Jieh
Encyclopedia
Jieh is a seaside town in Lebanon
with an estimated population of 5000, 23 km south of Beirut
, in the Chouf district via a 20 minute drive along the Beirut to Sidon highway south of the capital. In Phoenicia
n times it was known as Porphyreon
and was a thriving natural seaport, which still functions today. The town is also known for its seven kilometre sandy beach, a rarity along Lebanon's mainly rocky coastline.
The Hebrew prophet Jonah
was said to have landed on its shores when he was spat out of the giant fish described in the Old Testament
, and a temple was built which stands until today. Many invaders passed through Porphyreon such as Tohomtmos the Egyptian who landed his soldiers on its natural seaport in order to fight the North. Alexander the Great relaxed on its shore preparing for the attack on Tyre. St Peter and St Paul also walked through Jieh several times.
In modern times Jieh took some of the harshest blows of the Lebanese Civil War
that raged from 1975-1990. Being a coastal town made it vulnerable to the countless numbers of Palestine Liberation Organization
raids on the area, as well as Israel
i army invasions during the 1980s, but the worst being on January 20, 1976. Jieh is being rebuilt, albeit at a slower pace than the nearby capital city of Beirut.
and the giant fish in the Old Testament
have been found in churches dug from underground over time. Examples of these are the grand floor mosaics from the Byzantine Empire
period which were so big that trucks were needed to transport them to museums as was the case with the fine collection owned by Walid Jumblatt, a local politician, which are on display at his Beiteddine museum.
Jieh has recently been the scene of accidental excavations of a Byzantine era Christian church and surrounding tombs which had been buried underground for centuries. Nothing is being done to protect them at the moment due to political hearings on the matters of the people versus the government - sec. landlords rights to preserve historical artifacts found on said property with vialble direct ancestry value and or documentation. The people versus the government - sec. landlords rights to preserve historical artifacts found on said property which directly pertain to all local populous religious beliefs, practices, and or scriptures or text. All which fall under the world preservation of historical and archaeological acts of 1971.
Actions to establish a new Jieh multi-denominational museum/preservation site are underway via the local community in its entirety. The site location is still to be disclosed via town meeting set to take place in 2010. The possible locations being considered are: The St. George's Cathedral, The Prophet Jonah's Tomb, The Phoenician Palace on the beach (to be donated by the current land owners the El Hajj family), and The Byzantine Palace (to be donated by the current land owners the El Hajj family). Note other locations can and will be submitted to the list up until the day before the town vote due to take place July 15, 2010.
The rebuilding of Jieh's two churches took effect a few years after the civil war ended during the construction boom. On the left below is Our Lady of the Star, Maronite Catholic Church undergoing reconstruction, as well as the new St Georges Church featured to the right.
Many Christian families who fled the town of Jieh have sent money back to rebuild Our Lady of the Star, which still needs $1million to complete. The rebuilding of St George's has also begun. While the original Mousque of the town built directly over the tomb of the Nabi Younes to safe-guard the tomb, built around a century ago by the El Hajj family (one of the prodominate Shiite families in the village) still lies in ruins due to a dispute between Shiite and Sunni factions on the placement and erection of the new facility.
This has caused great strifes between all religious denominations in the region. More now than ever since Hezbollah stepped into the middle of the dispute and erected a Shiite based mosque without finding a common ground between both Muslim parties and the consent on placement of the facility with the Christian denominations in the area to confirm that the volumous call to prayers would not be a hindrance upon their religious practices.
On the 28th of October, 2010, the St Georges Catholic Cemetery was the subject of a vicious attack by graveyard vandals. An exhumed body in the lone casket of one of the tombs was removed, dragged out of its resting place and disfigured.
There are many privately owned beach resorts ranging from the north of the town, which contains a few women's only beaches, down to Jonas beach on the very southern end of the 7 km sand strip.
of monks. It is the direct result of repeated demands by the local residents and two decades of planning and negotiations. Construction was completed in 1965.
The mission of this project was to provide education to students of different faiths from Jieh and neighboring villages in the Chouf district south of Beirut.
The convent and school were lightly damaged during the 1975 war and then evacuated in 1985 when the Christian population of the town was forced out. This time the structure sustained heavy damages and for the next six years became a living quarter for Palestinian refugees.
Renovations started in 1991 after generous contributions from charitable organizations, local politicians and residents. As soon as the work was completed, 600 students enrolled of whom only 18 were Christians.
Today both the convent and the school are fully restored and became a center of culture and education for students from the southern suburbs of Beirut to Sidon.
The power station at Jieh was closed for a period after the Israeli invasion in 1982, and so technicians who came to repair the older Toshiba turbines were deterred away from the country due to kidnappings of foreigners and the raging of the civil war. Likewise, the three Brown Boveri turbines had managed to get some service from BBC's India technicians rather than from the Switzerland headquarters. This meant that only minor repairs could be done, and so the generators could not run at full capacity. In 1982, the Lebanese Pound fell by a factor of 600 and so Electricite du Liban, Lebanon's government owned power company, could not afford to buy spare parts from overseas for its power stations. Hundreds of communities and ghettos across the country also refused (and still refuse) to pay electricity bills that funded the maintenance. This, as well as significant electricity piracy, resulted in deteriorating conditions of the power plant at Jieh.
Foreign investment, however, helped revive the plant numerous times until presently, although today the main problem is the lack of adequate fuel supply from the government that is needed to run the plant. Recent deals with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf
have been sought to receive discounted fuel to ensure good supply to the power plants.
According to current news articles, Jieh's power plant is undergoing extensive maintenance due to neighbouring Syria's recent cut of power supply to parts of Lebanon, meaning that the Jieh plant is on its way to full service again.
The recent July 2006 war between the Hezbollah and the Israeli Defence Forces resulted in the fuel stores at the power plant being bombed, leading to a catastrophic environmental disaster with crude oil spilling into the sea. On Friday July 14 at around 3am, the Jieh power plant was struck by missiles from navy destroyers off the Lebanese coast aimed at one of its six fuel tanks. It was hit once more the next day when two bridges on the main highway in Jieh were also destroyed by missile attacks. Ongoing black smoke continued to rise from the plant for weeks after the attack as the nearby tankers exploded one after the other from the heat while the remaining tens of thousands of litres of oil spilled
endlessly into the Mediterranean sea.
up in the nearby mountains, the Jieh coastline has been subject to the continual release of unclean water through the Barja to Jieh sewerage canal. This canal routinely dumps Barja's human faeces and other liquid waste into Jieh's coastal waters and directly affects tourism and the environment in this town.
There have also recently been plans to build a landfill in Jiyyeh. This has met some hard opposition by some government ministers and angry locals who don't want their town being turned into a garbage dump, and so at the moment the solution to the problem is not quite clear.
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
with an estimated population of 5000, 23 km south of Beirut
Beirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
, in the Chouf district via a 20 minute drive along the Beirut to Sidon highway south of the capital. In Phoenicia
Phoenicia
Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
n times it was known as Porphyreon
Porphyreon
Porphyreon is a Catholic titular see. The original diocese was a suffragan of the archdiocese of Tyre, in Phoenicia Prima. The location is now Jieh, Lebanon.-History:...
and was a thriving natural seaport, which still functions today. The town is also known for its seven kilometre sandy beach, a rarity along Lebanon's mainly rocky coastline.
The Hebrew prophet Jonah
Jonah
Jonah is the name given in the Hebrew Bible to a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BC, the eponymous central character in the Book of Jonah, famous for being swallowed by a fish or a whale, depending on translation...
was said to have landed on its shores when he was spat out of the giant fish described in the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
, and a temple was built which stands until today. Many invaders passed through Porphyreon such as Tohomtmos the Egyptian who landed his soldiers on its natural seaport in order to fight the North. Alexander the Great relaxed on its shore preparing for the attack on Tyre. St Peter and St Paul also walked through Jieh several times.
In modern times Jieh took some of the harshest blows of the Lebanese Civil War
Lebanese Civil War
The Lebanese Civil War was a multifaceted civil war in Lebanon. The war lasted from 1975 to 1990 and resulted in an estimated 150,000 to 230,000 civilian fatalities. Another one million people were wounded, and today approximately 350,000 people remain displaced. There was also a mass exodus of...
that raged from 1975-1990. Being a coastal town made it vulnerable to the countless numbers of Palestine Liberation Organization
Palestine Liberation Organization
The Palestine Liberation Organization is a political and paramilitary organization which was created in 1964. It is recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" by the United Nations and over 100 states with which it holds diplomatic relations, and has enjoyed...
raids on the area, as well as Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i army invasions during the 1980s, but the worst being on January 20, 1976. Jieh is being rebuilt, albeit at a slower pace than the nearby capital city of Beirut.
Archaeology
The town houses some of Lebanon's finest archaeological ruins, some of them buried under modern buildings, others waiting to be dug up by excavators, and others having already been removed and placed in museums. Mosaics depicting the story of the Prophet JonahJonah
Jonah is the name given in the Hebrew Bible to a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BC, the eponymous central character in the Book of Jonah, famous for being swallowed by a fish or a whale, depending on translation...
and the giant fish in the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
have been found in churches dug from underground over time. Examples of these are the grand floor mosaics from the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
period which were so big that trucks were needed to transport them to museums as was the case with the fine collection owned by Walid Jumblatt, a local politician, which are on display at his Beiteddine museum.
Jieh has recently been the scene of accidental excavations of a Byzantine era Christian church and surrounding tombs which had been buried underground for centuries. Nothing is being done to protect them at the moment due to political hearings on the matters of the people versus the government - sec. landlords rights to preserve historical artifacts found on said property with vialble direct ancestry value and or documentation. The people versus the government - sec. landlords rights to preserve historical artifacts found on said property which directly pertain to all local populous religious beliefs, practices, and or scriptures or text. All which fall under the world preservation of historical and archaeological acts of 1971.
Actions to establish a new Jieh multi-denominational museum/preservation site are underway via the local community in its entirety. The site location is still to be disclosed via town meeting set to take place in 2010. The possible locations being considered are: The St. George's Cathedral, The Prophet Jonah's Tomb, The Phoenician Palace on the beach (to be donated by the current land owners the El Hajj family), and The Byzantine Palace (to be donated by the current land owners the El Hajj family). Note other locations can and will be submitted to the list up until the day before the town vote due to take place July 15, 2010.
Religion
Jieh is home to many religious groups, mostly Maronite Christians and Shiite Muslims with some Melkites, and Sunni Muslims. The Shiite Muslims of this area mainly occupy the high rise section of Nabi Younes (Prophet Jonah) located in the central western and southern parts of the town on the coast. While the northern and central eastern area is occupied by the Christian and Sunni populous in the section of St. George's and Our Lady of the Star's Cathedrals.The rebuilding of Jieh's two churches took effect a few years after the civil war ended during the construction boom. On the left below is Our Lady of the Star, Maronite Catholic Church undergoing reconstruction, as well as the new St Georges Church featured to the right.
Many Christian families who fled the town of Jieh have sent money back to rebuild Our Lady of the Star, which still needs $1million to complete. The rebuilding of St George's has also begun. While the original Mousque of the town built directly over the tomb of the Nabi Younes to safe-guard the tomb, built around a century ago by the El Hajj family (one of the prodominate Shiite families in the village) still lies in ruins due to a dispute between Shiite and Sunni factions on the placement and erection of the new facility.
This has caused great strifes between all religious denominations in the region. More now than ever since Hezbollah stepped into the middle of the dispute and erected a Shiite based mosque without finding a common ground between both Muslim parties and the consent on placement of the facility with the Christian denominations in the area to confirm that the volumous call to prayers would not be a hindrance upon their religious practices.
On the 28th of October, 2010, the St Georges Catholic Cemetery was the subject of a vicious attack by graveyard vandals. An exhumed body in the lone casket of one of the tombs was removed, dragged out of its resting place and disfigured.
Tourism
Jieh's main hub of tourism focuses on its beaches that cover its coast.There are many privately owned beach resorts ranging from the north of the town, which contains a few women's only beaches, down to Jonas beach on the very southern end of the 7 km sand strip.
Education
Jieh is a town that houses the popular St Charbel College. The convent of Saint Charbel and the attached High School are run by the Lebanese Maronite OrderLebanese Maronite Order
The Lebanese Maronite Order , is a monastic order among the Levantine Catholic Maronite Church, which from the beginning has been specifically a monastic Church...
of monks. It is the direct result of repeated demands by the local residents and two decades of planning and negotiations. Construction was completed in 1965.
The mission of this project was to provide education to students of different faiths from Jieh and neighboring villages in the Chouf district south of Beirut.
The convent and school were lightly damaged during the 1975 war and then evacuated in 1985 when the Christian population of the town was forced out. This time the structure sustained heavy damages and for the next six years became a living quarter for Palestinian refugees.
Renovations started in 1991 after generous contributions from charitable organizations, local politicians and residents. As soon as the work was completed, 600 students enrolled of whom only 18 were Christians.
Today both the convent and the school are fully restored and became a center of culture and education for students from the southern suburbs of Beirut to Sidon.
Power
Jieh is home to Lebanon's largest and oldest thermal power plant. Located on the southern tip of Jieh's border with neighbouring town Wadi El Zeina, this power station houses 5 units; the first two Toshiba units having been installed in 1970, while the three remaining turbines from the Brown Boveri Company in Switzerland were put into service later on between 1980 and 1981. The Toshiba units produce 65MW while the Brown Boveri Company (BBC) units each produce 72MW of electricity, totalling 346MW for the Jieh plant when at full capacity. Although this is only the second highest total capacity after Zouk from Lebanon's 7 thermal power plants, it must be commended for being the first and only one from during the 1970s and mid 1980s until the first unit at Zouk was put into service in 1984.The power station at Jieh was closed for a period after the Israeli invasion in 1982, and so technicians who came to repair the older Toshiba turbines were deterred away from the country due to kidnappings of foreigners and the raging of the civil war. Likewise, the three Brown Boveri turbines had managed to get some service from BBC's India technicians rather than from the Switzerland headquarters. This meant that only minor repairs could be done, and so the generators could not run at full capacity. In 1982, the Lebanese Pound fell by a factor of 600 and so Electricite du Liban, Lebanon's government owned power company, could not afford to buy spare parts from overseas for its power stations. Hundreds of communities and ghettos across the country also refused (and still refuse) to pay electricity bills that funded the maintenance. This, as well as significant electricity piracy, resulted in deteriorating conditions of the power plant at Jieh.
Foreign investment, however, helped revive the plant numerous times until presently, although today the main problem is the lack of adequate fuel supply from the government that is needed to run the plant. Recent deals with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf
Arab states of the Persian Gulf
"Arab states of the Persian Gulf" or "Arab Persian Gulf states" or "Persian Gulf Arab states" or "Arabic Persian Gulf states" or "Arab States of The Gulf", are terms that refer to the six Arab states of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, bordering the Persian Gulf....
have been sought to receive discounted fuel to ensure good supply to the power plants.
According to current news articles, Jieh's power plant is undergoing extensive maintenance due to neighbouring Syria's recent cut of power supply to parts of Lebanon, meaning that the Jieh plant is on its way to full service again.
The recent July 2006 war between the Hezbollah and the Israeli Defence Forces resulted in the fuel stores at the power plant being bombed, leading to a catastrophic environmental disaster with crude oil spilling into the sea. On Friday July 14 at around 3am, the Jieh power plant was struck by missiles from navy destroyers off the Lebanese coast aimed at one of its six fuel tanks. It was hit once more the next day when two bridges on the main highway in Jieh were also destroyed by missile attacks. Ongoing black smoke continued to rise from the plant for weeks after the attack as the nearby tankers exploded one after the other from the heat while the remaining tens of thousands of litres of oil spilled
Jiyeh power station oil spill
The Jiyeh Power Station oil spill is an environmental disaster caused by the release of heavy fuel oil into the eastern Mediterranean after storage tanks at the thermal power station in Jiyeh, Lebanon, south of Beirut, were bombed by the Israeli Air force on July 14 and July 15, 2006 during the...
endlessly into the Mediterranean sea.
Environmental Problems
As a result of crude violations of the environment directly by the council of BarjaBarja
Barja is a coastal town in the Chouf District of Lebanon within the Mount Lebanon Governorate. With a population of around 22,000 people, Barja lies 32 kilometers south of Beirut; at the midway point between the capital and Sidon...
up in the nearby mountains, the Jieh coastline has been subject to the continual release of unclean water through the Barja to Jieh sewerage canal. This canal routinely dumps Barja's human faeces and other liquid waste into Jieh's coastal waters and directly affects tourism and the environment in this town.
There have also recently been plans to build a landfill in Jiyyeh. This has met some hard opposition by some government ministers and angry locals who don't want their town being turned into a garbage dump, and so at the moment the solution to the problem is not quite clear.