Lebanon's Displaced Celebrate Ramadan amid Fears that Border Conflict Might Become the 'New Normal'

A picture taken during a media tour organized by the Alma Research and Education Center shows a dog walking past a destroyed car in the deserted northern Israeli town of Metula, near the border with Lebanon, on March 19, 2024. (Photo by Jalaa MAREY / AFP)
A picture taken during a media tour organized by the Alma Research and Education Center shows a dog walking past a destroyed car in the deserted northern Israeli town of Metula, near the border with Lebanon, on March 19, 2024. (Photo by Jalaa MAREY / AFP)
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Lebanon's Displaced Celebrate Ramadan amid Fears that Border Conflict Might Become the 'New Normal'

A picture taken during a media tour organized by the Alma Research and Education Center shows a dog walking past a destroyed car in the deserted northern Israeli town of Metula, near the border with Lebanon, on March 19, 2024. (Photo by Jalaa MAREY / AFP)
A picture taken during a media tour organized by the Alma Research and Education Center shows a dog walking past a destroyed car in the deserted northern Israeli town of Metula, near the border with Lebanon, on March 19, 2024. (Photo by Jalaa MAREY / AFP)

Shortly before sunset on a recent evening, Mervat Reslan and a group of other women made french fries in vats of boiling oil to serve with that night's iftar — the meal that breaks the daily fasts Muslims observe during the holy month of Ramadan.
They belong to roughly 60 families who have been sheltering at an abandoned hotel in the southern Lebanon town of Marwanieh to escape the shelling and airstrikes that have made it too dangerous to stay in their homes in the country's border region with Israel. Although they've become a family of sorts to one another, many long to return home.
“Especially during Ramadan, you start thinking that your house is better — that you and your family all used to gather together, your children and their children, your in-laws and neighbors. And now you’re sitting by yourself in a room,” said Reslan.
Those living at the Hotel Montana, which went out of business in 2005, are among an estimated 90,000 people from southern Lebanon who have been displaced by the near-daily clashes between the militant group Hezbollah and Israeli forces. Another 60,000 Lebanese civilians have decided to stay in the border zone and risk the danger, according to a United Nations agency.
The border clashes began with a few Hezbollah rockets fired across the frontier on Oct. 8, the day after Hamas' deadly incursion into southern Israel and Israel’s ensuing bombardment of the Gaza Strip. They quickly escalated to near-daily exchanges of rockets, shelling and airstrikes across the border and sometimes beyond, The Associated Press said.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 300 people in Lebanon. Most were militants from Hezbollah or allied groups, but more than 40 were civilians. Hezbollah strikes, meanwhile, have killed at least eight Israeli civilians and 11 soldiers, and displaced tens of thousands on that side of the border.
The cross-border attacks seem unlikely to end before a cease-fire is reached in Gaza — and possibly not even then. The prolonged state of limited conflict has left Lebanon, and particularly the displaced families, in limbo. School, work and farming in Lebanon's border region have been put on hold. For a while, many hoped that a cease-fire would coincide with the start of Ramadan, but half of the holy month has passed without clear prospects for a solution.
Most of the displaced Lebanese have moved in with relatives or found shelter in vacant houses or rooms offered up by residents farther north. Those with the means have relocated to their second homes or rented apartments.
Shelters like the Hotel Montana are a last resort.
“A person can deal with 10, 15, 20 days, a month (of displacement), but we’re now entering the sixth month and it looks like it will go on longer,” said Ali Mattar, who heads the union of municipalities for the Sahel al-Zahrani region, which includes Marwanieh.
The cash-strapped municipalities have been given much of the responsibility for dealing with the displacement, a task made more difficult by the four years of economic crisis the country has faced.
The Lebanese government has promised to compensate residents of the south whose homes have been damaged or destroyed. But the funding hasn't been secured, said Maj. Gen. Mohammad Kheir, who heads the country's Higher Relief Committee. A comprehensive survey hasn't been conducted to assess how many houses are damaged, though it is “in the thousands,” he said.
Hezbollah has been providing monthly payments to many of the displaced families, an official with knowledge of the situation said. The official, who was not allowed to brief journalists and spoke on condition of anonymity, did not give a precise amount, saying it depends on a family's size and needs.
Local and international nongovernmental organizations and religious charities have taken up much of the slack, but their resources are also strained. At the Hotel Montana, for instance, the Red Cross provides diesel to run a generator, but it can only be run for two hours in the morning and five in the evening because the supply is limited, said Salam Badreddine, who oversees disaster management for the union of municipalities.
The US and France, among other countries, have engaged in diplomatic missions to try to prevent the border conflict from escalating into full-scale war. But even if they succeed, some fear that a continuous state of low-level conflict could become the new normal.
“I think the risk of an all-out war still exists, and I would argue that it’s high,” said Emile Hokayem, director of regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank. But there is also a potential for a long-term simmering conflict that would “exhaust” the struggling Lebanese economy and society, he said.
“What I worry about is this ability to rationalize levels of violence and adjust to them, and (to think that) as long as we’ve avoided the big one, we’re fine,” he said.
Reslan said her family was briefly displaced during the brutal monthlong war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006, but this time feels different. Shelling has already damaged her family’s house, and she is afraid that the extended displacement will become permanent.
“We’re afraid — not of Israel but that we won’t return to our houses and villages. That’s the only thing we’re afraid of,” she said.
Mohammed Issa, a construction worker and farmer, fled the village of Aitaroun with his wife and three children on Oct. 8, when shells began falling next to his house. They stayed for two months with another family before moving to the Hotel Montana. Now he's counting the days until they can go home.
“If there’s a cease-fire, we’ll be on the highway and at our house within an hour,” he said.
When displaced families do finally return home, they could face the grim reality of damaged homes, burned fields and a lack of resources to help, said Jasmin Lilian Diab, director of the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University.
“It is not so much a conversation of whether or not they will eventually be able to go back, but what are they going back to," she said.



UN Humanitarian Chief Slams Aid Plan for Gaza Proposed by Israel, Backed by US 

A Palestinian boy has a bite from a ration of hot food from a charity kitchen set up at the Islamic University campus in Gaza City on May 12, 2025.(AFP)
A Palestinian boy has a bite from a ration of hot food from a charity kitchen set up at the Islamic University campus in Gaza City on May 12, 2025.(AFP)
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UN Humanitarian Chief Slams Aid Plan for Gaza Proposed by Israel, Backed by US 

A Palestinian boy has a bite from a ration of hot food from a charity kitchen set up at the Islamic University campus in Gaza City on May 12, 2025.(AFP)
A Palestinian boy has a bite from a ration of hot food from a charity kitchen set up at the Islamic University campus in Gaza City on May 12, 2025.(AFP)

United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher on Tuesday criticized an Israel-initiated and US-backed humanitarian aid distribution plan for Gaza as a "fig leaf for further violence and displacement" of Palestinians in the war-torn enclave.

"It is cynical sideshow. A deliberate distraction," Fletcher told the UN Security Council.

No humanitarian aid has been delivered to Gaza since March 2, and a global hunger monitor has warned that half a million people face starvation, a quarter of the enclave's population.

Israel proposed last week that private companies would take over handing out aid in Gaza's south once an expanded Israeli offensive starts in its war there, which began in October 2023 after Hamas attacked Israel. Aid deliveries have been handled by international aid groups and UN organizations.

"We can save hundreds of thousands of survivors. We have rigorous mechanisms to ensure our aid gets to civilians and not to Hamas, but Israel denies us access, placing the objective of depopulating Gaza before the lives of civilians," said Fletcher.

Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid, which the group denies, and is blocking deliveries until Hamas releases all remaining hostages.

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar, currently on an official visit to Japan, said on Wednesday that Israel endorsed what he called "the American humanitarian plan" under which aid would be provided by a private fund.

"It will go directly to the people. Hamas must not be allowed to get their hands on it," Saar said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has rejected Israel's proposal, saying in April it risked "further controlling and callously limiting aid down to the last calorie and grain of flour."

The UN says any aid distribution must be independent, impartial and neutral, in line with humanitarian principles.

Fletcher said the UN has met more than a dozen times with Israeli authorities about their proposed aid distribution model to find a solution but without success. Minimum conditions include the ability to deliver aid to all those in need wherever they are in Gaza, he said.

Amid the stalemate, the United States last week backed a mechanism for Gaza aid deliveries to be handled by private companies, an approach that appeared to resemble Israel's proposal, but gave few initial details about the plan.

"We will not allow the old, broken system to remain in place," Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon told the council. "We appreciate the efforts to build a new mechanism, one grounded in accountability."

US WORKING WITH ISRAEL

Senior US officials were working with Israel to enable a newly established Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to "provide a secure mechanism capable of delivering aid directly to those in need, without Hamas stealing, looting or leveraging this assistance for its own ends", acting US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea told the Security Council on Tuesday.

She urged the UN and aid groups to cooperate, saying the foundation would deliver aid consistent with humanitarian principles and would "ensure its own security so that commodities reach civilians in need".

"While some humanitarian organizations may ultimately choose not to engage in these conversations, others have chosen a more constructive path, and they will be able to deliver aid in an appropriate way, hopefully very soon," Shea said.

Fletcher said the Israeli-designed distribution model was not the answer. This was in part because Israel said it would limit aid distribution to south Gaza during its planned offensive and people would have to relocate to access aid there.

"It forces further displacement. It exposes thousands of people to harm," Fletcher told the council. "It restricts aid to only one part of Gaza while leaving other dire needs unmet. It makes aid conditional on political and military aims. It makes starvation a bargaining chip."

Most of the 15-member Security Council expressed concern about the proposed aid distribution plans.

"We cannot support any model that places political or military objectives above the needs of civilians. Or that undermines the UN and other partners' ability to operate independently," Britain, France, Slovenia, Greece and Denmark said in a joint statement before the council meeting.

The war in Gaza was triggered on October 7, 2023, when Hamas killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, and took some 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, more than 52,700 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health authorities.