Her face freezes as she reads the message she has just received on her mobile phone. The text tells her to immediately evacuate the building where she is, that of the Ministry of Information. This civil servant, who receives journalists from the international press on the first floor of this soulless building to accredit them, visibly fears for her life. Such a message can indeed precede Israeli strikes. Her colleagues at the ministry have received the same warning. If everyone keeps their cool, the threat is taken seriously.
Especially since early in the morning, messages of this type flooded the cell phones of residents of the south of the country, raising a wave of panic, just before the Israeli army unleashed a deluge of fire in this region, killing nearly 500 people. Unprecedented since 2006. If Tsahal mainly targets the south of the country, it does not spare Beirut, as on Friday: one of its missiles pulverized a building in the southern suburbs where, in its basement, executives of the Radwan unit, Hezbollah’s elite force, had gathered. Leave or stay? The civil servant is afraid, she tries to control herself. Leave or stay? She stays.
“We don’t want this war”
“This is the beginning of the war,” says Roy, a 55-year-old shopkeeper, sitting at a table in front of his falafel shop, his eyes and body tired. The news of the day exhausts him; for a week now, since the attack on Hezbollah pagers, Lebanon has fallen apart, he thinks. His country is caught in a spiral that is beyond its control and from which he sees no happy outcome. “I have experienced two wars in Lebanon, and I expect worse than in 2006 because this time, no one will be able to stop the madmen who run Israel and the madmen who run Iran, the sponsors of Hezbollah.” He too decided to stay. “I have Greek and Swiss passports, I could take refuge in one of these two countries. But I don’t want to, my parents are old, they live here, I have my business, our country is sinking, I don’t have the strength to leave it. The majority of young people who can have left or are preparing to leave. They are right. Our leaders have killed our country, how sad. And now, war is back.”
No one is counting on anyone to put an end to this deadly spiral. Neither on the allies of the Israelis, nor on the allies of Hezbollah, and even less on the UN, whose impotence is so obvious in this country. Since Monday, the 10,500 blue helmets of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), including the 700 French from Operation Daman, have been entrenched in their bases, canceling all their patrols, leaving the population alone to face the Israeli raids. Reduced to inaction, UNIFIL could only declare itself, in a press release, “gravely concerned for the safety of civilians in southern Lebanon, in the face of the most intense Israeli bombing campaign since last October” and announce that its head of mission, Aroldo Lazaro, had taken “contact with the Lebanese and Israeli sides, emphasizing the urgent need for de-escalation.” And that’s it.
Michel, a Greek Orthodox man in his forties, met near the famous Hamra Street, near the cornice that runs along the sea, does not care about UNIFIL or the UN. He shares the same desolation and the same feeling of abandonment as Roy. “We don’t want this war, but it’s coming upon us. The situation is getting worse every day. We’re already at the end of our tether.”
“We are all afraid”
In the street where Michel is on business, a cohort of big cars, Mercedes and BMWs, filled with displaced people, rush in and park. They have just arrived from the south, they are Shiites from the Amal group, who with Hezbollah are on the front lines of the Israeli-Lebanese border clashes. Women, children, men, they crowd into the hotel lobbies of this narrow street, they are tense. They are tired, they demand rooms, space, they get impatient, get angry, we hear raised voices, a fight between the men, a revolver is pulled from a holster, three shots in the air. Tempers calm down, the families end up spreading out among the hotels while the street is now under the surveillance of young Shiites. “Welcome to Lebanon”, says the hotel receptionist, a little shaken by this eruption of violence and panic. “Every day we cross a threshold towards the abyss,” Michel continues. “There is reason to be afraid, we are all afraid of what is happening to us.”
The large shopping mall in the Christian quarter of eastern Beirut, ABC Achrafieh, with its multi-level collection of international brands, trendy cafes and restaurants, and seven movie theaters, is one of the liveliest and busiest places in the Lebanese capital. A center that normally closes at 10 p.m. At the end of this troubled day, Monday around 7:40 p.m., customers learn on their cell phones that a missile has just struck a building in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a seven-minute drive away. The target of the Israeli army appears to be Ali Karaki, the commander of Hezbollah’s southern front.
Immediately, the ABC empties, the vendors close their shops, the cinema sessions are interrupted. “We are afraid, the next missile could fall here, what will happen? And then, we have to go home, we have to join our children,” exclaims one of the cinema employees. In less than twenty minutes, the ABC is closed. Outside, the cafes, restaurants, and shops follow suit as a power outage plunges the entire neighborhood into darkness.
Emerging from the shadows, in the heart of this neighborhood where Bashir Gemayel was assassinated in 1982, are armed Phalangists (1). They are clearly monitoring the comings and goings and ensuring the security of one of the buildings overlooking the street. According to a resident of this neighborhood, Pierre, it had been a long time since they had carried their weapons. “in full view of everyone”. And to launch, before running off into the night: “Our nightmares are back.”
(1) Members of the Kataeb party, a Christian militia founded in 1936 by Pierre Gemayel, Bashir’s father.
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International concerns
From New York, where the UN General Assembly is being held, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot has requested the convening of a “Security Council to hold emergency meeting on Lebanon this week”.
Russia has said it fears the “complete destabilization” from the Middle East due to the ongoing military escalation between Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel, whose strikes it condemned. China said “deeply shocked” by the human losses following the Israeli strikes.
For his part, Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian, said on Tuesday that its ally Hezbollah could not “not to stay alone” against Israel, which carried out bombings that left more than 550 dead the day before in Lebanon.
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