At sunset, the frightening roar of warplanes can be heard in the sky over the Lebanese town of Deir al-Ahmar. Black billows are seen over the horizon all around the village amid the setting sun’s golden rays, as Israel's bombs strike — the sound of the pounding explosions startling children who can be heard screaming in fear.
Just hours before, evacuation orders for the whole town of Baalbek and other Shia villages of the Bekaa Valley had seen more than 100,000 people fleeing for safety, and as the Israeli army's deadly airstrikes began, civilians watched in fear and sadness as they imagined their homes turned into rubble.
“I’m so scared for my parents, who decided to stay in Baalbek, that I can barely sleep at night,” Nour, a young elementary teacher in her late twenties, told The New Arab.
She had hastily thrown a couple of belongings and clothes in a bag and hit the road when she saw the evacuation orders posted by Avichai Adree, the Israeli army’s spokesperson, on October 30.
“I saw my mum scared for the first time in her life, she was panicking. I told her to remain strong for us,” Nour recalled. She then rushed to Deir al-Ahmar with her aunt, uncle and cousin in a car, while her parents drove to Ersal, a town bordering Syria, further north.
On the fateful night, more than 50,000 people had driven to safety and slept in the village, mostly in their cars.
[Philippe Pernot]
“We scrambled to distribute blankets and food, it was an emergency,” Rabih Saade, the town’s aid coordinator, told The New Arab.
“All our six schools have been transformed into shelters, and we are hosting many people in our churches and homes as well, especially since the evacuation orders,” Rabih explained.
The 10,000 inhabitants of the Deir al-Ahmar district are now hosting as many as 22,000 displaced from Baalbek and the surrounding villages – including 12,000 in the main village, usually inhabited by 4,500 people, Rabih said.
Life in isolation
Nour has been living at the displacement shelter set up at Deir al-Ahmar’s high school ever since. The New Arab met her the day after her arrival and a second time ten days later.
“Life here is not bad, but it’s crowded and not very sanitary. We’re four families in one classroom, babies are wailing and kids playing, it gets very loud and sometimes I feel like I can’t take it anymore,” Nour sighed.
She sipped tea with her aunt and uncle as obscurity set in — the classroom that had become her temporary home was cast in darkness while they waited for the electricity generator to kick in.
Her parents had returned to Baalbek, but Nour decided to stay at the shelter. “They have strong, courageous hearts and missed our house, our neighbourhood, so they decided to go back there despite the danger. But I can’t go back, I’m too afraid of the strikes,” she said.
“I’m afraid of going anywhere else since Israel not only targets buildings but also cars,” Nour shivered.
Humanitarian emergency
The 7,000-year-old town of Baalbek has been under constant bombardment by Israel ever since it launched its large-scale offensive on Lebanon on September 23. But the so-called localised strikes transformed into carpet bombing after the whole city was forced to evacuate.
On October 29, 60 people were killed in Baalbek in one day of strikes, with the number of victims in the Bekaa region reaching the hundreds since September. In all of Lebanon, almost 3,500 people have been killed and at least 15,000 wounded.
The surrounding Shia villages of Taraya, Bodai, Iaat, and many others are also bombed daily, as roadsides are left in a state of ruin and destruction.
Only the 13 Christian villages in the Deir al-Ahmar municipality have, for now, escaped the tragedy.
They are isolated from their Shia neighbours and from Baalbek, the roads too dangerous to drive on. The only link that remains to the outside world is to Bsharre and Tripoli — but that highway, winding through Mount Lebanon’s peaks, will be closed all winter.
“After the first snow, we’ll be completely stuck here,” Rabih said with an ominous tone in his voice. Sitting at his laptop under a makeshift tent at the high school’s back entrance, he was surveying the distribution of aid.
“We have received 1,600 mattresses from Doctors Without Borders, as well as many sanitary kits, but what we need are containers of food and ready-to-eat meals,” he explained.
[Philippe Pernot]
Boxes of aid were stacked in the high school’s yard, while young volunteers carried them around, unpacked them, and served meals to the displaced. Many were students from the high school, volunteering while waiting for their classes to resume.
“Once the roads are cut off by the snow and the bombings, we’ll be on our own. But we need at least 47,000 tons of fuel per month to heat the shelters in the winter’s cold, how will we ever get that?” Rabih questions.
Unity amid tensions
According to Rabih, Deir al-Ahmar is hosting the most displaced population disproportion to its inhabitants. Many residents The New Arab talked to took great pride in that fact.
“We must help these people who come to us, scared and in need. They are our neighbours and our friends and they would do the same for us,” Latif Qazah, the town’s mayor, told The New Arab as he received us in his office over a warm cup of tea.
“Of course, we would prefer our lives to continue normally, our children to go to school, and of course, we’re afraid that Israel will bomb us — but this is what humanity asks of us,” he said.
The fear of Israeli strikes only grew after the repeated massacres of entire displaced families in airstrikes on Zgharta, Saida and other localities all over Lebanon hosting them.
“We strictly control everyone who enters the town. We welcome their family, but anyone affiliated with Hezbollah, or carrying weapons, is sent back — we have to do this to guarantee our safety,” Rabih explained.
These verifications were conducted by the Lebanese army as well as a group of volunteers, he told The New Arab.
While the massive displacement of over one million people because of Israel’s offensive had been said to fuel sectarian tensions all over Lebanon, Deir al-Ahmar proved resistant to such divisions.
While most of the displaced are Shia and many support Hezbollah’s resistance against Israel, Deir al-Ahmar is a strictly Christian town – and staunchly opposed to the Party of God.
However, not everyone has taken in displaced families for political or cultural reasons. “We are something, and they are something,” one resident said, alluding to differing cultural norms.
Some mentioned tensions around the consumption of halal or pork meat. “At the beginning, we all had to adapt to each other. Now, it's fine, we live together,” one anonymous volunteer told The New Arab.
Here, even the Lebanese Forces, a Christian political party strongly opposed to Hezbollah, is helping the displaced with blankets and fuel while in other parts of Lebanon, its members are known to turn away displaced families.
A tradition of hospitality
“We surely have political and religious differences, but they are humans above all, they deserve to live,” Father Maroun Nadaf told The New Arab as we visited the Our-Lady-of-the-Tower church right after the All-Saints prayer.
“We opened our churches all over the district upon the diocese’s decision, following Christ’s teachings of hospitality and compassion despite the danger,” he said while showing us the Roman temple and olive press that the church was built on, attesting to the city’s ancient roots.
“Today, we value the humanity of these people over their political beliefs, as we already did during the 2006 war,” Father Nadaf said.
Deir al-Ahmar has been known for its hospitality towards strangers for decades, despite some tensions arising. Many Syrian families had fled the neighbouring country’s civil war and settled in the village made of old stone houses and green gardens, surrounded by an ocean of fields.
“The people here have been great to us, they have never uttered a single word of contempt against us,” Noura Mohammad, a Syrian agricultural worker, told The New Arab.
Fleeing the Syrian civil war in Idlib, she arrived in Deir al-Ahmar in 2011 and has been working in the neighbouring fields ever since.
Since Israel’s offensive, agricultural work has been paused. “We hear the warplanes fly above our heads, and we can’t go outside of the village,” she explained.
Her family has also been hosting Ali, her son-in-law, who used to live in Baalbek with her daughter.
“The Israelis bombed very close to our house, so we came here as quickly as we could. We’ve been displaced two times, from Idlib and now from Baalbek,” he said with resignation.
Further down the road, The New Arab met with Simon Berkashi and Evelyn Haj Mussa, a local couple who had taken in their extended family and children, displaced from the bombings on the neighbouring village of Iaat.
“Contrarily to Deir al-Ahmar, Iaat is a mixed town with both Christians and Shia. In this region, we have always been living together, working together, been friends,” Simon said.
“Back in 2006, we hosted displaced families in our churches and schools, but today the situation is much worse, and we have to open our homes as well,” he added.
Evelyne showed us the jars of homemade mouneh (conserves), that she traditionally prepares during the summer and autumn harvests to be consumed during the harsh mountain winters.
“Usually, we can last the whole winter but now since we feed more mouths, we only have enough for six months,” she explained.
Suddenly, Israeli warplanes rumbled above our heads – everyone rushed to their balconies, the kids yelling.
Several explosions were heard in the distance and smoke could be seen rising all around the horizon. It is here that Deir al-Ahmar’s isolation becomes painfully apparent.
Since 8 October 2023, 780 people have been killed, 1,200 injured and 60,000 displaced in Israeli airstrikes on the Baalbek-Hermel area, according to Bachir Khodr, its governor.
“We’re tired from this war, I hope it will be over soon... As you can see, we are a simple and welcoming people, we love life,” Simon said.
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 X: @PhilippePernot7