Israeli strikes hit Dahieh
“Dahieh was originally a very beautiful place but all the wars have taken their toll,” said Rasha al-Ameer, a novelist and publisher who was born and raised in the suburb and still lives there. Her brother, a prominent critic of Hezbollah, was assassinated in Lebanon in 2021.
“It is still a very vivid place and a diverse place. We have a cultural institution there and a lot of political activity,” she said. “It would be a terrible thing if Dahieh was destroyed. Though the bombing has destroyed much already.”
As well as homes, the Israeli air strikes have destroyed or damaged shops, businesses, restaurants and clinics. “Destruction on destruction,” said Mohaned Khalaf, a 45-year-old Sunni Muslim bakery worker, of his street in Burj El Brajneh, the most heavily targeted part of the suburb.
Reuters
A damaged vehicle lies amid rubble after an air strike in the Chiyah area of Dahieh
Khalaf, already a refugee once, from Syria, has gone back into Dahieh periodically to check on the apartment he shares with his two brothers and their mother, to see if his furniture remains. “The buildings around ours have been destroyed,” he said. “There is no life left there, not a person to be seen.”
The destruction has tested some Dahieh residents’ patience with Hezbollah – particularly Sunnis and other non-Shias. “This war is hurting everyone,” said Khalaf’s mother, Sameera, who wept on the street. “I am 63 years old,” she said. “I just want a place where I can wash.”
Sameera does not want to return to Dahieh, even after the war. “Yes, we could go back and rebuild, but Hezbollah and Israel will fight this war over and over again,” she said. “And Dahieh will suffer again.”
Shia Muslims, Hezbollah’s more natural support base, took a more supportive view – even those whose lives had been completely upended by the conflict. Members of Hezbollah had handed out food and $100 bills to displaced Shia families on the streets in central Beirut, several families said, and helped assist with shelter places.
“We used to support Hezbollah and we still support Hezbollah,” said Gharib Ali, a 61-year-old janitor who fled the suburb. Around him, his family nodded in agreement. The effect of the war on their lives “changes nothing for the Shia community,” he said. “If anything, it only increases our support. Every Shia feels the same.”
EPA
Signs at the entrance to part of the Dahieh warn it is dangerous to enter or take photographs without permission from Hezbollah
In this way, Mehdi and Zahraa may be something of an outlier – a Lebanese Shia couple, residents of Dahieh for decades, who were critical of Hezbollah for its role in the conflict.
“Dahieh is not Hezbollah, we are not Hezbollah, our building was not Hezbollah,” Zahraa said, angrily. “We went to sleep one night and woke up in someone else’s war.”
The family’s apartment is now uninhabitable, though the building may be salvageable. The Israeli army has sometimes issued social media warnings ahead of its air strikes, but there was no warning for the strike that hit Mehdi and Zahraa’s building. Their eldest son had gone home that day to shower, taking advantage of a seemingly quiet moment, and was knocked over and cut by flying glass when the bomb hit.
International humanitarian law generally requires an effective advance warning ahead of a strike that might affect civilians. But the BBC has found evidence of repeated Israeli strikes against Dahieh and other parts of Beirut where no warning was issued. And where there were warnings, some have been sent as little as 30 minutes beforehand, sometimes in the middle of the night.
“That timeframe is not an effective advance warning for someone who lives in Dahieh,” said Ramzi Keiss, a Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. “These are people are sleeping, they’re in their beds. They are not looking at social media."
Hezbollah was also possibly violating international humanitarian law, Keiss said, by placing its military commanders in and around the civilian population. “But that doesn’t give you a free pass to bomb as heavily as you can,” he added, referring to Israel.
“When you’re using 2000lbs in densely populated areas, you’re going to put civilians at the risk of great harm.”
Lebanese officials estimate that more than 2,400 people have been killed in the country over the past year and more than 1.2 million been displaced. Israel says 59 people have been killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights over the same period.
