Hussein expresses himself cautiously. He is surrounded by a crowd that enters and leaves the building, an educational center on the outskirts of Beirut that these days serves as a shelter. Like him, many of the 1,000 families who spend hours on a mat in the inhospitable hallways are Hezbollah sympathizers. Doubting the , promoting the , could hurt sensitivities. Suddenly, after alluding to the abuses that Israel commits against Lebanon “since 15 months of truce and decades ago,” Hussein is sincere: “The war with Israel was inevitable, but this was not the time.”
The second war that the party-militia has waged with Israel in three years – the third in two decades – has had on the Lebanese communities with a Shiite majority, where Hezbollah is the de facto authority, repercussions that the Israeli army took more time to impose on previous occasions. On Thursday, after demanding the eviction of all residents of southern Lebanon the previous day, military spokesman Avichay Adraee unleashed chaos by extending the measure to the densely populated suburbs of Beirut. Between both orders they affect more than 800,000 people.
Since Monday, the spread of Israeli bombings to areas where Hezbollah does not have a presence hits communities other than the Shiites that during the 2024 war fell into disrepair, even maintaining a certain normality. This element, together with the reception of waves of displaced people from territories that are already suffering from economic hardship, intensifies social tension and fuels the discourse that blames all of the Shiite neighbors responsible for the return of the war resumed by Hezbollah, the largest of the Lebanese formations that profess that religion.
Some and others agree in pointing out the Government. Those who declare themselves fed up with the regional adventures of what was considered the largest armed militia in the Middle East regret that the Executive, formed in 2025, has not managed to disarm Hezbollah in time – just as it did, although without setting deadlines – and that the formation links the destiny of Lebanon with that of Iran. Those around the so-called Party of God, for their part, remember that the authorities have not managed to prevent the Israeli occupation and bombings despite being the closest to the West in decades.
“I have not been able to convince her,” Hussein Ayash, 33, a resident of Chiyah, said Thursday, one of the four municipalities – along with Haret Reik, Hadath and Bourj el Barajne – that Israel demanded to be emptied before attacking Hezbollah. He was talking about his 73-year-old mother. “He says he doesn’t want to end up on the street,” he declared in the local press. “He prefers to die at home, so we both stayed.” Others left with what they were wearing. “I haven’t told my children anything,” said a mother who fled the area and who preferred to speak anonymously. “I just told them that we had to go. But on the road they understood everything and started crying.”
The path that thousands of families made to safety on Thursday was a walkway of recent defeats and scars. Before leaving Dahiye (suburb, in Arabic) they passed holes where Israel destroyed residential towers in 2024. Further ahead, hundreds of vehicles were collapsed in front of the Blom Bank branch, where Lebanese Sally Hafez showed up with a can of gasoline in 2022 to demand her own money. It was the first of several popular assaults in a context of capital restrictions. Many gathered in the area of the Great Seraglio, which in 2019 hosted the revolts against the sectarian system that ended up being the disappointment of a generation, or in the Plaza de los Mártires, the front of the civil war until 1990. To the east, others moved away from the drones on the coast of the Christian part,
A fraction of the exodus reaches the Muslim neighborhood of Hamra. There, Fatima, 21, receives them as a volunteer for a community project that distributes food, clothing and hygiene products to the displaced. Fatima, dressed in a hijab, is one of them. She lives in Deir Ames, a municipality near Israel and affected by the eviction, but she has a rented room in Beirut, where she goes every week as a university student.
He uses the first person plural when talking about Hezbollah. “This did not start on Monday or on [día del ataque masivo de Hamás a Israel]but much earlier,” she argues introvertedly, supporting the new regional front initiated by the Lebanese militia. Then, she raises her tone: “Everyone knows that [los israelíes] they want to have Greater Israel [que podría incorporar partes del sur de Líbano]”Concerned, a person in charge of the project approaches her. She asks her to moderate her tone: “We are a humanitarian mission and we cannot become a target.” Fatima takes off her overalls and goes out into the street to continue her argument. “I don’t know how you can say that the war started on Monday; The war never ended and this could not stay like this. There are children who during the truce have seen their parents bombed before their eyes!”
On the other side of Beirut, while the local population of Dahiye can be heard firing shots a few kilometers away to warn of the eviction order, Hussein recalls that Israeli grievances against Lebanon date back to “before the birth of Hezbollah”, in 1982. “Israel has bombed us non-stop during 15 months of truce. When we respond, everyone protests,” he reasons. “The war with Israel was inevitable. That said,” he clarifies, “if you ask me, I don’t think it was the time.” The global correlation of forces “is the same” as during the 2024 war, making it impossible to “achieve different results,” and in the community that revolves around Hezbollah, he adds, there is poverty and fatigue. “Many lack money, a home and a way to get ahead.”
In Ashrafieh, the Christian district of Beirut, Camille Mourani, head of political relations for the liberal and anti-sectarian National Bloc political party, fears that the spiral of violence in Lebanon will change the country’s destiny. “What is happening this Thursday is a before and after,” he says after the Israeli demand to empty the suburbs. He believes that they can become “the new Gaza,” and anticipates that the displacement of Hezbollah followers to areas where “they are fed up” with that organization can create “riots.”
He believes that the Government should have disarmed the organization “by force” last year, since, he assures, “it has the support of 70% of the people and the international community to do so,” and accuses the Shiite militia of having plunged the country into sterile debates for decades. “We have been debating for 40 years whether Lebanon should have one, two or three armies. We are talking about common sense, not something that accepts different perspectives. And the existence of a militia is something that cannot be debated.”
