Lebanon’s Protests: Cleaning in the Morning and Partying at Night

Lebanese activists clean a main road in downtown Beirut. AFP photo
Lebanese activists clean a main road in downtown Beirut. AFP photo
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Lebanon’s Protests: Cleaning in the Morning and Partying at Night

Lebanese activists clean a main road in downtown Beirut. AFP photo
Lebanese activists clean a main road in downtown Beirut. AFP photo

Medical student Lynn Abi Khalil, 17, says she could not take part in Lebanon's massive spontaneous protests against the government so instead she picked up gloves and a trash bag.

"I haven't been participating in the demonstrations because my family doesn't want me to," she says, as she collects rubbish in the center of the capital.

"So I'm taking part in a different way," she tells Agence France Presse, wearing a white medical mask.

On Sunday night, hundreds of thousands gathered across the country chanting against what they view as a corrupt and arrogant ruling class unable to lift the country out of its daily economic woes.

In the capital's main square, on Monday morning, the ground is strewn with plastic water bottles, smoldering trash, and the odd red-and-white Lebanese flag.

"Leave now," reads a trampled flyer bearing a picture of Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

Abi Khalil is one of hundreds of men, women and children who have flocked to the edge of the capital's Martyrs' Square in the early hours to do their part.

On the pavement at the foot of a large mosque, volunteers crouch behind an orderly line of supplies, handing them out to those who have turned up.

In a country infamous for major trash spillovers and sub-standard recycling, there are blue bags for plastic, green for glass and metal, and black for general waste.

Wearing a dark grey T-shirt and backpack, Peter Mouracade has been coming to Martyrs' Square since Saturday morning.

"I went to my kitchen, looked at was inside the cupboard –- plastic bags, gloves -- and I just went down to the streets," says the 39-year-old.

But the volunteer movement has since ballooned as the streets fill day after day with Lebanese from all religious sects and walks of life venting their discontent -- and then also cleaning up.

"From three or five people, we ended up being 50. From 50, we became 500. Today we have thousands of people who are coming," he says.

Mouracade, who is the CEO of the Beirut Marathon, says he and other volunteers mostly find a lot of plastic bottles.

When he first started out on Saturday, it followed a night of several people overturning trash dumpsters and setting them alight, or even breaking shop windows.

"There are a lot of people who are feeling a lot of anger and a lot of pain, that's why there's so much destruction," he adds.

"We need to respect the voice of the people, and our duty is to clean" afterwards.

On the square, female volunteers scoop up piles of used half lemons -- some with rind curling off them -- and burnt trash.

Suheil Hamdan, 49, films them with his mobile phone, seemingly making a video to share on social media.

"This is where corrupt lawmakers and ministers in our country belong -- in the bin bags," he says, a cap on his head to keep off the sun.

Sami Deeb, a 34-year-old, has taken the day off from running his struggling food distribution business.

"We have been on the ground for four days fighting for our rights," he says, dressed in an immaculately pressed pink shirt.

For days, he has been taking part in the protests, which late Sunday evolved into euphoric celebrations complete with humoristic songs, DJs, and traditional dabke dancing.

"We clean in the morning, and we party at night," he says.



Leisure ‘Forgotten’: Gaza War Drives Children to Work

Palestinian children break up stones collected from homes destroyed by previous Israeli air strikes, to sell them to make gravestones, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 21 August 2024. (EPA)
Palestinian children break up stones collected from homes destroyed by previous Israeli air strikes, to sell them to make gravestones, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 21 August 2024. (EPA)
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Leisure ‘Forgotten’: Gaza War Drives Children to Work

Palestinian children break up stones collected from homes destroyed by previous Israeli air strikes, to sell them to make gravestones, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 21 August 2024. (EPA)
Palestinian children break up stones collected from homes destroyed by previous Israeli air strikes, to sell them to make gravestones, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 21 August 2024. (EPA)

Some crush rocks into gravel, others sell cups of coffee: Palestinian children in Gaza are working to support their families across the war-torn territory, where the World Bank says nearly everyone is now poor.

Every morning at 7:00 am, Ahmad ventures out into the ruins of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, picking through the rubble produced by steady Israeli bombardment.

"We gather debris from destroyed houses, then crush the stones and sell a bucket of gravel for one shekel (around 0.25 euros)," the 12-year-old said, his face tanned by the sun, his hands scratched and cut and his clothes covered in dust.

His customers, he said, are grieving families who use the gravel to erect fragile steles above the graves of their loved ones, many of them buried hastily.

"At the end of the day, we have earned two or three shekels each, which is not even enough for a packet of biscuits," he said.

"There are so many things we dream of but can no longer afford."

The war in Gaza began with Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,476 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which does not break down civilian and militant deaths.

The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

"Nearly every Gazan is currently poor," the World Bank said in a report released in May.

- 'Barefoot through the rubble' -

Child labor is not a new phenomenon in Gaza, where the United Nations says two-thirds of the population lived in poverty and 45 percent of the workforce was unemployed before the war.

Roughly half of Gaza's population is under 18, and while Palestinian law officially prohibits people under 15 from working, children could regularly be found working in the agriculture and construction sectors before October 7.

The widespread wartime destruction as well as the constant displacement of Gazans trying to stay ahead of Israeli strikes and evacuation orders has made that kind of steady work hard to find.

Khamis, 16, and his younger brother, Sami, 13, instead spend their days walking through potholed streets and displacement camps trying to sell cartons of juice.

"From walking barefoot through the rubble, my brother got an infected leg from a piece of shrapnel," Khamis told AFP.

"He had a fever, spots all over, and we have no medicine to treat him."

Aid workers have repeatedly sounded the alarm about a health system that was struggling before the war and is now unable to cope with an influx of wounded and victims of growing child malnutrition.

- Money gone 'in a minute' -

The paltry sums Khamis and Sami manage to earn do little to defray the costs of survival.

The family spent 300 shekels (around 73 euros) on a donkey-drawn cart when they first fled their home, and later spent 400 shekels on a tent.

At this point the family has relocated nearly 10 times and struggles to afford "a kilo of tomatoes for 25 shekels", Khamis said.

Moatassem, for his part, said he sometimes manages to earn "30 shekels in a day" by selling coffee and dried fruit that he sets out on cardboard on the roadside.

"I spend hours in the sun to collect this money, and we spend it in a minute," the 13-year-old said.

"And some days I only earn 10 shekels while I shout all day to attract customers," he added.

That's a drop in the ocean for daily expenses in a territory where prices for goods like cooking gas and gasoline are soaring.

In these conditions, "we only think about our basic needs, we have forgotten what leisure is, spending for pleasure," Moatassem said.

"I would like to go home and get back to my old life."