“Destruction, violent death and threats have always loomed over our lives”

Clothes of children and adults dry in the windows of the dormitories of the technical institute of UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. Located in Sibline, a town in Chouf overlooking the Mediterranean, south of Beirut, the vocational training center for young Palestinians from Lebanon has become a temporary shelter since the start of the offensive launched by Israel in the Land of the Cedar, the September 23. Since then, more than 1,900 people have died, after a year of low-intensity war on the border between Hezbollah and the army of the Jewish state.

In an autumn light, the joy of the children watching their elders play football on the sports field offers a moment of normality in the life of the approximately 500 internally displaced people welcomed – the majority Palestinian, but also Syrian and Lebanese – who have been torn from their daily lives. A thunderous supersonic boom, followed by another less violent one, produced by the low altitude flight of Israeli fighter planes, brings back the reality of war and provokes nervous laughter in the courtyard. Later, two more detonations ring out from a distance.

“Where are the bombings we hear taking place? Is it close to where we are? What will we do if there is a strike here? This is the subject of our conversations »says Ayham Abdallah, Palestinian from Syria, aged 30. Near Sibline, the locality of Wardaniyeh was targeted twice in October. The sounds of more distant strikes often resonate at the technical institute site, because it is at altitude. “Our faith in God protects us. But we have no confidence in this enemy [Israël]with which no one can be safe, neither in Palestine nor in Lebanon”says the young Mazen Farran, Lebanese from Tyre, medical student.

Avoiding Hezbollah militants

Having fled the war in Syria in 2012, Ayham Abdallah worked as a waiter in Nabatiyé, in southern Lebanon. The violent Israeli bombings on the region drove it out. “Overall, I think we are safe in this center. But the recent bombing in Bourj Al-Chemali scares us”slips the young father. On Sunday October 27, a drone strike took place in this town near Tyre, in the South, on a building next to an UNRWA school. According to Dorothee Klaus, representative of the UN agency in Lebanon, the establishment, which suffered damage but was empty (the school year has not resumed and the place is not used as a shelter), was not “not targeted”.

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