the south, which are packed with Shia refugees, are pleading with the Red Cross to evacuate residents and refugees alike.
When I arrive at my hotel in Beirut's Hamra district, a delegation of eight left-wing MEPs is holding a press conference. "European opinion is doing what European institutions are incapable of doing - protesting against attempts to redraw the map of the Middle East," says Miguel Portas, the Portuguese parliamentarian who is their spokesman.
"We concluded that the real obstacle to a political solution in Lebanon and Palestine is the US and its ally, the state of Israel," he continues, blaming the US and Britain for the failure of the Rome conference on Wednesday.
The MEPs appeal earnestly for a ceasefire, "because you can't talk if there's no ceasefire. Every additional day of war means more dead, more destruction, more refugees," Portas continues.
An EU military intervention force could be a solution only if it were part of a solid agreement between Lebanese, the MEPs say. "But if it arrives in southern Lebanon to finish the Israelis' work by disarming Hizbullah, we are convinced that it will push the country towards civil war," Portas adds.
After the press conference, the owner and manager of the Hotel Cavalier invite me to lunch. I first stayed here 17 years ago, during the war between Gen Michel Aoun and the Syrian army, to escape shelling of the seafront corniche. Nadim Safa, the manager, greets me warmly, with three kisses on the cheeks. I still remember his harrowing account, back in 1989, of watching a lorry career into a deep gorge under shellfire in his native Chouf mountains.
A snippet of typical Beirut luncheon conversation: "The Americans are sending Israel 'bunker busters' and laser-guided missiles from Qatar," says David Boudargham, the hotel owner. "Maybe they will use these bombs if Nasrallah (Hizbullah's leader) bombs Tel Aviv?" ventures Safa. "No, they will use them anyway," Boudargham corrects him.
Boudargham deplores the departure of virtually the entire foreign business community since the war started on July 12th. "Unless Hizbullah is disarmed, no one will have the confidence to return," he says. Much as he wants a ceasefire, the hotelier knows it may be followed by strife between Lebanese. "If Israel backs off, giving a sense that Hizbullah is the winner, it will be very dangerous," Boudargham says. "It could give power in Lebanon back to Syria."
In the afternoon, I walk around the Hamra shopping and banking district. How quickly Beirut has reverted to her sad, war-time face. Rubbish lies uncollected in the streets. Most of the shops are closed. Bearded men speed by in old Mercedes - perhaps Hizbullah supporters on the run from the bombardment of the southern suburbs.
I talk to an old shopkeeper on Commodore Street. He is watching footage from the northern Israeli town of Qiryat Shemona, a frequent target of Katyusha missiles, on a portable TV set. "I'm afraid," he says, lifting a plaintive face towards me. "Six wars from Israel," he adds. "Wait a minute," I say, counting: "1978, 1982, 1993, 1996, 2006 . . . Did I miss one?" "Five is enough," the shopkeeper says grimly. "Nobody knows what will happen afterwards. What do the Americans want?"