Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor of The Times, watches the start of the clean-up in Lebanon and assesses the obstacles to peace and economic recovery
How has Beirut changed since your last visit?
It is interesting to see that the central, downtown areas have been pretty much unaffected by the fighting. All that has changed since the end of the hostilities is that, even though today is a holiday, most of the shops have reopened, particularly the jewellers which had been shuttered and emptied of their stock for weeks. There is a real sense of people trying to restore some of their livelihoods.
But in the southern suburbs of Beirut, that have been hardest hit by the bombing, we have seen extraordinary scenes of devastation.
An 11-storey apartment building which suffered a direct hit has been pancaked down to less than one storey high. The amazing sound of a 1,000 brooms sweeping up broken glass echoes in the streets. By the end of the bombardment there were almost no casualties here, as most of the people had gone, but there was still anger this morning as people blamed the Israelis for such heavy bombing of a residential civilian area.
Who is leading the clean-up?
We saw a few Lebanese officials in uniforms alongside municipal dustcarts, but my strong impression was that it was going to be Hezbollah that will do the bulk of the clean-up.
We heard from Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, on television last night offering to help families with a year's rent and to pay for damage to people's homes and property. It will need a lot of organising, but on previous occasions Hezbollah has shown itself really quite efficient on social operations.
The structural damage to homes will take a long time to put right, and in the mountainous areas workers are concerned that repairs should be done before the winter comes. It does get really cold and rainy in the hilltop villages so it is important to get them ready for winter before December.
How bad is the infrastructure damage and how much will it cost to put right?
We have just been out to the airport, where all four runways were very precisely hit by Israeli air strikes on four separate occasions. The airport is Lebanon's real lifeline - tourism, trade and much of the economy depend on it.
The smaller runways will be back in action in the next few days, but the main runway, the one that juts out into the sea, which is long enough to take the larger aircraft, will take weeks to put right as the built-in landing equipment has been badly damaged.
Roads and bridges will be fixable within the coming weeks.
Overall, they estimate that the damage will cost US $2.2 billion to repair. Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary, is in town and we are waiting to hear what British assistance will be made available.
Diplomats here feel however that most of the big funding is going to have to come from the Gulf states. Saudi Arabia has already pledged $500 million, and Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have promised $200 million apiece, which is a good start.
What progress is being made towards peace?
Everybody is hopeful that tomorrow we are going to see quite important changes on the ground in the warzone in southern Lebanon. It is believed that Israeli troops will relinquish some positions to Indian troops from the United Nations Unifil observer corps.
It will be an important psychological barrier to cross when an exchange of territory takes place and Israeli soldiers are seen to leave. Even if it's quite a small area it will boost people's confidence.
Additional UN peacekeepers will probably start to deploy next week. We hear that the French could be here quite quickly, they are already busy painting their jeeps white and their helmets blue.
It can't happen soon enough as there is a chaotic situation on the ground, with units of Israeli troops very close to Hezbollah fighters, and plenty of confusion thanks to the number of civilians coming back to their villages.
Nicholas Blanford, Times Lebanon Correspondent who is in the south at the moment, says that it is by no means clear who is in charge and if there was a breakdown in the ceasefire the situation could get very confused and bloody.
What are the obstacles to peace?
The big unknown with the power to cause trouble is exactly when the Lebanese army will deploy to the south. This is supposed already to have been agreed. But there is another Lebanese Cabinet meeting today and talks are going on about it even as we speak to decide what is going to be done.
Hezbollah has thrown a spanner in the works by announcing that it is "not the right time" to talk about disarming its fighters. This was one of the fundamental points of the ceasefire agreement, and Hezbollah is now going back on it.
There have been days and days of talks, with no signs yet of reaching a deal. The Government says that it wants to see the Lebanese army deploy and central authority extended down south, but the army cannot be asked to disarm Hezbollah. This has started to become a really thorny area which is feeding the sectarian divide.
We have picked up on serious strains developing between the sectarian groups. The Shias (who make up 35 per cent of the population) are unanimous that the war was a victory.
Other groups however are muttering under their breath that Hezbollah and the Shias have cause a huge amount of damage to this country, and what the heck do they think they are doing? They want to see the army down there as soon as possible. So there are potential splits developing between the difference communities which could be a bad omen for the future.
