BEIRUT (OSV News) — As Israel has escalated its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon across a United Nations-drawn boundary between the two countries, more than a million people have fled their homes.
Some of them have nowhere to go in a country already devastated by economic crisis, a political impasse and the largest number of refugees per capita and per square mile in the world.
“Lebanon has experienced every crisis imaginable over the past two decades and this is another one of those that we have to get through. We are nothing if not resilient,” Fadi Bejan told OSV News.
Bejan, the country representative for Pro Terra Sancta, a Catholic organization that supports local communities and helps in humanitarian emergencies, spoke as the U.N.’s Security Council expressed “strong concern” Oct. 14 after Israel fired on and wounded U.N. peacekeepers in the south of the country.
“Whereas before the war our focus was on providing food and medication to those within a 10-kilometer (6.2 miles) radius of Beirut, we have had to cast our net wider. The priority for PTS is now on those who have fled their home whether they be from Dahieh, a Hezbollah stronghold (district of Beirut), or a border town in south Lebanon,” Bejan said.
Even before the recent crisis, it was estimated that more than half of the Lebanese population is living below the poverty line, “while a shocking 9 out of 10 Syrian refugees require humanitarian assistance to meet their basic needs,” said the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR.
Currently, 1.2 million internally displaced people add to the 1.5 million Syrian refugees living in the country and some 11,238 refugees of other nationalities.
“At times of hardship we come together regardless of our faith. Amidst all the chaos that’s what I cling onto – the goodness of people in unimaginable circumstances,” Bejan told OSV News in his office in Beirut.
Rima Abi Karam, project manager for humanitarian projects in Lebanon of the Religious of Jesus and Mary – a congregation present in 29 countries, on four continents and dedicated to the education and service of the poor – agreed. “The Lebanese people have so much dignity that they don’t want to ask for help.”
In her Beirut office, full of dry food and diapers ready to be dispersed, OSV News met Samer and his young family, who hail from the Beirut suburb of Dahieh. Samer only wished to give his first name.
After the first night of heavy bombardment they moved to the north of the city to live with Samer’s disabled brother, Yousef.
“If it wasn’t for Yousef, already receiving support from them (Religious of Jesus and Mary) then Samer would have never reached out” Abi Karam told OSV News. The family receives tinned food and a small allowance every month. “It doesn’t solve their problems but it goes a long way,” the project manager said.
Others have not been so fortunate, Samer explained, eyes still red from the sleepless nights.
“There is no place for some of our neighbors to seek shelter. They have no savings and work in Beirut so they cannot flee to Tripoli or Byblos,” Samer said, pointing to cities north of Beirut. “Instead they have had to risk returning to their home in Dahieh,” he said.
Much of the beauty in Lebanon comes from its diverse landscape. In peacetime, one can drive north from Beirut and within an hour be surrounded by vineyards overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.
In the sleepy mountain town of Mazraat al Toufah, in north-central Lebanon, Maya and her two brothers from Tyre, a coastal town in southern Lebanon, told OSV News: “We don’t ask for much. I would just like to have access to a car so I can at least leave the village,” said the internally displaced woman.
Anxiety is mounting after at least 21 civilians were killed Oct. 14 in an Israeli air strike in a town just three miles away, a harsh reminder that nowhere is safe and the strikes aren’t only concentrated in the south.
The war itself is still in its infancy. Less than a month has passed since Israel launched its ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Regardless of which direction the war now takes, for the people of Lebanon much of the damage has already been done.
“(As many as) 1.2 million civilians have been displaced. You can’t reverse a number like that overnight. Just because the bombs have stopped doesn’t mean that the effects from the war have evaporated into thin air,” Bejan of Pro Terra Sancta told OSV News.
He said that after the 2006 war with Israel, “we at least had some semblance of an economy and were able to rebuild the damage. That won’t happen this time. We are going to have to rely on NGOs and foreign aid,” he said of a country that is struggling to find a president – with a power void since 2022 – and plunged into a crisis dubbed one of the worst globally by the World Bank.
For those from the south of the country, there is a strong sense of déjà vu.
“In 2006 the fighting was largely concentrated in southern Lebanon. Once we made it to Beirut, we generally felt safe. Now it seems that nowhere is off limits,” said Beniel from the village of Dibbine, right at the border with Israel, who only wished to give his first name.
This time, “perhaps naively, we thought that the Lebanese military or UNIFIL (U.N. peacekeepers) would protect us from Israeli aggression,” he said.
“The events of the past month have been a surprise to many of us,” he said of the Israel-Hamas war that entered its second year. Sixteen of his family members are now crammed into a two bedroom apartment in Nabaa, a historically Christian part of the Lebanese capital, where statues of the Virgin Mary are commonplace.
While Beniel said he would never leave Lebanon, his olive farm and family home, his daughter Nadine told OSV News: “I will leave Lebanon at the first opportunity.”
Her father added that as much as he wants to stay, he has “no idea whether my home will be standing when I return.”
For representatives of Pro Terra Sancta and the Jesus and Mary congregation, attention is beginning to shift to the winter season.
“People aren’t going to return to their homes for at least another six months. It won’t just be about providing food and water but also obtaining fuel to heat shelters,” Bejan said. “That’s going to be extremely costly,” he added.
Around the corner from Martyr’s Square in Beirut, project manager Abi Karam hands out blankets to three families who own nothing but the clothes on their back.
“I have lived in Lebanon for over 50 years and I’ve never witnessed displacement on this scale,” Abi Karam said. “We take it day by day and at the same time hope for some sort of miracle to end this misery.”