Beirut woke up Wednesday to deserted streets. It had been a long time since a city that had been booming so early had seemed so empty. “Where are you going? But have you read the news?” the first taxi driver he met after crossing a zone considered safe in the Lebanese capital told the journalist. After the yesterday’s attackshe The Lebanese government has closed schools and administrative services. “If I didn’t have to work, I wouldn’t go out either,” Wael assures us from the driver’s seat of his Kia.
Hanging from the rearview mirror, he wears a rosary, but he comes from Becca, a region bordering Syria where Israel detonated dozens of beepers on Tuesday afternoon. Across the country, there are already 12 dead and nearly three thousand wounded. “I don’t defend them and I don’t go against them,” he says, referring to Hezbollah. “I know they have to defend us in the south, but I don’t want to live like this. And what happened last night shows that they are no match for Israel. The Zionists are very smart. If they drag us into a war against them, we are lost,” he confesses.
What Wael did not know Wednesday morning was that in a matter of hours Israel would strike again in his native Bekah and other parts of Lebanon, and would kill 20 more people by detonating walkie talkies and other devices. “This country is cursed,” laments another taxi driver at night in a car similar to Wael’s.
Mohamed is a Shiite Muslim in his early thirties, and he speaks of his country with the pessimism of an old man. In the predominantly Christian neighborhood of Yeitaui, he stops to pick up two new passengers. You don’t see women like that in this part of town: they are both wearing the black abaya that many Shiites in Lebanon usually wear.
“Al mustashfa’ ar-Rum”indicates the taller of the two. At the Grecothodox hospital. As the taxi begins its journey, the same woman nods her head repeatedly, back and forth. “Who do you have in the hospital?” asks the journalist. “My son, I’ve been hurting him since yesterday,” he replies. “I’m sorry. And how old is he?” asks the Spaniard. But the younger one interrupts him with a resounding ‘Yeah!‘. It’s over. There’s nothing to say.
This is usually a busy highway on weekday mornings. #Beirut. But it is extraordinarily calm today while #Lebanon is still in shock.
Overcrowded hospitals are still working around the clock to treat around 3,000 people injured #hezbollah the explosion of pagers. pic.twitter.com/odziDkrb8X—Mohamad Chreyteh | محمد شريتح (@mchreyteh) September 18, 2024
In Dahié, a southern suburb of Beirut, relatives and supporters of Hezbollah revolt against the new explosions while they carry the bodies of four militants who died Tuesday during a funeral procession. On the corner of Aref Naamani Street, the Lebanese newspaper The Orient-The Day He is speaking to a woman in her fifties. Through tears, Sama* is sincere: “I am very sad, it’s horrible. I still haven’t understood what happened Tuesday night, we don’t have time to understand it. It’s unprecedented, I feel like “We have reached a point of no return.”he continues between sobs.
An all-out war with Israel could be devastating for Lebanon, which has lurched from crisis to crisis for the past five years. In 2019, a financial collapse and a Zaura The failure of the “revolution” has shaken the country. In the summer of 2020, as the world was looking for a way out of the pandemic, an explosion in the port of Beirut left 218 dead, 7,500 injured and nine missing.
Since then, the impunity of officials and the economic deterioration have reinforced the idea that the Lebanese government is the leader of a failed state. On the contrary, Hezbollah has been renewing its legitimacy in the south since the start of the Gaza war with daily exchanges of fire with Israel across the border.
But this week’s attacks have exposed the Shiite party, which until now boasted of being able to enter into open war with Israel and confront its army on an equal footing. Without a doubt, the detonation of the “research” and walkie talkies This Tuesday and Wednesday, they give the impression Hezbollah vulnerable to Israeli intelligence interferenceIn this new stage of the conflict, the pro-Iran group will have to calculate how to orchestrate a counterattack while its own infrastructure and internal communication channels have been taken over by the enemy.
Across the border, there are signs of an imminent Israeli offensive against southern Lebanon. On Wednesday afternoon, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that the “center of gravity” of the war in Gaza “is shifting north, which means we are allocating forces, resources and energy to the north.” Overnight, several eyewitness accounts and videos taken from Israel suggest a mobilization of Israeli Defense Forces troops on the Lebanese front.
In Beirut, the head of Hezbollah’s executive council spoke late in the afternoon. Hashem Saifeddin promised that the punishment “will come” for the perpetrators of the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday. This Thursday, the leader of the Shiite militia party, Hasan Nasrallah, is expected to break his silence at a highly anticipated press conference to be held at 6 p.m. local time.
*Real name withheld for security reasons.
