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Nasrallah: A next-generation leader

Who is Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the man who leads Hezbollah, who controls what some have called the world's best irregular army, who has moved Hezbollah from a purely terrorist organization to a Lebanese political party with two seats in the nation's cabinet?

What he may be is the next generation of Shiite leaders -- a man capable of leading a state within a state, a transitional figure between Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomenei, and Moqtada al Sadr, the leader of Baghdad's three milliion Shiites, and a man still capable of reminding Americans who first used car bombs against U.S. targets.

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Back in Beirut, 30 years later

The blogger, in his press pass photo as NBC's Beirut Bureau Chief in 1976, left, and today, as an NBC News producer based in Los Angeles.

The immigration officer at Damascus airport opened my 48-page passport full of stamps from Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Vietnam, Pakistan and Afghanistan and immediately spotted the ink that read Ben Gurion. "Whoops," I thought, "after 30 years working the Middle East story I should have known better."

"Come with me, Mister," the officer said, and escorted me to his superior.

Rule number one for working the Middle East story is always keep a clean passport. An Israeli stamp in your passport can mean you will be denied entrance into some Arab nations. So if your work calls you to visit Israel, you better get a second passport or ask the Israeli immigration officer not to stamp your document. They usually comply. If you remember to ask.

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An Israeli family's sacrifice

JERUSALEM - "I love being part of the Jewish state. As long as it goes on, we have to continue fighting for it."

In this hard-fought war, Sally Oren's words are hard spoken. Israel has just called her first-born son Yoav back to duty. Next week, he will be in uniform, fighting Hezbollah as a special forces solder in southern Lebanon, where eight Israeli soldiers died last week.

Sitting at a kitchen table drinking coffee with Sally, she tells you her husband Michael could have lost his life in Bint Jbail 23 years ago. That struggle to protect Israel, some say, was this nation's Vietnam. Michael came home with harrowing memories he didn't like to talk about.

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One woman's story

Muslim refugees wash their dishes in a stream in Rmeich, Lebanon. All photos by Houda Monsour

There are few hotels open here in Tyre, Lebanon. With bombs and artillery peppering the outskirts of this port city, most of its 270,000 resident fled weeks ago. Journalists double and triple-up into the few available rooms. And so it is not unusual to see refugees camping on the beach, or grassy areas nearby. They have found their way from the border, but don't have the means to continue safely to the mountains or north to Beirut.

A new group of refugees arrived here last night. They were weary border residents who had finally escaped the prisons that their villages had become. People who were rescued by aid convoys on Monday after Israel paused most of it aerial bombing campaign. Among them was Houda Monsour, her three children, and a young cousin. They caught my eye as they sat glumly on their suitcases holding a sign that simply said "Australia."

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So much for suspended airstrikes

We are sitting in the back of a four-wheel drive with our flak jackets on driving through the mountains of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. We wound up putting on all of our safety equipment after an Israeli drone targeted several vehicles that were not far from where we were. 

We’re along the Lebanese-Syrian border, on the Lebanese side. Earlier on Monday we visited the town of Aaita el Foukhar, which has essentially been completely cut off. An Israeli bombing last night took out the last road in or out of town. We started hiking the last seven miles to the village, but someone spotted us along the way and fortunately picked us up to bring us into town. 

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How could the U.S. pressure Israel?

What levers does the U.S. possess to pressure Israel -- if indeed it wanted to? The list is long --  from weapons deals to direct financing of Israel's military spending to special foreign aid packages.

The authors of a report (.PDF link) issued last week by the World Policy Institute (WPI) lays it out simply: "The billions of U.S. arms and aid it provides every year gives the Bush administration substantial leverage in pressing Israel for a cease fire in its attacks on Lebanon," notes William D. Hartung, a senior fellow at the WPI in New York.

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Reporting from a war zone

Photo by Ann Curry, NBC News

Reporting from this war zone has drawn our news team closer. You can see them in the above photo I took in Haret Hreyk, the Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs that is repeatedly targeted by Israeli warplanes. The smoke still rising from a bombing run just hours before, we were making our way through block after block of multi-storied apartment buildings turned to rubble.

That's producer Justin Balding on the left, sound man Drew Levinson in the middle and cameraman Mike Simon on the right.

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Watching Bush/Blair live in Israel

Our NBC News team is on Israel's northern border as I write this, and President Bush's joint news conference with British Prime Minister Blair is being aired live on television. The volume is all the way up because every few minutes we can hear the firing of Israeli 155 millimeter artillery into Lebanon a few hundred yards away.

The leaders of two of the world's most powerful nations are voicing their unified position to work for a sustainable peace in the region, before calling for an immediate cease-fire. Their comments seem a touch defensive, given a worldwide outcry over the disproportionate number of civilian deaths in Lebanon.

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Israeli soldier on his first time in combat

It is the first stop for dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians wounded by Hezbollah attacks. But even Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, the largest hospital in northern Israel, cannot escape the daily threat of rockets. Built between two popular Hezbollah targets (an Israeli naval base and the port of Haifa), Rambam has narrowly missed becoming a victim of the violence as well. Three Katyusha rockets landed on its coastal campus in a single day this week. No one was seriously hurt.

As we approached the hospital to visit with wounded soldiers, I warned my colleagues, photographer Brad Houston and soundman Michael Huntting, that we needed to keep our wits about us, listening closely for rocket warning sirens. It didn't take long. Just as soon as we parked, the blaring began. Doctors, nurses and staff members rushed through the front doors seeking shelter. Left behind, a dozen stretchers parked in front of the hospital in anticipation of the next round of victims.

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Did you know?

In all of the coverage of the Mideast conflict and the city of Tyre over the past few weeks, you may have noticed the odd-shaped peninsula that shows up in the satellite photos that we use. Jutting sharply into the Mediterranean Sea, the spit of land is one of the most notable features of the coastline. What's interesting to note is that it was man-made. In 333 B.C., Alexander the Great marched his army of Macedonians south and laid siege to the city of Tyre. The once crown jewel of the Phoenician Empire had faded a bit over the years, but it was still a major pawn in the conflict between the Persians and Greeks.

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