As Israel attacks, displaced Lebanese people come together in Hamra

Beirut, Lebanon – Beirut is filling up, possibly way past its capacity, as thousands of people stream into its neighbourhoods, seeking refuge from Israel’s unpredictable air raids.

When it seemed to have been concentrating on bombing the south, Israel soon bombed the north. Then it hit Christian-majority neighbourhoods, upending the guess that they were focusing on Shia-majority areas.

The uncertainty is almost palpable as exhausted people stream into the Hamra neighbourhood of Beirut on Tuesday, some having been on the road for more than 12 hours to cover a distance that normally takes two.

Finding a room at an inn

At the Casa D’Or, a four-star hotel on Hamra Street, a couple stands at the check-in desk, trying to negotiate the price for the last room available that night – a suite.

Speaking to them is a receptionist who introduces herself as simply, Lama.

Hamra is a bustling downtown Beirut neighbourhood known for its streetscapes [File: Ahmed Saad/Reuters]

Lama has worked at the Casa D’Or for four years, she says, and she has never seen it as busy as they are right now.

“We’re full,” she says. “Day before yesterday, we were at 40 percent [occupancy].”

Prices have been dropped for Lebanese guests, she adds.

But it does not seem like the couple succeeds in their negotiations – they walk out to stand on the pavement, looking slightly bewildered.

Outside and around the corner, on an unusually busy Makdissi Street, Dr Abbas, a cardiologist, says he has managed to find rooms for himself, his wife and his son – after they had spent 16 hours in the enormous gridlock of traffic coming from the south.

At one point, when they were close to Hamra, the family abandoned their vehicle and trundled their suitcases down the streets, weaving between the cars that they were outpacing on foot.

Abbas is from al-Mansouri, near Tyre in southern Lebanon, but his older son is studying medicine at the American University in Beirut, so they decided to come here rather than head for the mountains as they had when Israel attacked in 2006.

They’re not afraid, he says, because they have already been through so much. “We’re used to this, unfortunately,” he says.

His younger son, a teenager, is experiencing his first war, Abbas says. “He’s in training,” the doctor jokes.

The family seems happy to all be in the same city, but they are not immune from the tension gripping the country, or the anger.

“The Israelis are liars,” his wife says dismissively when asked about Israel’s claims that Hezbollah was storing weapons in homes in the south.

‘Is it safe here?’

There’s a gaggle of Syrian teenage boys walking down the street.

They usually work in Hamra, and live in Bir Hassan in the south, a neighbourhood close to Ghobeiry, where Israel was bombing on Tuesday.

They don’t want to go back there tonight, they say, preferring to go find friends in the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp.

“Is it safe here in this neighbourhood?” they ask, a question that is on everyone’s mind, whether they vocalise it or not.

The boys drift off, heading towards Shatila, where they hope they will be safer for the night.

Two women appear, looking slightly out of sorts.

They are from the south and have come up to Beirut from Tyre, where they have been staying for the past year.

Lebanese people fleeing southern Lebanon towards Beirut along the Damour highway on September 24, 2024 [Wael Hamzeh/EPA-EFE]

In Hamra, they found rooms at the Mayflower Hotel, but discovered to their dismay that they could not find bread.

Their distress attracts the attention of kind passers-by who join the two ladies’ hunt for bread.

A grocery shop owner says there is none to be had, so the search party heads for a falafel shop to ask if the women can buy plain bread.

The falafel seller apologises – he only has enough for the falafel he will make tonight night.

More people join the search and finally, two different people manage to find bags of bread. Victory.

They refuse to accept the women’s payment for the bread, and the group celebrates that someone has been helped.

Out of nowhere, someone beckons to plastic chairs set up between big flower pots on the pavement and asks the ladies to sit down while someone else sources coffees for them.

They were on the road for 15 hours getting to Beirut, now they need the break and a chance to enjoy other Lebanese people taking care of them. They never give their names.

‘Creating fitna won’t work’

“They [Israel] are trying to create fitna, turn Sunnis against Shia,” Salim Rayess says at the Makdissi Bakery – which is not actually on Makdissi Street, although it is close enough.

“But it isn’t working.”

“Fitna” means an internal strife that could escalate to the point where a civil war may break out.

An elderly woman who fled Israeli air raids in the south arrives at a school turned into a shelter in Beirut on September 23, 2024 [Bilal Hussein/AP Photo]

In his casual observation, Rayess unknowingly says what several analysts had said about Israel’s attacks on Lebanon: Israel wants to apply pressure until the Lebanese people turn on each other and try to distance themselves from Hezbollah and the Shia sect it represents.

Rayess is pitching in with Beiruti efforts to aid the new arrivals in any way possible.

He is at the Makdissi Bakery to take bundles of hundreds of manouches (a bread snack) to the Sagesse School in Clemenceau, which is housing displaced people.

A wry laugh drifts over the conversations outside – a man is talking about his apartment building, two shops and farmland that Israel has destroyed.

“It’s better that way,” he concludes. “Now, I’m waiting for the last of my properties to be destroyed, too.”