Even for the Lebanese, it can be hard to say where it all went wrong for their tiny, beautiful country.
Certainly it was long before early Tuesday morning, when Israeli troops marched into southern Lebanon. Long before Friday, when Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, the revered and reviled Hezbollah leader who had a chokehold on the country’s politics and security for years.
And long before last October, when Hezbollah and Israel began trading airstrikes and rocket fire across the border, bringing the war in Gaza to Lebanon’s green, fertile south.
Hezbollah, the Iran-funded Shiite Muslim militia that doubles as a major political party and social services organization, does not run Lebanon in any official sense. But under Mr. Nasrallah, it sometimes seemed as if it was the only force that mattered: a state within a state with its own military, schools, hospitals and youth programs.
Now his death has come as the latest thunderbolt to jolt Lebanon, a Mediterranean country of 5.4 million people already stuck in a dejected state of nonstop emergency.
Many say Lebanon’s current anguish began in 2019, when the economy imploded and took the country’s once-robust middle class with it. Mass anti-government protests that fall did nothing to dislodge the country’s widely loathed political class.
Others might mention 2020, the year the coronavirus further crippled the economy, and the year an enormous explosion at Beirut’s port shattered entire neighborhoods of the capital.
A good case could be made for going all the way back to the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, which birthed the movement that became Hezbollah, and from which the country never really recovered.
All these crises and more have left Lebanon in no shape to withstand a sharply escalating conflict with Israel, like a 10-car pileup caught in the path of a tornado.
That much became obvious over the last week, when at least 118,000 Lebanese fled Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon’s south, in its agricultural Bekaa Valley and in the Hezbollah-dominated Dahiya suburbs of Beirut.
The official response was “chaos,” said Mark Daou, an independent member of Parliament, as the TV in his office played news footage of the hourslong traffic jams on the roads from the south last week.
He was not surprised the government seemed stupefied. “They have no money and they have no control over what’s happening on the ground,” he said, noting that Lebanon’s nominal military has little actual power. “They’re hostage to whatever Hezbollah decides unilaterally.”
While the government designated hundreds of public buildings as shelters for the displaced, it provided no mattresses, bedding, food or other supplies.
Information about shelters spread haphazardly through word of mouth and on WhatsApp, with little official guidance. Shelters filled quickly, leaving hundreds to sleep in public squares, a seaside promenade, a beach and under bridges when they evacuated the Dahiya suburbs after Friday’s huge airstrike on Hezbollah headquarters under the neighborhood.
As the longtime head of a group the United States considers a terrorist organization, but one that drove Israel out of southern Lebanon when the state could not, Mr. Nasrallah was a hero to some Lebanese and anathema to others. But his power was such that few can predict what the country will look like without him.
Mired in political paralysis — partly, Mr. Daou said, because Hezbollah has moved to block attempts at resolution — Lebanon has gone nearly two years without a president and has only a caretaker government.
The state provides barely any electricity, leaving everyone dependent on generators, if they can afford the fees. Many generators can power only one appliance at a time, so residents unplug refrigerators or forgo air-conditioning just to do laundry.
The financial crisis has left many people who could once afford overseas vacations, ski weekends in Lebanon’s mountains and sun-dazzled afternoons at its beach clubs nearly destitute, their savings trapped in banks that deny them access to their own money. Desperate, a few account holders have resorted to holding up bank branches to demand their own funds.
Thousands of doctors, nurses and medical technicians, as well as many young professionals, entrepreneurs, designers and artists, have left the country. Teachers routinely go unpaid; many of their students cannot afford textbooks.
“The country in many respects cannot withstand a long-term war,” said Sleiman Haroun, the president of a national association of Lebanese hospitals. Though the health care system had performed well so far, he said, he worried that there were not enough medical professionals left to cope with a sustained Israeli onslaught.
But, he added, “This is our fate. We have to face it.”
Enraged at their leaders, the Lebanese long ago stopped expecting anything from them.
Into the void left by the state have stepped private donors, individual volunteers, citizen aid groups, entrepreneurs and social-services organizations affiliated with political parties.
In wealthier pockets of the country, their efforts, along with the chic cocktail bars, nightclubs, manicured beach clubs and sophisticated restaurants, mask Lebanon’s collapse so effectively that first-time visitors are frequently taken aback by its high-functioning facade.
Residents and business owners have installed solar panels on rooftops across Lebanon to compensate for the lack of government-supplied electricity. Private donors pay for street lighting in some Beirut neighborhoods.
Over the last week, as shelters overflowed with displaced residents, a patchwork of volunteers and local aid groups rushed to fill the gap.
Just inside the gate of a private school in central Beirut last week sat Sarah Khalil, a board member who was helping to manage wave upon wave of donations — food, water, a refrigerator — arriving in the courtyard. The school’s board had opened its 50 classrooms to displaced families, and faculty, neighbors, students’ family members and other school affiliates were showing up with provisions.
“This is the only way,” she said. “We can’t rely on the government, but we surely can rely on those around us.”
At Dr. Sobhy Salah Middle School in the Bir Hassan neighborhood, the Ministry of Education unlocked the doors for displaced families. But it was the scouting organization affiliated with the Amal Movement, a major Shiite Muslim political party, that was running the shelter and gathering donated supplies.
Asked why the government had not provided more, Mohamed Jaber, a volunteer, let out a laugh.
“There’s no government to begin with,” he said. “The government will only wake up way after the war has ended.”
Families at the shelter said they had come there after hearing about it from relatives or through word of mouth. But many shelters filled quickly, including this one, leaving the latest wave of displaced arrivals with few options if they had no family or friends to take them in.
That was how several Syrian families ended up under a bridge in Beirut on Wednesday afternoon, beaten-up minibuses and gleaming SUVs honking around them. Their presence was a reminder of yet another crisis that has strained Lebanon: The country plays reluctant host to an estimated 750,000 refugees from next-door Syria, driven to Lebanon by Syria’s brutal civil war, its economic crisis and a powerful earthquake last year.
Bushra Ali, 24, stood under the bridge with her 4-year-old son, 2-year-old daughter and a black plastic bag of necessities, all they had been able to grab on Wednesday morning as they evacuated Dahiya, the Hezbollah-dominated suburb of Beirut that Israel has struck repeatedly.
Originally from Aleppo, Syria, her family came to Lebanon last year, after the earthquake in northern Syria destroyed their home. But the move had not been a success.
Her husband was laid off from a Lebanese shoe factory three months ago. Their rent was rising every month. Now bombs were falling and schools were closed, so they had decided to go back to Aleppo.
“It’s a really horrible feeling,” she said, her face crumpling as she stroked her son’s hair.
The Lebanese government appeared similarly missing-in-action after the port explosion on Aug. 4, 2020, that damaged more than half of Beirut and killed 218 people — a catastrophe that later investigations by media outlets and rights groups found was rooted in the government’s neglect, corruption and mismanagement. In the days after, while soldiers sat smoking on street corners, it was regular citizens who showed up to clean up the debris.
In the blast’s wake, a small, scruffy group of friends began distributing donations and free meals from an abandoned gas station in east Beirut. Four years later, now a full-fledged community kitchen and local aid group, Nation Station has begun delivering around 1,600 meals and sandwiches a day to shelters.
“The country, it’s already down. Like, I can’t believe we’re doing this again,” said Josephine Abou Abdo, a co-founder, who manages the crew of young staff and volunteers. “It’s back to Aug. 4 vibes.”
Four years ago, they were motivated by their own government’s inaction. Now, she said, it was Israel’s assault that was drawing Lebanese together in solidarity.
With Israel attacking them, she said, “this is the least that we can do.”
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