Lebanese environmental activists carry a banner calling on Arab countries to take action against climate change, as Arab participants enter the venue of the annual conference of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED) in BEIRUT, November 19, 2009. The forum highlights the impact of climate change on Arab countries. REUTERS/ Mohamed Azakir

When Arab leaders arrived last week  in Beirut to discuss how to avert climate change, they did so – without exception – in elaborately large cars.

Attendees at the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED) conference in Sin El Fil came with a swashbuckling desire to adapt to the proliferating damage being wrought by global warming. They came with high rhetoric and ambitious plans.

They also came with an hypocrisy which extended way beyond their deeply inappropriate transport.

Dr Rashed Bin Fahed, UAE environment and water minister, summed up the general mood of martyred victimhood which permeated every discussion at the entire conference.

“There is no doubt climate change today is a fact. It’s true that our region is not contributing to this. However, the threats of climate change to our region may be very dangerous,” he said.

What is true is that the MENA region contributes less than five percent of total global carbon emissions. Since we are on facts, however, it is also true that the Gulf alone exports more than 15 million barrels of oil every day to developed and developing countries alike.

To say that the Arab world is absolved from blame after providing carbon-guzzling countries with swaths of non-renewable energy - for stratospheric profits –  is preposterous. In the same way as you are responsible if you feed a morbidly obese person until their liver finally collapses, so the Arab region cannot claim total innocence on climate change.

It’s true that our region is not contributing to this.

The Arab world is especially vulnerable to climate change; a mere one degree increase in global temperatures – an absolute certainty, by all measurements – will affect 41,500 square miles of MENA land. Up to 15 percent of Qatar could disappear and global warming, if undinted, will wipe more than 12 percent off Egypt’s GDP due to desecration of the Nile Delta.

Hearing AFED’s recommendations today – which are to be taken to Copenhagen as part of the Hariri-headed Lebanese delegation – was encouraging. They called on Arab countries to start shouldering responsibility, rather than sit back and claim that since climate change isn’t their fault, they shouldn’t have to do anything to avert it.

What Copenhagen may or may not achieve shouldn’t prevent Arab countries from implementing cuts in emissions or considering global warming as a key part of future development policy. MENA countries should still seek to alter their ways, starting with a switch to greener forms of transport as is currently being trialled in Jordan.

This would demonstrate genuine willingness to fight climate change, to say nothing of eliminating ironic entrances to future environmental forums.

But

China's Qu Bo (L) fights for the ball with Lebanon's Hussein al-Amin during their 2011 AFC Asian Cup qualifier match in Beirut November 14, 2009. REUTERS/Jamal Saidi (LEBANON SPORT SOCCER)

Frantic, ferocious and more than a little farcical; this was an international football match Lebanese style.

Thousands of fans descended upon Beirut’s Municipal Stadium on Saturday to see minnows Lebanon take on the might of China in a qualifying match for the 2011 Asian Cup.

With China having roughly 300 players at their disposal for every one Lebanese, the odds looked stacked against the Cedars. That Lebanon was rock bottom of Group D before Saturday’s clash, with zero points, did little to dispel the pre-match feeling of impending annihilation.

As dusk fell over the Al-Baladi stadium, Lebanon’s fans – flanked by police trussed up like extras from Robocop, sub-machine guns and tear gas canisters at the ready – adopted an intriguing tactic: abuse the opposition team, fans (all 15 of them) and the referee. Relentlessly.

As the Chinese national anthem whirred up, so did the jeers and whistles from the Lebanese faithful, seemingly more interested in banging drums and hurling insults than watching a game of football.

As it was, Lebanon started brightly, with the ethereal Hassan Maatouk – the Cedars’ all-time top goalscorer – terrorising the Chinese right-back and forcing goalkeeper Yang Zhi to save well after turning brightly and fizzing a curling shot from 25 yards.

As the game progressed, China’s superiority began to show. As did Lebanon’s petulance.

The first China goal had the merest whiff of offside, but this was enough to provoke apoplectic protests from the Lebanese back four, captain Roda Antar receiving the first yellow card of what quickly descended into an ill-tempered game for his trouble.

After the break, China doubled their lead in what looked to be a perfectly legitimate manner. Not so, said Lebanon. Handball.

Every other country I have ever watched has had calls like this one apparently go against them. They argue, they shout, then they get on with their job, which is playing football. Not Lebanon.

I think the referee made two mistakes. The referee helped China win the match.  - Emile Rustom, Lebanon Coach

Coach Emile Rustom - never the most sedate of individuals – was furious. Gesturing vigorously from the dugout, he appeared to be calling his players off in protest. The referee, the unfortunate Mr Hamad al-Badawi, trotted over to see what the iridescent Rustom was complaining about now. Then the fans started.

Again a first for me, the Lebanese supporters hastily composed a jaunty chant, in which they suggested that Mr Badawi might care to fornicate with his own sister. Children, eyes wild with excitement, joined in the song and soon the entire stadium was beseeching the referee to eat shit.

Mr Badawi is a referee. But he wanted to make it clear that he was a referee with feelings. After a 15 minute stoppage in which fans hurled more than unkind words and police were mobilised to contain some of the most rambunctious supporters, Badawi sent for the stadium announcer.

“If you don’t stop being mean to me, I’m calling this game off,” he whimpered over the stadium tannoy, or words to that effect.

Surprisingly, the fans responded with profanities at double volume, dancing, jeering and waving flags in time with the drums.

The referee’s bottom lip quivered and, presumably mindful of the mountain of paperwork he’d have to trawl through were he to call the whole damn thing off, reluctantly continued the match.

Lebanon went on to lose 2-0 (it could have been worse had Celtic’s Zheng Zhi not spaffed a penalty wide with 10 minutes to play) and now have no hope of qualifying for 2011.

Not that the fans minded. They’d already had their fun.

Let me make this clear. I am no denouncer of Ziad Baroud. Lebanon’s hugely popular Interior Minister, who received widespread acclaim from his handling of the June 7 election, is a man I appreciate greatly. His apparent ability to see past the sectarian rivalry – in which many senior politicians seem hopelessly mired – is as refreshing as it is admirable. Baroud’s maxim of “security is a red line,” over which partisanship must never tread, is welcome.

From an administrative point of view, his tenure on the Internal Security Forces has been successful. As an order-keeping unit they are rightly respected, regardless of the heavy-handed tactics individuals within the ISF sometimes employ.

But the Interior Ministry’s decision to ban the use of motorcycles outside of daylight hours in the wake of the clash in Ain al-Remmeneh that left one man dead and four others seriously injured is a reaction straight from the knee-jerk category.

True, there are almost daily reports from the suburbs of Lebanon’s big cities of residents being terrorized by gangs of thugs atop scooters. Two-wheeled vehicles are perfect – so the argument goes - for people seeking to harm or intimidate others as they can make speedy getaways through Beirut and Tripoli’s labyrinthine alleyways.

But banning all motorcycles is unnecessarily heavy-handed and may yet prove counterproductive to its acclaimed goal of reducing security breaches.

Security is a red line.

There is first the issue of a lack of differentiation. As a logical premise, a considerable percentage of criminals ride motorbikes or scooters. But the “bad people are people, bad people ride motorcycles, therefore all people who ride motorcycles are bad” reduction is obviously wrong. A great deal of law-abiding citizens are being punished for the misdemeanors of a few.

Next is the fact that people who do bad things on motorbikes don’t do it because they ride on two wheels. They do it because they are bad people. If someone has a score to settle or a bone to pick, they are unlikely to be deterred if they can’t ride their scooter. A murderer doesn’t become absolved if you take away his ride – he just becomes a slower murderer.

There are a few exemptions from the ban; bakers and press for example (lucky me). But in many cases carrying a bag of flour between your seat won’t make you safe from prosecution, as many bikes are unregistered. Even if, like me, you have all documents present and correct, you still face regular interrogation from soldiers holding guns asking gruffly for your papers. This is a deeply unpleasant experience even if all it does is make you five minutes late for work.

 Unforeseen side-effects from the IM’s bitter medicine are likely to emerge. Many people rely on their bikes to get to work or visit family members. The ban won’t just make this harder to do, it is likely to deteriorate Beirut’s already derisory traffic situation further, as scooters and bikes are narrow; cars and minibuses are not.

There is another, less comfortable association with targeting motorbike and scooter owners. I have been stigmatized for owning a scooter, with people telling me, quite openly that “only poor people and zooz (Lebanese chavs) ride them.” Baroud’s decision to ban their use raises the doubtless-unintended prospect of the Ministry targeting a particular socioeconomic group. Less well-off people will find it harder to get to work or travel around the city to do what they need to do. (Generally but by no means definitively) richer car-owners will continue unscathed. There is no proof that this was the IM’s intention, but the suggestion is nonetheless uncomfortable. 

Of course, Baroud faced a barrage of political pressure to be seen to be doing something following outrage over Ain al-Remmeneh from senior governmental figures. But a blanket ban on two-wheels is misjudged.

Ali sits outside MAG's Kfar Zor headquarters. I have no idea who the man in the shades is

Ali Murad smiles serenely as he tells me about the day he lost his leg.

He is dressed smart, in a pristine, grey t-shirt and khaki combat trousers and speaks in broken English with measured understatement.

“I was conscious when I went to the hospital, believe me, I remember everything,” he says and shuffles awkwardly onto his prosthetic leg.

Ali was part of Lebanon’s Mine Action Group, a team of some 400 trained mine clearers who have been working to rid the country from its estimated one million cluster bombs – relics from the 2006 war with Israel that still carpet much of south Lebanon – on a fateful February morning. His squadron had been working on a plot of land, known to be “heavily contaminated” all morning and had stopped for a break. These were the last moments of Ali’s first life.

On the way back to his lane – a metre-wide column of scrub land that each worker has to scan for visible bomblets – Ali stood on an unexploded M-77 submunition. In an instant, the bomb had obliterated his right foot and badly damaged his other leg.

“I looked at my foot and said ‘It’s finished,” Ali recalls, hoisting up his right trouser leg and showing his prosthetic forelimb. As medics crowded round their wounded colleague, Ali issued a simple instruction, even as his foot was bandaged back on to his body. “Save the other one.”

Ali was taken to Hammoud Hospital in the nearby port of Sidon and pleaded with surgeons to save as much of his leg as they could. In listening to their stricken patient, however, the doctors made a terrible mistake, keeping too much of his ruined limb. In the coming days, Ali needed an additional operation – risking infection of toxic shock – to remove enough flesh for a false leg to be attached in the future.

In a way, I’m glad it was me.

Doctors feared that the injuries Ali had sustained would debar him from even walking again. They hadn’t reckoned with their patient’s willpower. Ali was back, working the fields and making Lebanese soil safe for its inhabitants, less than three months after his accident. The man, unassuming and shy, turned out to be irrepressible.

Ali has fought against a life changing ordeal, coming to terms with the loss of his leg the way you or I would grieve a departed relative, yet he and the rest of MAG’s clearance teams are currently striving against an altogether more profound problem: funding.

When I went to Nabetieh to go on my second mine clearing operation, there were some rather big cheeses who cam along: Brigadier General Fehmi – head of the Lebanese Mine Action Centre – and Marta Ruedas, Lebanon’s most senior UN official. They both stressed their hope that the mine clearance programme in Lebanon would continue to receive funding, even as international governments and philanthropists are suffering in the wake of the global financial crisis and what the latter termed as “donor fatigue.” Neither said how they hoped to achieve this.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, Lebanon had 64 mine clearance teams, there are currently only 16 and this is set to diminish. Marta tells me that ridding Lebanon once and for all of landmines is an achievable goal – it is a small country, after all. But if governments continue to withhold their support then civilians here will keep being added to the list of more than 300 – mostly children – who have been killed or maimed by cluster bombs in the last three years.

Ali is – perhaps understandably given his experiences – pragmatic and selfless on the topic of mine clearing.

“I think about my bomb every minute. I stepped on it, and that was bad,” he says. “But then I think: it could have been a child. It could have been a woman harvesting za’atar, or anyone else. I survived, and I can continue to help the people here in Lebanon.

“In a way, I’m glad it was me.”

Suited for cluster-bomb clearing in Tibnin, Lebanon

One of the most enjoyable things about being a reporter in Lebanon is the access it affords.

You want to speak to the Interior Minister? Sure, here’s his mobile and home phone number. You need a quote from the Head of the Internal Security Forces? Go ahead, he’ll call you after lunch and tell you, in perfect English, what it is you’re after.

Last week, I wanted to speak with UNIFIL troops in the south of the country, and file a dispatch from Tibnin on how the cluster-bomb clearing operation is going three years after the Summer War of 2006.

After a few phonecalls and correspondence with a charmingly eccentric Italian UN General, I was on the way to the south, a few kilometers from Israel, a state against which Lebanon is still officially at war.

Then the red tape catches up with you. You want to go south of Sidon in a professional capacity? Go ahead, but you need the Army’s permission and this takes 15 days. I know you want to go this week, but there is nothing I can do, there’s a procedure to follow, after all.

15 days turned rapidly into 2 as our terrier of a receptionist battered through this pointless beauracracy, yet I still found myself sitting in a stifling mobile in the LAF’s Sidon barracks. Calls in Arabic, made with not the slightest tinge of urgency. Paperwork. Sighs and queue-jumping. Eventually I get passed a hand-written slip, containing precisely three digits and a signature cast in childish scrawl. Next time, I will forge the pass myself.

Once in Tibnin, I get greeted by Lt Monnoyer and a half-hour health and safety blurb. We patrol an area of sparse shrubland, the earth parched from the baking sun which beats relentless down as the mine clearers get to work.

In the last 72 hours of the 2006 war, Israel dropped more than a million cluster bomb M42 submunitions, so that – according to many Lebanese – they could continue killing for the next 30 years. Hundreds have been killed or maimed by these de facto landmines (an estimated 40 percent of the bomblets didn’t explode upon contact with the ground).

I speak later with someone from Lebanon’s Mines Advisory Group. She tells me that the Israelis, knowing that a ceasefire was imminent, deliberately dropped weapons on Lebanon that were well past their use-by date.

We’ve found bomb casings with ‘use by 1978′ on them. They knew what they were doing.

The day I file my dispatch, there is news of two Syrian farmers who are obliterated the moment they step on a cluster bomb particle. These deaths will keep being reported, with a seemingly inescapable sense of ennui. This is a scandal. But people have grown used to this and the general malaise and lack of funding which now engulfs Lebanon’s landmine clearing operations.

Back in Beirut, I report on a prison break, involving a Fatah al-Islam inmate being held on terrorism charges. Want to speak to the head of the Army? Here’s his direct line.

Everyone has their idea of a good dog.

Be it lumbering and covered in damp grass or small, fluffy and crammed into a handbag, there is a dog for every kind of person. My ideal dog (since you asked) is a sedate Labrador situated at the foot of my armchair, the kind who doesn’t require endless attention and doesn’t mind when you break wind and blame it on him.

There are many dogs in Lebanon, and not many people find them ideal. Some can be found loitering round the grimier backstreets of East Beirut, their owners fled from war or hardship. Others form packs in the southern villages surrounding Nabatieh. They are fed on raw meet and terrorize the locals, high on protein and the taste of blood.

Last week, a prominent Shiite cleric issued a fatwa authorizing the killing of stray dogs after receiving a letter from Nabatieh residents, enraged over a series of recent dog attacks.

“The rule is to protect animals and preserve their lives,” said Sheikh Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in the statement. “But if their behavior represents a danger for the lives of people … as is the case with stray or fierce dogs, then killing them is authorized.”

I called animal rights groups for their response to these comments, fully expecting outrage. But, partly out of pragmatism and partly out of the fact that Fadlallah is one Shiekh you don’t mess with in Lebanon, their answers were measured.

Yes, stray dogs are a nuisance, even a danger when vulnerable people are set upon by them. But shooting them isn’t a good way of alleiviating the problem, especially when they are usually angry at being beaten and starved in the first place.

And so I found myself, too early this morning and with a thoroughly-installed hangover, clambering up a dirt path in the Metn to visit a home for stray dogs.

I won’t lie: climbing through the metal gate was scary. About 50 dogs, some very big, some missing eyes and legs, immediately descended upon me, gnashing teeth and barking as if I was dressed as a meat-drenched postman.

Most of the strays there have been abused; some have had their eyes shots out, others deliberately run over.

In the corner, under a blue tarpaulin canopy sits Andora, a lustrous, toffee-coloured Staffordshire terrier, perched haughtily on a broken foam sofa. She turns over to reveal a livid red gash in her side. She’s been fighting. The shelter will do what they can for her, as they feed, water and walk every dog, every day.

BETA, who runs the shelter for about 200 stray dogs, has a tough task. It is two-pronged.

First, they are trying to find a way to neuter as many of Lebanon’s estimated 35,000 strays as they can. Second, they are looking to educate the Lebanese about ethical animal treatment.

It’s difficult to say which will be trickier. As I’m leaving a farmer in an improbably large sombrero comes sauntering down the track. The dogs, evidently displeased at the intrusion, bark ferociously but at a cautious distance. The man, bucktoothed and ignorant, picks up a stone and hurls it at the nearest animal, a Dalmatian cross. It misses, but only just.

Carol, a volunteer at BETA, screams something in Arabic with far greater vemon than even the biggest dog’s bark. The man looks, shrugs his shoulders and throws another stone.

For information on how to donate to BETA, visit: http://www.betalebanon.org/

It was 10.13am when the jets flew past. Roaring over the port in east Beirut, they banked high in the air and drifted off over the glittering Mediterranean.

My first reaction was probably shared by most people up at that time. Jetplanes? Who owns them in this region? Nervous looks were exchanged and the Daily Star splashed the next day with a story detailing “intensive” Israeli flyovers.

At the same time, reports from the south suggested that four merkava tanks had been mobilized near the contested occupied Kfar Shuba region, further heightening tensions next to the Blue Line. At the same time, LAF commander Qahwaji ordered his troops to remain on the highest level of alert and to be ready to combat Israeli aggression.

A dislocated quiet descended in Beirut. People here live with a constant unease; a shallow buried sense of imminent peripeteia.

Things began to sound more foreboding. A freight lorry unloading its metal container sounded, momentarily, like an explosion. Fireworks, the mainstay of the Beirut soundtrack, had people thinking harder than usual.

But things had been missed. The National reported that people had begun to flee Beirut.

The jets, it emerged, were MIGs from the long-dormant Lebanese Air Force. Why didn’t anyone tell us? They did but, incredibly, the press release was missed by all Lebanese media, possibly too preoccupied with what war machines were flexing their muscles across its southern border to take note of what was happening at home.

An army spokesperson said, a little sheepishly, after the incident:

“It is no problem, the pilot is training. We warned all the newspapers and television stations yesterday in a press release.”

Whoops.

Still, the increased activity near the UNIFIL-administered Blue Line, stemming from an explosion at a Hizbullah arms cache last month near the southern village of Khirbet Silim, is cause for near-universal concern.

(It has since emerged that Hizbullah number two Naeem Qassam admitted that the group had stored weapons there, but denied they had breached resolution 1701 claiming the munitions were “old” and “normal”. That’s fine then.)

A week after the incident at Khirbet Silim, more than 100 protesters confronted a UNIFIL-lead investigative team, hurling rocks and injuring 14 peacekeeping troops. The protest sparked a flurry of articles questioning the efficacy of resolution 1701 and conjecture on whether or not Hizbullah, with its solid southern support base, had turned their back on UNIFIL.

To further confuse matters, Al Qaeda in Lebanon, the Brigade of Abdullah Azzam, released a video claiming responsiblity for rockets fired at Israel from south Lebanon. In doing so, they slammed Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah for being a “big imposter” in his support for “crusader” UNIFIL forces.

If all this suggests a ratcheting up of antipathy around the Blue Line, it’s virtually impossible to tell what’s actually happening down there. Misinformation abounds; one only needs to leaf through the Lebanese dailys to hear several conflicting reports.

What is clear (as it can be, in the Beirut smog) is that something is going on down there, be it zionist cows, observation posts, protests or tank mobilisation.

Not according to UNIFIL.In an exclusive interview with its deputy spokesperson, I was informed that there has been no deterioration in Blue Line security.

Herein lies the problem. UNIFIL has a mandate to administer and demarcate a de facto border, but can only work in conjunction with authorities from one side of it. The other side, so it seems, can do more or less as they please and UNIFIL, although trying to win hearts and minds of Lebanese soldiers and civilians alike, must maintain a diplomatic silence.

Speak to people and they’ll tell you something hasn’t happened when it has. Read the papers and they’ll tell you something has happened when it hasn’t. Who you listen to won’t change the situation, just how you feel about it.

Of all the emails you expect to find in your inbox on a Sunday, a video from Al Qaeda isn’t one of them.

To appear in one the next day is the very definition of unforeseen.

The shaky CGI and amateurish, hand held footage wouldn’t look out of place on an late-night Channel4 educational video. In a way, this makes sense; al Qaeda want to teach the veiwer a lesson.

At the start of the year, two Katuysha rockets were fired into Israel from positions in South Lebanon. The attack, which injured several civilians and damaged buildings in an Israeli village, threatened to shatter the fragile peace that had fitfully settled between the two countries since the 2006 war.

All the usual suspects denied involvement at the time so the significance of seeing two hooded militiamen assembling and positioning rockets from what looked a lot like South Lebanon on Sunday was neither lost on me nor the Lebanese media.

The story I wrote after seeing the video, after sitting for hours with antagonizing chants and poorly modeled CGI rockets hitting giant stars of David, was an exclusive to the Daily Star. It is nice to beat our competitors to it from time to time.

A call from PressTV ensued. They wanted to interview me. Did I think the video really was from al Qaeda? Was it really Zawahiri’s voice that features, earnestly and angrily, towards the end of the piece? How did they get such an aesthetically-challenged special effects editor to work on it?

In spite of my insistence that I wasn’t an analyst, I ended up talking as if I’d been an expert on the clandestine operations of the Brigade of Abdullah Azzam in South Lebanon for my whole life. As the camera rolled, I couldn’t help feeling like I was treading water in a sea of sweeping statements and retarded understanding.

The next time I’m asked to be an analyst, I think I’ll stick to reporting on forest fires.

We’ve been in Haifa Hospital for precisely seven minutes before the power cuts out.

I know this because the clock on the wall by the reception booth sits proudly in between a picture of Yasser Arafat and a plastic sign showing a Kalashnikov rifle crossed through with livid red strokes. No guns. Not in here, at least.

“Electricity is one of our biggest problems,” says Dr Alim al-Ahmed. “You’ve lived in Beirut, you know the problems we have. Here, those problems are ten times worse.”

In the next 30 minutes the power goes out a further six times. Each time the two head surgeons, sitting languidly in their air-conditioned office, stop their paperwork for the briefest of moments, and resume with eyes squinted.

With me on the leather sofa is Dr Suzie Millar, Head of A&E at INOVA Fairfax Hospital in Washington. She was prepared for the power cuts and has brought provisions. She rummages in her backpack and pulls out two headlamps.

As the Palestinian surgeons play with the lights, shining yellow beams onto the back of their hands, I ask Dr Millar what they will use them for.

“They’ll use these for operating when the power cuts out,” she says, as if exasperated by the prospect.

And what did she use them for back in the US?

“These?” she asks, incredulously. “Maybe going camping.”

After being walked around the three story Hospital in the heart of Bourj al-Barajneh, I realise that Dr Millar’s comments were not disparaging. The hospital has 6 doctors and 30 beds for the estimated 60,000 Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon.

It is funded entirely by the PLO, somewhat changed from its recent history, and Ahmad, from the Palestine State Embassy, explains to me how it handles any hospital’s most difficult operation, finance.

“If a woman comes to us and needs attention, we know she cannot afford it. The cost of a bed is 125,000 lira ($75) and that’s without drugs or treatment.

“We will ask her what she has, make some inquiries and we will get her the money.”

She will be helped because she is a Palestinian. The same treatment doesn’t apply outside the camps.

(As this point, it seems fair to say that the word ‘camp’ is highly misleading. These ‘camps’ are made of concrete buildings, with electricity generators, running water, balconies and airy courtyards, wrought iron door knockers and leather furniture. The muddy streets are flanked with restaurants, garages, internet cafes and a splendid mosque, crescented minaret looming imperiously over the concrete walls marking the ‘camp’ boundary. Some Palestinians have lived in these settlements for more than 40 years, three generations sharing a living space. The word ‘camp’ is used in Lebanon to emphasize the transient nature of the accommodation. But these people are not going away.)

In fact, they’re increasing. I speak with Dr Ichlas, Head of the Maternity Unit at Haifa. She tells me she and her two midwives delivery about 50 babies a month.

A month? That’s an impossibly small number for 60,000 inhabitants. This is their only hospital.

Dr Ichlas tells me that although UNWRA runs maternity clinics for consultations, antenatal care etc., upto 30 percent of Palestinian births are done at home. As we leave the unit, I walk past a tiny, jaundiced baby stretched out as if it is sunbathing under a UV light.

Although it can’t be more than two days old, its delicate ears are pieced with aquamarine studs. The nurse, coming to check on the girl, strikes up a Marlboro Light before readjusting the light.

These are first-world doctors, working in third-world conditions, in a country with first-world facilities.

We pass along a ward with brightly painted walls, each room filled with a patient and apparently half their extending family. There is an old man in his white, slightly sullied underwear with a drip in arm and cigarette in mouth.

Dr Millar, despite being evidently appalled by the place’s sanitation, has nothing but admiration for Haifa’s physicians.

“These people are working without even the most basic of equipment. They don’t even had a CAT scan and, for trauma surgeons, that is unbelievable.

“In the States, anyone with anything suspect gets sent upstairs [for a CAT scan]. Here, they have no idea what’s happened until they open them up.”

In a trauma surgery theatre, there is a brand-new ventilator sitting forlorn in the corner, it’s packaging still draped loosely over its monitor. I ask Dr Alim why they don’t use it.

“Unfortunately, no one can use it.”

It’s a story that applies to an entire race. As Palestinians these doctors are barred from working anywhere in Lebanon, other than at Haifa. All of them have trained in Russia or Libya, easily as well-trained as western doctors. That they are superb physicians is unacknowledged by circumstance. They work with what little they have, saving lives when they can, but more often watching patients die because they lack access to facilities a mile way that would see them saved.

“These are first-world doctors, working in third-world conditions, in a country with first-world facilities,” says Dr Millar.

As we leave the hospital, there’s a man hunched over outside the maternity ward. A nurse in baby pink scrubs walks out with a beaming smile. The man – big as a bear, strong and ruddy – crumples into tears of joy.

This morning I visited Haifa hospital in the Palestinian camp Bourj al-Barajneh, South Beirut.

This hospital, funded almost exclusively by the PLO, has 3 emergency rooms, one ventilator and 30 beds for the estimated 60,000 Palestinians residing in Lebanon.

Here are some of the pictures I managed to hurriedly take.

Three trauma surgeons after operating on a young man's abdomen

The maternity clinic with stirrups et al

A young Palestinian recovering from heatstroke

Maternity unit in Haifa Hospital