The war in Lebanon has taken over life in Syria. Its everywhere. Taxis and micro-buses have news on their radios instead of music or religion; the hippest Damascus cafes have al-Jazeera headlines interrupting the music every hour; even at the gym, the body-builders clustering six-deep around a TV monitor with intense looks on their faces are watching not the latest music videos or muscle-toning techniques but Hizbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallahs latest speech.
Even that is just the surface of an ocean of conversation, word-of-mouth information-exchange, which both keeps Syrians feelings at a high pitch and makes the truth of what is happening in Lebanon very difficult to ascertain.
The swirl of emotion is as intense as its focus is clear. There is widespread and fierce support for Hizbollah; an overwhelming generosity, including towards the tens of thousands of Lebanese refugees who have made their way across the border; sadness, depression, anger; elements of humiliation, which strengthen nationalist feelings; a surprisingly broad disregard for religion; and negative feelings ranging from conspiracy-laden hatred to a sense of betrayal and sadness - towards the "international community".
Many Syrians see this conflict is an indirect war on their country, as well as the threat of an actual one. Their relationship with Lebanon, controversial on the level of politics, is intimate and personal: almost every Syrian has Lebanese family or friends, no passports are needed in crossing the border in either direction, telephone calls dont require a country dialing code.
For many, this translates into a family feeling; at the extreme, into the conviction that Syrians and Lebanese are one people. Ahmad, a fiercely nationalistic 26-year-old, speaks of the aggression against our people in Lebanon; Fares, also 26, echoes this in saying our people's resistance will triumph". More generally, the war has encouraged an even closer affinity with Lebanese: "with this war, you feel again that whatever can happen with the governments of the two countries, the people are very much together", says Sarab, a historian.
Lydia Wilson is currently studying for a PhD at Cambridge University in medieval Arabic philosophy. She has been living in Damascus for eleven months
Also on openDemocracy about Syria and Lebanon:
Roger Scruton, "Syria before and after Lebanon"
(9 March 2005)
Alex Klaushofer, "After Syria"
(19 October 2005)
Hazem Saghieh, "Syria and Lebanon: keeping it in the family"
(14 December 2005)
Anoushka Marashlian, "Syria cracks down on dissent" (19 June 2006)
Paul Cochrane, "The Syria safety-zone"
(26 July 2006)
A bitter cup
The war has also revived Syrians longstanding grievances against Israel and the west. Syria has officially been at war with Israel since the six-day war of 1967 when Israel captured the Golan Heights, an area it still holds against bitter Syrian resentment. A state of emergency has been in place since then, and armed conflict is a perfect environment for anti-Israel, anti-western sentiments to emerge. We are used to this feeling, says Louna, a student. We have lived with Israeli aggression all our lives.
The education system and the media in Syria nourish and reinforce such views. But Syrian citizens are not just their mouthpieces; they make sense of the origins and circumstances of the Lebanese war in their own terms. I think there are many reasons [for the war], but the most important is to distract attention from what [the Israelis] are doing in Palestine, and also away from Iraq, says Shatha, a housewife.
Samar, a café manager, offers another perspective: The reason goes [back] many years; Israel didn't like what happened in 2000, it seemed like they were the losers when they left Lebanon". Mouaz, a Syrian-Palestinian, joins in: "Why do you think they are pushing up to the Litani [river]? Israel always wants water, that's what this is about". It is not far to a conspiracy theory with decades-long roots, claiming that the two blue lines on the Israeli flag (either side of the star of David) represent the Nile and the Euphrates, the boundaries Israel covets.
Syrians' focus, then, is on land, not religion. Their support for Hizbollah, like those of the Lebanese who have flooded into Syria, crosses confessional boundaries. "I have been working twenty-four hours a day for the past month with refugees, and I have not heard one person blame Hizbollah, whatever their religion - unfortunately. It's always dangerous to not have any variety in political opinions", says Khaled, 26. What about those who have lost family members, friends, livelihoods? "Let me tell you a story."
"There is a man who owns a farm in the south [of Lebanon]. Like everyone he thought the aggression would last four or five days, at most a week. He gave his animals enough food and water for a week and came to Syria. After eight days he called people in the area and said 'kill and eat them, I can't feed them anyway'. At the beginning he was half with Hizbollah, now he has lost everything but wishes 100% he was there fighting with Hizbollah."
I myself met a couple in a refugee centre who had spent four years preparing for their wedding, including building a house. On the morning of the wedding, it became the very first house in the conflict to be destroyed. The man held his wife, and said: "Now I wish, instead of spending all that time and money on my wedding, that I had committed myself to fight for Hizbollah". His wife demurred, but he continued: "it's not easy to say, but I wish I had committed myself to death over marriage because I believe it is the right thing to do."
There are other voices, including people interviewed on al-Jazeera who say that Hizbollah is partly responsible for the terrible toll of civilian casualties. But as the conflict persists and diplomatic initiatives stall, the tide of opinion is greatly on Hizbollah's side. Young Syrian men, some of whom participate in spontaneous and regular anti-Israel street demonstrations, are full of bravado. I don't want the war to finish for [Israel's] advantage, and I don't want humiliation for Lebanon. I want the war to be long if it achieves something for Hizbollah and for Lebanon", says Shatha.
It is strange to encounter such near-uniform solidarity, but the war has indeed united Syrians behind Hizbollah. If there are cracks, they are hard to spot.
