‘Everyone is leaving’: bombardments drive tens of thousands from southern Lebanon

[CharlieH]

 

Nancy Faraj was eating lunch with her family at her home in the village of Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon when Israel bombed the house next door, killing two of her neighbours.

Within hours she and her family had grabbed a handful of possessions and headed north-west for the city of Tyre, 50 miles (80km) south of Beirut, where they are now living in a school with several hundred others.

 

For Faraj, 25, it marks the second time she has been displaced by war with Israel. In the 2006 conflict, when she was seven, she fled with her mother to Beirut. Now she has been displaced again, this time with her own children.

“We came here three weeks ago. Up until then the bombing was away from the village and we felt relatively safe. But after they hit my neighbour’s house the decision was immediate.

“It feels like the fighting is getting worse,” she added, saying that the family no longer wanted to live close to the boundary.

In three months, according to figures released last week by the International Organization for Migration, about 76,000 people have been driven from southern Lebanon.

Local authorities in Tyre, a pretty seaside city with ancient ruins, are registering between 200 and 300 newly displaced people each day.

A short drive south along roads lined with citrus and palm groves, vehicles become increasingly scarce, barring the patrolling vehicles of Unifil, the UN observer mission.

In the small town of Naqoura, 1.5 miles from the boundary with Israel, a pile of tangled rubble is all that remains of a house hit in an Israeli strike last week. Surrounding homes and businesses are without windows and peppered with shrapnel.

An Israeli drone buzzes nearby. It is a reminder of the risk that has become almost constant in the south.

The handful of people who remain in Naqoura are palpably anxious and unwilling to speak or be identified.

In a mini-market next to the destroyed house, a man is cleaning up his ruined business, whose windows have been blown out. He left, he said, two minutes before the strike, which killed his cousins.

A young man on a moped appears and checks the Guardian’s paperwork. He leaves and then returns after a few minutes delivering a message from Hezbollah asking reporters to leave.

In three months the violence here has taken on its own logic. The formal situation is that the “cessation of hostilities” defined by UN resolution 1701, which brought an end to the 2006 war, is still in place.

Despite what has been happening on the boundary since 8 October, when Hezbollah began what was at first a limited campaign of firing into Israel in support of Hamas’s war in Gaza, there has been no declaration of war and ambiguous signals from both sides about their intentions.

 

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[Hanaguma]

Now Hezbollah can also learn the valuable lesson of FAFO, that Hamas has been studying for the past months.  Fire rockets into Israel, they will fire back.

Quote

 

 

[Morch]

7 minutes ago, Hanaguma said:

Now Hezbollah can also learn the valuable lesson of FAFO, that Hamas has been studying for the past months.  Fire rockets into Israel, they will fire back.

 

 

The people evacuating are civilians, though. Hezbollah keep firing missiles, launching rockets and carrying out drone attacks regardless. Also, on the Israeli side of the border, a whole lot of people have been evacuated as well.

[Hanaguma]

1 hour ago, Morch said:

 

The people evacuating are civilians, though. Hezbollah keep firing missiles, launching rockets and carrying out drone attacks regardless. Also, on the Israeli side of the border, a whole lot of people have been evacuated as well.

Well, if the Lebanese Army won't kill or drive out the Hezbollah terrorists, that leaves it up to the IDF.  

[Morch]

Just now, Hanaguma said:

Well, if the Lebanese Army won't kill or drive out the Hezbollah terrorists, that leaves it up to the IDF.  

 

No one really expects the Lebanese Army to do so, or think that it can. Given that Hezbollah is very much in the political system/government, it's also a bit of a convulsed situation.

 

The point made was that so far it's an ongoing tit-for-tat between the Hezbollah and the IDF, with civilians on both sides of the borders being evacuated.

 

Hopefully things will not deteriorate into an all out war.