Variables in play: Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel from hilltops and villages in Lebanon in support of its ally Hamas after their cross-border attack triggered a fierce Israeli offensive in Gaza.
| Photo Credit: AP

As the Lebanese Christian village of Rmeish marks its first Easter since the Gaza war erupted, residents say a parallel confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel is dragging them into a conflict they did not choose.

Like many Christians elsewhere in southern Lebanon, residents are angry and fearful their homes could be caught in the cross-fire and their families forced to flee — permanently — from their ancestral villages near the Lebanon-Israel border.

Earlier this week, a Rmeish resident confronted a group of armed men trying to launch rockets at Israel from within the village. Some villagers rang church bells to sound the alarm, and the armed men moved off to fire rockets from another neighbourhood, according to Mayor Milad al-Alam and Rmeish residents. “What we have been saying for the last six months is: among our own homes, keep us neutral. Any strike in return would have brought huge losses,” Mr. Alam said.

Hezbollah began launching rockets from hilltops and villages in southern Lebanon at Israel on October 8 in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, which carried out a cross-border attack into Israel the previous day that triggered a fierce Israeli land, air and sea offensive on the Gaza Strip.

Christian criticism

The villagers’ resentment reflects criticism from Christian clerics and politicians opposed to Hezbollah, who have long accused the group of undermining the state through its possession of a controversial arsenal that outguns the national Army, and of monopolising decisions of war and peace.

“We have nothing to do with this war. Do they (Hezbollah) want to displace us?” said a 40-year-old resident of Rmeish who asked not to be identified, fearing that criticising Hezbollah could bring reprisals. Iran-backed Hezbollah, which holds sway over much of the Lebanese state, denied its fighters had tried to launch rockets from Rmeish.

More than a dozen sects coexist in a precarious balancing act in tiny Lebanon, reflected in a power-sharing system that reserves government posts by religion. The presidency and central bank governor — two top posts reserved for Maronite Christians — have been vacant since October 2022 and July 2023 respectively due to divisions over choosing successors.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been displaced both internally and to foreign countries by conflict and hardship over the last century, with the 15-year civil war seeing killings and kidnappings according to sect. Some 90,000 people have been displaced from southern Lebanon since the conflict broke out in October.

Christian lawmaker Ghada Ayoub, who represents a constituency in the south and hails from the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces party, said that Christians were standing up to Hezbollah “because it is encroaching on their presence,” and that the war was deepening fissures in Lebanese politics.

“The question is now: are there even any shared points left that we can carry on with — that we can build a state with?” she said.

The area most impacted by the shelling is the border strip, home to about a dozen Christian villages including Rmeish. They are nestled in rolling hills of olive groves, pine trees and tobacco fields — now too dangerous to plant or harvest due to shelling.

“The areas around us were really affected — there have been strikes 500, 600 metres away. Our harvests have been ruined,” said Joseph Salameh, a local official in the town of Klayaa, about 4 km from Lebanon’s southern border.

‘Imminent exodus’

Lebanon was already hit hard by a financial meltdown that began in 2019. With tourists staying away due to bombing, shops closed and schools shuttered or began sheltering thousands displaced by the fighting, villages across the predominantly Shia Muslim south have been dealt another severe economic blow, prompting fears among locals of a Christian exodus. “Now the war has added to it and is encouraging our children to leave… Christians are no longer able to take on more than others because the problems of this country have become too many,” Mr. Salameh said.

Lebanon’s top Christian clerics have also sounded the alarm in weekly sermons. Maronite Patriarch Boutros al-Rai called early on in the Gaza war for Lebanon to stay on the sidelines and more recently said war had been “imposed” on Christians.

Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Beirut Elias Audi asked earlier this month if it was fair for “one faction of Lebanese to decide on behalf of everyone, and take unilateral decisions that not all Lebanese agree on”. With outcry mounting, Hezbollah’s main Christian ally the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) has even ramped up criticism, saying its nearly two-decade alliance with Hezbollah had been “shaken”.

“The main problem that arose recently was crossing the limits of defending Lebanon and getting involved in a conflict in which we cannot make decisions,” FPM head Gebran Bassil said.

Their alliance had provided Hezbollah with supporters from a religious community outside its traditional base, but the pair have split over several issues in the last two years — including who should be Lebanon’s next President.

Michael Young at the Carnegie Middle East Center said Mr. Bassil’s comments were an attempt to gain some leverage over Hezbollah by signalling a rift — but also reflected Christian unease with the status quo.

“The mood among the Christian community is almost a psychological divorce from the system. They don’t feel that they have a say in the system and in a way it’s true — Hezbollah is in control of much of the system,” Mr. Young said.

Trucks carrying aid wait to exit, on the Palestinian side of the border with Egypt, as the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas continues, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on October 21, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The border crossing between Egypt and Gaza opened on October 21 to let desperately needed aid flow to Palestinians for the first time since Israel sealed off the territory following Hamas’ bloody rampage two weeks ago.

Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, half of whom have fled their homes, are rationing food and drinking filthy water. Hospitals say they are running low on medical supplies and fuel for emergency generators amid a territory-wide power blackout. Israel has launched waves of airstrikes across Gaza that have failed to stem ongoing Palestinian rocket fire into Israel.

The opening came after more than a week of high-level diplomacy by various mediators, including visits to the region by U.S. President Joe Biden and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Israel had insisted that nothing would enter Gaza until some 200 people captured by Hamas were freed and the Palestinian side of the crossing had been shut down by Israeli airstrikes.

More than 200 trucks carrying roughly 3,000 tonnes of aid had been positioned near the crossing for days. But Egypt’s state-owned Al-Qahera news, which is close to security agencies, said just 20 trucks had crossed into Gaza on October 21. Hundreds of foreign passport holders also waited to cross from Gaza to Egypt to escape the conflict.

The Hamas-run government in Gaza said the limited convoy “will not be able to change the humanitarian catastrophe that Gaza is currently enduring,” calling for a secure corridor operating around the clock.

The opening came hours after Hamas released an American woman and her teenage daughter, the first captives to be freed after the militant group’s October 7 incursion into Israel. It was not immediately clear if there was any connection between the two.

Hamas released Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter, Natalie, on Friday for what it said were humanitarian reasons in an agreement with Qatar, a Persian Gulf nation that has often served as a Mideast mediator.

“The two had been on a trip from their home in suburban Chicago to Israel to celebrate Jewish holidays,” the family said. They were in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, near Gaza, when Hamas and other militants stormed into southern Israeli towns, killing hundreds and abducting 203 others.

Mr. Biden spoke with the two freed hostages and their relatives. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which transported the freed Americans to Israel, said their release was “a sliver of hope.”

Hamas said in a statement that it was working with mediators “to close the case” of hostages if security circumstances permit. The group said it is committed to mediation efforts by Egypt, Qatar and others.

There are growing expectations of a ground offensive that Israel says would be aimed at rooting out Hamas, an Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years. Israel said on Friday it does not plan to take long-term control over the small but densely-populated Palestinian territory.

Israel has also traded fire along its northern border with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, raising concerns about a second front opening up. The Israeli military said on Saturday it struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in response to recent rocket launches and attacks with anti-tank missiles.

Israel issued a travel warning on Saturday, ordering its citizens to leave Egypt and Jordan — which made peace with it decades ago — and to avoid travel to a number of Arab and Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain, which forged diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020. Protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza have erupted across the region.

A potential Israeli ground assault is likely to lead to a dramatic escalation in casualties on both sides in urban fighting. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed in the war — mostly civilians slain during the Hamas incursion. Palestinian militants have continued to launch unrelenting rocket attacks into Israel — more than 6,900 projectiles since October 7, according to Israel.

More than 4,100 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry run by Hamas. That includes a disputed number of people who died in a hospital explosion earlier this week.

Speaking on Friday about Israel’s long-term plans for Gaza, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant laid out a three-stage plan that seemed to suggest Israel did not intend to reoccupy the territory it left in 2005.

First, Israeli airstrikes and “maneuvering” — a presumed reference to a ground attack — would aim to root out Hamas. Next will come a lower intensity fight to defeat remaining pockets of resistance. And, finally, a new “security regime” will be created in Gaza along with “the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip,” Mr. Gallant said.

Mr. Gallant did not say who Israel expected to run Gaza if Hamas is toppled or what the new security regime would entail.

Israel occupied Gaza from 1967 until 2005, when it pulled up settlements and withdrew soldiers. Two years later, Hamas took over. Some Israelis blame the withdrawal from Gaza for the five wars and countless smaller exchanges of fire since then.

Over a million people have been displaced in Gaza. Many heeded Israel’s orders to evacuate from north to south within the sealed-off enclave on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. But Israel has continued to bomb areas in southern Gaza where Palestinians had been told to seek safety, and some appear to be going back to the north because of bombings and difficult living conditions in the south.

“Generators in Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, were operating at the lowest setting to conserve fuel while providing power to vital departments such as intensive care, hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia said. Others worked in darkness. The lack of medical supplies and water make it difficult to treat the mass of victims from the Israeli strikes,” he said.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said it had received a threat from the Israeli military to bomb Al-Quds Hospital. It said Israel has demanded the immediate evacuation of the Gaza City hospital, which has more than 400 patients and thousands of displaced civilians who sought refuge on its grounds.

It was not clear if there was an agreement for generator fuel to be brought in through Rafah.