Displaced, bombed, mourning: Lebanon braces for war

Beirut - A map of Palestine and figures wearing black-and-white keffiyehs adorned flyers littered below an apartment building - its sixth floor entirely wiped out by an Israeli drone attack on Sunday.

Israel’s strike - the first to hit central Beirut in nearly a year of conflict - killed four people, including three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Palestinian leftist faction and resistance movement. 

The flat served as the group’s office, according to a PFLP officer The New Arab spoke to at the scene, and was located at a busy transit centre known as ‘Cola’ in central Beirut.

“My wife, my three children, and I were sleeping. My brother was smoking shisha on the balcony. Then, we heard a loud sound, an explosion, and we couldn’t see anything,” a 50-year-old man, who was living on the sixth floor of the building, told The New Arab at the site. He requested to remain anonymous. 

Just one week ago he and his family fled their village of Zefta, in Lebanon’s southern Nabatieh governorate, when it came under heavy fire from Israel. For a brief period, they had found safety in the Beirut apartment - but it was cut short by the Israeli drone, ripping through their building. 

Israel has significantly escalated its attacks on what it says are Hezbollah military targets. Hundreds of civilians have also been killed, and thousands injured, and the strikes have hit homes, medical centres, ambulances, and cars with those fleeing across the country, the Lebanese health ministry has reported. 

At least 1,700 people in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli strikes over the last year. More than 600 were killed in a single day last Monday when Israel carried out one of the “most intense air raids” in modern history, according to the New York Times, leaving large parts of south Lebanon and the Bekaa valley in ruins. 

Intense and continuous Israeli attacks have continued throughout the country over the week, causing the death toll to climb. Israel’s army on Tuesday morning announced a “limited, localised, and targeted” ground operation against Lebanon, although Hezbollah and UNIFIL have denied Israel has entered the country. 

“We don’t have another place [to go],” said the man - the building now unlivable after the strike. For now, he, his wife, and three children are homeless, like thousands of others forced to flee their homes in the country. 

Mass displacement

The Lebanese foreign minister estimated on Sunday that up to one million people are displaced due to the war. On Friday night into Saturday morning, Israel unleashed a relentless bombardment of Beirut, sending many into panic and triggering a wave of displacement in the capital. 

In one hit, a dozen Israeli anti-bunker missiles flattened six buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah.

“It was a very powerful strike, we felt indescribable terror and left our house immediately,” a man, who asked to go by Abu Jaadan, told The New Arab after he fled Chyah, a neighbourhood in the southern suburbs, on Friday.  

His wife, who asked to go by Umm Jaadan, said she lost consciousness in fear and partially lost her hearing from the strength of the blast. The couple and their children had found refuge in a public park in Beirut, where they sat on thin mattresses, sipping coffee. “There are no buildings around so we feel a lot safer, and we have shade during the day,” she said.

Along with a few belongings, they also fled with their pet bird, Dudu, which perched quietly in a small cage beside them. “We’ll try to find a shelter in a school, but for now they’re all full,” Abu Jaadan said, their future uncertain. Many of the over 360 shelters the government has opened to house the displaced - which were already overcrowded and underfunded before Israel’s escalation last week - are now full and beyond capacity. 

Nasrallah assassinated

When the news broke of Nasrallah’s death on Saturday afternoon, Abu Jaadan and his wife froze, in shock. “We don’t believe it, we can’t,” Abu Jaadan exclaimed. His teenage daughter beside him expressed that she would shed tears if his death “is true”. At the time, around noon, Hezbollah had not confirmed his death and rumours circulated he was still alive. 

Nasrallah became the secretary-general of Hezbollah in 1992 after an Israeli helicopter gunship killed his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi. He led the movement for the majority of its existence and growth into the most powerful political and military force in the country.

Nasrallah was revered by his supporters and referred to as ‘Sayyed’, an honorific title also used for descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. “For the Shia community in Lebanon, Nasrallah is also a spiritual leader, so he is very important to them and his loss is very painful,” Hassan Kotob, a political analyst with the Lebanese Center for Research and Consulting, told The New Arab.

Kotob said that the death of Nasrallah, viewed by many as a figure with “divine protection”, is a huge blow to the group’s morale. “People might lose the high spirit they had before the war, and before the killing of Hassan Nasrallah,” he said. 

Hezbollah lost seven of its high-ranking officials over the past week, the Associated Press reported, and has suffered immense destruction to its hefty arsenal. Meanwhile, huge portions of the south and east of the country - where many of the group’s Shia supporters reside - have been destroyed.

Kotob pointed out that following the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, which lasted 34 days, multiple Arab countries rushed to Lebanon’s aid to help it rebuild. However today, Hezbollah's now-estranged neighbours have made no such moves. 

Kotob said that the immense destruction in the areas where Hezbollah attracts its base of support might raise questions about why the group began fighting Israel, in support of Palestinians in Gaza, in the first place. 

However, Abu Jaadan and his wife’s support has not wavered for the group. “It’s important to understand that we, the Shia, have had many leaders. Although Nasrallah was very special to us, someone will replace him,” he said. 

Abu Jaadan quoted Imam Hussein as a historical example, the third Shia imam and alleged successor of Prophet Muhammad, who was killed in 679 in the battle of Karbala. Despite his tragic death, the religious branch of Islam has continued to exist to this day.

For Abu Jaadan, the Shia community would find another leader, just like they did after Karbala. 

“In the end, every one of us is Nasrallah,” his wife, Umm Jaadan, affirmed with conviction. “We can all embody the resistance against the [Israeli] occupation – it is an idea which can’t be killed.” 

Icon of resistance 

Later on Saturday afternoon, Hezbollah confirmed the news of Nasrallah’s death. Some of those displaced in Beirut’s central Martyr's Square burst into tears upon hearing the news. 

“It's too early for you to die, O Sayyed [Nasrallah], we know how much you wanted to earn the shahadah [martyrdom], but you are our father that protects us,” cried Nivine, a woman who fled her home in Lebanon’s north-eastern city of Baalbek, who preferred to go by her first name only. 

Earlier in the morning, when The New Arab met her, she was distributing manakish [traditional Levantine flatbread] to families seeking shelter under a mosque in Martyrs Square, with a smile stretched across her face. 

But after the news of Nasrallah’s death, her smile had vanished. “He [was] a man of religion who never [accepted] injustice in any country, he taught us how to treat others,” she said. “We will continue on the path he has given us, to defend the Palestinian cause, and inshallah [God willing] one day we will win.” 

Like many Lebanese, she grew up with Hassan Nasrallah as an icon representing resistance against Israel. Hezbollah was formed in 1982 to fight Israel during its occupation of southern Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s. 

However, for others, Nasrallah is a controversial figure who ruled the Shia community with an iron fist, allegedly ordering the assassination of critics like researcher Lokman Slim and committing war crimes alongside Bashar al-Assad’s regime during the Syrian civil war. 

'Prelude to a ground invasion'

Back at the bustling intersection in central Beirut, a young man affiliated with the PFLP stared at the group’s demolished office. “They can really hit us everywhere, at any time, in all impunity,” he muttered. He wished to remain anonymous for his security. “I spent a lot of time in that office, it hurts to see it like this,” he told The New Arab. 

He said that Israel had targeted other PFLP offices across Lebanon on Sunday night, as well. In these “targeted” attacks, he made clear Israel also killed many civilians. The PFLP’s armed wing, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, have fought Israel in Gaza alongside Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), although they have not launched any attacks on Israel from Lebanon. 

The young PFLP member said he has spent months digging trenches and reinforcing defensive positions in south Lebanon but has not been involved in combat operations. He believed an Israeli ground invasion was imminent, noting that the assassination of Nasrallah could be “a prelude to a ground operation”. 

However, he was not worried that Israel would destroy Hezbollah or other resistance groups. “Targeting the command structures doesn’t change anything - the resistance is rooted deeply in the people and will only end when the injustice and occupation end,” he said. 

“This is the ideological mistake Israel is making - believing that they can win the war with their sheer arsenal of destruction. But, in Gaza, as in Lebanon, they have already lost politically,” the young man stated. 

An Israeli warplane flew overhead the busy intersection and a drone circulated above, its deadly hum synchronising with the traffic.

Amid the commotion, a document likely from the PFLP office lay on the ground, its front page reading: “We are rather facing a project of colonialism, a racist settlement, and the replacement of our people by another people.” 

Hanna Davis is a freelance journalist reporting on politics, foreign policy, and humanitarian affairs.

Follow her on Twitter: @hannadavis341

Philippe Pernot is a French-German photojournalist living in Beirut. Covering anarchist, environmentalist, and queer social movements, he is now the Lebanon correspondent for Frankfurter Rundschau and an editor for various international media. 

Follow him on Twitter: @PhilippePernot7