History
The area around Bint Jbeil has been inhabited for millennia. Archaeologists have suggested that the ancient fortified city of En-hazor, which the Book of Joshua describes as having been occupied by the Biblical Tribe of Naphtali, was located in the vicinity.
According to some historians, the name of the town is derived from a Yemeni name. They argue that the name is linked to Yemeni tribes that immigrated to the Levant centuries ago from Yemeni towns such as Jibla, Jabalan Al Ardaba, and Jabalan Al Raymah, or the two territories of the Jubail lowland and Jubail highland. Other historians claim that the founders of Bint Jbeil were the Phoenicians, who came from the northern Lebanese town of Jbeil (Byblos); they may have been Shia Muslims escaping the Seljuk occupation of Byblos. Bint Jbeil literally means 'Daughter of Byblos.'
The town is predominately inhabited by Shia Muslims (90%), though the surrounding area also has a significant Christian (10%) minority . It has been the site of violent conflict on several occasions during the last century.
Bint Jbeil was occupied by Israel in 1978 during Operation Litani, and again from 1982 until 2000 during the 1982-2000 South Lebanon conflict, during which time it was severely depopulated; as much as 75% of the population was reported to have left for other parts of Lebanon. It was the scene of occasional violent attacks on Israeli forces (that were occupying the Lebanese border regions of Israel), such as a deadly suicide car bombing carried out by a Hezbollah member on 25 April 1995. Hezbollah took control of the town following the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon.
As the largest town in the area, Bint Jbeil is sometimes known as the "Capital of the Liberated South" (among Lebanese Shi'ites), or the "Capital of Hezbollah" (among Israelis). It is considered one of the centers with symbolic history for Hezbollah. Under Lebanon's complicated system of sectarian electoral representation, Bint Jbeil's electoral district is allocated 3 Shi'ite seats in the country's parliament. Hezbollah did well in the area in the 2005 elections in Lebanon, winning the local seats to add to its nationwide tally of 14.
Bint Jbeil was again contested by Israeli and Hezbollah forces in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, during which it suffered heavy damage (See Battle of Bint Jbeil). Reconstruction as of early 2007 had been going very slowly, leading to reports of dissatisfaction among the residents. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the town in 2010 to show solidarity for Hezbollah and the local victims of Israel's attacks.
Read more about this topic: Bint Jbeil
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)