The residents of Keserwan, a beautiful mountainous district of Lebanon where there are many churches and summer residences to escape the heat of Beirut, had been accustomed for decades to seeing the Israeli bombings on the news, as an alien reality, despite it happening in their home. country. In the 34-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah, the closest target was a bridge near the famous casino; and these days it was Dahiye, the fiefdom of the Hezbollah party-militia south of Beirut, just 20 kilometers away. Until this Wednesday, when the explosion sounded much closer. For the first time, Israel fired a missile at a home in Maaysra, a Shiite island between the Christian towns of Keserwan.
They are so close that you just have to follow the curves of the road to go from the Shiite mosque of Maaysra to the Christian Yahshush, where Jean Souaid (60 years old and “very Maronite”, he calls himself) and his wife, Lena Zouein, a year younger. , observe with concern the proximity of the conflict and the arrival of displaced Shiites to the shelter school. “Of course I’m afraid. And I ended up having to go too. The school is next to my house. Who knows who is going to come and guarantee me that Israel is not going to end up bombing it? […] Or that no one is going to smuggle weapons in at midnight? If there were one or two… but when [los desplazados chiíes] They come in these numbers, I’m afraid. Why do we have to enter this war?”
― They argue that to help Gaza.
―And what do I have to do with Gaza? Yeah [el líder de Hezbolá, Hasan] Nasrallah wants to save his people, it is time for him to surrender.
“We Christians, whatever we do, end up paying a price,” says another neighbor, Dany Zouein, 48 years old. “If we accept the displaced, we put the town in danger. And if not, they are going to tell us that we are radicals or racists. Of course, those who come have to remove the political slogans. “That is clear.”
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This is exactly what an incident in Tripoli, the largest Sunni city in the country, has caused, whose recording has spread like wildfire on social networks and shows the precariousness of identity balances. In the video, a neighbor is heard speaking in a firm tone to a newly arrived Shiite: “You have a photo of Nasrallah in the car and you carry a gun, without hiding it. You come here from Dahiye and you carry a gun. I’m not going to touch you, because [si lo hago] I would do something stupid and go to jail. So, come on, get you and your gun out of Tripoli!”
Jean, Lena’s husband, doesn’t like the situation either. He says that he “and 90%” of Yahshush (2,500 inhabitants in the summer, less than half during the off-season) would not rent their house to a displaced Shiite, unless they knew him very well firsthand. “Not even if they paid me a thousand dollars (895 euros) a month, not even if I was a family with a wife and children. “I don’t know who they are and I don’t want to be left homeless,” he emphasizes. “The City Council will have to search the cars, to make sure there is no rifle between the mattresses or an automatic weapon hidden in the trunk.”
-And why the City Council, and not the State?
– Because there is no State. The State is with them. If there is a problem, we will have to take the solution into our own hands. The City Council, the town…
“There is no State” is a phrase on the lips of many Lebanese, regardless of their religious affiliation. A reflection of the weakness of institutions and the absence of agreement on what form the shared national interest would take. Lebanon has a system of power sharing between the three main confessions (Sunnis, Christians and Shiites) that ends up paralyzing decision-making, generating distribution of benefits among the elites and pushing the majority to think and vote, above all, like the his.
Added to this is the power of Hezbollah, far above its parliamentary presence, thanks to tens of thousands of fighters who could defeat the army itself and turn it into a kind of state within the state. Without your green light, important decisions can only end up in the trash. Like the position of president, which is held by a Christian and has been vacant for a year and a half due to lack of agreement on a successor. Or the Prime Minister, the Sunni Nayib Mikati, who continues to accumulate months in the interim. The Armed Forces lack the capacity and the will to combat those of Israel, although they violate the national airspace on a daily basis. Also if they end up penetrating by land. It would be, as in 2006, an issue between Israel and Hezbollah, plus their respective allies.
Fed up with these elites and this confessional structure gave birth to the famous Revolution in 2019. The frustrated social revolt did not change the country, but its novel political representation won nine deputies (none of them Shiite) of the 128 in Parliament in the 2022 elections.
One of them is Nayat Saliba. Today he criticizes both Israel and the establishment Lebanese for not having prevented “a war that will cause greater destruction in a country that cannot afford it” and that is “tired” after combining a pandemic, the explosion in the port of Beirut and the brutal economic crisis in just five years, still to finish. “Yes, Israel is the enemy. He is a beast, a killing machine. But all our rulers have also failed many times to prevent this war,” says Saliba, from the Taqadum party. “We are in favor of building a State and supporting the Armed Forces.”
The weight of Hezbollah
The Lebanese Foreign Minister, Abdullah bu Habib, assured on Wednesday that the weight of Hezbollah in Lebanon has been greatly exaggerated. “It doesn’t control the airport, it doesn’t control the borders. Of course they have influence, like others. They also have a popular base. They have influence, perhaps more than others, but they do not have absolute influence in the country. If they want to appoint a president, they can’t. They have to reach a compromise agreement with others,” he pointed out in a conference.
The last few days have not only strained coexistence or, rather, brought to light tensions that already existed. There have also been signs of solidarity and unity, since last week’s detonation of thousands of beepers and walkie talkies that Hezbollah had distributed, attributed to Mossad. Lebanese of different faiths have come to hospitals to donate blood or organs, or are handing out water and sweets to families stuck on the road as they flee to safer areas. Also in Tripoli, the same city of the viral incident.
One of these initiatives is led by a peculiar character with a gym body: mechanic Zach Bouery. A devout Christian, he is fixing the vehicles of the same Shiites whose presence in a Christian area worries the couple Jean and Lena, with whom he shares the creed, completely free of charge. Bouery has posted videos on his social networks praising Jesus Christ in the middle of Dahiye, always dressed in a black T-shirt dominated by a huge white cross. Last Tuesday, he shared a message on Instagram asking his 15,000 followers to spread the word that he would fix breakdowns in the vehicles of those displaced (Shiites, although he did not need to explain it) for free by the Israeli bombings. He does not charge for spare parts or working time, and says that he has already helped 20 families.
If his initiative has received both applause and criticism it is precisely because of its exceptionality: everyone knows that Christians or Shiites fought on different sides during the civil war, that they have been changing political alliances and that the Maronite phalanxes went with Israel when it occupied (1982- 2000) the same south of the country from which Bouery’s new “clients” are now fleeing Israeli fire.
“I made the video so that people can see that Christians want to help Muslims,” he explains in the middle of the road from Beirut to Tripoli, next to the motorcycle that allows him to avoid the inevitable traffic jams to quickly reach the cars in trouble. . It is in the heart of the Christian heart, at the height of Souk, crowned by a figure of Jesus Christ. And its popularity is evident: not two minutes go by without someone honking their horn or slowing down and rolling down their window to greet you. “Many people, when they see this shirt, think that I am racist. And others think that Christians are like Jews [israelíes]. “I wanted to show that the Lebanese are all part of the same nation,” he says.
Isabelle Aoun also thinks (and acted like this). On Wednesday, as usual, he was at the bakery he runs in Zaaitra, the Maronite town that borders the Shiite town bombed on Wednesday, Maaysra. That is why he heard the explosion clearly, saw “the smoke rising into the sky” and the Shiite families arriving scared at the church to take refuge, aware – due to the weight of history – that they would never be a target. “They came to the bakery to go to the bathroom, to get water… I understand that everyone has their fears, but I like to help without thinking about each person’s religion. And I also tell you: this is not the time for those kinds of problems.”
