The headquarters of the party affiliated civil defence and ambulance service lies in ruins in front of the damaged mosque in the centre of Hanine, in southern Lebanon, on July 8.Oliver Marsden/The Globe and Mail
The noon call to prayer sounded over the centre of this town Monday, but no one came to the mosque. There was no imam in the building, which is scarred from the shrapnel of an Israeli air strike that destroyed a paramedic station across the street, only a stereo system that clicked on with a timer to broadcast the prayer song.
The only residents The Globe and Mail spotted during a drive through Hanine, one of the dozens of ghost towns that line both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border, were a family of five who peeked out from their balcony at the rare sight of a passing car. “We’re staying because we will never allow Israel to displace us,” 54-year-old Hussein Qashaqesh explained, though apparently none of his neighbours shared his commitment.
Mr. Qashaqesh said 60 families usually live in Hanine, an olive farming town just six kilometres north of the border. The population doubles each summer with holidaymakers, he said.
Not this year. Nine months of fighting between the Hezbollah militia and the Israeli military have driven some 90,000 Lebanese from the border area, while 60,000 Israelis have been evacuated from the southern side of the frontier by their government. It’s a deadly but thus far controlled confrontation that many fear is on the verge of tipping into all-out war.
The home of the Qashaqesh family stands in ruins in Hanine after it was targeted and destroyed by an Israeli air strike. The sign reads 'Your souls took the road to Jerusalem before your bodies did. Maryam Qashaqesh and Sara Hussein Qashaqesh, 11 years old.'Oliver Marsden/The Globe and Mail
The possibility of war between Israel and Hezbollah has many considering leaving Lebanon for good
Hezbollah began launching rockets and drones into Israel on Oct. 8, the same day Israeli forces began operations in the Gaza Strip after the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel. While Hezbollah has said it will stop its attacks as soon as there is a ceasefire in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Israel will no longer tolerate the presence of Hezbollah on its northern border.
Towns such as Hanine are already a war zone. Four houses in the town have been destroyed in Israeli strikes, including one on either side of the home where Mr. Qashaqesh lives with his wife and three children. He sold and installed solar panels before the war, but there’s no work now.
“We hear this every day,” he said as a pair of explosions boomed over the hills to the east – later reported to be Israeli artillery strikes that hit the outskirts of a nearby village.
More than 450 people have been killed in southern Lebanon since the start of the clashes, including five in Hanine. Two were distant relatives of Mr. Qashaqesh – 11-year-old Sara Qashaqesh and her aunt Maryam – who died in an April air strike that obliterated their home, with the force of the blast propelling the family’s washer and dryer out the side of the building. Two others were killed earlier in the fighting in the air strike on the paramedic station, which Mr. Qashaqesh said was used by “the party.”
A temporary grave has been dug for Maryam and Sara Qashaqesh next to the mosque. When the fighting has finished the family will finish the grave and add the headstones.Oliver Marsden/The Globe and Mail
In Hanine, as in most of southern Lebanon, there’s no need to clarify which party you’re referring to. The yellow flags of Hezbollah fly over the city centre and over the mound of broken concrete and twisted rebar that was once the paramedic station. The Israeli flag is painted on the street outside the town hall so that anyone passing by has to drive over it.
And there’s no ambiguity over whom the fifth person killed in Hanine was. Beside the simple graves of Sara and Maryam, who were buried outside the damaged mosque, is the more ornate burial place of Kumail Swaidan, a 47-year-old Hezbollah fighter who was killed in an Oct. 23 Israeli air strike, reportedly just as his unit was preparing to launch an anti-tank missile across the border. Hezbollah has acknowledged losing 366 fighters since the clashes began. Israel says 21 soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed by Hezbollah fire.
Posters of Hezbollah fighters killed in action with flags celebrating the Shia religious holiday of Ashoura on top of them line the road in southern Lebanon.Oliver Marsden/The Globe and Mail
The dominance of Hezbollah – which in addition to its military might is the supreme political and social force across southern Lebanon – is apparent even in the emptiness of Hanine. The only other people The Globe saw in the town Monday were four young men sitting on the balcony of a half-built home that they said had been converted into the new paramedic station. A pair of ambulances belonging to the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Organization were parked outside.
The men said that, other than the Qashaqeshes, the only civilian still in the town is an old man who lives by himself. The four said they were volunteers but refused to give their names or answer any other questions.
The only traffic in Hanine that day came in the form of two small convoys of armoured vehicles belonging to UNIFIL, the 10,000-member United Nations force that is supposed to be keeping the peace in southern Lebanon. UNIFIL’s lightly armed troops are only allowed to intervene and confront an armed group such as the Iranian-backed Hezbollah if they are specifically requested to do so by the Lebanese government. That hasn’t happened, making the UNIFIL force more of a monitoring effort than a peacekeeping one.
UNIFIL armoured personnel carriers patrol the streets of southern Lebanon.Oliver Marsden/The Globe and Mail
Kandice Ardiel, a Canadian who serves as UNIFIL’s deputy spokesperson, said the exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah have become more intense in recent weeks. “We’ve seen more strikes further in on both sides. The concern we have, as peacekeepers, is that a miscalculation could lead to escalation,” she said.
On Sunday, Israel used a drone to kill what it said was a top Hezbollah operative in the Baalbek region, more than 100 kilometres from the border. Israeli warplanes were audible in the skies over southern Lebanon on several occasions Monday.
Mahmoud Reslan knows what it’s like to be the last person to leave a town. The 51-year-old construction worker stayed in Odaisseh, a town flush against the Israeli border, until early December, when the empty shops and constant explosions finally drove him out. “It was terrifying to be there alone in the village with so much bombing. Anyone would get scared. We’re not superheroes,” he said, adding that he stayed behind for five days after his wife and two children left because he promised his son he’d remain with the family’s two dogs.
Now Mr. Reslan and his family are among some 650 internally displaced people from the south living in the abandoned Hotel Montana, a relatively safe 50 kilometres from the border. Conditions are grim – Mr. Reslan’s daughter and son sleep on thin mattresses that flank the double bed in their hotel room, while the two dogs are chained up outside. Food, bottled water and diesel for the hotel generator are delivered by a mix of international charities.
It’s the fourth time in his life that Mr. Reslan has fled a home – including twice during Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war, and again in 2006 when Israel and Lebanon fought a 33-day war that left more than 1,200 people dead – and he feels the current conflict is drawing closer.
Residents of the hotel can see and hear explosions in the surrounding hills on a near-daily basis, and several of the hotel’s windows have been shattered by Israeli jets breaking the sound barrier overhead. For those who fled their homes during the 2006 war, it’s an exhausting sense of déjà vu.
“That war was over in 33 days. This time it’s been nine months,” said Manahel Rammal, a 54-year-old from Odaisseh who said she was the first to arrive in the Montana when it began accepting internal refugees early in the conflict. “We’re tired, we’re depressed and we want to go home. This is all we wish for.”