Israeli strikes fuel Lebanon’s sectarian tensions

In the heart of Beirut, where Muslim-majority west meets predominantly Christian east, Father Antoine Assaf stands in Mar Elias Kantari church and urges his anxious parishioners to be kind to their neighbours. He knows this message matters more than ever.

Beyond his quiet church is a noisy, messy disaster: more than 1mn people are fleeing war between Israel and the Lebanese Shia militant group Hizbollah, as Israel’s bombing campaign threatens the delicate balance between Lebanon’s three main religious groups.

Aged 60, Assaf, a Maronite priest, has seen Lebanon nearly destroyed by sectarian violence before. A 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990, divided the country and its capital along religious lines. In the following decades, warlords turned political leaders hardened their communities against one another.

Now he watches as Israel’s military campaign drives Shia families from their homes and into predominantly Christian and Sunni areas, compounding old grievances and raising fears of intercommunal violence in a small country awash with guns.

“Every Sunday, I push people to help and welcome each other,” the priest said. But as bombing has followed the displaced, with Israel striking central Beirut and deep inside Christian and Sunni heartlands, Assaf is also warning his flock to be vigilant.

They should help “while keeping in mind that we should be careful”, he added. “If we live near someone who is a stranger, we should be aware of his situation, if he is [an official] in Hizbollah or not.”

Assaf does not blame fleeing Shia families: like many Lebanese, he sees the broadening Israeli air strikes as a deliberate policy to pit his people against each other.

Sami Atallah, director of Beirut-based think-tank The Policy Initiative, said: “The Israelis are trying to make the Lebanese population turn against the Shia community. The Shia community feels really isolated. Hitting them in Christian areas is a recipe for civil strife.”

Reinforcing these suspicions, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this month told Lebanese people to rise up against Hizbollah or face “a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza”.

Most Lebanese scoffed at Netanyahu’s call to arms. “He thinks we are so cheap that we will do what he tells us,” said hairdresser Anne-Marie, 36.

She dislikes the Shia militant group. But “if I don’t like Hizbollah, that doesn’t mean I like Israel. That doesn’t mean I will side with my enemy against my fellow Lebanese.”

After a year of war between Israel and Iran-backed Hizbollah, a blistering Israeli aerial campaign and ground invasion this month forced more than a million people from their homes. Thousands of people have fled Beirut’s southern suburbs, south Lebanon and parts of the eastern Bekaa Valley, all majority Shia areas where Hizbollah dominates.

On the run, Shia families have crowded into west Beirut, whose Sunni majority despises Hizbollah. They blame it for assassinating the beloved Sunni leader and former prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, and remember Hizbollah militants overrunning west Beirut in 2008.

Most government shelters are full, so people sleep on tattered mattresses along west Beirut’s picturesque seafront. Some live in converted nightclubs; others cram into apartments. With no space for the influx of vehicles, double-parked cars cause interminable congestion.

In Hamra, a major commercial hub, residents say they are overwhelmed by the new arrivals.

“I feel sorry for them, I really do,” said shopkeeper Hashem, 56. “But I don’t feel it’s safe on this street any more — there are now groups of men hanging around all day and all night, [smoking shisha]. We don’t know who they are and they keep scaring off my customers.”

Like others, he fears law and order could break down. Desperate displaced people have broken into several empty buildings and set up camp, prompting landlords to hire security guards. Other owners have put up barbed wire, or even resorted to demolishing the buildings wholesale.

“We know there’s no state, but there’s also no police, not enough army around, so people will take the law into their own hands,” Hashem said. “Beirut feels lawless.”

Last week thieves were caught stealing from empty houses in Ghobeiry, a Shia-majority district in southern Beirut. The suspects were beaten, blindfolded and tied to poles by residents, signs reading “thief” were hung around their necks.

Nerves jangle as the city is unified by tension caused by the constant whining sound of Israeli drones, war planes breaking the sound barrier, and booming air strikes.

But Beirut is divided along the old civil war lines, as internal refugees avoid the majority Christian east. In contrast with teeming west Beirut, the east is quieter than normal. Many wealthier families have gone to the mountains or left Lebanon, unwilling to get caught up in a war many feel they have no part in, and which they blame Hizbollah and its base for championing.

The displaced may simply steer clear of east Beirut because rent is expensive and they lack community ties, analysts said. Imane Jaffal, a yoga teacher who fled the southern city of Tyre three weeks ago, is staying with her son in east Beirut and said she feels welcome. “If everyone is a bit alert, they have the right to be,” she said, “because Israel strikes wherever.”

But the visible presence of rightwing Christian parties deters displaced people. Fresh flags with the insignia of the rightwing Lebanese Forces flutter in the Sassine intersection in the city’s east.

Christians in east Beirut “fear an invasion”, said one local resident. “The flags are to remind everybody that we are here.”

Beyond bifurcated Beirut, the picture is more complex. Christian and Sunni communities in the country’s north have cautiously welcomed the newly homeless, renting out houses and apartments — sometimes at exorbitant rates — and providing aid.

But the mood changed with an Israeli air strike on a house in the Christian village of Aitou last week, which killed 23 people, mostly displaced women and children. A local official said Israel’s target was a visiting Hizbollah official delivering monthly stipends to the displaced.

Atallah of The Policy Initiative said: “The fact that [the Israeli military] hit the Hizbollah officer not in his car but in the house is sending a message: ‘This is the price you will pay if you host the displaced’.”

Josephine Zgheib, president of charity the Beity Association, said she had helped find shelter for nearly 700 displaced people in the mountainous Kfardebian area.

But after the Aitou strike, neighbours ask Zgheib, “‘do you know them, do you have IDs, are you sure they are not from Hizbollah?’” she said.

Zgheib did spot two Hizbollah members who arrived. The men had been blinded, she said, “so we knew they had the exploding pagers”. Israeli sabotage of Hizbollah equipment caused pagers and walkie-talkies to blow up a month ago, injuring hundreds of Hizbollah members, along with others including children.

Asked to leave, the injured men disappeared after a week.

Mostly, though, it is impossible to know who is or is not Hizbollah. The sprawling organisation spans areas from dispensing medicine and issuing micro-loans to launching missiles. Civilian Hizbollah members might not have seemed dangerous before, but Israel has increasingly targeted non-military organisations such as Hizbollah-linked healthcare facilities.

Unsure what to do, Zgheib sends names of people seeking shelter to Lebanese army intelligence to check.

Despite rising paranoia, Lebanese people are rallying round to supplement the meagre offerings of a threadbare state with everything from home-cooked meals to hygiene kits.

On the edge of west Beirut, Assaf hopes this time of need could help communities forge new ties. “That’s why I’m a priest in this area. I am engaged in building bridges between communities . . . there is an opportunity now.” But, he concedes, “it is very difficult”.

Cartography by Jana Tauschinski