Deriving Information from the Shia Ward Guards: Israel’s Pummling of Lebanon in the Light of Lebanon’s Civil War

They are not intending to discriminate against anyone, but rather a precautionary measure. “We don’t know the men and maybe they are fighters with Hezbollah, so Israel could bomb this building if Hezbollah men are staying in it,” Jaber says, while preparing bread orders for customers early one Saturday morning.

“For children and women, we welcome everyone, but we’re on high alert for every man coming into our neighborhood,” says 24-year-old Elee Jaber, who manages a family-owned bakery in Ein el Remmene, which sits next to Dahieh, a once densely populated Shia neighborhood and Hezbollah stronghold that Israel has been pummeling.

If the guards see something that catches their attention like a car with tinted windows or men frequenting a residential building, they try to quietly gather information from the residents and neighbors.

Gemayel, a founding member of the neighborhood watch group who had a part in Lebanon’s civil war, stated that there is awareness and will among the people not to go back to the conflict. His father was the leader of the Lebanon’s main Christian militia that was an ally of Israel. That alliance cost him his life. Soon after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, the elder Gemayel was elected president and then assassinated weeks later by a fellow Maronite Christian in the very same neighborhood that the night guards now patrol.

The Shia community has been the subject of attempted ethnic cleansing by Israel. There is little or nothing that can be done to dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure but it is more important that the Shia are prevented from returning to that area because of the destruction.

A refugee crisis in a predominantly Shia city: What a Syrian resident’s father tells his father about the situation in Nabatieh

With nothing more than a flashlight and a baton, they hide in plain sight, under the shadow of a tree or the dark entrance of a boarded-up business, where they’re on high alert for anyone who looks out of place.

His parents fled their home in the predominantly Shia city of Nabatieh in September with only the clothes on their backs. His father didn’t have time to get his ID as the airstrikes rained down, and now the city is in ruins.

They’ve been staying at his apartment in Ashrafieh for weeks while Ezzat, a strategist at an advertising agency, scours listings looking for anyone willing to lease a unit to his displaced parents, but it’s been tough. He didn’t want to give his last name out of fear it would make finding a home more difficult for his parents.

“I’ll call people and they’ll say, ‘Oh, we’re not renting anymore,’ but then I’ll call again and start talking in English and then it’s a different story,” he says, highlighting how any hint of a displaced person looking for a place to stay, even an inquiry in Arabic, is immediately shut down. “If you talk in French or English, it’s like ‘Oh, he’s OK, he’s cool, he’s a good Shia.’ “

“When someone goes to another town and bombs a building, people get afraid,” he says. “I would ask questions as well if someone is coming to my building, because there is a real threat.”

“Christian, Druze, Muslims — Sunni and Shia — all of you are suffering because of Hezbollah’s futile war against Israel,” he said. “Stand up and take your country back.”

The mounting casualties have also prompted questions about whether degrading and eliminating groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are the Israeli government’s only goals.

It may not take much for a religious group to get into a dispute in a country where memories of the civil war are still vivid. In order to avoid a sectarian conflict,Lebanon avoided a national census for 99 years.

The1989 Taif Agreement gave militant groups the chance to surrender their weapons at the end of the war as part of a peace plan, and this is the moment to get Hezbollah to do the same.

“[Former Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah took us to this war without even asking us. He didn’t even have the idea to build shelters in case of war,” says Akram Nehme, another founding member of the neighborhood watch. The damage is now the collateral damage. All the south’s villages are destroyed and the economy is below zero as our country is below zero. This doesn’t mean I’m a Jew, I want a Lebanon that looks like me, my culture and I don’t want anyone to tell me how to live.

More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza conflict, according to local health authorities, but they don’t differentiate between civilians and Islamic fighters, meaning more than half of the dead are women and children. Israel says it targets Hamas militants who hide among civilians.

In a report before the Security Council on Tuesday, Joyce Msuya, the U.N.’s top humanitarian official, said that “acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes” were being committed in Gaza. “The daily cruelty we see in Gaza seems to have no limits,” she said, pointing to recent developments in Beit Hanoun.

Drones blared announcements demanding people move south to Gaza City, said Mahmoud al-Kafarnah, speaking from one of the schools as sounds of gunfire could be heard. “The tanks are outside,” he said. We do not know where to go.

Palestinians fear that Israel is going to depopulate the area to make it easier to control it. On Tuesday, witnesses told The Associated Press that Israeli troops had encircled at least three schools in Beit Hanoun, forcing hundreds of displaced people sheltering inside to leave.

Palestinian health officials say hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, though the true numbers are unknown as rescue workers are unable to reach buildings destroyed in strikes. Israel has ordered residents in the area to evacuate. But the U.N. has estimated some 70,000 people remain.

A total of 24 soldiers were killed in the assault on Gaza since it began, following the deaths of four soldiers in the north of the country.

Israel has increased aid recently, including opening a new crossing into central Gaza and some small shipments of food and water to the north. So far, it’s not clear how the impact will be.

Israel has fallen short so far. In October, 57 trucks a day entered Gaza on average, and 75 a day so far in November, according to Israel’s official figures. The United Nations puts the number lower, at 39 trucks daily since the beginning of October.

With virtually no food or aid allowed in for more than a month, the siege has raised fears of famine among the tens of thousands of Palestinians believed to still be sheltering there.

Israeli airstrikes kill 11 people in a Hamas-Casar attack in the Gazan town of Muwasi

Mohamed Shabat and his wife Dima, both volunteer doctors at Kamal Adwan Hospital, were killed along with their daughter Eliaa, according to hospital director Hossam Abu Safiya.

The United States said that it would not reduce its support for Israel after a deadline passed for allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza. The State Department said that Israel had made some progress, even though the international aid groups said it had failed to meet US demands.

An Israeli airstrike on a residential building in central Lebanon killed 15 people, including eight women and four children, and wounded at least 12 others, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said. The strike came without warning, and state media said the building was sheltering displaced families.

A strike on a building east of Lebanon killed at least six people. The home that was destroyed was owned by Wael Murtada’s uncle and those inside fled from the Dahiyeh last month. He said three children were among the dead and other people were missing.

Since late September, Israel has intensified its bombardment of Lebanon, and vowed to stop Hezbollah’s cross-border fire.

The two people who were killed in the detonation of the rocket were located in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya. Another two people were wounded by shrapnel in a separate impact outside the town.

A Hezbollah drone smashed into a nursery school near the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Tuesday morning, but the children were inside a bomb shelter and there were no injuries. There was no shortage of debris across the playground.

Israeli strikes across Gaza kill 46At the same time, Israel has continued its 13-month campaign in Gaza set off by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack into southern Israel.

An Israeli air strike late Monday hit a cafeteria used by displaced people in Muwasi, the center of a “humanitarian zone” that the military declared earlier in the war.

At least 11 people were killed, including two children, according to officials at Nasser Hospital, where the casualties were taken. Men pulled bloodied victims from tables and chairs in an enclosure made of corrugated metal sheets as witnessed in the video.

A strike on a house in the northern town of Beit Hanoun killed 15 people on Tuesday, including relatives of Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat, who has been reporting from the north.