Property Sharks Circle Ravaged Beirut Homes

Workers remove the rubble beneath a partially-destroyed traditional Lebanese building in the Gemmayzeh neighborhood of the capital Beirut, in the aftermath of the devastating port blast, on August 26, 2020. (Photo by JOSEPH EID / AFP)
Workers remove the rubble beneath a partially-destroyed traditional Lebanese building in the Gemmayzeh neighborhood of the capital Beirut, in the aftermath of the devastating port blast, on August 26, 2020. (Photo by JOSEPH EID / AFP)
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Property Sharks Circle Ravaged Beirut Homes

Workers remove the rubble beneath a partially-destroyed traditional Lebanese building in the Gemmayzeh neighborhood of the capital Beirut, in the aftermath of the devastating port blast, on August 26, 2020. (Photo by JOSEPH EID / AFP)
Workers remove the rubble beneath a partially-destroyed traditional Lebanese building in the Gemmayzeh neighborhood of the capital Beirut, in the aftermath of the devastating port blast, on August 26, 2020. (Photo by JOSEPH EID / AFP)

Ever since a monster blast ravaged the arches and high ceiling of his family home in Lebanon's capital, Bassam Bassila says a real estate developer has been hounding him to sell.

"The owner of a tower block nearby is trying to pressure me into selling him my home so he can raze it to the ground" and "build a tall tower" instead, the 68-year-old said in Beirut's Monot neighborhood.

A massive explosion at the Beirut port on August 4 that many blame on official negligence killed more than 180 people, wounded thousands and laid waste to some of the capital's most picturesque streets.

With survivors still picking through the rubble, property sharks are moving in to take advantage of distraught homeowners, sparking outrage over yet another disaster in the making, this time targeting the country's heritage.

Standing inside his living room turned balcony after the wall separating them was blown off, Bassila said the developer had first approached him some time before the blast, offering to buy his apartment after acquiring the ground floor of the same building.

"Eventually you will leave," the developer threatened at the time.

And now he is back, ramping up pressure on Bassila to sell the home he inherited from his grandparents by refusing to prop up the ceiling of the flat below -- meaning Bassila's apartment could collapse.

A former photographer now eking out a living as a taxi driver, Bassila says he cannot afford to restore his family home without financial aid. But he is also determined not to give it up.

"I was born in this house and my father was before me... I can't live anywhere else."

Of 576 heritage buildings surveyed in the wake of the explosion, including 331 in the port's immediate vicinity, the culture ministry says 86 were severely damaged.

Of those, 44 risk complete collapse, while a further 41 could partially fall down.

In the days after the explosion, Bishara Ghulam, the mayor of the Rmeil district near the port, said he received an unexpected visitor among those flocking to his office to report damage to their homes.

"A man turned up who said he was a real estate broker. He said he wanted to buy houses damaged in the blast, and would pay whatever the owners wanted," Ghulam said.

"I told him we weren't selling."

In the capital, banners have appeared reading "Beirut is not for sale".

Naji Raji, the founder of the Save Beirut Heritage initiative, said: "We've heard from people who have received offers from investors linked to certain politicians."

These developers were bent on profit and coveted central Beirut real estate as it was a "prime touristic area" but would likely change its appearance with no regard for heritage, he said.

In the devastated Gemmayzeh neighborhood, architect Rita Saade surveyed the damage sustained by the home that once belonged to her great-grandparents.

Between the mint green walls of a room held up by arched pillars, she pointed to where the floor had partially caved in. Wooden slats from broken window shutters and shattered drinking glasses lay in a pile nearby.

"This is heritage and it needs to be restored," said the 23-year-old Saade. But "we can't afford to restore it on our own".

Audrey Azoulay, the head of the UN's culture and education body UNESCO, Thursday said the agency hoped to raise "considerable" funding to help with reconstruction.



'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

 Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
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'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

 Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

After surviving more than a year of war in Gaza, Aisha Khaled is now afraid of dying of hunger if vital aid is cut off next year by a new Israeli law banning the UN Palestinian relief agency from operating in its territory.

The law, which has been widely criticised internationally, is due to come into effect in late January and could deny Khaled and thousands of others their main source of aid at a time when everything around them is being destroyed.

"For me and for a million refugees, if the aid stops, we will end. We will die from hunger not from war," the 31-year-old volunteer teacher told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

"If the school closes, where do we go? All the aspects of our lives are dependent on the agency: flour, food, water ...(medical) treatment, hospitals," Khaled said from an UNRWA school in Nuseirat in central Gaza.

"We depend on them after God," she said.

UNRWA employs 13,000 people in Gaza, running the enclave's schools, healthcare clinics and other social services, as well as distributing aid.

Now, UNRWA-run buildings, including schools, are home to thousands forced to flee their homes after Israeli airstrikes reduced towns across the strip to wastelands of rubble.

UNRWA shelters have been frequently bombed during the year-long war, and at least 220 UNRWA staff have been killed, Reuters reported.

If the Israeli law as passed last month does come into effect, the consequences would be "catastrophic," said Inas Hamdan, UNRWA's Gaza communications officer.

"There are two million people in Gaza who rely on UNRWA for survival, including food assistance and primary healthcare," she said.

The law banning UNRWA applies to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in 1967 during the Six-Day War.

Israeli lawmakers who drafted the ban cited what they described as the involvement of a handful of UNRWA's thousands of staffers in the attack on southern Israel last year that triggered the war and said some staff were members of Hamas and other armed groups.

FRAGILE LIFELINE

The war in Gaza erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, after Hamas attack. Israel's military campaign has levelled much of Gaza and killed around 43,500 Palestinians, Gaza health officials say. Up to 10,000 people are believed to be dead and uncounted under the rubble, according to Gaza's Civil Emergency Service.

Most of the strip's 2.3 million people have been forced to leave their homes because of the fighting and destruction.

The ban ends Israel's decades-long agreement with UNRWA that covered the protection, movement and diplomatic immunity of the agency in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

For many Palestinians, UNRWA aid is their only lifeline, and it is a fragile one.

Last week, a committee of global food security experts warned there was a strong likelihood of imminent famine in northern Gaza, where Israel renewed an offensive last month.

Israel rejected the famine warning, saying it was based on "partial, biased data".

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, said last week that it was continuing to "facilitate the implementation of humanitarian efforts" in Gaza.

But UN data shows the amount of aid entering Gaza has plummeted to its lowest level in a year and the United Nations has accused Israel of hindering and blocking attempts to deliver aid, particularly to the north.

"The daily average of humanitarian trucks the Israeli authorities allowed into Gaza last month is 30 trucks a day," Hamdan said, adding that the figure represents 6% of the supplies that were allowed into Gaza before this war began.

"More aid must be sent to Gaza, and UNRWA work should be facilitated to manage this aid entering Gaza," she said.

'BACKBONE' OF AID SYSTEM

Many other aid organizations rely on UNRWA to help them deliver aid and UN officials say the agency is the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza.

"From our perspective, and I am sure from many of the other humanitarian actors, it's an impossible task (to replace UNRWA)," said Oxfam GB's humanitarian lead Magnus Corfixen in a phone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"The priority is to ensure that they will remain ... because they are essential for us," he said.

UNRWA supports other agencies with logistics, helping them source the fuel they need to move staff and power desalination plants, he said.

"Without them, we will struggle with access to warehouses, having access to fuel, having access to trucks, being able to move around, being able to coordinate," Corfixen said, describing UNRWA as "essential".

UNRWA schools also offer rare respite for traumatised children who have lost everything.

Twelve-year-old Lamar Younis Abu Zraid fled her home in Maghazi in central Gaza at the beginning of the war last year.

The UNRWA school she used to attend as a student has become a shelter, and she herself has been living in another school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat for a year.

Despite the upheaval, in the UNRWA shelter she can enjoy some of the things she liked doing before war broke out.

She can see friends, attend classes, do arts and crafts and join singing sessions. Other activities are painfully new but necessary, like mental health support sessions to cope with what is happening.

She too is aware of the fragility of the lifeline she has been given. Now she has to share one copybook with a friend because supplies have run out.

"Before they used to give us books and pens, now they are not available," she said.