When the most recent round of fighting between and the Lebanon-based militant group, Hezbollah, began, Lebanese woman Malak Daher hoped it would only last a few days.
“It’s so hard to be so far from your life,” said the 30-year-old, who was displaced from the southern town of Mais al-Jabal, located almost directly at the Lebanese-Israeli border where fighting is centered. “You feel like your life is on hold. Like, life is going on elsewhere, but your own time has stopped.”
But the fighting between Hezbollah, which several countries including the US and Germany have classified as a terrorist organization, and Israel’s armed forces has not ended. In fact, over the past few weeks, it seems to have ramped up.
Daher survived the 2006 war in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, but said that felt like nothing compared to the current exchange of blows.
In early June, human rights groups reported that Israel fired white phosphorous munitions over Lebanese towns, which is in violation of international humanitarian law. Meanwhile, has fired more than 160 rockets into Israel, in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of two of their commanders.
Ever since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 people, the situation at the Israel-Lebanon border has been increasingly tense.
The EU, the US, Germany and others classify Hamas, which governs , as a terrorist group. Hezbollah, a powerful Lebanese group that plays a dominant part in Lebanese political and social life, considers an ally, while explicitly opposing Israel.
After two inconclusive wars in 1996 and 2006, Israeli forces and Hezbollah have preferred tit-for-tat attacks in each others’ territories — without huge casualty counts.
Fears of full-scale war in Lebanon
However, since October 7, these sorts of attacks from both sides, both in size and scope.
This has raised concerns that unrest at the border will turn into a full-scale war. Several hardliner Israeli politicians have already publicly stated that Israel should attack Hezbollah now, given the tensions at the border. A recent popular survey indicated that a majority of Israeli citizens, more than 60%, currently agree with this position.
“The October 7 attacks dramatically increased Israeli insecurity,” a March briefing by the Washington-based think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explained. “If Hamas, less well-armed and trained than Hezbollah, can brutally kill over 1,100 Israelis, what might the more formidable Hezbollah do?”
It is unclear whether a wider war will break out. Current international diplomatic efforts are , and most experts argue it would be strategically unwise for Israel to open another front as it continues its military operations in Gaza.
They also point out that Hezbollah is a far better armed and more powerful adversary than Hamas in Gaza.
As for , the country has been mired in for years now. Even if the population sympathizes with Palestinians, more than 37,000 of whom have been , Lebanese locals — struggling with inflation, unemployment and — are unlikely to support dragging them towards war.
Lebanese authorities say there have been more than 375 fatalities in Lebanon since October 2023, including 88 civilians, due to Israeli strikes. Israel’s military has counted 18 soldiers and 10 civilians killed by Hezbollah fire.
Tens of thousands internally displaced
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of civilians — around 100,000 Lebanese and more than 60,000 Israeli — have been displaced by fighting.
Locals told DW that those who left southern Lebanon were reluctant to return unless they absolutely had to. Some went back to check on property whenever things seemed calmer, or to attend a funeral, for example. But most shops and supermarkets in the area were closed, and it was hard to find supplies, they said.
When Daher first fled to Beirut after border skirmishes began in late 2023, the trained nurse was unemployed. So, she said she decided to go back to work at a hospital in southeastern Bint Jbeil, also near Lebanon’s border with Israel. Now, she stays there for three days, works her shifts, then returns to Beirut, where she and her mother are staying with relatives.
At one point, Daher said she so desperately wanted to return to Mais al-Jabal that she and her 60-year-old mother, who used to make a living growing and in the border village, journeyed back. But it was a nightmare, Daher told DW. With missiles fired at all hours of the night, all they could do was hide in the corridor until morning.
“I thought we were going to die together,” recounted Daher, whose husband works in . As soon as the sun came up, the pair returned to Beirut. Now Daher only comes back to work, even though she is well aware of how dangerous it is. In late May, an Israeli strike nearly hit the hospital where she works.
“They haven’t just taken my time,” Daher said of the Israeli military. “They’ve stolen my ambitions and my peace. I have become an angry, anxious woman who waits for aid. Before this, I was an independent woman.”
Some people in Lebanon refuse to leave home
A handful of people in southern Lebanon have refused to leave, despite the ongoing fighting and growing threat of war. One of them is Issam Alawieh, 44 and a father of seven. He has stayed in his home in the border village of Maroun el-Ras along with his wife and two of his sons. The family has survived three Israeli air strikes so far.
“You hear only the crash. It’s like a volcano coming from beneath you,” said Alawieh, who lost his hearing for a week after one attack.
Alawieh has continued working in a bakery in nearby Bint Jbeil.
“Even though the income is not good and sales have decreased [by] 95%, I have to continue to provide food for my children,” he told DW.
Living in such dangerous conditions was better than being displaced and forced to accept aid elsewhere, Alawieh argued. Neighbors who fled town called him crazy, he said, but he believes his family has adapted — the children were getting used to the sound of bombing.
“If I go and leave everything here, I will be humiliated, and I don’t want that,” he explained.
But there’s more to it than that, he added: This is his home.
“I cannot live away from south Lebanon. This land is like my mother,” he argued. “I cannot survive without her, and we will win as long as we are steadfast in our land.”
Edited by: Maren Sass
The post Lebanon: Fears rise over a potential war with Israel appeared first on Deutsche Welle.
