‘Our seeds, our roots’: Sowing hope as Israeli bombs fell on Lebanon
Al Jazeera
An agroecological collective in the Bekaa Valley has built a ‘seed library’ to preserve the region’s farming heritage.
Bekaa Valley, Lebanon – A warm wind blows over the rocky, arid landscape of the Lebanon-Syria border, ruffling the silhouettes walking slowly through the mountain pass, clambering around two huge craters.
What used to be a densely packed road stretching all the way from Beirut in Lebanon, through the Bekaa Valley and on to Damascus in Syria via the Masnaa Crossing, has been reduced to rubble by Israeli bombardment. All travel has become near impossible.
Families now pass only on foot, carrying their luggage over their heads, carefully avoiding losing their balance while navigating the debris.
Until a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah was reached on Wednesday, Israel had been carpet-bombing Lebanon since late September. On October 4, its forces bombed Masnaa, the largest border crossing into Syria, on October 4 as it ramped up its assault on Lebanon nearly a year after it started a war on Gaza.
What’s left of Masnaa is barely enough to allow people through, not to mention the once-familiar trucks full of fresh fruits and vegetables that used to wind through the pass, going both ways.
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