How fierce but undeclared Israel-Hezbollah war is hurting civilians in south Lebanon

Short Url
Updated 02 May 2024
Follow

How fierce but undeclared Israel-Hezbollah war is hurting civilians in south Lebanon

  • IDF and Iran-backed Lebanese group began trading fire across the border following Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack
  • Farming communities in southern Lebanon have seen their fields burned, homes destroyed by Israeli strikes

BEIRUT: For more than six months, an undeclared war has been raging along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, leading to the displacement of some 92,000 Lebanese citizens and the destruction of homes, businesses and agriculture.

The front line of this conflict between Hezbollah and the Israeli armed forces stretches some 850 km, incorporating parts of the UN-monitored Blue Line, with missiles fired by both sides reaching up to 15 km into their respective territories.

Although the exchanges have remained relatively contained, Israeli attacks have caused civilian deaths, damaged and destroyed homes, infrastructure and farmland, and ignited forest fires. Civilians on both sides of the border have been displaced.

“Our town is right on the border, and there are now only 100 out of 1,000 residents, and the rest are those who are unable to secure an alternative livelihood,” Jean Ghafri, mayor of Alma Al-Shaab, a predominantly Christian village in the Tyre District, told Arab News.

“So far, the shelling has destroyed 94 houses, and 60 percent of the olive groves, mango, and avocado orchards, vineyards, olive and carob trees have been burned, and some of the olive trees that were burned are 300 years old.”

Most of the people in the border region are Shiite. The rest are Sunni, Druze and Christians, along with dozens of Syrian refugee families, some 10,000 troops of UNIFIL, or UN Interim Force in Lebanon, and a few thousand Lebanese soldiers.

Members of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia began launching rocket attacks against Israel on Oct. 8, a day after the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza.




A bulldozer removes rubble after an Israeli strike on a house in the southern Lebanese village of Sultaniyeh. (AFP/File)

Since then, Hezbollah and the Israeli military have traded fire along the shared border, raising fears that the Gaza conflict could spill over and engulf Lebanon in a devastating war reminiscent of the 2006 Israeli invasion.

“The town, although it is in a conflict zone, did not witness this level of direct destruction in the 2006 war,” said Ghafri. “It is impossible to know the exact damage because the area is considered a war zone. Those who are still there are receiving food rations from religious or international organizations.”

Al-Dahira is another town that has come under heavy shelling on an almost daily basis since the conflict began. It was from its nearby border that Hezbollah began its military assault on Oct. 8.

Its mayor, Abdullah Ghuraib, counts “17 houses that have been completely destroyed and dozens of houses that are no longer habitable due to the force of the shelling.”

He said: “There is only one woman, Radhya Atta Sweid, 75 years old, who insisted on staying in her house and not leaving. She had stayed in her house during the 2006 war and her brother’s wife, who was with her in the house, was killed and she remained there.”

Hassan Sheit, the mayor of Kfarkela, a village that is only a stone’s throw from the Israeli border, painted a similar picture of destruction and displacement.

“The material losses are great. This is a town where people live in summer and winter, of which only 7 percent of the 6,000 inhabitants remain,” Sheit told Arab News.

“The displacement from the town caused people to be homeless, living with relatives and in rented apartments, and living on aid from civil society and Hezbollah, which varies between financial and in-kind assistance.




Flames rise in a field near the border village of Burj Al-Mamluk after an Israeli strike. (Reuters/File)

“The town lost 15 martyrs as a result of the Israeli bombardment. What is happening today in the town was not done in the 2006 war.”

Thousands of families from towns and villages across southern Lebanon fled as soon as the first exchanges began. Many of these communities are now ghost towns, having lost some 90 percent of their residents.

The displaced, most of them women and children, have moved to towns further away from the border, including areas around Tyre, Nabatieh, Zahrani, Sidon, Jezzine and even the southern suburbs of Beirut, where they rent or stay with relatives.

Those without the means to support themselves have been forced to reside in shelters established by local authorities. These shelters, most of them in school buildings, are concentrated in the city of Tyre, within easy reach of their towns and villages.

This protracted displacement has been accompanied by economic hardship brought on by the financial crisis that struck Lebanon in late 2019. To make matters worse, many south Lebanese have lost their livelihoods as a result of their displacement.




Funeral for Hezbollah members Ismail Baz and Mohamad Hussein Shohury, who were killed in an Israeli strike on their vehicles, in Shehabiya. (AFP/File)

Ghafri, the mayor of Alma Al-Shaab, said several displaced residents had said expenses in Beirut were different from those in the villages. One person had told him residents “do not work and therefore no income reaches them, except for in-kind assistance from civil and international organizations and from wealthy expatriates.

“There are no political parties in Alma Al-Shaab, no militants, and all its people are in favor of the Lebanese state and refuse to allow their town to be used as a battlefield. People are worried about their future, and I am trying to convey this position to Hezbollah.”

Those who initially benefited from reduced or rent-free arrangements are now being asked to pay more or move on. The rent for some apartments has reportedly jumped from $100 to $1,000 per month, placing a significant strain on household savings and incomes.

INNUMBERS

• 92,621 Individuals displaced from south Lebanon by hostilities as of April 16 (DTM).

• 1,324 Casualties reported, including 340 deaths, as of April 18 (OHCHR, MoPH).

According to media reports, Hezbollah has intervened in support of displaced households, calling on apartment owners in the south and in Beirut’s southern suburbs to cap their rents, and providing families with financial aid.

Families who spoke to local media said Hezbollah provided a quarterly payment of $1,000 for three months, then reduced the amount to an average of $300 per month, covering about 15,000 displaced families.

Like other displaced households, the people of Al-Dahira have complained of “running out of money and relatives’ discomfort with their presence,” said the town’s mayor Ghuraib.




Students hold a large banner with the images of three sisters killed in the south of Lebanon during Israeli shelling. (AFP/File)

“Two days ago, we came to the town to pay our respects to someone who died. We entered the town in a hurry and quickly inspected our homes, and I saw men crying about the loss of their livelihoods and possessions.

“The people of Al-Dahira make a living from growing tobacco, olives and grains, but the (crops of the) previous season burned down and now the land is on fire.

“The problem is that the situation is getting worse day by day. People’s lives have been turned upside down. If the war drags on, the land will die. The Israelis are deliberately turning it into a scorched earth.”

What is undeniable is that the displacement of entire farming communities has brought the once bountiful agricultural economy in many areas to the brink of collapse.

“The people of Aitaroun make their living from agriculture, especially tobacco farming, and the losses today are great,” Salim Murad, the mayor of the southeastern border town, told Arab News.




Smoke billows during Israeli shelling on the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila. (AFP/File)

“There are 40 dairy cattle farmers with about 500 cows and two factories for making cheese and dairy products. With the displacement, production stopped and the displaced people most likely sold their cows or slaughtered them, which means that another link of agricultural production has been destroyed.

“There were 2,200 beehives distributed along the border, as the area is rich and varied in pasture, but these hives were completely lost, and farmers lost the olive season, and these orchards lost their future suitability for cultivation.”

It is unclear whether any kind of compensation will be paid to these farming households once the violence ends. Although the situation appears bleak, Kfarkela mayor Sheit is confident the region’s resilient communities will bounce back.

“Once the war stops, people will return to their homes and rebuild them,” he said. “Because we are the owners of the land.”


UN’s top anti-racism body calls for immediate Gaza aid access

Updated 9 sec ago
Follow

UN’s top anti-racism body calls for immediate Gaza aid access

  • Civilian population ‘at imminent risk of famine, disease and death,’ statement warns
  • Israel has blocked humanitarian aid entering Gaza since March in bid to ‘pressurize Hamas’

NEW YORK CITY: The UN’s top anti-racism body has called for immediate humanitarian access to Gaza in a bid to avoid “catastrophic consequences” for its civilian population.

The statement by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination — comprised of independent experts — came hours after the World Central Kitchen charity said it was forced to end operations in Gaza due to a lack of food.

It also follows a commitment by Israel to “conquer” almost all of the enclave, as well as disputes involving Israel, the UN and US over the appropriate way to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians there.

The CERD committee is convening in Geneva for its latest session, ending today.

Gaza’s civilian population, “especially vulnerable groups such as children, women, the elderly and persons with disabilities,” are “at imminent risk of famine, disease and death,” the committee said.

The warning follows an earlier appeal by the World Food Programme, the UN’s food agency, which said that almost all food aid operations in Gaza had collapsed.

Late last month, the agency announced that the entirety of its food reserves in the enclave had been depleted.

Since March, Israel has blocked humanitarian aid into Gaza in a bid to build pressure on Hamas, which still holds Israeli hostages.

Tom Fletcher, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, said last week: “Two months ago, the Israeli authorities took a deliberate decision to block all aid to Gaza and halt our efforts to save survivors of their military offensive.

“They have been bracingly honest that this policy is to pressurize Hamas.”

Expanded military operations by Israel in Gaza over the past two months “have dramatically worsened the humanitarian crisis and severely endangered the civilian population,” Friday’s CERD statement said.

The committee called on Israel to “lift all barriers to humanitarian access, allow the immediate and unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid, and cease all actions obstructing the provision of essential services to the civilian population in Gaza.”

The statement also highlighted worsening conditions across the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including in East Jerusalem, where Israel closed six UNRWA schools this week.

Philippe Lazzarini, the Palestinian refugee agency’s chief, reacted with fury over the move, describing it as an “assault on children.”

The CERD statement called on all UN states to “cooperate to bring an end to the violations that are taking place and to prevent war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, including by ceasing any military assistance.”


UN committee warns of ‘another Nakba’ in Palestinian territories

Updated 09 May 2025
Follow

UN committee warns of ‘another Nakba’ in Palestinian territories

  • During the 1948 war, around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what became known as “the Nakba”

GENEVA: The world could be witnessing “another Nakba” expulsion of Palestinians, a United Nations committee warned Friday, accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and saying it was inflicting “unimaginable suffering” on Palestinians.

For Palestinians, any forced displacement evokes memories of the “Nakba,” or catastrophe — the mass displacement in the war that accompanied to Israel’s creation in 1948.

“Israel continues to inflict unimaginable suffering on the people living under its occupation, whilst rapidly expanding confiscation of land as part of its wider colonial aspirations,” warned a UN committee tasked with probing Israeli practices affecting Palestinian rights.

“What we are witnessing could very well be another Nakba,” it said, after concluding an annual mission to Amman.

During the 1948 war, around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what became known as “the Nakba.”

The descendants of some 160,000 Palestinians who managed to remain in what became Israel presently make about 20 percent of its population.

The UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1968.

The committee is currently composed of the Sri Lankan, Malaysian and Senegalese ambassadors to the UN in New York.

“What the world is witnessing could very well be a second Nakba. The goal of wider colonial expansion is clearly the priority of the government of Israel,” they said in their report.

“Security operations are used as a smokescreen for rapid land grabbing, mass displacement, dispossession, demolitions, forced evictions and ethnic cleansing, in order to replace the Palestinian communities with Jewish settlers.”


Iran, US to resume nuclear talks on Sunday after postponement

Updated 09 May 2025
Follow

Iran, US to resume nuclear talks on Sunday after postponement

  • Fourth round of indirect negotiations, initially set for May 3 in Rome, postponed due to ‘logistical reasons’

DUBAI: Iran has agreed to hold a fourth round of nuclear talks with the United States on Sunday in Oman, Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi said on Friday, adding that the negotiations were advancing.

US President Donald Trump, who withdrew Washington from a 2015 deal between Tehran and world powers meant to curb its nuclear activity, has threatened to bomb Iran if no new deal is reached to resolve the long unresolved dispute.

Western countries say Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran accelerated after the US walkout from the now moribund 2015 accord, is geared toward producing weapons, whereas Iran insists it is purely for civilian purposes.

“The negotiations are moving forward, and naturally, the further we go, the more consultations and reviews are needed,” Aragchi said in remarks carried by Iranian state media.

“The delegations require more time to examine the issues that are raised. But what is important is that we are on a forward-moving path and gradually entering into the details.”

The fourth round of indirect negotiations, initially scheduled for May 3 in Rome, was postponed, with mediator Oman citing “logistical reasons.”

Aragchi said a planned visit to Qatar and Saudi Arabia on Saturday was in line with “continuous consultations” with neighboring countries to “address their concerns and mutual interests” about the nuclear issue. 


No milk, no diapers: US aid cuts hit Syrian refugees in Lebanon

Updated 09 May 2025
Follow

No milk, no diapers: US aid cuts hit Syrian refugees in Lebanon

  • Merhi and her family are among the millions of people affected by Trump’s decision to freeze USAID funding to humanitarian programs
  • Since the freeze, the UNHCR and WFP have had to limit the amount of aid they provide

BEIRUT: Amal Al-Merhi’s twin 10-month-old daughters often go without milk or diapers.

She feeds them a mix of cornstarch and water, because milk is too expensive. Instead of diapers, Merhi ties plastic bags around her babies’ waists.

The effect of their poverty is clear, she said.

“If you see one of the twins, you would not believe she is 10-months-old,” Merhi said in a phone interview. “She is so small and soft.”

The 20-year-old Syrian mother lives in a tent with her family of five in an informal camp in Bar Elias in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

She fled Syria’s civil war in 2013 and has been relying on cash assistance from the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR to get by.

But that has ended.

Merhi and her family are among the millions of people affected by US President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze USAID funding to humanitarian programs.

Since the freeze, the UNHCR and the World Food Program (WFP) have had to limit the amount of aid they provide to some of the world’s most vulnerable people in countries from Lebanon to Chad and Ukraine.

In February, the WFP was forced to cut the number of Syrian refugees receiving cash assistance to 660,000 from 830,000, meaning the organization is reaching 76 percent of the people it planned to target, a spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, the WFP’s shock responsive safety net that supports Lebanese citizens cut its beneficiaries to 40,000 from 162,000 people, the spokesperson added.

The UNHCR has been forced to reduce all aspects of its operations in Lebanon, said Ivo Freijsen, UNHCR’s country representative, in an interview.

The agency cut 347,000 people from the UNHCR component of a WFP-UNHCR joint program as of April, a spokesperson said. Every family had been receiving $45 monthly from UNHCR, they added.

The group can support 206,000 Syrian refugees until June, when funds will dry up, they also said.

“We need to be very honest to everyone that the UNHCR of the past that could be totally on top of issues in a very expedient manner with lots of quality and resources — that is no longer the case,” Freijsen said. “We regret that sincerely.”

BAD TO WORSE
By the end of March, the UNHCR had enough money to cover only 17 percent of its planned global operations, and the budget for Lebanon is only 14 percent funded.

Lebanon is home to the largest refugee population per capita in the world.

Roughly 1.5 million Syrians, half of whom are formally registered with the UNHCR, live alongside some 4 million Lebanese.

Islamist-led rebels ousted former Syrian leader Bashar Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces. Since then there have been outbreaks of deadly sectarian violence, and fears among minorities are rising.

In March, hundreds of Syrians fled to Lebanon after killings targeted the minority Alawite sect.

Lebanon has been in the grips of unyielding crises since its economy imploded in 2019. The war between Israel and armed group Hezbollah is expected to wipe billions of dollars from the national wealth as well, the United Nations has said.

Economic malaise has meant fewer jobs for everyone, including Syrian refugees.

“My husband works one day and then sits at home for 10,” Merhi said. “We need help. I just want milk and diapers for my kids.”

DANGEROUS CHOICES
The UNHCR has been struggling with funding cuts for years, but the current cuts are “much more rapid and sizeable” and uncertainty prevails, said Freijsen.

“A lot of other questions are still to be answered, like, what will be the priorities? What will still be funded?” Freijsen asked.

Syrian refugees and vulnerable communities in Lebanon might be forced to make risky or dangerous choices, he said.

Some may take out loans. Already about 80 percent of Syrian refugees are in debt to pay for rent, groceries and medical bills, Freijsen said. Children may also be forced to work.

“Women may be forced into commercial sex work,” he added.

Issa Idris, a 50-year-old father of three, has not received any cash assistance from UNHCR since February and has been forced to take on debt to buy food.

“They cut us off with no warning,” he said.

He now owes a total of $3,750, used to pay for food, rent and medicine, and he has no idea how he will pay it back.

He cannot work because of an injury, but his 18-year-old son sometimes finds work as a day laborer.

“We are lucky. We have someone who can work. Many do not,” he said.

Merhi too has fallen into debt. The local grocer is refusing to lend her any more money, and last month power was cut until the family paid the utility bill

She and her husband collect and sell scrap metal to buy food.

“We are adults. We can eat anything,” she said, her voice breaking. “The kids cannot. It is not their fault.”


Kurdish PKK says held ‘successful’ meeting on disbanding

Updated 09 May 2025
Follow

Kurdish PKK says held ‘successful’ meeting on disbanding

  • The PKK will share “full and detailed information with regard to the outcome of this congress very soon,” it said
  • In February, Ocalan urged his fighters to disarm and disband

ISTANBUL: The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) held a “successful” meeting this week with a view to disarming and dissolving, the Kurdish agency ANF, which is close to the armed movement, announced on Friday.
The meeting resulted in “decisions of historic importance concerning the PKK’s activities, based on the call” of founder Abdullah Ocalan, who called on the movement in February to dissolve.
The congress, which was held between Monday and Wednesday, took place in the “Media Defense Zones” — a term used by the movement to designate the Kandil mountains of northern Iraq where the PKK military command is located, the agency reported.
The PKK will share “full and detailed information with regard to the outcome of this congress very soon,” it said.
In February, Ocalan urged his fighters to disarm and disband, ending a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
In his historic call — which took the form of a letter — Ocalan urged the PKK to hold a congress to formalize the decision.
Two days later, the PKK announced a ceasefire, saying it was ready to convene a congress but said “for this to happen, a suitable secure environment must be created,” insisting it would only succeed if Ocalan were to “personally direct and lead it.”
The PKK leadership is holed up in Kurdish-majority mountainous northern Iraq where Turkish forces have staged multiple air strikes in recent years, targeting the group which is also blacklisted by Washington and Brussels.