Lebanese population trapped in potential escalation between Hezbollah and Israel

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has vowed a “decisive and painful” response to deadly Israeli raids in Lebanon.

Tensions Rise in Lebanon After Hezbollah Promises Response “severe” against Israel. The Shiite militia could join Iran after the double assassination of Fouad Chokor, a senior Hezbollah dignitary in Beirut, and that of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. After ten months of war and the death of more than 100 civilians in southern Lebanon, the population fears an escalation.

On Monday afternoon, the sound of an explosion rocks the capital. The Israeli air force has just broken the sound barrier above the buildings. In the north of the city, Mona took a while to come to her senses: “I was very scared, I cried and screamed… I calmed down when I knew it was not a strike.”

His companion Ahmad is at his side. They discuss together what they could do if war breaks out. “I’m going to flee, to Qatar or Dubai, even if it’s sometimes complicated to get a visa.”explains Mona. “I’m not afraidsaid his companion. I was born with the sound of strikes. I heard them when I was little and I adapted! If I leave, and you leave, and everyone leaves… Who will take care of the country?”

“A lot of people will want to leave, I’m not the only one.”

Mona, a resident of Beirut

to franceinfo

A few blocks away, Ibtissem has already had to make a decision. The small apartment furnished only with a television and a sofa is not her home. Until a few days ago, the sixty-year-old lived in the south of the country, near the border. She preferred to come to Beirut as a precaution: “A lot of people are worried. We watch the news, we hear about an escalation but we don’t know what will happen next.”

In the living room, Lebanese television is broadcasting the deaths and destruction of the last 24 hours in the Gaza Strip: “Israel often strikes indiscriminately. They consider civilians as collateral damage. When they killed Fouad Chokor in the southern suburbs, they got their target, but at the cost of five other civilians.” This is the sixth time in her life that Ibtissem has had to be displaced from her village. The last time, during the last war in 2006, she remembers that the conflict left more than 1,000 civilians dead on the Lebanese side.

In Beirut, the war seems more palpable by the day. For civilians on the front lines of the conflict, the wait is endless.