The Weekly Dispatch takes a deep dive into breaking events and issues of significance around our world and our nation today, providing the background readers need to make better sense of the headlines speeding past us each week. For more news and analysis from around the world, visit Dispatches.
The travel advisory from the U.S. embassy on Aug. 3 could not have been more stark. “We encourage those who wish to depart Lebanon to book any ticket available to them…”
The rest of the communique was no less alarming: “Keep your cell phone charged in case of emergency… be prepared to shelter in place should the situation deteriorate…. Have a contingency plan for emergencies.”
Dark days indeed appear to be looming ahead for Lebanon. Forces far beyond the control of its already embattled citizens—plagued by years of economic and political instability—are dictating their nation’s future. A showdown between Israel and Iran appears likely, with the Iranian proxy Hezbollah the instrument of Iran’s retaliation for the assassination of Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil.
The killing of Mr. Haniyeh, who had been the chief of the Hamas political office in Qatar, ratcheted up tensions across a region already on edge because of the war in Gaza and tit-for-tat missile and artillery strikes between Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah militia. U.S. warships and military materiel are on the move to the region, and any hope for a near-term cease-fire in Gaza that might reduce tensions collapsed on Aug. 11, when Hamas negotiators stepped back from talks after an I.D.F. strike at a United Nations compound the day before killed scores of noncombatants. (An I.D.F. spokesperson said the death toll has been exaggerated and claimed that 19 Hamas fighters were killed in the attack.)
On Aug. 12, White House officials concurred with Israeli intelligence sources who are predicting an Iranian attack on Israel this week. That reprisal may come directly from the Iranian military or through its proxy force Hezbollah, an independent and well-armed Shiite Muslim movement within Lebanese society. Any new violence could lead to another devastating war in South Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel, potentially worse than the last conflagration in 2006.
In the middle of the escalating tension are the people of Lebanon. Humanitarian sources say about 100,000 Lebanese have already been forced from their homes because of the fighting, among them many Lebanese Christians whose villages lie near the Israeli border. A full-fledged war would be an unimaginable catastrophe, said Karam Abi Yazbeck, the regional director for the Catholic humanitarian agency Caritas MONA.
Speaking from Beirut on Aug. 13, he said the Lebanese central government is already unable to cope with the humanitarian crisis that has enveloped southern Lebanon, relying on humanitarian nongovernment organizations to do the heavy lifting in assisting the many thousands displaced. After years of economic and political turmoil, the Lebanese health care system is deeply degraded.
“If a bigger-scale war might happen,” Mr. Abi Yazbeck said, “this will affect everyone—even on basic things like water, electricity, medicines, bread…. This will be a huge humanitarian crisis.”
Cedric Choukeir is the country representative for Lebanon for Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. church’s relief and development agency. He said C.R.S. team members in Lebanon are preparing for what may come. “We’re going to do everything in our power to remain operational in case of an escalation so that we can fulfill our mission of serving the vulnerable.”
Responding to America from Beirut by email, Mr. Choukeir wrote, “Right now, we are focused on ensuring the safety of our staff should things escalate. This includes having backup locations to work from in case our office in Beirut is inaccessible, as well as backup residency options for staff who might be displaced.”
“On the programming side,” he added, “we’re working with local partners to help increase their emergency preparedness.”
A new war would only add to the many woes experienced in recent years by the people of Lebanon. Battered by years of civil war between 1975 and 1990, the nation saw its civic and economic suffering reach new heights in 2019 when a banking meltdown obliterated the savings of essentially its entire middle class.
Since then, Lebanon has lurched from one crisis to the next. Still adjusting to the presence of more than 1.5 million refugees from Syria, Iraq and Palestine, Lebanon has also suffered domestic travails punctuated by a spectacular port warehouse explosion in 2020 that killed more than 200 people, devastating the city and shocking the region.
Fighting between the I.D.F. and Hezbollah that began in the aftermath of the Hamas raid into Israel on Oct. 7 has already proved injurious to the region and to an economy that had just shown some small progress toward stabilization. “The currency has been stable for more than a year now,” Mr. Choukeir said, “and there have been positive signs of an economic recovery. Because of this, the current conflict and a potential escalation would be another serious blow that would first impact the most vulnerable people who don’t have any savings or safety net.”
Since Hezbollah forces began their campaign against Israel in support of Hamas, “the most intense bombardment has been in an area just under eight miles away from the border,” Mr. Choukeir said. “The homes and farms there have been heavily damaged.” But communities beyond the border, even those without a Hezbollah presence, have also experienced what he described as “limited airstrikes.”
The lives of people in these communities have been disrupted, Mr. Choukeir said. “They have been cut off from the rest of the country for more than 10 months now.” Any travel outside their communities—“to see family, friends, the doctor, all the things they used to be able to do freely”—now must be assessed according to the risk it creates.
Mr. Choukeir especially worries about the impact on the children of southern Lebanon. More than 30,000 children have been displaced by the fighting, he said, and 10,000 of them have been cut off from school. “The loss of education could have generational impacts,” he said.
He believes there is still a chance that the I.D.F. and Hezbollah can be pulled back from the brink of a full war, noting that so far both sides have been “very calculated in their military responses and counter-responses. Public opinion—the opinions of those here in the region and internationally—has been a factor in their decisions.”
Christian political parties have been pressing to keep Lebanon out of a wider war, but now the fight has escaped beyond Gaza and Lebanon, becoming more of a regional conflict between Israel and Iran.
“It’s not clear how much the Lebanese government can influence the decisions being made,” Mr. Choukeir said. “So far, international efforts have failed to push for a cease-fire, so the fear is that the whole of Lebanon will become collateral damage.”
Bringing even a temporary halt to the suffering in Gaza would surely go a long way toward reducing tensions and perhaps would still avert a wider war that would involve Lebanon, according to Mr. Abi Yazbeck. But reports from Caritas colleagues suggest that conditions in Gaza have reached rock bottom. Getting aid into the conflict zone remains a logistical nightmare.
For the inhabitants of Gaza, every day is a struggle to find water and food. Mr. Abi Yazbeck said the tiny Christian community in Gaza, now reduced to about 600 people, shares the suffering of all the people in Gaza as the I.D.F. campaign against Hamas continues.
Mr. Abi Yazbeck urges American Christians to remember how imperiled this small Christian community in Gaza remains. They “are living in fear on a daily basis,” he said. “As you can imagine, the situation—for Christian or non-Christian—is the same. They are…under a high risk every day.”
Meanwhile, Lebanon has maintained one of the region’s largest and most influential Christian communities, about one-third of the country’s population. But like Christians elsewhere in the Middle East, many Lebanese Christians have considered joining a vast diaspora in the United States, Latin America and Europe.
Now all eyes in Lebanon are on Iran to see if it will strike out at Israel; and then, in turn, how Israel—with a ready capacity to demolish Lebanon’s infrastructure—may respond. Mr. Abi Yazbeck acknowledges that some of Lebanon’s problems are of its own making—including its fractious, factional leadership and its institutional incapacity. But other problems are far beyond its control, buffeted by the ambitions of regional and great powers alike.
His plea is not for the United States to intervene just to help Lebanon’s Christians, but to help everyone in Lebanon by finding a way to remove the country from the continuing strife in the Middle East. “Since, I don’t know, the 1960s, even before that, this country has never had a time of peace,” he said. “It’s always a time of tension and problems.”
He suggests a respite from its role as a pawn in Middle East geopolitics could provide the breathing space to address, with the assistance of the World Bank and other multilateral institutions, Lebanon’s glaring socioeconomic weaknesses and government incapacity. Lebanon, he said, is “a small country, and we’re paying the highest bill, and we deserve, as Lebanese people, Christians especially, to live a few years of happiness.”
More from America
- Christians caught in the crossfire between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon
- Caritas Lebanon director: Beirut is devastated but we will rebuild our city
- Lebanon’s economy was already reeling. Coronavirus may push it into collapse.
- The miracle of Lebanon: Despite tensions, Muslims and Christians live in peace.
