you know take wonderful things start to happen sometimes the simplest seditions author missed and packed four yeah right it has not been proven yet they say. the main thing is that sets out zero apart from other news organizations is that a lot of our reporting is about real people but about ideas or politicians and what they may want to do but how policy and how events affect real people it's ok it's ok it's ok to. leave the mark the conflict could get off but it happened if this is not an act of creation and i'm going to move the walk. down like my family's status and wealth has benefited from their choice to enslave. some of us so stai risky to speak out as a surprise that. this job isn't just about what's on a script or a piece of paper it's about what is happening right now.

control the holiday inn and you control the the region around and that's why it was such a bloody battle. the important thing if you were walking around in beirut was not to be in the line of fire from the holiday inn. the bottle of adi even completed to division all the beadle into two sectors east and west beirut. but also for sauce but let's not look on our stuff see ya old one how can the club move from. the most powerful building in the system from it is the holidays. warmer tells our buildings that function as normal hotels but often in the context of real instability.

beirut once a jewel in the mediterranean but then torn apart by war. this is the sea front of the lebanese capital today around three decades after the end of the civil war. the devastating conflict lasted for fifteen years this street was the green line dividing beirut into east and west. dominating the front line was this concrete skeleton what was once the holiday and. its

walls still patted by the scars of war a grotesque witness to the years of separation killing and destruction. of find i missed tell me on i'm a painter and architectural activist from england and i've lived in beirut for about eight years. i'm particularly inspired by the memories and the feelings the emotions that embedded in the war and the buildings and beirut. which the most powerful building in the city for me is the holiday and. it's so famous and so iconic it's like a joint which. remains in the center of the city like and i'm resolved sky.

the holiday inn is still a stark reminder of war wounds that have yet to heal even today. the thirteenth of april nineteenth. seventy five was the official start date of the violence. but this was a proxy conflict fought during the cold war era. on one side lebanese right wing parties backed by the united states aiming to expel armed palestinian groups from lebannon. on the other left wing parties are allied with the p.l.o. and backed by the soviet union who saw the right wing christians as an extension of israeli and american influence in lebanon. only two weeks off to

beirut erupted the south vietnamese capital saigon fell to the communists ending over nineteen years of conflict in vietnam television's first war. now came levanon. armies of reporters and war photographers moved from southeast asia to the middle east and began to occupy beirut hotel rooms filled up with news crews and a new chapter of the cold war began. most of the correspondents t.v. crews and photographers checked into this hotel the commodore a safe haven in the west of the city. every day they would set off from here for downtown beirut for the main hotel district where the holiday inn was of the front line. the holiday inn was

a war who tell in the sense that it was part of an urban battle a battle between two factions of the strategic heights but it was an oppressor so none of the journalists covering the war to be interested in the whole of the holiday inn became one of the first significant physical manifestations of the. of the conflict. my name is kenneth morris and professor of european history and one of my key research interests in the history of war. war were tales are buildings that function as normal hotels but often in the context of real instability so i look a new minister tales study of us holiday invaders commodore but also the hotel europe on belfast for example the leader palace in nicosia cyprus all of these hotels have continued to function throughout this pedia of instability some are

within the real midst of an urban conflict. a war hotel emerges out of the history where journalists over a long period before wars start have somehow find it a congenial place to be a watering hole convenient near the center of activity in the city where the politics happens where the culture happens where you meet people the hotels which made beirut the tourist center of the middle east i'm jonathan demme will be and i've long been a reporter reporting from all over the world and therefore i've been in wars and most memorable amongst these was the experience of reporting from the lebanese civil war in the one nine hundred seventy s. this was once the richest part of the richest city in the middle east i first went to lebanon in nine hundred seventy two as a young reporter my very first article for a magazine here called the new statesman in which i effectively said this place is

waiting to blow all it needs is a spark because of the complexity of this very small country surrounded by competing nations. from the one nine hundred fifty s. to the early seventy's beirut was a magnet for the international pleasure seeking elite. they would say hotel district was at the heart of its luxury tourism economy making it a favorite jetsetter destination. one we speak about beirut's golden age as to switzerland of the middle east we are actually talking about an area the old town district that is the very specific product of a precise geopolitical project my name is sarah freeganism i'm

a political geographer based at the university of birmingham i am interested in hotels and urban conflict. all a day in came quite late in the day. before it was opened it came quite late in the day in two days or tell district which was considered a playground for celebrities and politicians and diplomats and spa is. the hotel district started life in the one nine hundred twenty s. when the st george open. for four decades it was one of the most prestigious hotels on the mediterranean. during the cold war in the one nine hundred fifty s. and sixty's the bar of the cent george was described as a revolving door of information. the british double agent came philby was a regular. he operated on the cover as

a foreign journalist and on the thirtieth of january nine hundred sixty three was spotted for the last time at the bar in the senate george before disappearing in beirut and reappearing a few months later in moscow. and . more smart hotels sprang up including the phoenicia even more luxurious than the st george. but when the holiday inn arrived in one nine hundred seventy four it was not only the tallest but also the last to open before the civil war broke out. i remember the experience of the phoenicia and i went to the holiday inn different scales of hotel but both of them pretty luxury hotels the phoenicia was very grand indeed. was a holiday inn but a very upmarket holiday inn so there was plenty of chrome plenty of silver plenty

of gold colored drapes it was done very much in the style that the arab world likes. lisa rose. and a son had a fair saddle to soften the holy well i let me come soldiers over there had a bill and the billy and sammy hum something was sorely embers. this friend or lonely day in the attic a metal surely the the will of man my friend was pretty bad the fair. land the city. has a good hello and. a short amount believe it had a bill he can feel inside me the only be elaborately breach. of us and i can live it you know who can time but bizarrely who will miss initiated medical were to him as an him at home. can only be

levied on machete if best but if so what can the numbers hold then i will not approve the creation of a seal and the seem very valid. artist tom young wanted to get inside the building today but to do that he had to get permission not only from the owners but from the lebanese army which still controls it as a strategically sensitive location young man wanted to indulge his passion painting i finally got the chance to go inside and my my my immediate feeling was one of just overwhelming emotion i felt sad i felt i felt horror but i felt amazing that's.

when i started my projects for the holiday inn and so i started painting it from the outside from many viewpoints. and then i discovered that it's the parents of a very good friend of mine but i have to refer parents sammy and. actually not only live next to the holiday inn and have a fantastic view of it from their balcony and they're possibly one of the very few people in lebanon who had their wedding reception dinner in the holiday inn. sam had. one hundred forty. and the opportunities from. men's awareness and let's put some of you out of office i mean again it's in my

blood how to believe in the all knowledge then began in the theater and more anomaly a flea i let us know by the moment as though it was not. or a catholic and it had it had we. on the last second and again that would that it had the economic demands i was so horny hedrick to. read it some put mechanize an ad that had a few guinness when the shuttle making machinery it was a bit of a diplomat. but i had barely known at that. there about russia. and the sun i looked at that idea but i never got back to see if that i. can marry that comes here. then. the national economic laws ian. lee nick n.

and wanted so remember only the in why they were the. head of it at the heart of. their holy then. seeing the building from a distance you understand its context within the city and what it must have meant in the civil war. or use this very bright red which expresses the blood that's been spilled their violent enough. hate anger and every time i slash. the paint it's a way of going through that anger and that violence and honoring that and i also raise it as if that itself is the erosion of memory. when the civil war started in april nine hundred seventy five the p.l.o. when the lebanese national movement for the maronite christian financial party. the

violence was triggered by the so-called bus incident on the thirteenth of april when fighters from the phalange party opened fire on a bus carrying palestinians as it drove through their stronghold of anal romani. twenty six palestinians were killed and dozens wounded unleashing what became a living hell on the streets of beirut which spread rapidly throughout lebanon. there was street fighting and shelling. there were snipers in kidnappings and sectarian massacres across the religious divide. the christian phalangist militias were based in east beirut but gradually took control of the main downtown streets in the west of the city the strategic port and the hotel district including the cent george the phoenicia the hilton and the

holiday inn. on the twenty fourth of october one thousand nine hundred seventy five leftwing muslim militias and palestinian armed groups under the umbrella of the national movement launched a massive offensive to try and regain control of the hotel district which straddled east and west. with the battle of the hotel's nine hundred seventy five nine hundred seventy six was was simply a battle for control of the city jake heights and who controlled the strategic heights crudes essentially dictate terms so controlling these buildings in the hotel district the high rise buildings became extremely important for the militias . which in the. central. had the only well when i was hit by the

sun's orders will release. the militia fighters started moving upwards. and they started going on top of towers one e's bush on more and other one is only day and. a few days into the battle of the hotels the guests are completely abandon the entire district and evacuated to the neighboring mediterranean island of cyprus. soon after the upper floors of the holiday inn were set on fire by intensive shelling. the fighting on the ground spread into what was called sector four where the phalangist had begun using the helton as

a sniper base in the days leading up to the start of the civil war the beirut hilton had been preparing for its grand opening but that never took place. instead militias on both sides checked in the for any v.i.p. guests. this rare archive video shows the moment when left wing fighters seized the lobby of the hilton after the phalangist had withdrawn to their positions in the holiday inn. the important thing if you were walking around in beirut was not to be in the line of fire from the holiday inn. my name is tim the well and i was the b.b.c.'s middle east correspondent in beirut in the seventy's eighty's ninety's i was in beirut during the much of the lebanese civil war i remember once trying to get down to the holiday inn to try and make some sort of effort to get into it to interview the phalangists and just as i was

getting to the point in an area where i'm or i see where you would come right round the corner into the face of the. gunfire started. scuttled back there was a dead body lying up the street. was all rather sinister i fled back to the hotel i'm afraid it was one of my braver days but did some people did get across to the holiday inn. on the twentieth of march nine hundred seventy six the so-called lebanese and palestinian joint forces launched their strongest attack yet against the frontline just in the hotel district. their aim was to control all key positions there but especially the highly strategic holiday in. control of holiday inn and you control the region around so you took the holiday in if you possibly could and that's why it was such a bloody battle. the holiday inn and it surrounds

blames for three days as opposing militias vying for control. no one knew which way the fighting was going not even the lebanese and foreign journalists who reported on the national movements first incursion into the hotel lobby. fair to any year before. b. anyone has a half and i'm on for a moment short i want to be on. a small group of christian phalangist sigman is to hide inside the hotel killed a senior national movement command before making their way up to the top on the twenty fourth floor. by the fallback.

position that. can block me from. the two stepsons who study. this out of fear about going i'm not smoked for. a while to say you had always thought well you don't like the army. the images of the sniper dropping twenty four floors to his death on the street and there's the militia celebrating for the cameras have become symbols of the form of the holiday and. soon bottles the tap and the room by room floor by floor stare by stare. the bottle of oddity incompleted the deviation of beirut through the green line into two

sectors east and west beirut and these partition remained over the course of the two funnelling back. and it passed by. no one will ever know how many heroes died here in the holiday inn the battle lasted three days and three nights and there were no prisoners at the end. jonathan dimbleby reported on several overseas wars for british commercial broadcaster i.t.v. and was one of the first foreign journalists to enter the holiday inn and document the aftermath of the fighting there smoldering ruins of what had been this very popular resort hotel and you looked at it and thought. this is what we do to one another. there's a hotel and now it's a shelf total show. light bulbs hanging down off of the wall war

wires chairs smashed up a piano that was in there which somehow it was there survived the chandelier is all like this broken as a sort of looking bizarrely. like gargoyles staring down at what humanity had done to itself below the vision it will not be a surprising vision but it was surprising that that could happen in beirut. the green line of course in the civil war was a place where flowers and trees grew abundant and so it's a reference to that but it's also a way of envisioning some brighter future kind of sense of hope that might spring

up in the ruins of the past. today around three decades on from the end of the civil war the complexity of lebannon sectarianism and the geopolitics of the region mean that the country and its people are still struggling to recover from its effects. the majority of the hotel district has been rebuilt. the enormous shell of the holiday inn still towers over downtown awaiting its fate. no more green line for it to look down on today. but the monument to fifteen years of struggle continues to attract visitors historians artists and filmmakers all seeking to understand the events of the seventy's and eighty's. more than

any of the ravaged building surviving the conflict it surely deserves the title war hotel. because we're not at the liver as sure that. rights are being violated. and food are stripped away. in the sand here anniversary of the wishes of the whites that stand up. like this. data for human rights. in nepal poverty leaves children vulnerable and at risk but sometimes those who say they can help cause the most harm one of many shines a light on predators in the aid industry. on al-jazeera.

this is al jazeera. hello i'm daryn jordan this is the out as they are news hour live from doha coming up in the next sixty minutes going before congress the head of the cia will brief u.s. senators on the death of a saudi journalist. after more than fifty years as part of opec qatar is calling it quits leaving the oil cartel in a bid to focus on cats. injured who the fighters are evacuated from yemen raising

her.