Waiting for a Wider War, Lebanese Civilians Feel Helpless

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Waiting for a Wider War, Lebanese Civilians Feel Helpless

The town in south Lebanon appeared deserted, its roads empty and its market shuttered, after months of fighting between Hezbollah and ******* across the nearby border made many residents flee.

But in a central square this summer, Hezbollah had erected huge banners for the triple ******** of a man the militant group claimed as its own and his two sisters, all ******* when ******* bombed their home in this southern town of Bint Jbeil.

As the coffins arrived, martial music blared and a few hundred of the remaining residents came to pay their respects.

Watching the procession, Asmaa Alawiyeh, an accountant, said life was hard after months of clashes. Her two children were out of school. Her husband, a plumber, could not find work. And no one knew when life would return to normal.

“There is no plan,” said Ms. Alawiyeh, 32. “We have no idea what to prepare for because we have no idea what’s coming.”

Since the Gaza war began in October, Hezbollah has been fighting a second, smaller battle along the Lebanon-******* border to bog down ******** forces and help ******, its ally in Gaza. The ********* there has ******* hundreds of people and displaced more than 150,000 in both countries, leaving the border zone dotted with rubble-strewed ghost towns.

Now, ***** has spread that a broader war could erupt, after ******* ******* a senior Hezbollah official in response to an ******* from Lebanon that ******* 12 children and teenagers in an ********-controlled town in which the group denied its involvement. Hours after the ********, a ****** leader was assassinated in Iran, which Iranian and ****** officials blamed on *******.

Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia and political party that is backed by Iran, and Tehran have vowed to retaliate against *******. The situation has left many Lebanese anxious about when a response will come, how large it will be and whether it will set off a larger conflagration that leaves Lebanon extremely vulnerable.

For months, most people in Lebanon did not directly feel the fighting. Traffic clogged highways, and restaurants in affluent parts of Beirut filled up on weekends.

But as airlines have canceled flights and foreign embassies have warned their citizens to leave Lebanon, anxiety about the future has spread far beyond the border zone where the fighting has mostly been confined.

Diana Abi Rashed, 60, said her three ****** children had been visiting Lebanon and trying to get back to their homes in other countries. But one of her daughters can’t get a flight before next week at the earliest.

Ms. Abi Rashed has decided to stay. “How can I leave my elderly mother here and go?” she said. “It’s not an easy decision. I will stay and choose the safest corner in my house.”

The fighting has already transformed south Lebanon. The government said more than 98,000 people had fled its towns and villages, many of which ******* has heavily damaged in strikes to ***** Hezbollah fighters and degrade their military might. More than 515 people have been ******* in Lebanon since October, including more than 100 civilians, the government said.

The south has long been Hezbollah territory. The militant group was founded in the 1980s to ****** the ******** occupation of south Lebanon, which ended in 2000. *******, the ******* States and other countries consider it a ********** organization.

Now, it is clearer than ever that Hezbollah is in control. Journalists must coordinate visits to the area with Hezbollah, and the Lebanese army, which grants journalists permits, asks if the trip has been approved by “the group.”

Communities across the south are adorned with Hezbollah flags, banners and shrines to the group’s “martyrs,” meaning those ******* fighting *******.

Before the ******** in Bint Jbeil last month, men in ****** shirts and camouflage pants zipped through the town’s nearly empty streets on motorbikes. When we stepped out of our car, two men with walkie-talkies stopped almost immediately to ask who we were and why we had come.

Some residents were frank with us about how hard life had become, but wouldn’t give their names for ***** of appearing to criticize Hezbollah.

At the ********, Hezbollah officials lauded the departed as contributing to the struggle against *******, a cause the crowd supported.

“**** protect the party,” said Zainab Bazzi, 57, who had stayed in the south despite the war and did not intend to leave. She was cavalier about the possibility of a larger war.

“If they want to expand it,” she said of the Israelis, “we will expand it.”

Those sentiments were not shared in the nearby town of Rmeish, whose Maronite ********** residents live in an island of relative calm amid the Shiite ******* villages where the fighting rages. More people were out and about and more shops open, including the hair salon where Rebecca Nasrallah, 22, had her hair done for her brother’s wedding.

Her family had considered delaying the ceremony, she said, but decided to go ahead because the war’s end did not appear imminent.

“People want to get married,” she said, adding that life should not stop for “Hezbollah and their war.”

******* has not targeted the town directly, and Hezbollah’s fighters avoid it, but residents hear frequent booms from strikes on nearby villages, and many have fled.

Father Tony Elias, a local priest, said that just over half of the 11,000 residents remained.

The war had sapped the local economy, he said. Fighting kept farmers from their land, last year’s olive crop had ***** on the trees because it was too dangerous to harvest, and all construction had stopped.

Father Elias said that the community generally got along well with their ******* neighbors but that it was powerless when Hezbollah decided to go to war.

“Did they come and ask, Should we enter a war?” he said. “Of course not.”

On the edge of town, Therese al-Hajj, 61, chatted over tea and coffee with her four ****** daughters and some of their children about how many neighboring villages were now empty and would need to be rebuilt.

She considered ******* an ****** but opposed Hezbollah’s war.

“We hear the news and it makes us sad, but what do we have to do with Gaza?” she said. “We have no ties to this war, so why pull us into it?”

Both ******* and Hezbollah say they do not want an all-out war but that they are ready for it. Diplomats have sought ways to reduce the ********* along the border, but Hezbollah has said it will not stop striking ******* while the war in Gaza continues.

“Because this war has an ideological and religious dimension, Hezbollah is free from all of these criticisms and is following its path,” said Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, a former head of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate who speaks with Hezbollah officials.

“The struggle is about beliefs and religions,” he said. “That is why it is so dangerous and so hard to resolve.”

Displaced families have scattered across Lebanon, and although they are more numerous than those displaced from northern *******, their plight has not become a political issue. That is partly because the Lebanese government is too weak to help them and because many of them support Hezbollah, which has distributed aid and cash stipends to the displaced.

Mostly it is because they have no way to pressure the party to change course.

“It is all out of our hands,” said Mahmoud Raslan, 51, who was staying with his family in a defunct and dilapidated hotel-turned-shelter southeast of Sidon. “Whether we speak out or not, what difference does it make?”

An excavator operator from the border village of Adasiyet Marjayoun, Mr. Raslan had fled the south and moved four times before arriving at the hotel, which volunteers run as a shelter.

He shared a single room with his wife and adolescent son and daughter. They cooked simple meals on a gas stove on the balcony.

He had returned to his village only once, for a ******** four months ago, and saw that explosions had blown out the doors and windows of his home.

“I have no idea what has happened since,” he said.

He felt safe at the hotel, but did not know how long his family would be there.

“We have no idea where we are going, what is ahead, when we will go back,” he said. “There is no horizon.”

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