In bombed southern Lebanon, the great fear of Christian villages

(Beirut) In the south of Lebanon emptied of a large part of its inhabitants, a handful of Christian villages say they are “besieged”, caught in the crossfire of Hezbollah and the Israeli army in a war which, they say , was imposed on them.

Living in the village of Rmeich, nestled in the green hills two kilometers from the border with Israel, Joseph Jarjour, 68, and his wife, have already experienced nearly a year of cross-border shooting between the Shiite movement and Israeli troops.

And for almost three weeks, there has been open war with the intensification of Israeli air strikes.

“We are a peaceful village, we have no weapons, we have never liked war. We only want to stay in our homes,” declared this retired teacher, contacted by AFP by telephone, during a rare reconnection of Rmeich to the internet network.

“We don’t want to be part of the conflict” but “we find ourselves under siege,” he continues. “The roads are not safe, so it is very hard to reach Beirut”, even though it is less than a hundred kilometers north of the village of red-tiled houses.

Currently, 6,000 people are in Rmeich, known for its tobacco cultivation.

Among them, a few hundred displaced people from surrounding areas, according to Mayor Milad al-Alam. Surrounding areas, Shiite villages now empty after bombings.

“When Israel bombs, it goes over our heads. And when Hezbollah responds, it goes over our heads,” says Mr. Jarjour.

“Life has stopped”

In the small multi-faith country, the south, mainly Shiite, has many Christian villages. If until now Israeli strikes have rarely targeted them, they are suffering the repercussions of the damage inflicted on neighboring Shiite localities.

In Rmeich, houses cracked under the shock waves of the explosions and the local vegetables are no longer arriving.

“Life stopped in October 2023,” says the mayor.

The municipality, he said, managed to obtain the delivery of aid convoys, including one on Thursday, under escort of the Lebanese army and in coordination with the peacekeepers deployed along the border.

“But we cannot replace the State” which many Lebanese consider to be absent even before the great bankruptcy of 2019 which brought the country to its knees, he adds.

Despite everything, in Rmeich, everyone repeats that during the 2006 war against Israel, no one left.

This time again, assures Mr. Jarjour, “we will stay until our last breath, we will abandon neither our village nor our homes”.

When Hezbollah opened a front in northern Israel, in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, which began hostilities in the south with its unprecedented attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, many Lebanese citizens and officials, Christians in head, protested.

As early as January, Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Raï considered that the border South had become “hostage” and the inhabitants “scapegoats”, a thinly veiled denunciation of Hezbollah.

“Forget the war”

In the village of Qlayaa, four kilometers from the border, 550 of the 900 families are still there, despite shortages of gasoline, medicine and the forced closure of the nearest hospital.

If they ignore the evacuation orders from the Israeli army, it is because they are “believers and attached to their land,” says the parish priest, Pierre al-Raï.

Here, he continues, “we have done everything so that there are no military installations or actions.”

The village, where a huge statue of Saint George sits, lived under Israeli occupation from 1978 until the withdrawal in 2000, under pressure from Hezbollah.

Today, the streets are often deserted. But solidarity is organized and no one misses church appointments.

Pauline Matta, mother of four children aged four to 18, cried when she saw the name of her village on an Israeli evacuation order. Since then, this forty-year-old admits that she no longer sleeps and panics “every time we hear an explosion or a plane breaking the sound barrier.”

She insisted on sending her children to the village summer camp.

“The drones were flying above them” but “without that, we couldn’t live, like that, we forget the war a little,” she said.

“A war has been imposed on us with which we have nothing to do. So why would we leave? I’m not going to get thrown out on the roads,” she assures.

And this despite increasingly harsh living conditions.

Because the pay of her husband, enlisted in the Lebanese army, which supported them all, melted like snow in the sun with the economic crisis.