(2 of 3)
Hazards remain. Hardly a day passes without some form of violence, usually a revenge killing to settle personal accounts. The green line, the wartime boundary between Muslim and Christian zones (see map), where the lengthy list of sniper victims includes U.S. Ambassador Francis Meloy, remains a psychological barrier for many Beirutis. The line is clogged with traffic during the day but it can still be perilous after dark. Yet in most other sections of the city day or night, restaurants and discos are open and busy; action has even returned to the baccarat tables and slot machines the Casino du Liban, near Jounieh, though its Lido-style floor show has yet to reopen. In warm weather, Beirut's St Georges swimming club, located next to the internationally renowned burned-out hotel of the same name, has reopened for swimming, sunning and girl watching Owner Michel Nader, who spent $500,000 to refurbish his club, left one bullet-riddled section of the bar as it was, "so people can remember and talk about what madness the civil war was." Another sign of returning normality: the reappearance of foreigners, including about 2,000 of the 5,000 Americans who lived in Beirut before the fighting.
Even by modest estimates, some $5 billion will be required for full recovery in Lebanon, and such funds have been slow in coming. The first-step port reconstruction was financed by a $69 million U.S. grant. Lebanon's Arab neighbors, who bankrolled much of the fighting, have chosen to underwrite a far lesser share of the bill for peace. "The money in hand is a few swallows," an official told TIME Correspondent Dean Brelis. "It doesn't make a spring."
Potentially, a more dangerous shortfall is any true spirit of reconciliation. The Muslim left, leaderless since the assassination of Kamal Jumblatt, is afraid of once again slipping into a minority position within Lebanon's complex political equation, despite its large numbers. The Christians, for their part, remain bitterly resentful of the 250,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon, whom they blame for starting the war. As a hedge against any new outbreak of hostilities, the Christians have taken complete control of east Beirut and almost all of northern Lebanon where they are busy installing the infrastructure for a separate state including improvements in the deep-water port at Jounieh and a $25 million airport at Hamat—all with the active assistance of Israel In the deep south, Christian forces with Israeli troops at their side have been challenging the Palestinian presence along the Lebanon-Israel border Says Pierre Gemayel, 72, charismatic leader of the Phalange, the strongest Christian political and fighting group: "Israel has the power to break the Palestinian arm holding a knife at our throats. Is it so astonishing that we are cooperating with Israel?"