Preliminary Report from Beirut: Port Explosion and Its Reverberations

Port of Beirut and surrounding area, 2007. Photo by Yoniw via Wikimedia Commons Port of Beirut and surrounding area, 2007. Photo by Yoniw via Wikimedia Commons

Preliminary Report from Beirut: Port Explosion and Its Reverberations

By : Ziad Abu-Rish زياد ابوالريش

The nature of Tuesday’s explosion in the port of Beirut and the extent of the damage across the city and beyond is not yet clear. There are plenty of unconfirmed reports and it is hard to take official statements as transparent. That being said, the effects of the explosion were felt across the city and beyond. For those familiar with the geography, nearby areas such as Karantina and Gemmayzeh as well as further away areas such as Manara, Hamra, Burj Hammoud, Sin al-Fil, and Brummana felt the explosion.

The port area itself is largely decimated, with adjacent neighborhoods destroyed and those one neighborhood removed reportedly looking like a warzone. Much of the most damaged areas are only now being accessed by those searching for victims, rescue teams having been forced to wait out the flames or make sure remaining structures would not collapse on them. The anecdotes and reports of windows shattering, balcony doors collapsing, and ceilings caving in across Beirut (to say nothing of the “exterior damage” on the streets that are today lined with broken glass) and beyond are true and a testament to how powerful the explosion was.

As of 10pm Beirut time (3pm EST) on Wednesday 5 August, official estimates claimed 135 dead, 5000 wounded, dozens missing, and approximately 300,000 made homeless or unable to properly make use of their homes. At least three hospitals in Beirut have either closed down or evacuated significant parts of their facilities. One estimate puts the material damage in the 3-to-5 billion US dollar range.

Most everyone was terrified, immediately assuming what is the worst-case scenario in their minds, having flashbacks to their own previous experience with bombings/shelling, or reliving some type of trauma. Many folks sitting in their homes were injured, others who were leisuring, meeting, or working at cafes or hotels had window panes fall on them. Office and other buildings experienced similar damage or injuries. In all cases, most people were frightened and panicked.

Many ERs were overwhelmed the night of the bombing and even the morning after. Anecdotal evidence indicates some people had to visit several hospitals before being able to get treated, some going to Tripoli, Saida, or parts of Shuf. In other cases, folks waited hours to contact the Civil Defense or the Red Cross. Ambulance sirens, typically a weekly (if at all) occurrence in some neighborhoods, were that night a regular feature despite being relatively far from explosion.

People were/are panicked in Beirut and the country. This explosion comes in the wake of a massive surge in COVID-19, a development crisis, fiscal and monetary collapse, and escalating internal and regional tensions. It is worth stressing that the major port of a food- and otherwise import-dependent political economy is now completely non-operational. The Beirut port processed an estimated sixty percent of Lebanon’s imports. This is to say nothing of how a population experiencing approximately forty-percent unemployment, sixty-percent poverty, and fifty-percent inflation, combined with a foreign currency shortage and incapacitated primary port, will be able to secure the necessary materials to treat the wounded, fix homes, and rebuild the port. Beyond the immediate deaths, injuries, material damage, and individual/collective trauma, there is no way to know which of the many explanations are in fact the case. This lack of clarity (at best) or confusion (at worst) only intensifies the sense of devastation and rage felt by many. Devastated by yet another crisis that eviscerates people’s sense of security. Rage at a dense and interlocking network of government officials, bureaucrats, party leaderships, and businesspersons who provide no transparency and shirk any accountability for the policies and decisions that directly led to this and so many of the other crises.

What we do know is that a port hangar containing 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate is quickly becoming the consensus cause of the large explosion (note: Timothy McVeigh used 2.3 tons of this substance—mixed with another—in his 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City). That highly explosive material, used for bombs and fertilizer, had been at the Beirut port for at least six years. It was initially confiscated, was known to top-level officials in the relevant Lebanese bureaucracy, and was the subject of several formal warnings about the hazardous nature of the material and its current storing. What triggered the explosion of this ammonium nitrate is not yet clear, though various video footage reels show a pre-existing nearby fire that had already caught the attention of both the public and on-the-scene officials.

Beyond this, we do not know much. There is no way to confirm or deny the two most circulating explanations (not to mention other possibilities). First, an accidental spark of some sort caused nearby materials (some say fireworks) to catch fire and explode, eventually spreading to the nearby ammonium nitrate. If true, this, along with the criminality of leaving the explosive material unaddressed for years, is another example of how policies and negligence of governments, ministries, and various bureaucracies in Lebanon cost people their lives, livelihoods, and sense of security. Second, the site was targeted by fire, bomb, or rocket to either destabilize the country in general or target a port-located arms depot/shipment belonging to Hizballah. If true, this is another example of how regional rivalries and the ability of external powers such as the United State and Israel to wage elective wars, assaults, and bombings with impunity cost people their lives, livelihood, and sense of security.

Neither scenario is beyond the realm of real possibility. There is no way at this point to confirm or discount either of these or other explanations regarding what caused the ammonium nitrate to explode. Therefore, it remains best to wait for the unanimous “official” explanation in Lebanon. But until then, and long after, it will be those people living in Lebanon (whether citizens, refugees, migrant workers, or others) who pay the price. In both potential scenarios, the criminality of willfully storing such explosive materials (i.e., ammonium nitrate) at the port, without proper precautions, and despite repeated warnings, is a condition of possibility for how devastating the overall outcomes were in this particular instance. Even so, there have been no apologies, no resignations, and no indictments. 

There will be time for more analysis (in coverage and quality) of causes and culpability, and for understanding the extent of the material damage to the port, the city, and the country—all of which are lived spaces. But for now, all eyes must be on immediate medical attention for those in need, including search and rescue.

[Click here to read an Arabic version of this article.]

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

    • تقرير أولي من بيروت: انفجار المرفأ وأصداؤه

      تقرير أولي من بيروت: انفجار المرفأ وأصداؤه

      لم تتضح بعد طبيعة الانفجار الذي حصل يوم الثلاثاء في مرفأ بيروت ومدى الأضرار التي سببها في أنحاء المدينة. هناك العديد من التقارير غير المؤكدة ومن الصعب اعتماد التصريحات الرسمية بسبب افتقارها للشفافية.

    • Municipal Politics in Lebanon

      Municipal Politics in Lebanon
      The municipal system has been a key pillar of debates on administrative decentralization, economic development and political participation in Lebanon. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, activists
    • Doubling Down: Jordan Six Years into the Arab Uprisings

      Doubling Down: Jordan Six Years into the Arab Uprisings
      The political economy of Jordan today is characterized by greater degrees of authoritarianism and neoliberalism than was the case in 2010. Yet two trends in knowledge production on Jordan seem to cla

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412