Lebanon’s Precarious Sectarian Balance Tipping amid Hezbollah-Israeli War

A view shows buildings in the town of Klayaa, southern Lebanon, March 29, 2024. (Reuters)
A view shows buildings in the town of Klayaa, southern Lebanon, March 29, 2024. (Reuters)
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Lebanon’s Precarious Sectarian Balance Tipping amid Hezbollah-Israeli War

A view shows buildings in the town of Klayaa, southern Lebanon, March 29, 2024. (Reuters)
A view shows buildings in the town of Klayaa, southern Lebanon, March 29, 2024. (Reuters)

As the Lebanese Christian village of Rmeish marks its first Easter since the Gaza war erupted, residents say a parallel confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel is dragging them into a conflict they did not choose.

Like many Christians elsewhere in southern Lebanon, residents are angry and fearful their homes could be caught in the cross-fire and their families forced to flee -- permanently -- from their ancestral villages near the Lebanon-Israel border.

Earlier this week, a Rmeish resident confronted a group of armed men trying to launch rockets at Israel from within the village. Some villagers rang church bells to sound the alarm, and the armed men moved off to fire rockets from another neighborhood, according to mayor Milad al-Alam and Rmeish residents.

"What we've been saying for the last six months is: among our own homes, keep us neutral. Any strike in return would have brought huge losses," Alam told Reuters.

Hezbollah began launching rockets from hilltops and villages in southern Lebanon at Israel on Oct. 8 in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, which carried out a cross-border attack into Israel the previous day that triggered a fierce Israeli land, air and sea offensive on the Gaza Strip.

The villagers' resentment reflects criticism from Christian clerics and politicians opposed to Hezbollah, who have long accused the group of undermining the state through its possession of a controversial arsenal that outguns the national army, and of monopolizing decisions of war and peace.

"We have nothing to do with this war. Do they (Hezbollah) want to displace us?" said a 40-year-old resident of Rmeish who asked not to be identified, fearing that criticizing Hezbollah could bring reprisals. Iran-backed Hezbollah denied its fighters had tried to launch rockets from Rmeish.

More than a dozen sects coexist in a precarious balancing act in tiny Lebanon, reflected in a power-sharing system that reserves government posts by religion. The presidency and central bank governor – two top posts reserved for Maronite Christians – have been vacant since Oct. 2022 and July 2023 respectively due to divisions over choosing successors.

‘No say’ in system

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been displaced both internally and to foreign countries by conflict and hardship over the last century, with the 15-year civil war seeing killings and kidnappings according to sect. Some 90,000 people have been displaced from southern Lebanon since the conflict broke out in October.

Christian lawmaker Ghada Ayoub, who represents a constituency in the south and hails from the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces party, told Reuters that Christians were standing up to Hezbollah "because it is encroaching on their presence," and that the war was deepening fissures in Lebanese politics.

"The question is now: are there even any shared points left that we can carry on with – that we can build a state with?" she said.

The area most impacted by the shelling is the border strip, home to about a dozen Christian villages including Rmeish. They are nestled in rolling hills of olive groves, pine trees and tobacco fields -- now too dangerous to plant or harvest due to shelling.

"The areas around us were really affected – there have been strikes 500, 600 meters away. Our harvests have been ruined," said Joseph Salameh, a local official in the town of Klayaa, about four km (2.5 miles) from Lebanon's southern border.

Lebanon was already hit hard by a financial meltdown that began in 2019. With tourists staying away due to bombing, shops closed and schools shuttered or sheltering thousands displaced by the fighting, villages across the predominantly Shiite south have been dealt another severe economic blow, prompting fears among locals of a Christian exodus.

"Now the war has added to it and is encouraging our children to leave... Christians are no longer able to take on more than others because the problems of this country have become too many," Salameh said.

Lebanon's top Christian clerics have also sounded the alarm in weekly sermons. Maronite Patriarch Boutros al-Rahi called early on in the Gaza war for Lebanon to stay on the sidelines and more recently said war had been "imposed" on Christians.

Mounting outcry

Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Beirut Elias Audeh asked earlier this month if it was fair for "one faction of Lebanese to decide on behalf of everyone, and take unilateral decisions that not all Lebanese agree on".

With outcry mounting, Hezbollah's main Christian ally the Free Patriotic Movement has even ramped up criticism, saying its nearly two-decade alliance with Hezbollah had been "shaken".

"The main problem that arose recently was crossing the limits of defending Lebanon and getting involved in a conflict in which we cannot make decisions," FPM head Gebran Bassil said.

Their alliance had provided Hezbollah with supporters from a religious community outside its traditional base, but the pair have split over several issues in the last two years – including who should be Lebanon's next president.

Michael Young at the Carnegie Middle East Center said Bassil's comments were an attempt to gain some leverage over Hezbollah by signaling a rift – but also reflected Christian unease with the status quo.

"The mood among the Christian community is almost a psychological divorce from the system. They don't feel that they have a say in the system and in a way it's true -- Hezbollah is in control of much of the system," Young told Reuters.



A Family Digs Through Trash for Bits of Food, Showing Gaza's Growing Desperation

The Taeima family is among more than two million Palestinians who are on the brink of famine after 19 months of war between Hamas and Israel. The high risk of famine has generated international outrage against Israel over its nearly three-month blockade and escalating military offensive in Gaza. - AP news
The Taeima family is among more than two million Palestinians who are on the brink of famine after 19 months of war between Hamas and Israel. The high risk of famine has generated international outrage against Israel over its nearly three-month blockade and escalating military offensive in Gaza. - AP news
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A Family Digs Through Trash for Bits of Food, Showing Gaza's Growing Desperation

The Taeima family is among more than two million Palestinians who are on the brink of famine after 19 months of war between Hamas and Israel. The high risk of famine has generated international outrage against Israel over its nearly three-month blockade and escalating military offensive in Gaza. - AP news
The Taeima family is among more than two million Palestinians who are on the brink of famine after 19 months of war between Hamas and Israel. The high risk of famine has generated international outrage against Israel over its nearly three-month blockade and escalating military offensive in Gaza. - AP news

With flies buzzing all around them, the woman and her daughter picked through the pile of garbage bags for scraps of food at the foot of a destroyed building in Gaza City. She found a small pile of cooked rice, a few scraps of bread, a box with some smears of white cheese still inside.

Islam Abu Taeima picked soggy bits from a piece of bread and put the dry part in her sack. She will take what she found back to the school where she and hundreds of other families live, boil it and serve it to her five children, she said.

“We’re dying of hunger,” she said. “If we don’t eat, we’ll die.”

Her rummaging for food is a new sign of the depths of desperation being reached in Gaza, where the population of some 2.3 million has been pushed toward famine by Israel’s nearly three-month blockade. The entry of a small amount of aid in the past week has done almost nothing to ease the situation, The AP news reported.

Before the war, it was rare to see anyone searching through garbage for anything, despite the widespread poverty in the Gaza Strip.

Since Israel launched its military campaign decimating the strip after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, it has been common to see children searching through growing, stinking piles of uncollected garbage for wood or plastic to burn in their family's cooking fire or for anything worth selling — but not for food. For food, they might search through the rubble of damaged buildings, hoping for abandoned canned goods.

But Abu Taeima says she has no options left. She and her 9-year-old daughter Waed wander around Gaza City, looking for leftovers discarded in the trash.

“This is our life day to day,” she said. “If we don’t gather anything, then we don’t eat.”

It's still not common, but now people picking food from trash are occasionally seen. Some come out after dark because of the shame.

“I feel sorry for myself because I’m educated and despite that I’m eating from the trash,” said Abu Taeima, who has a bachelor’s degree in English from Al-Quds Open University in Gaza.

Her family struggled to get by even before the war, she said. Abu Taeima has worked for a short time in the past as a secretary for UNRWA, the main UN agency for Palestinian refugees and the biggest employer in Gaza. She also worked as a reader for blind people. Her husband worked briefly as a security guard for UNRWA. He was wounded in the 2021 war between Hamas and Israel and has been unable to work since.

Israel cut off all food, medicine and other supplies to Gaza on March 2. It said the blockade and its subsequent resumption of the war aimed to pressure Hamas to release the hostages it still holds. But warnings of famine have stoked international criticism of Israel.

It allowed several hundred trucks into Gaza last week. But much of it hasn’t reached the population, either aid trucks were looted or because of Israeli military restrictions on aid workers’ movements, especially in northern Gaza, according to the UN Aid groups say the amount of supplies allowed in is nowhere near enough to meet mounting needs.

Abu Taeima and her family fled their home in the Shati refugee camp on the northern side of Gaza City in November 2023. At the time she and one of her children were wounded in a tank shelling, she said.

They first headed to the strip’s southernmost city of Rafah where they sheltered in a tent for five months. They then moved to the central town of Deir al-Balah a year ago when Israel first invaded Rafah.

During a two-month ceasefire that began in January, they went back to Shati, but their landlord refused to let them back into their apartment because they couldn’t pay rent, she said.

Several schools-turned-shelters in Gaza City at first refused to receive them because they were designated for people who fled towns in northern Gaza. Only when she threatened to set herself and her family on fire did one school give them a space, she said.

Abu Taeima said her family can’t afford anything in the market, where prices have skyrocketed for the little food that remains on sale. She said she has tried going to charity kitchens, but every time they run out of food before she gets any. Such kitchens, producing free meals, have become the last source of food for many in Gaza, and giant crowds flood them every day, pushing and shoving to get a meal.

“People are struggling, and no one is going to be generous with you,” she said. “So collecting from the trash is better.”

The risk of catching disease isn't at the top of her list of worries.

“Starvation is the biggest disease,” she said.