Jieh

Infobox City Lebanon
official_name = Jieh
native_name = الجية


image_caption = Jieh coastline
governorate = Mount Lebanon Governorate
district = Chouf District
leader_title = Mayor
leader_name = Dr Georges Nader El-Azzi
lat_deg = 33
lat_min = 39
lat_sec = 56.51
lat_hem = N
lon_deg = 35
lon_min = 25
lon_sec = 36.46
lon_hem = E
elevation_m = 0
mapx = 33.66569722
mapy = 35.42679444

Jieh (or Jiye, Jiyye, Jiyeh, Jiyyeh, الجية) is a seaside town in Mount Lebanon on the Mediterranean Sea. Jieh has a population of 5000 people.ref|Population It lies 23km south of Beirut, Lebanon in the Chouf district via a 20 minute drive along the Beirut to Sidon highway south of the capital.

Jieh, the fertile land according to the Greek sources, extends 7 km along the Lebanese sea coast.It is the ancient city of Porphyreon whose history goes back to centuries before Christ. The 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.ref|Jonah It was known at the time of the Phoenicians as a thriving natural seaport. This natural seaport continued functioning and remains up to the present times. 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 Macedonian relaxed on its shore preparing for the attack on Tyre. St Peter and St Paul also walked through Jieh several times. ref|theological

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 Israeli army invasions during the 1980s, ref|Israel but the worst being on January 20, 1976, now in its 30th anniversary. ref|anniversary

Nonetheless, Jieh is being rebuilt, albeit at a much slower pace to the nearby capital city of Beirut. Many Christian families who fled the town of Jieh have sent money back from all over the world to rebuild its mother church Our Lady of the Star which still needs $1million to complete. The rebuilding of the St George's Church has also just begun. Those who remained in Lebanon still periodically visit on weekends and move back during the summer holiday season where this town is most famous for its seven kilometre sandy beach, a rarity along Lebanon's mainly rocky coastline.

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 Jonah and the giant fish in the Old Testament have been found in churches dug from underground over timeref|Jonah. 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.

Religion

Jieh is home to many religious groups, mostly Maronite Christians and some Melkites and the Muslim Sunni sect which mainly occupy the high rise section of Nabi Younes (Prophet Jonah) located in the central part of the town on the coast.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.

Tourism

Jieh's main hub of tourism focuses on its famous 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 7km sand strip.ref|Bamboo

These beaches and resorts fill with tourists and beach goers throughout the summertime.

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 Order 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. ref|Education

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 have been sought to receive discounted fuel to ensure good supply to the power plants.ref|PowerAccording 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.ref|Power2

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 14th at around 3am, the Jieh power plant was struck by missiles either from navy destroyers or from an airstrike 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.

Environmental Problems

As a result of crude violations of the environment directly by the council of Barja 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.ref|Pollution2 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.

=Jiyeh Power Station Oil Spill=

The power station oil spill from a July 14-15th Israeli airstrike has released over 16,000 tonnes of crude oil into the Mediterranean sea and has threatened marine life along the coast of Lebanon, mainly from Jieh stretching as far north as Syria and Turkey. For more recent information and photos on the oil spill and the clean-up efforts, please take a look at the websites: http://www.unep.org/lebanon/ and http://www.planet2025news.net/lebanonoilspill.rxml

Jieh Sub-districts

Jieh is divided locally and unofficially into sub districts namely: Taht el Chir, Beit Chahine, Maqsabe, Haret el Kaneese, Qassouba and Nabi Younes.

Notes

# Azzi, C., [http://www.jiehonline.com/landfill.htm "Technical Opinion On the proposed Landfill"]
# Azzi, A., "Jieh Through history" [http://atallah.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=50 Atallah Family Website]
# United Nations General Assembly Security Council, [http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/d6cc1e848b9ee1b385256b72006b97ec?OpenDocument Letter dated 5 January 1988 from the Permanent Representative of Lebanon to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General]
# Jieh Online, [http://www.jiehonline.com/thirtyyears.htm 30 Year Anniversary]
# [http://www.churchesforjesus.org/prophet_jonah.html The story of the Prophet Jonah and the giant fish]
# [http://www.jiehonline.com/AsaratDec2004.htm Pictures of Byzantine church excavations, Dec 2004]
# [http://www.virtualebanon.com/bamboobay Bamboo Bay Jieh, 360° Panoramic View]
# [http://www.ifpexpo.com/News_show_news.asp?id=1358 $8 million new resort near Beirut - 5/20/2005]
# [http://www.saintcharbeljieh.com College St Charbel (French)]
# [http://www.edl.gov.lb/AboutEDL.htm Electricite du Liban information about Lebanon's power plants]
# [http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=3&article_id=73004 Lebanese ration power after Syria cuts off supplies]
# [http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=73345 Daily Star Article: 'Lebanon will drown in solid waste']
# [http://www.greenpeacemed.org.mt/27052001.html Greenpeace "Right To Know" tour calls for a toxics use and release inventory on chemical-use by industries in Lebanon]

References

* [http://www.jiehonline.com JiehOnline]
* [http://atallah.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=50 Atallah Family Website]
* [http://csrd.lau.edu.lb/Publications/StudentReports/Pollution%20in%20Lebanon.htm Pollution in Lebanon]
* [http://www.usatradeonline.gov/miscfiles.nsf/85e140505600107b852566490063411d/ab845ccea385b5d38525705100507455/$FILE/lebanon.pdf USA Trade Online: Lebanon Country Analysis]
*Blank, S.J. (Ed), [http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB139.pdf Mediterranean Security into the coming Millennium] , 1999
* [http://www.saintcharbeljieh.com St Charbel College Website (French)]
* [http://www.edl.gov.lb/AboutEDL.htm Electricite du Liban website]
* [http://www.churchesforjesus.org North York Knights of Columbus Website for fundraising the rebuilding of churches where Jesus walked and preached]
* [http://www.virtualebanon.com/bamboobay Bamboo Bay Jieh, 360° Panoramic View]