Ali Daher first heard the explosion and then he felt the pain. An Israeli aircraft loitering high above had shot two rockets at the building next door, collapsing the top two floors and showering him and his two sons with a deadly spray of concrete and jagged metal.
The target of the strike was the Dar al-Salaam hotel – Arabic for “house of peace” – in the southern Lebanese town of Wardaniyah, converted in the last weeks into a government displacement centre for 24 families forced to flee their homes under Israeli bombing. Originally a German-Lebanese centre set up to promote cultural understanding, bronze statuettes and pieces of Lebanese antiquities had been pushed to the side to make room for mattresses and boxes of aid.
The strike on 9 October killed five people and injured 12. It was the first time that Wardaniyah had been targeted by Israel, but was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on buildings hosting displaced people in parts of Lebanon thought to be safe and that have otherwise not seen any fighting.
“We wanted to go somewhere safe, where there is no bombing, war or [militias], so we came here. Why did they strike here? We don’t know,” said Ali Daher, a 36-year-old mine clearance operator who was displaced from Tyre, south Lebanon, on 30 September. He held out his fractured wrist and pointed to his one-year-old son Kareem’s arm, which had been bandaged after a piece of debris tore it open.
The effects are also being felt in Lebanese society, where local officials have said the fear of strikes have inflamed tensions between members of the country’s many sects and the largely Shia Muslim displaced, who they are afraid to welcome. Unconfirmed rumours of Hezbollah fighters hiding among the displaced have proliferated, despite the vast majority of displaced them being civilians.
More than 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon over the last year, most of them since 23 September, when Israel escalated its aerial campaign over wide swathes of the country. Many have sought shelter in Christian and Druze-majority areas that had previously been spared Israeli bombing.
“We’re still terrified, I can barely hear out of my ears. We’re so tired. I’ve started taking pills for my nerves,” Daher said, wincing as a massive boom rippled out, the sound of an Israeli jet breaking the sound barrier amplified by the town’s high elevation. “Wait for the next one,” he said while Kareem waited in his stroller, a single finger pointed to the sky in anticipation of the second sonic boom.
Lebanon’s painful history of sectarian violence, with a 15-year civil war being fought from 1970 between a dizzying, constantly shifting patchwork of sectarian alliances, has made the spectre of renewed intercommunal fighting especially concerning.
In most cases, like the strike on Monday in Christian-majority Aitou, north Lebanon, which killed 21 living in a residential building rented to displaced people, there have been no other strikes on the area. Similarly, a strike on Baadaran on 28 September, in the Druze-majority Chouf district, which killed eight people, was the only time Israel has struck the town.
The single deadliest strike in Lebanon since the war started was on Ain el Delb, outside Saida, killing 71 people on 29 September after displaced families moved into an apartment block. It was the first time that the town came under Israeli fire.
Israel has not yet commented on any of the strikes on buildings hosting displaced people, but has previously said that its military operation in Lebanon is intended to target Hezbollah fighters, installations and weapons caches.
Ali Breem, the mayor of Wardaniyah, said the purpose of such strikes on the displaced was to “sow terror” and to make people afraid of the displaced. The multi-faith town of about 5,000 residents has hosted more than 8,000 people since 23 September.
“They are hitting a village which is supposed to be safe. Even if there was a military target, if there as someone visiting family in Badaraan or otherwise, they could have waited and hit them in another place,” Breem said. He said the airstrike had not affected Wardaniyah residents’ willingness to host people fleeing Israeli bombardment.
On Thursday, the Israeli military again struck Wardaniyah, bombing a home after issuing a warning to residents of the town to distance themselves from what it said was a Hezbollah installation. No one was injured in the strike, and though the town’s residents and the displaced fled in anticipation of the strike, almost all had returned by the weekend.
In Achrafieh, the majority-Christian neighbourhood of east Beirut, groups of men have donned uniforms and begun nightly patrols, armed with batons.
A neighbourhood watch programme, which had been discontinued in the summer of 2023, was revived on 5 October amid a feeling of “rising insecurity” among residents, according to Akram Nehme, an administrator of Achrafieh 2020 which runs the initiative.
Nehme said the restarting of night patrols had nothing to do with the influx of displaced people, but had been planned for some months prior. The programme, which relies on donations from Achrafieh’s residents, had suddenly received an influx of funding.
Unlike in most other areas of Beirut, where displaced families line up outside communal kitchens and sleep on pavements, there are no people sleeping rough on Achrafieh’s streets. In private, many residents saythey are scared to host people from south Lebanon or the southern suburbs of Beirut, for fear their presence might bring an Israeli bomb down on the neighbourhood.
“This is a very big concern for us. If one building is targeted in Achrafieh, it will be an issue. So far, we have mostly had rich people move here, but still, you could be a rich terrorist,” Nehme said.
In other parts of the capital city, it feels as if the social fabric has already started to fray under the pressure of mass displacement. Mob justice has begun to take root in Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut which have been mostly depopulated as a result of frequent Israeli bombing since 29 September.
Men accused of looting abandoned homes this week were severely beaten and tied to light poles, the word “thief” spray painted across their exposed chests. Lists of “collaborators” with Israel, consisting primarily of critics of Hezbollah, have started to circulate social media. Pictures of people making citizen arrests of individuals they accuse of spying for Israel abound, with little evidence given for the accusations.
Some Shia families have started to make arrangements for travel to Iraq, fearful of backlash against them as Israeli troops advance in south Lebanon and Israeli bombs dog the displaced heading northwards. Lebanon’s General Security Directorate has made their journey easier, citizens now only needing an ID to travel to Iraq.
Lebanese officials say they are aware of the potential for a social implosion. As waves of displaced reached Beirut a month ago, soldiers were deployed to major intersections across the city, where they have since remained. “The different security agencies are looking into this and tackling it from a security perspective. But this also requires a lot of dialogue, which we’re doing at the local level between different community groups to not allow for any tensions,” said Nasser Yassin, the caretaker minister of the environment and head of the government’s crisis cell.
Despite growing fears, displaced people are continuing to be welcomed and cared for across Lebanon. In Wardaniyah, those who were living in the Dar al-Salaam hotel have been resettled in people’s homes.
Daher and his family are being hosted by a young couple, who have increased the electricity supply to their house to ensure their guests are comfortable. Still, the couple asked not to be named in this article, fearful that hosting the displaced family makes their home a target.
