ABSTRACT
On 14 August 2006, the Israeli war on Lebanon fi nally ended aft er 33 days of continuous bombardment that resulted in 1,200 deaths, 4,000 injuries, and the displacement of approximately one million individuals from their homes and villages. Beirut awoke to fi nd its southern suburbs devastated. Of the estimated 12,000 air strikes over Lebanon, 4,000 targeted the southern suburb of the capital. The scale of destruction was outrageous given its intensity and the residential nature of the target location (fi gure 3.1). The southern suburb saw the destruction of 1,232 mostly residential buildings which housed approximately 30,000 residential and 1,600 commercial units. Of the aff ected buildings, 951 were partially destroyed and the rest completely razed (Jeshi, 2008).
