Upstream, traffic is still heavy. Only the signs installed by the NGO Handicap International, which call not to approach unexploded ordnance, remind us of the proximity of war. It is from Rachaya, about thirty kilometers from the border, that the road that descends from the Bekaa plain and winds towards the foot of Mount Hermon, is emptied of all traffic. Israeli planes fly through the sky with white stripes. On the ground, the bituminous line, which winds between rocky hills and olive groves, is hardly more frequented than the Lebanese army. By not participating in the fighting, it continues to pay its price in the conflict.
On Wednesday, November 20, a soldier was killed again in an airstrike while traveling aboard a light armored vehicle near Qlayaa, 4 kilometers as the crow flies from the demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel. Two other wounded soldiers were hospitalized at Hasbaya hospital, 15 kilometers away.
This small town is the last stop before the fighting. The deceptive indifference of the place contrasts with the roar of explosions that echoes from hill to hill. Here the calm is fragile. Hasbaya owes it to the composition of its population: it is a mixed city where a majority of Druze, a Christian minority and a Sunni minority coexist. This November afternoon, Israeli artillery and aircraft target the town of Khiam, a Hezbollah stronghold, 10 kilometers to the south; A ground raid is underway at Chebaa, 7 kilometers as the crow flies to the southeast. Almost all residents of the surrounding predominantly Shiite villages have left the area.
“Hezbollah does not exist here”
“We get used to it, it’s the same thing almost every day”says Anwar Abouhaida, 58, pointing his finger in the direction of the noise. But he did not recover from the night of October 25. It was at his home, in the Hasbaya Village Club, a group of chalets built on the banks of the river, where three Lebanese journalists were killed by an Israeli attack. To date, these are the only victims of the war in Hasbaya. Seventeen journalists, belonging to eight media outlets, lived there, and seven of them were injured. “I did not expect at all that this would happen here and that journalists would be attacked. I had also refused to rent to displaced people from other villages because I didn’t know them and I didn’t want to house someone who could be a target… Hezbollah doesn’t exist here.”he explains, busy clearing the debris from one of the chalets.
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