Children’s and adult clothes drying on the dormitory windows of the technical institute of UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. Located in Sibline, a town in Chouf overlooking the Mediterranean, south of Beirut, the vocational training center for young Palestinians from Lebanon has become a temporary shelter since the beginning of the offensive launched by Israel in the Land of the Cedar, on September 23. Since then, more than 1,900 people have died. after a year of low-intensity war on the border between Hezbollah and the army of the Jewish State.
Under the autumn light, the joy of children watching their elders play soccer on the sports field offers a moment of normality in the lives of the approximately 500 internally displaced people welcomed – most of them Palestinians, but also Syrians and Lebanese – who They have been torn apart. of your daily life. A thunderous supersonic boom, followed by a less violent one, produced by the low-altitude flight of Israeli fighter planes, brings back the reality of war and provokes nervous laughter in the courtyard. Later, two more detonations sound in the distance.
“Where are the bombings we hear taking place? Is it close to where we are? What will we do if there is a strike here? This is the topic of our conversations »says Ayham Abdallah, a 30-year-old Palestinian from Syria. Near Sibline, the town of Wardaniyeh was attacked twice in October. The sounds of more distant attacks often echo at the site of the technical institute, because it is located at a high altitude. “Our faith in God protects us. But we have no confidence in this enemy. [Israël]with which no one can be safe, neither in Palestine nor in Lebanon.”says young Mazen Farran, a Lebanese from Tyre, a medical student.
Avoid Hezbollah militants
After fleeing the war in Syria in 2012, Ayham Abdallah worked as a waiter in Nabatiyé, southern Lebanon. Violent Israeli bombing in the region drove him out. “Overall, I think we are safe in this center. But the recent bomb attack in Bourj Al-Chemali scares us.”slides the young father. On Sunday, October 27, a drone attack occurred in this city near Tyre, in the south, against a building next to a UNRWA school. According to Dorothee Klaus, representative of the UN agency in Lebanon, the facility, which was damaged but empty (the school year has not resumed and the site is not used as a shelter), was not “undirected”.
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