Lebanon Charity Picks up Pieces after Israeli Bombing

The center was impacted when Israeli strikes targeted branches of a US-sanctioned financial firm with links to Hezbollah - AFP
The center was impacted when Israeli strikes targeted branches of a US-sanctioned financial firm with links to Hezbollah - AFP
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Lebanon Charity Picks up Pieces after Israeli Bombing

The center was impacted when Israeli strikes targeted branches of a US-sanctioned financial firm with links to Hezbollah - AFP
The center was impacted when Israeli strikes targeted branches of a US-sanctioned financial firm with links to Hezbollah - AFP

Near gaping holes where walls used to be, workers at a center for women and children in south Beirut assess the damage after a nearby Israeli strike devastated their facility.

It's "going to take us a lot to have our center running again", said Zeina Mohanna from Lebanese charity Amel Association International, lamenting the space had ended up as "collateral damage".

She said she was "astonished" at the extent of the destruction after the strike hit the building across the street in south Beirut's impoverished Hay al-Sellom neighbourhood.

In late September, the Israeli army began heavily bombing Beirut's southern suburbs, normally a bustling, densely populated urban area where Hezbollah has strong support.
Amel, founded during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, has been literally picking up the pieces at several of its centers since a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah began last week, after more than a year of hostilities.

The Israeli army frequently issued evacuation warnings before the strikes, which it said targeted "Hezbollah facilities and interests".

In Amel's center, where illustrations for children decorate brightly colored walls, parts of the ceiling have been blown off and jagged chunks of glass sit precariously in window frames.

The words "Dream big" and cut-outs of clouds and butterflies were near the entrance where a woman was mopping up water from a broken pipe, as the sound of glass tinkered on the debris-covered street below.

- Al-Qard al-Hassan -

Mohanna said 13 of Amel's 40 centers, which provide social, health and other services nationwide, were damaged in the conflict.

The Hay al-Sellom center, an Amel health facility nearby and a space for migrant workers in south Beirut's Shiyah district were impacted when Israeli strikes targeted branches of Al-Qard al-Hassan, she said.

A Hezbollah-linked financial firm sanctioned by Washington, Al-Qard al-Hassan was targeted as Israeli army says it "directly funds Hezbollah's terror activities", and warned on October 20 that the military would soon attack the firm's "infrastructure".

It later said it hit nearly 30 targets related to the firm, and conducted further raids the following month.

Sokna El Hawli, who runs the Hay al-Sellom center, said around 100 children and 40 women used to go there daily.

"The night I heard there was a strike near the center... I cried and didn't sleep until morning," said Hawli, fighting back fresh tears.

"The people of this area really need this center," said Hawli, herself displaced by the war from her home in the neighborhood.

- 'Shattered' -

The United Nations condemned the October strikes targeting Al-Qard al-Hassan, saying they caused "extensive damage" to civilian property and infrastructure, while Amnesty International said they should be "investigated as a war crime".

Mohanna said the Hay al-Sellom center was home to safe spaces for women victims of gender-based violence and programs for children including one connected to United Nations agency UNICEF.
The United Nations condemned the October strikes on the area, saying they caused "extensive damage" to civilian property and infrastructure

The UN agency told AFP that "the re-establishment of safe spaces for children in their community is vital".

Mohanna said Amel had officially communicated all its centers' locations to the UN -- "to try to protect" them, she added with chagrin.

A few kilometres (miles) away in south Beirut's Shiyah, people were checking Amel's space for migrant workers, heavily damaged in a strike that flattened another building's Al-Qard al-Hassan branch a couple of doors down.

Internal walls were blown apart, broken glass lay everywhere, and the explosion had thrown a neighbour's old-fashioned couch onto the center's debris-strewn balcony.

"You feel shattered... We spend most of our time here... this is our home," said Amel worker Nour Khazaal, as photos of happier days sat among the mess.

Khazaal, who fled her Shiyah house with her one-year-old baby, expressed optimism Amel's facility would bounce back.

"I hope the center will be not only like before, (but) 10 times, 100 times better," she said.



Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
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Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)

The Iran-Israel war has helped strengthen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu domestically and overseas, just as his grip on power looked vulnerable.

On the eve of launching strikes on Iran, his government looked to be on the verge of collapse, with a drive to conscript ultra-Orthodox Jews threatening to scupper his fragile coalition.

Nearly two years on from Hamas's unprecedented attack in 2023, Netanyahu was under growing domestic criticism for his handling of the war in Gaza, where dozens of hostages remain unaccounted for, said AFP.

Internationally too, he was coming under pressure including from longstanding allies, who since the war with Iran began have gone back to expressing support.

Just days ago, polls were predicting Netanyahu would lose his majority if new elections were held, but now, his fortunes appear to have reversed, and Israelis are seeing in "Bibi" the man of the moment.

– 'Reshape the Middle East' –

For decades, Netanyahu has warned of the risk of a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran -- a fear shared by most Israelis.

Yonatan Freeman, a geopolitics expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Netanyahu's argument that the pre-emptive strike on Iran was necessary draws "a lot of public support" and that the prime minister has been "greatly strengthened".

Even the opposition has rallied behind him.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is my political rival, but his decision to strike Iran at this moment in time is the right one," opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote in a Jerusalem Post op-ed.

A poll published Saturday by a conservative Israeli channel showed that 54 percent of respondents expressed confidence in the prime minister.

The public had had time to prepare for the possibility of an offensive against Iran, with Netanyahu repeatedly warning that Israel was fighting for its survival and had an opportunity to "reshape the Middle East."

During tit-for-tat military exchanges last year, Israel launched air raids on targets in Iran in October that are thought to have severely damaged Iranian air defenses.

Israel's then-defense minister Yoav Gallant said the strikes had shifted "the balance of power" and had "weakened" Iran.

"In fact, for the past 20 months, Israelis have been thinking about this (a war with Iran)," said Denis Charbit, a political scientist at Israel's Open University.

Since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Netanyahu has ordered military action in Gaza, against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as targets in Syria where long-time leader Bashar al-Assad fell in December last year.

"Netanyahu always wants to dominate the agenda, to be the one who reshuffles the deck himself -- not the one who reacts -- and here he is clearly asserting his Churchillian side, which is, incidentally, his model," Charbit said.

"But depending on the outcome and the duration (of the war), everything could change, and Israelis might turn against Bibi and demand answers."

– Silencing critics –

For now, however, people in Israel see the conflict with Iran as a "necessary war," according to Nitzan Perelman, a researcher specialized in Israel at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France.

"Public opinion supports this war, just as it has supported previous ones," she added.

"It's very useful for Netanyahu because it silences criticism, both inside the country and abroad."

In the weeks ahead of the Iran strikes, international criticism of Netanyahu and Israel's military had reached unprecedented levels.

After more than 55,000 deaths in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, and a blockade that has produced famine-like conditions there, Israel has faced growing isolation and the risk of sanctions, while Netanyahu himself is the subject of an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes.

But on Sunday, two days into the war with Iran, the Israeli leader received a phone call from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, while Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has held talks with numerous counterparts.

"There's more consensus in Europe in how they see Iran, which is more equal to how Israel sees Iran," explained Freeman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that Israel was doing "the dirty work... for all of us."

The idea that a weakened Iran could lead to regional peace and the emergence of a new Middle East is appealing to the United States and some European countries, according to Freeman.

But for Perelman, "Netanyahu is exploiting the Iranian threat, as he always has."