On the first day that Israeli airstrikes hit southern Lebanon, Inas Burro knew she had to flee with her three children. Perched atop a hill in Ayta Ash Shab, a little over half a mile from Israel, she has had a view of border tensions all her life. So when Hezbollah hit an Israeli observation tower in the first week of the Gaza war, she knew it was time to leave.
“I grabbed everything that I could find, scooped up the children and ran,” she said. Within hours the house next door had been hit in an apparent retaliatory strike. She has no idea if hers is still standing.
Between 40,000 and 60,000 people are estimated to have fled the villages on the border of southern Lebanon as Hezbollah and Palestinian factions exchange tit-for-tat fire with Israel. The spectre of a full war and the Gaza invasion becoming a regional conflict is looming.
While the border clashes have mostly remained within the confines of decades-understood rules of engagement on both sides which deter escalation, there has been an increase in cross-border fire over recent days. Analysts and diplomats fear that a significant depletion of Hamas’s capabilities or the crossing of an unknown red line in Gaza could leave the Iran-allied Hezbollah with no choice but to enter the war.
While many who have fled the escalating violence have moved in with family or friends elsewhere in the country — or rented second homes — those facing the brunt of Lebanon’s economic collapse are sheltering in schools.
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Three schools in the coastal city of Tyre, 12 miles north of the border, have become a temporary home to more than 1,500 people. The makeshift shelters are full before Hezbollah has even formally entered the war, and Lebanon — economically and politically broken — is woefully unprepared.
The Israeli strikes, which have mostly been contained to the immediate border villages, hit as deep as Tyre on Wednesday night, according to the Lebanese state news agency.
Families have taken in the displaced, but Lebanon’s severe economic crisis means that many of those hosting are barely able to survive the added financial pressure.
“We’re trying to open a new shelter that will hold an additional 400 people,” Hassan Hammoud, from Tyre’s Crisis Management Authority, said. “But everything in Lebanon is weak: the central government, the municipalities …” The caretaker government has so far been unable to give any support for shelters, he said, adding that they were relying purely on help from non-governmental organisations and parties in the south.
“The noise is unbearable,” Burro said of her new home. She is lucky; her family of five have a room to themselves because they have a baby little over a year old. The school desks are stacked to the side of the room, acting as shelves for the clothes, shoes, pots and pans that they managed to escape with.
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Food and water are being provided by the Crisis Management Authority, but there are growing fears over supplies for the winter. Three mattresses are given to a family of six to sleep on the floor, but much like the blankets being handed out, they are thin and will soon be insufficient to keep people warm.
“I’m terrified of war breaking out,” Burro said from the classroom she has to call home for the foreseeable future. “A war on top of this economic crisis?” she laughs, almost deliriously, “can you imagine?”
The border villages in the south of Lebanon are predominantly made up of impoverished day labourers and agricultural workers, according to Hammoud. Marwa, 24, who is sheltering in Tyre technical school, is sharing a room with 17 other women. Her father, a shepherd, refused to leave his flock — the only source of income for the family — and is in the middle of daily clashes.
“Our house has burnt down. It was hit by an Israeli airstrike while they were using white phosphorus,” Marwa said. Human Rights Watch has said that Israel has used white phosphorous — illegal if used in populated areas — in Lebanon this month. The Israeli military said this was “unequivocally false”.
Another family said they had risked returning so that they could bring three of their sheep to safety with them. “This is worse than 2006 when there was an actual war,” the mother of the family said. “At least they gave us warning then when they were going to bomb us.”
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The school that Marwa is sheltering in, the largest of the three, does not have running water in the lavatories — which are shared by dozens of people — and the overall sanitation level is raising fears of scabies breaking out.
The World Health Organisation has shipped aid to Lebanon in case Hezbollah enters the war. In the last war with Israel, Beirut’s airport, the only commercial way in and out of the country, was immediately hit.
Burro is running out of milk for her one-year-old daughter, Hannine. It’s not just her; the Crisis Management Authority is desperately in need of milk to give to families. In no economic place to provide help, the health ministry has told it to recommend that women rely on breast milk.
“Tell them to do it naturally, they told us,” Hammoud recalled. “Women are scared and stressed, how can you expect their milk to come through?”
The shelters that the Lebanese authorities have so far managed to open are overstretched before war has hit the country. If Hezbollah does enter the fray, the population — 80 per cent of which live below the poverty line — will be facing devastation.
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“I woke up in the middle of the night, my body shaking, to the sound of bombing,” Burro said. “What will we do if the war completely breaks out? I have no clue. Head to the mountains? Be homeless again?”
