Neighborhood Watch: Hezbollah is hiding in the neighborhood of Dahieh and Syria is backed by a rival militia
Hezbollah is accused of using ordinary houses for weapons storage. It says it wants to stop Hezbollah from using missiles across the border in order to drive it out of the area. In a statement to NPR, the Israeli military said it “makes great efforts to estimate and consider potential civilian collateral damage in its strikes,” and called the claims of ethnic cleansing “ridiculous,” adding that Israel’s military is “fully committed to respecting all applicable international legal obligations.”
“We welcome everyone, but we’re on high alert for every man coming into our neighborhood and that’s what we’re trying to keep an eye on!” says Elee Jaber, the bakery manager of Ein el Remmene, which sits next to Dahieh.
“We’re anxious. Kamil Helou is the nightwatchman who wanders the streets and looks for new people in the neighborhood. “You do not know who your new neighbor is, they may be a target.”
“The circumstances require our patrols to be more vigilant than ever,” says the founder of the organization behind the neighborhood watch program. The residents of the area are scared of Hezbollah members coming and hiding in their homes and they want us to be there to check out any suspicious activity.
There is a growing fear among the residents who have been living there for many years that Hezbollah operatives could be hiding among them and that Israeli airstrikes could soon follow. Some residents and experts in Lebanon fear that the displacement caused by the civil war between Christians, Druze, and Muslims could cause more violence because of the fact that both Israel and Syria backed rival militias.
A man’s dilemma: How displaced people often find refuge in the shadow of a tree or an entrance to a boarded-up business in Lebanon
With nothing more than a flashlight and a baton, they hide in plain sight, under the shadow of a tree or the dark entrance of a boarded-up business, where they’re on high alert for anyone who looks out of place.
His parents left their home in the mainly Shia city of Nabatieh in September with only their clothes on. His father was out of town and didn’t have time to grab his identification as the bombardment of their city left a lot in ruins.
Still, with so many displaced people looking for new homes, and with anxieties growing, rents have skyrocketed, leaving families like Ezzat’s with few options. Even though he’s happy his parents stay with him for as long as they need, it’s been difficult to watch his mother and father make their neighbors feel safe. To keep a low profile, they don’t invite friends or relatives over even though he knows it would bring them great comfort, and his father, who owned a bookstore in Nabatieh before the war displaced them, never leaves the apartment for fear he’d draw too much attention and be seen as a threat. It has sent him into a deep depression.
“I’ll call people and they’ll say, “Oh, we’re not renting anymore,’ but then I’ll call again and start talking in English and it’s a different story,” he says, highlighting how any hint of a displaced person looking for a place If you speak in English or French it will say “Oh he’s ok, he’s cool, he’s a good Shia.” “That’s right.”
When someone goes to a different place and bombs a building, people get afraid. “I would ask questions as well if someone is coming to my building, because there is a real threat.”
Source: In Lebanon, residents fear Hezbollah could be hiding among people displaced by war
The Gaza Crisis: A Call to Israel to End the War of 2023 and the Israeli Army to End Hezbollah’s Legacy
Benjamin Netanyahu called on Lebanon’s main religious groups to fight Hezbollah in a video speech last month.
The Israeli government’s goal of degrading and eliminating groups like Hezbollah has been questioned due to the mounting casualties.
In a country where memories of the brutal civil war are still vivid and the eventual reconciliation among groups remains fragile, it may not take much to trigger tensions between religious groups. Lebanon has avoided a national census for nearly a century to avoid reviving a sectarian conflict.
While Nadim Gemayel doesn’t believe Lebanon will repeat its past, he does think this is the moment to bring Hezbollah in line with other civil war-era militant groups that gave up their arms at the end of the war as part of the 1989 Taif Agreement.
“[Former Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah took us to this war without even asking us. He didn’t even have the idea to build shelters in case of war,” says Akram Nehme, another founding member of the neighborhood watch. “Now we are the collateral damage. Our country is very cold, there is no economy and all the villages of the south are destroyed. This doesn’t mean I’m a Zionist or with Israel, I want a Lebanon that looks like me, like my culture and I don’t want anybody to tell me how to live.”
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250 as hostages. Around 100 hostages are in Gaza, about a third of them are dead.
Msuya told the Security Council that “acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes” are being committed in Gaza. “The daily cruelty we see in Gaza seems to have no limits,” she said, pointing to recent developments in Beit Hanoun.
Drones blared announcements demanding people move south to Gaza City, said Mahmoud al-Kafarnah, speaking from one of the schools as sounds of gunfire could be heard. “The tanks are outside,” he said. “We have no idea where to go.”
Many Palestinians fear that Israel is trying to permanently lose control of the area. Hundreds of displaced people were forced to leave three schools in Beit Hanoun after Israeli troops encircled them, according to witnesses.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes killed at least 46 people in the Gaza Strip in the past day, including 11 at a makeshift cafeteria in an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone, medics said. There were 33 people killed in Lebanon on Tuesday, all of them in the south of the country.
The number of soldiers who have been killed in the assault on the isolated northernmost part of Gaza has risen to 24, the military announced Tuesday.
The Israeli military announced earlier that they would allow more aid into Gaza after the US urged them to allow more aid in. Hundreds of thousands are sheltering in sprawling tent camps in and around Muwasi, a desolate area with few public services.
Israel has been short so far. Israel’s official data shows that 75 trucks a day entered Gaza in November, compared to 57 in October. The United Nations says the number has fallen to 39 trucks a day since October.
With virtually no food or aid allowed in for more than a month, the siege has raised fears of famine among the tens of thousands of Palestinians believed to still be sheltering there.
Israel’s 13-month campaign in Gaza ended with a strike on a civilian building and a house in the northern town of Beit Hanoun
The director of the hospital says that volunteer doctors Mohammed and Dima Shabat were killed along with their daughter Eliaa.
The latest bombardment came as the United States said it would not reduce its military support for Israel after a deadline passed for allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza. The State Department cited some progress, even as international aid groups said Israel had failed to meet the U.S. demands.
There was no word of casualties at the moment. The military of Israel said it targeted Hezbollah’s infrastructure without providing evidence.
Another Israeli strike on an apartment building east of Beirut killed at least six people. Wael Murtada said the destroyed home belonged to his uncle and that those inside had fled from the Dahiyeh last month. He said three children were among the dead and other people were missing.
Israel intensified its bombardment of Lebanon in September, saying it would stop Hezbollah’s cross-border fire and cripple the group.
Two people died in a rocket blast at a storage building in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, first responders said. Another two people were wounded by shrapnel in a separate impact outside the town.
There was no injuries when a Hezbollah drone smashed into a nursery school in northern Israel on Tuesday. The impact scattered debris across the playground.
Israel has continued its 13-month campaign in Gaza, which was started in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack into southern Israel.
The center of a “humanitarian zone” that Israel’s military declares in the middle of war was hit by an Israeli strike late Monday.
There were casualties at the hospital and at least 11 people were killed. The video showed men pulling the wounded from the tables and chairs in the sand in an enclosure made of corrugated metal sheets.
A strike on a house in the northern town of Beit Hanoun killed 15 people on Tuesday, including relatives of Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat, who has been reporting from the north.