‘This is not our war.’ Lebanese Christians caught between Hezbollah and Israel.
| Rmaich and Alma el-Shaab, Lebanon
As one travels south in Lebanon, one sees fewer cars on the road, and more and more freshly strung banners marking the “martyrdom” of Shiite Hezbollah fighters, who have been locked in intensifying fighting with Israel ever since the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched its attack last October from Gaza.
The escalating exchanges of fire have displaced some 90,000 Lebanese and 60,000 Israelis from border areas. On Wednesday, Hezbollah launched more than 200 rockets at Israel, in apparent response to Israel killing a senior Hezbollah commander overnight.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onIt’s a recurring theme in warfare: the plight of noncombatant civilians caught in the crossfire. In southern Lebanon, Christian villagers say Hezbollah’s tactics make them vulnerable to destructive Israeli salvos.
Those who have stayed in the south – especially in the handful of Christian-majority villages and towns – say they are caught in the middle, and paying the price for a war that is not their own. They face an unknowable timeline, with Hezbollah vowing to continue pressuring Israel until there is a cease-fire in Gaza.
Hezbollah fighters “come between us, and mingle among us, and fire their missiles and run away. Then we get hit back” by Israel, says Tony al-Alam, in the Christian town of Rmaich. “We are sitting here, watching our sheep and goats die, and there is nothing we can do about it.”
Looking up from the center of Rmaich, a Christian town lodged on Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, a sun-wizened Lebanese goatherd points to a cluster of pine trees on a ridge.
That is one of many nearby places used by Shiite Hezbollah fighters as cover to quietly deploy, fire rockets into Israel, and then disappear, he says, prompting Israel to return fire. It’s a pattern that for eight months has disrupted livestock, crops, and his livelihood.
“I have olives behind those trees, but I don’t dare go there,” says Tony al-Alam, noting that half his 300 goats have now starved to death. It has become too risky to graze beyond the edge of town, and Mr. Alam has already spent all his money on animal feed.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onIt’s a recurring theme in warfare: the plight of noncombatant civilians caught in the crossfire. In southern Lebanon, Christian villagers say Hezbollah’s tactics make them vulnerable to destructive Israeli salvos.
Days earlier, he says, Israeli troops opened fire as he and a friend checked a tobacco field, forcing them to run.
“This side here, [Hezbollah] sneaks into the forest and fires at the Israelis, and the Israelis fire back everywhere,” says Mr. Alam, noting that Israel’s use of phosphorus weapons has also poisoned grazing areas and crops, and increased the risk of brushfires.
“This side, for some reason they just don’t understand: Please stay away with your operations,” says Mr. Alam. “They come between us, and mingle among us, and fire their missiles and run away. Then we get hit back [by Israel]. We are sitting here, watching our sheep and goats die, and there is nothing we can do about it.”
The Israelis “didn’t target us on purpose” with the aim of harming civilians, says Mr. Alam, echoing other Lebanese residents still living along the border. But this war on Israel’s northern front – started by Hezbollah in solidarity with Hamas immediately after the Palestinian militant group launched its Oct. 7 invasion of Israel from Gaza – has heavily impacted civilians.
The escalating exchanges of fire have displaced some 90,000 Lebanese and 60,000 Israelis from border areas. On Wednesday, Hezbollah launched more than 200 rockets at Israeli military bases and other targets – one of its heaviest bombardments to date – in apparent response to Israel killing a senior Hezbollah commander overnight.
As one travels south in Lebanon, one sees fewer cars on the road, and more and more freshly strung banners marking the “martyrdom” of Hezbollah fighters.
Those who have stayed in the south – especially in the handful of Christian-majority villages and towns, like Rmaich – say they are caught in the middle, and paying the price for a war that is not their own.
Like all Lebanese, they face an unknowable timeline, with the war in Gaza already extending much longer than first expected and Hezbollah vowing to continue pressuring Israel until there is a cease-fire.
Likewise, Israel makes frequent warnings, such as one in April from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who said any war in Lebanon, while “difficult” for Israel, “would be a catastrophe for Hezbollah and Lebanon.”
“Nothing has changed in eight months, so people started losing hope,” says Father George el-Amil, a Maronite Christian priest in Rmaich, speaking after scores of parishioners celebrated a Sunday service. The morning was so quiet that locals remarked about it, but at 2:21 p.m., a single Israeli strike to the northeast killed two Hezbollah officers.
“We are living in a big prison; we have to worry about driving out of the village safely, and that doesn’t exist,” says Father George, as his parishioners call him.
What do people blame? “Hezbollah, and the Lebanese government, because they can’t contain Hezbollah,” the cleric says, noting that United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006, was meant to ensure that the Lebanese army would deploy along the border, and Hezbollah would pull back.
“If the Israelis hit us, we will hit them. But this is not our war – we did not do anything to them, and they did nothing to us. It’s somebody else’s war,” he says. “Why are we suffering from all of this? Because we are suffering from a lack of government.”
Agricultural output is down 60%, construction work “is zero,” and a lot of businesses have shut down, says Father George, listing reasons for residents’ dwindling financial reserves. “There are a lot of people selling what they own.”
Closed schools are also a big problem for Rmaich, which has appealed to the American and French embassies in Beirut for $1 million to support 1,000 students, says Mayor Milad al-Alam.
The prewar population of 11,000 now stands at 6,500. Support for education normally comes from locals, he says, but with 80% of the population growing tobacco and 20% growing olives – and access to both crops limited – the cash crunch has meant the next school year is in doubt.
“Now it’s eight months, not eight days,” Mayor Alam says of the violence. “Nobody knows the future.”
Similar resignation is felt to the west in the small Christian border village of Alma el-Shaab, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.
There Father Maroun Ghafari, a priest for 30 years with unruly eyebrows, preaches to a dwindling flock beneath the constant sound of buzzing Israeli drones and nearby Hezbollah-Israel exchanges of fire.
“It’s our village; we can’t leave easy,” says Father Maroun. The prewar population of more than 800 or 900 is today just 70 or 80 people, in a village that he says “gets hit because it is strategic” – sandwiched between Israel and adjacent Shiite villages like Naqoura, where Hezbollah is very active.
“The situation is getting worse and worse. We don’t know why. Here we are not combatants; we are peaceful,” says the priest. Of those who stay, “we inspire them, and they inspire me. We have this belief that, if we leave, all will be lost.”
Already a number of houses have been destroyed or damaged, says Father Maroun.
“Maybe if people didn’t leave, we would not have this much destruction,” he says. “Maybe if people were here, no one would come around the village and shoot to the other side.”
At one wrecked house within view of Israeli guard towers, a silver-painted religious statue of Mary holding a baby Jesus presides over the wreckage from an Israeli strike, including kitchen pots melted by heat and ruined family photo albums.
On a CD from 2011 is the label “Wedding of Firas & Rana.”
Those who stayed include beekeeper Elias Sayah. Of his 400 hives, he rescued 70 from a valley now thick with Hezbollah fighters. As honeybees swarm around his protective mask and suit – he talks about his bees as lovingly as if they were his children – Mr. Sayah describes how an Israeli shell tore away a corner of his bedroom roof.
“I should be a dead man right now,” he says of the strike a couple months ago. “I am just a beekeeper. Why are they firing their bombs at me?
“Ask your country, ask Joe Biden: Why do they attack me?” he says. “We feel that the 2,000-pound bombs the Americans are sending to Israel, some of them are for us.”
Those concerns are shared by Mr. Sayah’s mother, Rosette, who moved with her ailing husband out of the village for seven months, for safety, but had to return when they ran out of cash. For this family, peace can’t come soon enough.
“Every night when I hear the bombing, I feel it is my last night,” she says. “I fear for my life.”
