The Lebanese have been accustomed for years to the State being a bad window to go to. The economic crisis that began in 2019 accentuated the every man for himself in a country in which the solution to basic problems depends more on the religious group to which one belongs, the surname or the famous person wasta(a contact or plug). Now, the Israeli offensive (20% of the population displaced, the south invaded and increasingly devastated, two other areas under daily bombing…) is having an unaffordable impact on the battered national coffers. Given the impotence and absence of the authorities ―”“Ma fi dawla” (there is no State) is one of the favorite phrases of the Lebanese―, civil society groups, volunteers, political parties and even notables have been hastily filling the gaps, such as the young people who distribute thousands of meals to the displaced or the Palestinian who began to build a medical center because he took for granted what was coming.
Burj Al Barajne is, originally, a refugee camp that emerged from the Nakba, the flight or expulsion by the Zionist militias and the Israeli army between 1947 and 1949 of 70% of the Palestinians who lived in what is now Israel. Like Mohammad Al Habet, whose family descends from the city of Acre.
At 47 years old, he had been smelling for more than a month what had ended up happening, so he wanted to speed up. He ordered the hospital’s iron structure to be erected before the latest waves of bombings, which have ended up generating an exodus among its around 67,000 inhabitants. Burj Al Barajne is next to Dahiye, the bombed Shiite fiefdom of Beirut, and its alleys (crowned by impossible knots of electrical cables) have also ended up absorbing Syrian refugees and migrants from Ethiopia, Bangladesh or India. It’s the rent they can afford.
“We saw clear signs that there was going to be a war. We were confident, so we started to seriously think about how we could contribute. We are next to Dahiye and we had the experience of 2006 [la guerra entre Israel y Hezbolá, en la que también fue duramente bombardeado]so this seemed like the priority to us,” he explains inside the construction shed he uses as an office.
As the State – “or what remains of it”, Al Habet ironically – is “only for some” and Lebanon prohibits Palestinian refugees from owning land, it has allocated some land it rented for the hospital project. He calls it that, even though he doesn’t have the permits. “Technically, we will be an emergency center. If it helps speed it up, I’m signing a paper promising that we’ll leave it in the hands of a charitable organization. If the war spreads too long, it will be necessary.” Like in 2006, he recalls, when Israel bombed the bridges and ambulances had a very difficult time moving from one neighborhood to another, he recalls.
The idea is to install 72 beds. Munir Saleh, a 56-year-old Palestinian, paints the legs of the stretchers. “Normally, I sell kaak[un pan con sésamo típico de los puestos callejeros]but I do this because I know how to paint and I want to help. If they end up giving me some money, the better. If not, nothing happens.” Here they are from Mohamed Dahlan, the famous and controversial former head of preventive security with Yasir Arafat who remains popular in the refugee camps, in part thanks to the funds he obtains in the Gulf, where he resides. His name has been heard for months in post-war Gaza.
Volunteers of all crises
The initiatives outside the authorities in difficult times do not stop in this camp full of posters calling for the boycott of American brands (for their support for Israel) or with the image of Abu Obeida, the masked spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas who claimed before the world the attack of October 7, 2023. In the much quieter and more privileged Christian neighborhood of Achrafiye, in Beirut, Mahya el Jawhary takes a break after boiling 500 eggs for the next day. He is 33 years old and is hired as a chef by the German Embassy. But since his work is paralyzed, he has changed the small portions with signature touches for a handful of diners for the huge casseroles of “things that are easy to make and transport,” such as sandwiches or legumes, to feed those displaced by the Israeli bombings. Some families from the south of the country who have ended up in the neighborhood even go down to see if they have any leftover rations and can take some home.
It does so with Nation Station, a collective born from the explosion in the port of Beirut in 2020 that has remained active and has suddenly found itself with a brutal crisis and hundreds of thousands of displaced people. “We mobilized immediately when we began to see the images of people fleeing and houses destroyed by the bombings. We thought we would have about 10 or 15 volunteers; In the end there are 200,” explains Josephine Abou Abdo, 34 years old and manager of the community kitchen in which they transformed an old gas station and from which they do not stop leaving. tupperwarewith food. Every day up to 2,800 portions and, even so, Abou Abdo admits, “it is just a drop in the ocean” of needs. The volunteers, some of them foreigners, also carry boxes with baby wipes, water bottles or diapers.
Aley is “the capital of the mountains”, as they usually call it in Arabic. Located between Beirut and Damascus, it is the fourth largest city in the country and is mainly populated by Druze, as can be seen in the traditional white hats that men wear in the streets. Many of the displaced have ended up here, far from the three areas hardest hit by Israeli bombs: the south, the Bekaa Valley and Dahiye. At the beginning of the crisis, the elderly Druze leader Walid Jumblatt sent them a reassuring message: come to the mountains, we will welcome you and you will be safe. In the first two days, 17,000 arrived in Aley.
Public schools, which were enrolling the last students for the start of the school year, were transformed into shelters. They depend on the Ministry of Education, but the closest thing to a state authority in one of them is a governor who is not there because she cannot cope. The real authority is a political party that represents the Druze community, although it declares itself secular: the Progressive Socialist Party, which Walid Jumblatt led for decades and has taken control of the situation. “The Government is completely absent,” says the secretary of the formation in the crisis cell, Ribal Abu Zahy, while the children play in the yard and the women search through the bags of urgently donated clothes.
There are 390 people at the school and most “haven’t been able to shower for days,” he admits. “Everything you see in the classrooms has been brought by us, NGOs or the Red Cross. Or neighbors. Except for 200 mattresses that the Ministry has given us and they are not enough for everyone,” he adds. And why is a political party in charge? “Who else?” he answers. “Here we have a lot of presence and structure… and it was that or nothing,” he adds. The area is the party’s stronghold.
Petra Azzam, a 23-year-old volunteer who studied at that school, sums up the Ministry’s role like this: “Basically, giving us the key to the school.” “I have bought things with the money that my friends send me. They trust me and have donated $500. I send you a photo on WhatsApp so you can see what I spent it on,” he adds.
Feces accumulate in the hallway bathrooms. There is no water in the cistern. “People shower by pouring bottles of water on themselves,” says her friend and fellow volunteer Marwa Ghrazi. And state water? Ghrazi cracks a half-smile before provocatively responding: “Whose?”