Lebanese civilians fleeing Israeli attacks face hardship and exploitation

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Beirut, Lebanon – Umm Hassan* says she was ready to die in her home when Israel began carpet bombing south Lebanon earlier this week.

Shrouded in her black abaya, she explains that the “resistance” – a reference to the Lebanese armed group, Hezbollah – ordered her to leave the governorate of Nabatiya with her husband and children, however.

She did as they said, believing that Hezbollah wanted civilians out of harm’s way in order to fight Israel, a country she calls the “Zionist state”.

“The [Zionists] don’t scare us,” she tells Al Jazeera at an elementary school that has been turned into a displacement shelter in Lebanon’s capital Beirut. “[Before we left home], I saw [an Israeli] warplane above me. Warplanes are all over the [skies] in the south.”

As the United States and France ostensibly pressure Israel to avert all out-war with Hezbollah, civilians from south Lebanon say they are already living through catastrophic levels of bombardment.

In their eyes, Israel has already declared a major war on Hezbollah – as well as the civilians here.

Since Monday, more than 700 people – men, women and children – have been killed in Israel’s relentless bombing of south Lebanon. That figure amounts to nearly half the number of people killed in Lebanon since Israel and Hezbollah began exchanging fire across the border on October 8, the day after Israel’s war on Gaza began.

Hezbollah initiated the cross-border skirmish in a stated attempt to relieve pressure on Hamas in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed about 41,000 people and displaced most of the 2.3 million population in the besieged enclave.

Israel’s devastating war on Gaza followed a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, in which 1,139 people were killed.

Now, civilians in Lebanon – particularly from the south and other regions controlled by Hezbollah – are bracing for a similar fate as the Palestinians in Gaza, despite ostensible Western efforts to prevent a full-scale war.

Provoking Hezbollah

The US and France are leading international calls for a temporary 21-day ceasefire out of fear that Israel could further escalate its assault on Lebanon.

But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government is accused of committing war crimes and genocide in Gaza, recently said that he refuses a truce.

“Our policy is clear: We’re continuing to strike Hezbollah with all [our] strength, and we won’t stop until we achieve all our objectives – first and foremost the return of northern residents to their homes,” he said, after landing in New York in advance of addressing the UN General Assembly on Friday.

At the Assembly, Netanyahu accused the UN of “anti-Semitism”. The Israeli leader said that singling out his country is “a moral stain on the United Nations”, making the institution “a swamp of anti-Semitism”.

“I say to you, until Israel – until the Jewish state – is treated like other nations, until this anti-Semitic swamp is drained, the UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce,” he said.

He also spoke about the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court, a UN body, against him and Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, linking the measure to anti-Semitism.

Netanyahu’s statement came after members of his far-right coalition threatened to collapse the government – and possibly Netanyahu’s political career – if a ceasefire were reached with Hezbollah.

Michael Young, an expert on Lebanon at Carnegie Middle East Center, told Al Jazeera that Israel will likely continue bombing mainly Shia-populated regions where Hezbollah governs.

He added that by escalating the conflict, via killing hundreds of civilians and displacing tens of thousands of people, Israel is trying to provoke Hezbollah into retaliating in kind.

Hezbollah has calibrated its attacks to hit Israeli military targets and outposts, to avoid civilian casualties that would give Israel a pretext to wreak further destruction on Lebanon, Young said.

Any scenario in which all of Lebanon is targeted risks deepening the opposition that some communities have towards Hezbollah, he added.

“Israel has crossed all red lines to provoke Hezbollah into bringing out its big guns, so that Israel can then respond much more violently,” he told Al Jazeera. “But Hezbollah has fired just one rocket at Tel Aviv and it seems that it was just a warning.”

“Hezbollah knows the trap that Israel is setting for them … Hezbollah does not want to be blamed for Lebanon’s destruction.”

Israel’s heavy bombardment has forced more than 90,000 people to flee their homes and take refuge in towns and cities further north, where the government has turned 533 schools into displacement shelters.

Many are also trying to rent apartments in Beirut, but landlords are reportedly raising prices to profiteer from Israel’s devastating assault, according to Hassan,*a Beirut resident who is hosting several relatives who have fled the south.

He said his cousin lost his home and livelihood during the bombardment and is now struggling to afford a life in the capital.

“Landlords are exploiting the displaced,” Hassan told Al Jazeera. “Prices for apartments were recently $500 or $600, but now it is about $1,000 or $1,300 and they often want six months of rent in advance.”

Young, from Carnegie Middle East Centre, added that some non-Shia communities appear hesitant to receive large numbers of displaced people out of fear that there are Hezbollah members among those seeking refuge.

In one reported incident, men in the mostly Sunni-populated city of Tripoli stopped a family who arrived from the south because they had images of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other operatives plastered on their vehicle.

The men from Tripoli began tearing the pictures up. Tripoli residents generally harbour deep resentment towards Hezbollah for what they see as its role in helping Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to repress a pro-democracy uprising that erupted in March 2011.

Despite the bitter history, Young explained that many communities in Lebanon simply fear that if they allow new arrivals to openly sympathise with Hezbollah, then they could get caught up in the conflict.

“[The displacement crisis] has created clear tensions between the Shia community and others in Lebanon. Wherever they flee to … [host communities] may fear they could be bombed [by Israel].”

All-out war?

While many non-Shia regions have been generally spared by Israel for now, civilians from south Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley feel they are already living through an all-out war.

Ali, 25, said that Israeli forces had already killed one of his acquaintances on Tuesday after attacking a Hezbollah storage facility in Baalbek, a Hezbollah-controlled region in the Bekaa Valley.

“What Israel is doing is wrong. They are killing civilians in order to try and kill fighters, but that’s not right. It’s not necessary,” Ali told Al Jazeera from his corner store in Hamra, a bustling district in the capital Beirut.

Ali said he fears his mother and father, who also live in Baalbek, could be killed next. However, he understood their desire to remain on their land, rather than flee.

“If they die, they want to die with dignity, not by fleeing their home,” he told Al Jazeera.

Like many others, Ali said that he would support a negotiated ceasefire if Hezbollah believes it is in their interest and the interest of civilians.

However, he expected Israel to further escalate its bombardment of Lebanon if ceasefire talks fail.

“The war can still get a lot worse,” he warned.

*Some names have been changed to protect anonymity.

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