‘I won’t welcome strangers’: Israel strikes at Lebanon’s sectarian wounds

Residents across the country fear housing people fleeing Israel's attacks will give it excuse to strike

A home in Barja damaged by an Israeli strike on the town. Israel did not warn civilians before launching its attack. Reuters

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Ali was left homeless after an Israeli air strike decimated the six-storey apartment building where he grew up in the Lebanese town of Ain Deleb, killing 73 residents – among them dozens of displaced people who sought shelter in the building.

In the aftermath, when he tried to rent a place in the same town for himself and his family, he was turned away.

The 20-year-old barber says he has no connection to Hezbollah, the political party and militant group that has been entangled in a war with Israel for the past year. Still, landlords and residents in the mixed-sect, predominantly Christian Ain Deleb, near the coastal city of Sidon, refused to rent to him and his family, fearing for their safety.

For them, Ali’s religious denomination as a Shiite – the sect to which Hezbollah also belongs – and his new classification as a displaced person meant he was a risky enough link.

"There was nowhere for us to stay. We’d spend some nights in the nearby mosque, some nights with friends here and there," he told The National bitterly, in the weeks after the strike.

Israel has made it very obvious that they want to encourage sectarian tensions. It has been explicit in its plans that it wants some sort of internal uprising and reaction against Hezbollah

Mohanad Hage Ali,
Carnegie Middle East Centre

His experience is the result of what residents, analysts, legal experts and Lebanese security officials have told The National is a deliberate pattern by Israel to destabilise Lebanon internally by attacking Christian, Sunni and Druze areas where people have opened their homes to the displaced Shiite population – aiming to inflame the fragmented country’s simmering sectarian tensions.

In the less than two months since Israel began its escalating offensive against Hezbollah, The National visited the sites of Israeli assaults on residential complexes in predominantly non-Shiite areas of Lebanon and focused on three: The apartment building in Ain Deleb; a house in Aitou, a Maronite Christian village in northern Lebanon where at least 24 were killed in an Israeli strike; and an apartment building in Barja, a predominantly Sunni Muslim town in Mount Lebanon’s Chouf, where rescue teams pulled more than 30 bodies from the rubble.

A clear pattern emerged – survivors and witnesses told The National that Israel’s missiles hit with no prior warning. In every case, the strikes caused mass civilian casualties, hitting residential buildings populated by Shiite families displaced by Israel’s offensive. Israel never officially announced the targets of the strikes, allowing rumours to fester in communities reeling from the violence.

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None of the homes hit in the attacks were near areas of Lebanon where there is active combat.

“Israel has made it very obvious that they want to encourage sectarian tensions. It has been explicit in its plans that it wants some sort of internal uprising and reaction against Hezbollah as it continues to attack the group,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director for research at the Carnegie Middle East Centre, in Beirut.

If sectarian tensions stemming from resentment over Hezbollah’s role in the war were to boil over “it would divert resources away from attacks against Israel", he explained.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Lebanon in October, calling on “Christians, Druze and Muslims – Sunnis and Shiites alike” to oppose Hezbollah. Israel's attacks in Lebanon have eliminated the majority of the group’s senior leadership, destroyed infrastructure and disrupted weapon supply routes. The campaign has come at a great civilian cost, particularly in Shiite-majority areas such as southern Lebanon and Baalbek.

About 2,600 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Lebanon since the Israeli offensive began in late September, while the Lebanese government estimates that about 1.4 million remain displaced. About a quarter of the population has been uprooted and pushed into Sunni, Druze and Christian areas – raising fears that such displacement could expose those areas to Israeli attacks.

'Strangers from the south'

The attack on Ain Deleb came on an ordinary Sunday in late September, after families gathered for lunch. Ali said goodbye to his uncle, who was settling in for a post-meal nap, and left on his motorbike to meet some friends. Minutes later, the unmistakable thunder of Israeli missiles striking nearby had him rushing back to discover a smoking pile rubble where his home once stood.

Peoplelook for survivors at the site of the Israeli attack on Ain Deleb. Reuters

His uncle, neighbours and a place that was home to 15 years of memories disappeared in an instant. Automatically, he set to pulling survivors out of the mass of concrete and iron that was once his home.

Residents of the village widely believe the target of the strike was Ahmad Awarky, a car salesman thought to be a minor Hezbollah official. For the past two decades, he lived peacefully with his neighbours on the spacious ground floor of the building.

The Israeli army did not publish a statement claiming it struck a Hezbollah official, as it did after previous attacks on high-level commanders, such as Ibrahim Aqil or Hashem Safieddine. Weeks later, after a query from The National, the Israeli army said it “eliminated the commander of Hezbollah's Sidon compound, along with several other operatives". The army also said it issued “evacuation orders” and claimed the building was being used as “Hezbollah's terror headquarters”, but provided no evidence.

Three residents, including Ali, denied they received any Israeli order to leave their homes. They maintained that the building comprised 17 apartments occupied by long-term residents, with many also sheltering dozens of relatives displaced by Israel's offensive on southern Lebanon. That included residents of the bottom floor, where about 30 of Mr Awarky’s displaced relatives were staying.

“We all knew he may have been in Hezbollah or that he had been with the group in the past and was retired,” Ali told The National. “We knew him for years. It was clear to us he wasn’t a high-level guy and we didn’t think twice about living in the same building as him. He was a car salesman."

His remarks were backed up by residents of nearby buildings who knew Mr Awarky. The severity of the strike raised fears in Ain Deleb that housing “strangers from the south” who could include Hezbollah-affiliated individuals, as one resident put it, could put the community at risk.

A Lebanese security official, speaking about the strike on Ain Deleb and later attacks, said Israel "has begun targeting lower-ranking fighters" with the aim of turning "public opinion against the Shiite population and Hezbollah".

Mourners lower a body into a grave during the collective funeral held for people killed in an Israeli attack on Ain Deleb. Reuters

Mohammad, a Sunni resident of a nearby building, was feeding Mr Awarky’s chickens on the day The National met him. He described Mr Awarky as “a good neighbour. We liked him and had no issues with him. I didn’t care what his politics were.“

"If they really wanted to assassinate him, they didn’t need to massacre everyone in the building," Mohammad said. "But after this, there’s no way I’d ever let anyone associated with Hezbollah live in my building.”

When asked how it was possible to identify a Hezbollah member, Mohammad made a series of gestures: he held his right hand to his chest, pointed to his ring finger and pressed his hands together in prayer. The gestures depicted a man who does not greet a woman with a handshake, wears a style of silver stone-set ring favoured by Shiite men and who prays often – all common traits for an average, observant Muslim.

“It’s not about sect or anything. It’s just that Israel has no mercy, and I’m afraid for my family,” Mohammad stressed. “I won’t welcome strangers in my building.”

Ali stayed temporarily at a neighbour's house in the same building as Mohammad, after numerous landlords refused to rent an apartment to him. It was clear that Ali and Mohammad shared an easy, neighborly camaraderie as they chased the late Mr Awarky’s chickens around his destroyed yard.

“I’ve known Ali for years,” Mohamad said. “Of course he’s welcome to stay in my building.”

“In the end, sure I’m Sunni – but more importantly, I’m Lebanese, and we help each other in times of crisis.”

When The National spoke to Ali three weeks later, he had moved with his father to Akkar, located in the farthest reaches of northern Lebanon.

“It’s the only place where we could find to live,” he said solemnly. His voice betrayed his exhaustion. “It’s remote. There’s nothing around. But anyway, these days, I don’t think anywhere is safe for people like us.”

'With each Israeli massacre, people fear us more and more'

Lebanon’s government shelters are overcrowded owing to several waves of displacement. As Israel’s offensive continues, homes for rent have been harder to come by for people seeking refuge. Displaced families are often met with suspicion by local residents.

Displaced Lebanese tie together a make-shift shelter in central Beirut. AFP

“We tiptoe around our new neighbourhood,” said Mariam Rammal, who was displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs and is now living in the mixed-sect area of Sanayeh. “We don’t want to be perceived as causing problems for people. But it’s not in our hands. With each Israeli massacre, people fear us more and more.”

In the four decades since its inception, Hezbollah has become tangled in Lebanon’s social and political fabric, rallying considerable support. While not representative of all Shiites, the group has succeeded in making itself synonymous with the sect in Lebanon – a fact Israel has exploited easily.

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Israel has created an environment of fear by launching deadly attacks on areas of Lebanon where Hezbollah is not known to operate, “succeeding in enforcing a new equation where the only way that you could spare yourself from Israeli air strikes is by making sure that no Hezbollah-affiliated individuals are among you", Mr Hage Ali said.

“So now we see tensions where people with long beards or a certain style of hijab are viewed with suspicion. The Israeli strategy is to turn Lebanese areas into communities that police who lives among them, [in order to] to spare themselves from Israeli massacre — which of course leads to further sectarian tension.”

Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative and former director of Human Rights Watch in Lebanon, said the pattern of strikes on residential buildings containing large numbers of displaced people showed Israel "decided that they will wage war not just on Hezbollah and its affiliated institutions, but also on the community from which Hezbollah hails".

"So, in effect, this is a war on the Shiite community in Lebanon," he added. "Because Israel perceives that the Shiite community supports Hezbollah."

When Elie Alawan rented his summer house in the remote northern village of Aitou to some family friends made homeless by Israel’s onslaught on the south, he did not imagine his home and his friends would be obliterated within weeks.

"They were people who were running away from war," Mr Alawan said, the morning after the strike on the area. "They needed somewhere to stay. What was I supposed to do, dismiss them?"

Lebanese Civil Defence personnel work at the site of an Israeli air strike in the northern Lebanese village of Aitou. DPA

Aitou was relatively untouched by the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah and local residents assumed it would stay that way amid the current conflict. The Hijazi family, consisting of 21 people displaced from the southern Lebanese village of Aitaroun three weeks earlier, had guests over and were grilling fish when Israeli missiles struck on October 14.

Elie’s brother Sarkis, who lived in the home below, said he would visit the Hijazis regularly. “Half of them were women. There were some elderly people and a couple of kids. And the men were very decent,” he said.

Residents of the small village said that while the strike may have been shocking, it was hardly a surprise. "It's a terror attack and we don't know why terrorists operate the way they do," a summer resident of the mostly seasonally occupied town said.

He spoke anonymously out of concern he would be perceived as playing into Israel’s exploitation of inter-communal tensions, but expressed worry over the practice of targeting Christian or mixed-sect areas of Lebanon that harbor displaced people:

"We don't know who they are. At the same time, in the end, they're civilians and we want to help because they've lost their own homes."

'You can’t trust anyone'

In Beirut’s predominantly Christian Ain Al Remmaneh neighbourhood, local residents patrol the streets every night. They are affiliated with the Lebanese Forces, a Christian political party and former militant group created during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war. As part of their daily rounds, they report “suspicious” people to security forces. That includes anyone they suspect may be affiliated with Hezbollah.

“We can’t allow someone on a wanted list to hide among us. What, are we supposed to die for them? They started this war against a force stronger than us," said Dani Ghosn, a supporter of the Lebanese Forces who takes part in the patrols. "We didn’t want this."

Ain Al Remmaneh is known as the site of the massacre that sparked the civil war. In 1975, a Christian militia attacked a bus carrying mostly Palestinians to a refugee camp, killing 27 people. Tensions with Palestinians, especially among western-aligned, predominantly Christian communities, had been brewing for years owing to the Palestine Liberation Organisation's operations against Israel in southern Lebanon and Beirut.

Ever since, the Ain Al Remmaneh neighbourhood bordering Beirut’s southern suburbs has been a flashpoint of sectarian tension. The spectre of the bus attack looms over Lebanon, darkened by the parallels between the PLO and Hezbollah, with both groups accused by critics of operating a foreign-funded state within a state.

It only takes one person, even if all the others are innocent, for Israel to strike a building

Dani Ghosn,
supporter of the Lebanese Forces

Weeks ago, Mr Ghosn said, local residents informed the army that a family staying in the area was affiliated with Hezbollah. The army then forced the family out. But otherwise, there has not been much tension, he added, insisting the issue is not with displaced families, but with people who could be Hezbollah members.

“In my building, there’s a family from the south – they are all respectable," he said. "They drive nice cars. They’re calm. In the end, these are our Lebanese brothers.”

Mr Ghosn acknowledged that it was not always easy to tell someone from the Shiite sect apart from a Hezbollah fighter. "You can’t trust anyone," he added. "It only takes one person, even if all the others are innocent, for Israel to strike a building."

Israel and the US have described the war in Lebanon as an “opportunity” to change the country and reshape the Middle East. The Lebanese security official told The National that Israel was attempting to create “a new political paradigm in Lebanon that exists to their benefit", exploiting the political views of people such as Mr Ghosn.

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Patrols in Ain Al Remmaneh have already sparked memories of the civil war, when armed sectarian militias were seen in their communities, checkpoints were built and foreign-backed groups fought to control the country.

Tension has also increased in Barja since the strike on the predominantly Sunni village. Ahmad Abou Bahiri was smoking shisha in his living room on a quiet Tuesday evening when the attack happened. Within moments, he found himself digging desperately through the rubble for his wife and children.

Emergency workers search for survivors after an Israeli strike on Barja, in Mount Lebanon. Reuters

As he searched frantically through the smoking debris, he found a leg. At first, he thought it belonged to his wife. Moments later, he realised it had come from the four-storey building next door, which a month earlier had been rented out to displaced Shiite families fleeing Israel's attacks in the south. The building was the target of the strike.

Mr Abou Bahiri and his family were injured and their home was destroyed. Next door, at least 35 people were killed, including women and children. The Lebanese Civil Defence found body parts belonging to four different people in Mr Abou Bahiri's bedroom.

As with many of Israel's attacks on non-Shiite areas, there was no warning to civilians. And like all other mass-casualty strikes on predominantly non-Shiite areas observed by The National, the Israeli army did not announce what its target was in Barja.

Once more, it allowed rumours to fill the void.

For Ali, his experience since the attack that destroyed his home in Ain Deleb has hardened him. “I hope everyone who turned us away feels displacement one day," he said. "I hope they’ll experience what it’s like to have nowhere to go and doors shut in their face, so they can feel what we went through."