War Piles Yet More Trauma on Lebanon's Exhausted People

'People just can't anymore,' said Rami Bou Khalil, head of psychiatry at Beirut's Hotel Dieu hospital - AFP
'People just can't anymore,' said Rami Bou Khalil, head of psychiatry at Beirut's Hotel Dieu hospital - AFP
TT

War Piles Yet More Trauma on Lebanon's Exhausted People

'People just can't anymore,' said Rami Bou Khalil, head of psychiatry at Beirut's Hotel Dieu hospital - AFP
'People just can't anymore,' said Rami Bou Khalil, head of psychiatry at Beirut's Hotel Dieu hospital - AFP

Ask a Lebanese person how they are, and you're likely to be met with a heavy pause or a pained smile. Years of crisis have drained them, and now Israeli air strikes are pushing many to breaking point.

Cartoonist Bernard Hage, who draws under the name Art of Boo, summed it up a few weeks ago with a layer cake.

These layers are "Financial Collapse", "Pandemic", the 2020 "Beirut Port Explosion", "Political Deadlock" and "Mass Depression".

"War" is now the cherry on top.

Carine Nakhle, a supervisor at suicide helpline Embrace, says the trauma is never-ending.

"The Lebanese population is not OK," she said, AFP reported.

The hotline's some 120 operators take shifts around the clock all week to field calls from people in distress.

Calls have increased to some 50 a day since Israel increased its airstrikes against Lebanon on September 23.

The callers are "people who are in shock, people who are panicking", Nakhle said.

"Many of them have been calling us from areas where they are being bombed or from shelters."

Israel's bombardment of Lebanon, mostly in the south and in Beirut's southern suburbs, has killed more than 1,100 people and displaced upwards of a million in less than two weeks.

Tens of thousands have found refuge in central Beirut, whose streets now throng with homeless people and where the traffic is even more swollen than usual.

- 'Huge injustice' -

Every night, airstrikes on the southern suburbs force people to flee their homes, as huge blasts rattle windows and spew clouds of debris skywards.

Ringing out across Beirut, the explosions awaken terrible memories: of the massive 2020 Beirut port blast that decimated large parts of the city; of the last war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006; and of the 1975-1990 civil war.

This latest affliction comes on the back of years of the worst financial crisis in Lebanon's history that has plunged much of its middle class into poverty.

Rita Barotta, 45, lives near the relatively quiet Christian-majority town of Jounieh north of Beirut.

She says she cannot hear the airstrikes, but also that she no longer has the words "to describe what is happening" to Lebanon.

"I no longer know what being me 15 days ago looked like," said the university lecturer in communications, who has thrown herself into helping the displaced.

"Eating, sleeping, looking after my plants -- none of that's left. I'm another me. The only thing that exists now for me is how I can help."

Networking on her phone, Barotta spends her days trying to find shelter or medicine for those in need.

"If I stop for even five minutes, I feel totally empty," she said.

Barotta almost lost her mother in the Beirut port explosion, and says that keeping busy is the only way for her not to feel "overwhelmed and petrified".

"What is happening today is not just a new trauma, it's a sense of huge injustice. Why are we being put through all this?"

- 'Just can't anymore' -

A 2022 study before the war by Lebanese non-governmental organization IDRAAC found that at least a third of Lebanese battled with mental health problems.

Rami Bou Khalil, head of psychiatry at Beirut's Hotel Dieu hospital, said all Lebanese were struggling in one way or another.

"Lebanese have a great capacity for resilience," he said, citing support from family, community and religion.

"But there is this accumulation of stress that is making the glass overflow."

"For years, we have been drawing on our physical, psychological and financial resources. People just can't anymore," he said.

He said he worries because some people who should be hospitalized cannot afford it, and others are relapsing "because they can no longer take a hit".

Many more people were relying on sleeping pills.

"People want to sleep," he said, and swallowing pills is easier when you have neither the time nor the money to be treated.

Nakhle, from Embrace, said many people sought help from non-governmental organizations as they could not afford the $100 consultation fee for a therapist at a private clinic.

At the charity's health centre, the waiting list for an appointment is four to five months long.



Lebanese Fishermen Stay Ashore after Israeli Warning

 A Lebanese flag waves on a fishing boat docked at the harbor in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon on October 8, 2024. (AFP)
A Lebanese flag waves on a fishing boat docked at the harbor in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon on October 8, 2024. (AFP)
TT

Lebanese Fishermen Stay Ashore after Israeli Warning

 A Lebanese flag waves on a fishing boat docked at the harbor in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon on October 8, 2024. (AFP)
A Lebanese flag waves on a fishing boat docked at the harbor in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon on October 8, 2024. (AFP)

Piles of fishing nets lay on land unused in the southern Lebanese port of Sidon on Tuesday as fishermen stayed ashore after the Israeli military warned of strikes against fighters along the coast.

Commercial vessels and leisure boats were anchored in the harbor, while the city's ancient fish market fell unusually quiet, with traders trying to peddle the catch from earlier in the week.

"The Lebanese army told us we weren't allowed to go out, and we're respecting that," said Mohammed Bidawi, a member of the local fishermen's union.

"If it continues like this, the market will close too."

After nearly a year of cross-border clashes, Israel intensified its bombing campaign in Lebanon on September 23, killing more than 1,100 people and displacing over a million from their homes, according to official figures.

The Israeli army warned late Monday that it would expand its operations against Lebanese armed group Hezbollah to Lebanon's coast.

It warned people to stay away from the shore in the area south of the Al-Awali river, which flows into the sea to the north of Sidon.

Issam Haboush, another fisherman, said he was worried about his family.

"Fishing is the way we support our children. If we don't go out to sea, we won't be able to feed ourselves," he said, adding that hundreds of families depended on the trade.

Bidawi said the de facto ban on fishing in Sidon had plunged around "5,000 to 6,000 people" into difficulty, the latest blow after a huge financial crisis in the country since 2019.

"The fishermen and traders at the fish market are going to need help," he said.

Before the war, Lebanon's fleet of 3,000 fishing boats reaped in between 3,000 and 3,500 tons of fish each year, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said in 2021.

Fisherman Hamza Sonbol said he and his colleagues had become destitute overnight.

"We've become like the country's displaced," he said.

- 'Upsetting' -

Freediving instructor Marwan Hariri, 47, also has a boat in the port to take students out on for lessons.

"Since yesterday I've been feeling very down," he said.

He had already lost 70 percent of his students in the past year of border clashes, as they largely came from southern areas under heavy Israeli bombardment, he said.

"I haven't even been opening the diving center. I've just been going down to the sea to go spearfishing," he said.

Despite the financial crisis and the tensions in the south, he was still enjoying diving with his speargun which he said was a way to temporarily escape from the news.

On Monday, he put his catch up for auction among acquaintances and managed to sell it for $56.

Then the Israeli military issued its warning.

Despite the perfect weather conditions on Monday morning, when he went down to the beach, he saw no fishermen coming back on their boats.

"It was really upsetting," he said.