Like an abused woman told to hush and carry on, the Lebanese population, still in shock, gathers itself once again after yet another cycle of violence and returns to a semblance of daily life. Whether the home and the hearts are shattered, no one wants to know. Although a ceasefire was declared on November 27th, Israeli drones resumed flights within days—not only over the southern border but across Lebanon. In the South, the Israeli army continues its raids and systematic destruction of villages near the border.
With a legendary sense of humor, a defense mechanism long employed to endure the unbearable, the Lebanese have nicknamed the MK drone Emm Kamel (“Kamel’s Mother”), a legacy of the wartime practice of assigning code names to sensitive matters. Though less loud than during the war, the roaring of these drones in the skies is a reminder that the threat has not fully vanished.
After an initial sense of relief, reactions to the ceasefire among the population vary depending on one’s personal history, background, and level of awareness. If, for a population exhausted by years of repeated violence since the end of the so-called civil war—what stateman and journalist Ghassan Tueni called “the war of others”—the news of a ceasefire was significant, a page of such brutality cannot be turned in just a few days or weeks. Besides the moral damages, the bill of this war includes 4,047 killed and 16,593 injured in Lebanon since October 2023, with over 3,000 deaths in the last two months alone. Around 1.5 million people have been displaced, and massive destruction is essentially in the South and in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Hezbollah’s headquarters. This comes on top of the unprecedented financial and economic crisis that has been crippling the country and the population for years.
A Population still Under Shock
As they rushed to return to their land and homes—sometimes reduced to nothing but rubble—before the Israeli army’s withdrawal that is meant to take place over 60 days, many Lebanese are concerned that this ceasefire is only a truce. Israel has been repeatedly breaching the ceasefire agreement, disregarding international norms and law. When some believe the war has ended and Hezbollah has been defeated or seriously weakened, the party’s sympathizers see things differently. In any case, they claim they are “not concerned if the war starts again; we will continue fighting. We have trust. We are used to wars, we are not afraid—it is a matter of belief,” says Ali, a restaurant manager in Beirut who was displaced during the conflict. “Martyrdom is our belief,” he adds.
Mazen, another fearless sympathizer of Hezbollah from the South, worked for years in Dubai as a flight attendant before returning to Lebanon. He expresses concerns about the increasing “suffocation of Jabal Amel,” the predominantly Shia southern region with historic ties to Palestine, and is looking to emigrate again. He is betting on and exploring opportunities in the Netherlands through a recruitment agency assisting migrants and refugees he was told about. During the war, he sent his wife and child to stay with his brother-in-law in Tunis. In the meantime, he has applied for a visa to France, from where he plans to continue to the Netherlands.
Within the Shia community, however, many do not support Hezbollah’s adventures and have started to dare be more vocal about it: Khaled, a successful self-made entrepreneur in the F&B sector, has seen his business in the southern suburbs destroyed. “If I had the choice, I would leave – he says – for every now and then it is the same story. My business was hit during the 2006 war as well. We build, grow, expand, and then we go backwards.” Despite his frustrations, Khaled feels his hands are tight behind his back: “How could I shut everything down and leave? We’ve built a name and reputation over 50 years,” he says. “How could I leave all the employees behind? We have 500 families living from our activities.”
The rebound capacity of the Lebanese remains nevertheless both a strength and a double-edged sword. Khaled is already scouting to open new premises in other areas, in Beirut and its suburbs. At first not very talkative, he confesses to Reset DOC that after speaking to us, he “would need a glass of whisky,” as it opens his wounds given the harshness of the subject. He recounts how, during the conflict, Israeli forces gave them a half-hour warning before bombing the building across the street. “If you had cut me then, not a drop of blood would have come out. Actually, I am still terrorized; there’s no guarantee this is over, there is nothing tangible about this. You can’t build based on this truce; it is like developing a building on shifting sands. Nothing has changed, only the headlines; the same politicians are in power. I fear bombs, assassinations now and more.”
The spectrums of the past still continue to haunt Lebanese memories. “Those months were pure terror. Our properties have been destroyed, our employees and families displaced,” reminds Khaled for those who have short memory impairment.
The Burden of the Socio-Economic Impact of the War in a Country already Depleted
Maha, a Sunni woman whose flat near the southern suburbs of Beirut was damaged, shares the same sense of anxiety and caution. She has been staying at the gym in the mountains where she works as a receptionist—they gave her a room—and her sister has been cooking for her and delivering meals for the whole week. Though she says she misses her home, Maha has not dared to return: “For me, this is a truce; you don’t know when it will start again. Our fate is uncertain. I feel that everyone has been affected by this war—some by fear, others directly in their lives. It is a chain effect. Of course, those who were not directly touched don’t feel the same level of anxiety.”
It is not only the fear of the bombing that weighs on the Lebanese minds but also the degraded conditions in which the war has left them. In the South, for instance, many families face the loss of their homes, along with no electricity, no water, and disrupted internet access. As a result, many families have chosen to delay their return until after the end-of-year holidays, since their children need to go back to school. As the war has been raging for more than a year in the South compared to two months in the capital and elsewhere, work opportunities have rarefied. People are also leaving because of this. The region which relies on agriculture has also suffered from attacks on the environment—including the use of white phosphorus that burned the territory and compromised crops. Even for the most resilient citizens, over a year of uninterrupted trauma is difficult to bear. As the philosopher Henri Bergson remarked, “human time is the time of project,” yet trauma and violence strip people of their ability to envision a future.
Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu has been repeating: “We are in a ceasefire situation, not in an end of hostilities.” Despite his warnings and Donald Trump’s carrot-and-stick approach, a big faction of the Lebanese thinks the war is over, as Hezbollah has lost its arsenal and access to weapons with the weakening or backing out and fall of its allies, respectively Iran and Bashar Al Assad’s Syrian regime. They somehow feel reassured by the presence of the guardians of the cease-fire that compose the international monitoring committee and by the deployment of the Lebanese army on the Southern border in application of UN resolution 1701, which has started slowly.
As Lebanon approaches the election of a new president on January 9th—following more than two years of political vacuum—the critical question remains whether the political class will finally gather and clearly take a stand and refuse to give its consent to dubious interests above the State or not. And hence, start to undercut the dysfunctionalities of a rotten system entertained by the post-war lords—including Hezbollah—for which only civilians have been paying the heavy price, whatever confession or community they belong to.
The traditional and simplicistic Western narrative that views Lebanon mainly through the lens of confessionalism is outdated. This narrative has been exploited by those in power to maintain their grip. And it is the entire civilian population that is held hostage by a corrupt ruling class that has impoverished it, and sucked and undermined the State until it was left without any governance.
How will such a fallen State now compensate for the million people hit by the war? And how will Hezbollah, with no or very little Iranian support compensate its supporters and fund reconstruction? Necessary sums are estimated to billions. So far, the Lebanese government has released an 8-million-dollar fund to the Council of the South to finance assistance.
The socio-economic burden of the war is humungous and Lebanon, as in the past, relies essentially on the international community for reconstruction and mainly the Gulf countries; but this time the aid will be conditioned to reforms, and the donors “will be watching the future government,” says Najat Aoun Saliba, Member of Parliament. The MP, who was one of the few women to enter Parliament in the last election and who is part of a group of independent, sees this moment in Lebanon’s history as a turning point: “This is a golden opportunity to build a State. All Lebanese want to build a State” she says. “The establishment is weakened and the Lebanese people are now more powerful than they realize. We have to seize this opportunity. It is now and this opportunity can’t be forever.” Will Najat Saliba’s optimism prevail or will Lebanon’s traumatic history keep its citizens trapped in the old ways, in a Middle Eastern environment where their country still represents a unique though shaky democracy?
Cover photo: Smoke billows from a site targeted by Israeli shelling in the southern Lebanese border village of Khiam on July 30, 2024, amid ongoing cross-border clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by AFP)