Lebanon's Palestinian Refugees Fear for their Families in Gaza

Hayat Shehadeh's daughter is in Gaza, and she has not spoken to her for a week. ANWAR AMRO / AFP
Hayat Shehadeh's daughter is in Gaza, and she has not spoken to her for a week. ANWAR AMRO / AFP
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Lebanon's Palestinian Refugees Fear for their Families in Gaza

Hayat Shehadeh's daughter is in Gaza, and she has not spoken to her for a week. ANWAR AMRO / AFP
Hayat Shehadeh's daughter is in Gaza, and she has not spoken to her for a week. ANWAR AMRO / AFP

In a ramshackle Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Hayat Shehadeh wrings her hands as she watches the Israel-Hamas war. Her daughter is in Gaza, and she has not spoken to her for a week.
"I can't sleep. I get up at 3:00 am... I go to watch the television," said the 69-year-old from her dark flat in south Beirut's Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian camp.
"Sometimes she writes to me, 'I'm fine'. She doesn't write more than that" because she has no way to recharge her phone battery, said the elderly woman, a baby grandchild playing with a Palestinian flag on the floor nearby.
Gaza-based Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking about 240 hostage, according to Israeli officials.
Israel has since carried out a relentless air and ground offensive in Gaza that the Hamas government says has killed some 12,000 people, including thousands of women and children.
With pain in her voice but trying to maintain her composure, Shehadeh said her daughter had separated her three children, sending them away with different relatives.
"She was crying, she said 'I split up the kids'," her mother said, so that "if someone dies, they don't all die."
The Burj al-Barajneh camp is a labyrinth of alleyways, some bearing pictures of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, or stencils and posters in support of Hamas and other Palestinian groups, some glorifying the October 7 attacks.
Lebanon hosts an estimated 250,000 Palestinian refugees, many living in the country's 12 official camps, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
'Dear to me'
Shehadeh said her daughter, aged in her thirties, had been living in Lebanon in recent years but a few months ago "her husband came and took her" back to Gaza.
"She's moving around... I don't know what area she's in now," Shehadeh said, requesting the young woman not be identified by name.
More than 1.5 million people have been internally displaced in Gaza, and UN agencies have warned of rapidly deteriorating conditions.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has described children sheltering at a UN school "pleading for a sip of water or for a loaf of bread".
On Friday, network provider Paltel group said communications with Gaza were severed due to a lack of fuel.
Shehadeh's family came to Lebanon from the Acre area, now in northern Israel, survivors of what Palestinians call the Nakba, or the "catastrophe", when more than 760,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes by the 1948 war over Israel's creation.
She said the family had feared for their lives, including after Jewish paramilitary groups massacred more than 100 Palestinian villagers at Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, in April that year.
The elderly woman said if she could talk to her daughter, she would tell her not to cry.
"I want to tell her that her tears are dear to me," she said.
'Nothing left'
Beirut's dilapidated Burj al-Barajneh camp was partially destroyed in Israel's 1982 invasion of Beirut and during Lebanon's 15-year-long civil war, according to UNRWA.
In her small flat in the camp, Palestinian Fatima al-Ashwah, 61, is also glued to the television, praying her family members in Gaza are not among those being pulled dead from the rubble, or hoping to get a glimpse of them in footage of displaced people at shelters.
Originally from Al-Kabri, now in northern Israel, Ashwah has some 70 extended family members in Gaza, including her cousins and their families, the eldest in their seventies, the youngest just one year old.
They used to live in northern Gaza's Beit Hanoun, near the Erez crossing with Israel, Ashwah said, but now "their houses are all gone... because they're on the front lines. There's nothing left."
Israel has for more than a month been calling on the population in northern Gaza to evacuate south as it pushes ahead with its war against Hamas.
Ashwah's relatives have fled from place to place, with some now sheltering in schools near Gaza's southern Rafah crossing with Egypt.
She said sometimes she had been able to hear bombing during short telephone calls.
Her relatives have told her: "'We're hungry, we're afraid, the children are afraid, they're terrified'," she said.
"The situation breaks your heart," she said. "I can't stand the sound of crying and screaming anymore".
Fighting back tears, she recounted how she had visited Gaza in July, and how the family greeted her and another relative with drums and dancing in celebration at the Rafah crossing.
"God willing it will be over and Gaza will go back to how it was before," she said.



Israel Pounds Lebanon ahead of Hamas Attack Anniversary

Fire and smoke rise over an area targeted by an Israeli air strike on Beirut's southern suburbs on October 6 - AFP
Fire and smoke rise over an area targeted by an Israeli air strike on Beirut's southern suburbs on October 6 - AFP
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Israel Pounds Lebanon ahead of Hamas Attack Anniversary

Fire and smoke rise over an area targeted by an Israeli air strike on Beirut's southern suburbs on October 6 - AFP
Fire and smoke rise over an area targeted by an Israeli air strike on Beirut's southern suburbs on October 6 - AFP

A fireball lit up the sky and smoke billowed over Beirut on Sunday as Israel unleashed intense strikes on Lebanon, almost a year since the Hamas attack that sparked war in Gaza.

In Gaza, Israel's military said it had encircled the northern area of Jabaliya after indications Hamas was rebuilding despite nearly a year of devastating air strikes and fighting.

As another strike hit Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati appealed to the international community to put pressure on Israel for a ceasefire.

Lebanon's official National News Agency said Beirut's Dahieh was hit by more than 30 strikes, with a petrol station and a medical supplies warehouse also hit.

"The strikes were like an earthquake," said shopkeeper Mehdi Zeiter, 60.

Israel's military claimed it struck weapons storage facilities and infrastructure while taking measures "to mitigate the risk of harming civilians".

AFPTV footage showed a massive fireball over a residential area, followed by a loud bang and secondary explosions. Smoke was still billowing from the site after dawn.

Later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to troops along the northern border, his office said, nearly a week after the army launched a ground operation inside Lebanon.

For his part, Israeli President Isaac Herzog called Iran an "ongoing threat" after Tehran launched around 200 missiles at Israel on Tuesday in revenge for Israeli killings of militant leaders including Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.

It came the same day Israeli ground forces began raids into Lebanon after days of intense strikes on Hezbollah strongholds.

- 'Resistance won't back down' -

One Israeli military official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to discuss the issue publicly, said the army "is preparing a response" to Iran's attack.

Netanyahu noted Iran had twice launched "hundreds of missiles" at Israel since April.

"Israel has the duty and the right to defend itself and to respond to these attacks and that is what we will do," he said in a statement.

Netanyahu's critics accuse him of obstructing efforts to reach a Gaza ceasefire and a deal to free hostages still held by Hamas.

Iran has prepared a plan to respond to a possible Israeli attack, Tasnim news agency reported, citing an informed source.

The Islamic republic's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Friday warned that "the resistance in the region will not back down".

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Friday that "the resistance in the region will not back down"

- 'Never-ending nightmare' -

UN's refugee agency head Filippo Grandi said Lebanon "faces a terrible crisis" and warned "hundreds of thousands of people are left destitute or displaced by Israeli air strikes".

Israeli bombardment has put at least four hospitals in Lebanon out of service, the facilities said.

The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon said it rejected a request by Israel's military to "relocate some of our positions" in south Lebanon.

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in Damascus Saturday after visiting Beirut, renewed his call for ceasefires in both Gaza and Lebanon and threatened Israel with an "even stronger" reaction to any attack on Iran.

US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators tried unsuccessfully for months to reach a Gaza truce and secure the release of 97 hostages still held there.

Gaza's civil defense agency said on Sunday an Israeli strike on a mosque-turned-shelter in central Deir al-Balah killed 26 people. Israel said it had targeted Hamas militants.
A Palestinian medic searches for survivors in the rubble of a building after it was hit during an Israeli strike on Gaza City's Zeitun neighbourhood

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,870 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Gaza's health ministry and described as reliable by the UN.

Ahead of the October 7 anniversary, thousands joined pro-Palestinian rallies in London, Paris, Cape Town and other cities.