Neha Madhira
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“Expulsion orders” and evacuation warnings have been issued for a quarter of Lebanon’s coastline as well as 26 towns in South Lebanon due to the Israeli military’s unrelenting bombardment and ground invasion. Around 1.2 million civilians have been displaced across the country, and more than 2,000 people have been killed since the attacks began on Oct. 2.
In late September, Israeli militants reportedly placed explosives inside pagers they claimed were being used by Hezbollah members, which simultaneously set off, killing at least 20 and injuring more than 2,700 others, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Just a week later, Hassan Nasrallah, a Lebanese politician and Hezbollah leader, was assassinated by an Israeli airstrike on Dahieh, a suburb near Beirut. However, Israel has expanded its carpet-bombing to targeting masjids as well as two hospitals. Lebanese Americans, as well as medical and humanitarian workers, are urging for a ceasefire while their families grapple with tough decisions around whether to leave their homes with no guarantees on when they might return.
“[Members of the ministry] met Oct. 9 to discuss mass casualty training at more hospitals across Lebanon,” said Wahida Ghalyani, manager of the public health emergency operations at the Lebanese Health Ministry. “So far, 118 hospitals in Lebanon have already had mass casualty training, which consists of three-day training modules and mental health support as well. We have set up mobile clinics in residential areas for those who have smaller injuries or wounds, but need dressing changes.”
Ghalayini said at least 123 health care workers have been killed in Lebanon.
“Prior to the recent escalation with the pager explosions, Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon and its ongoing bombardment across the country, my parents were in our hometown, Sidon,” said Zahra Hankir, a Brooklyn-based Lebanese writer and editor. As the situation has become far more dangerous and deadly, Hankir’s parents were relocated to Beirut to stay with her sister, believing certain areas of the capital would be safer than the south. However, Hankir said it has become “increasingly clear that no place in Lebanon is truly safe anymore.”
Jennifer Moorehead, the country director for Save The Children, said at an Oct. 3 press conference that the last couple of weeks have been “a complete nightmare.”
“Twenty percent of the population is basically on the move,” Moorehead said, adding that 420,000 of those are children in Beirut.” She said people are sleeping in cars lined up on the road, or families are sleeping outdoors among piles of their belongings.
“It’s a crisis of alarming proportions,” Moorehead said.
U.S. officials have arranged flights that have reportedly brought about 350 Lebanese Americans back, but Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said that an evacuation was not being considered right now.
“We are very privileged compared to the majority of Lebanon’s displaced; as five of my parents’ six children live abroad, we have been able to assist them financially and to ensure they have what they need,” Hankir said. “This is not true for hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, as well as migrant workers from Africa and Asia and Syrian, Palestinian, and Iraqi refugees who live in the country and are now displaced with little to no support. The realities on the ground are heartbreaking, and it feels like no amount of help is enough to meet the overwhelming needs.”
Hankir also said her sister and parents are technically able to leave Lebanon, but have chosen not to.
The situation is particularly personal for Hankir’s father, who was born in 1948, the year his parents were exiled [to Lebanon] from Haifa, Palestine, during the Nakba, Hankir said. Her parents left Lebanon for the U.K. during the Lebanese civil war and were unable to return for many years due to the Israeli invasion of 1982, Hankir said.
“I understand my father’s feeling that he does not want to leave Lebanon again,” Hankir said. “He is an older man with a serious illness, unwilling to be forced off his land, having been born into displacement and experienced it before.”
Sally Abby Khalil, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Oxfam, said this is the “worst internally displaced crisis” in Lebanon since the last Israeli invasion in 2006, which led to a civil war and about a million people.
Oxfam found that in shelters across Lebanon, people most needed mattresses, bedding, and cooking and sanitation items, Khalil said at the press briefing held in the wake of Israel’s escalating violence in Lebanon. Women also need sanitary pads, towels, and underwear.
“There must be a step back from the brink where this regional war furthers fires into unimaginable crisis,” Khalil said. “There must be an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, which would then cascade to a ceasefire in Lebanon and all other countries now caught up in this violence.”
Jana Saad, a University of Texas at Austin student whose entire family is from Beirut, said her family is split on what to do during these stressful times.
“Most of them thought the conflict would end because a lot of fighting stayed happening at the border,” Saad said. “At the same time, my mom was talking with a family member who was sure that what happened in Gaza would happen in Lebanon. Parts of my family have left and driven up to the mountains to stay with my grandma’s sister.”
Saad said she had the privilege of visiting her family in Beirut this past summer.
“My parents and I were going back and forth about whether or not we should go in the weeks leading up to our trip,” Saad said. When the family ultimately decided to visit, Saad said they found that people in Lebanon were trying to maintain a sense of normalcy even as Israeli war planes droned overhead. “It makes me emotional to not be sure of the next time I’ll ever be able to go and visit.”
Hankir said her parents are trying to maintain that sense of normalcy while being away from home, but “the uncertainty makes it difficult to plan anything.”
“A few days ago, Israel flattened a building in Ein El Deleb, Sidon, killing dozens of innocent civilians,” Hankir said. “The building was right next to my uncles’ and aunts’ building, where my parents and grandparents used to live, and where we regularly visited for family lunches. They thought their time had come. They lost neighbors. Displaced people who had sought shelter in the building were also killed.”
Khalil said the multicountry crisis has spiraled into an “unnecessary and man-made catastrophe.”
“Israel has been allowed to act with impunity and with complete disregard of international law and the protection of civilians,” Khalil said at the press briefing. “First in Gaza, then here in Lebanon, and now we’re seeing the escalations across the region, all this from a single source.”
Khalil said that before the latest regional attacks started, nearly 40 million people were already in urgent need of humanitarian aid in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen alone.
“We’re already seeing that a regional conflict is forcing even more people to flee, and more people [are] in need,” Khalil said. “This will deepen poverty, further contract economies, widen inequality gaps, and intensify existing injustice.”
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Originally Published: 2024-10-10 10:42:13
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