“It is right up this road!” shouts a local man, offering directions in a neighborhood he knows well. Antelias is a quiet Christian suburb a few miles north of Beirut, home to small manufacturing sites and shops and the Hadeal Center, a social service program primarily serving Lebanon’s Christians.
Hadeal, the Humanitarian Association for Development, Empowerment, Assistance and Learning, found yet another role after clashes began in South Lebanon between Hezbollah militants and Israel Defense Forces in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants on Oct. 7. The center has been sheltering internally displaced people from villages along the border that has become the battle zone for the Hezbollah militia and the I.D.F.
Over 100,000 Lebanese so far have fled their homes and villages because of the artillery and missile duels. Many have found shelter with relatives far from the conflict; some have rented apartments or found other places to live away from their endangered communities. But not all the people fleeing the fighting can afford to set themselves up in a new home elsewhere. A number of shelters have opened in different communities in northern Lebanon to provide what everyone hopes will be temporary lodging for the displaced families.
The road leading up to the Hadeal Center offers a beautiful view of the mountains around Beirut. The air grows cleaner after leaving the city behind and the streets grow emptier. The center, a former multipurpose building owned by the Maronite Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch, has six floors and 14 rooms.
“On each floor, we have one empty room we keep for emergencies—if someone is sick for example,” says Charbel Merhej, the director of the center.
Hadeal was started in August 2023 by a group of about 30 Lebanese Christians. “We wanted to help. We all have worked hard all our lives, and [decided] it was time for us to give back to our community,” says George Hajj, the association’s president. Hadeal offers different social service programs at four centers in Christian regions of Lebanon, including free medical supplies and services, job training and various efforts to assist Lebanese seniors. But with the beginning of new conflict in the south, the agency's priorities shifted, and it began accepting refugees from the fighting.
Youssef Elias, 60, has nine children. “The three eldest are now married,” he says. He fled the fighting in South Lebanon and has been living with his six younger children at the improvised shelter. “My youngest, Mariam, is a year and a half. She needs surgery for her feet, but we cannot afford it.”
Mr. Elias is a day laborer. Under normal conditions, he earns roughly $400 per month, working in farm fields. “But now we cannot go to the fields. It is too dangerous, so we are staying here, [and] I do not work.”
The tobacco fields in south Lebanon that he usually helps harvest this time of year are located near the border with Israel. The area is under almost constant bombardment as Israeli forces strike Hezbollah missile launchers and storage and logistics sites. The I.D.F.’s use of white phosphorus shells has also made the ground hazardous to work, and it has become impossible for workers to harvest the crop.
Hanane Semaan comes from Rmeish, one of the largest Christian communities in the south, located just a mile and a half from the border with Israel. She was in Beirut for surgery when the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah started. She came straight to the center with two of her children. Going home was too dangerous.
Her husband, who normally also works in South Lebanon’s farm fields, soon joined her, landing a job in Beirut as a parking valet. “He works from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. and brings home around $20 a day,” Mrs. Semaan says. “What can we do with this amount? Nothing.”
Mrs. Semaan came with two of her youngest children. “Charbel, my son, is 13. He misses his friends. He always tells me that he wants to go back to his room and play with his friends. Some of them are still living in the south and others have moved to Beirut. He has one friend who came to this center.” The Semaan family had notified the family of Charbel’s friend about a placement opportunity.
“We sent our location to his friend’s family because they were looking for shelter, they came later. Even though Charbel looks alright, he is not happy here; I can feel it.” His friend and his family left the center to live with relatives, and Charbel has come to feel more alone, his mother worries.
His education has ground to a halt as the fighting continues. “At the beginning, he was following classes online, but it stopped,” Mrs. Semaan. She explains that volunteer teachers were unable to keep the shelter’s impromptu “school” for the displaced children going. Now the young people have little to occupy their time.
The center staff created a computer room and tried to engage the children, but the parents say their children remain too distracted by their circumstances. “Putting our children in Beiruti schools is very expensive. We cannot afford it since we are not working anymore,” Mrs. Semaan said. “Transportation [to school in Beirut] is also an issue.”
So the children play in the shady courtyard at the center of the Hadeal’s compound or on its small playground, and parents keep a worried eye on their children, who are safe from the shelling but not from their own trauma.
Charbel “is not focused and cannot continue [learning on his own]. We see the children playing soccer every day, and that is it,” Mrs. Semaan says. “There was a French volunteer from l’Oeuvre d’Orient who came and taught them French for a few months, but he left because of the [conflict]. We are afraid for their future. They just missed a full year of school.”
Like the children, the adults at Hadeal also grapple with post-traumatic stress and other psychological trauma because of what they have experienced. Huweida Debl, 56, has been in the center for nine months now, finding her way to Hadeal, like most residents here, about a month after the fighting started when it became clear that it was too dangerous to stay in their southern villages. “We thank God that someone saw us and opened their doors to us because the Lebanese state does not see us,” she says.
Mrs. Debl knows she is suffering from P.T.S.D. “Sometimes the Israeli jets break the sound barrier, and it causes a loud boom. This is terrifying for me.” Unfortunately, she does not have the money to seek counseling, “but being here is enough for me,” she says, knowing that she is now far from the frontlines.
Despite their appreciation for the safety at their temporary shelter, everyone at the Hadeal Center wants to go home, and anguish about their status is the main feeling among residents. “We were living in a war zone. We came to Beirut, [where] everyone is living normally. But in the south, we were simply surviving. How long does this have to last? No one knows. It’s exhausting,” says Mrs. Debl. Like all the displaced people in the center, she is rooted in her village and farming life and struggling to adapt to her altered conditions.
Even quick visits to the south to check on homes and farmland have become out of the question. Mrs. Semaan’s eldest son is in the Lebanese Army and persuaded his mother to stay clear of the conflict zone. “He said it is too dangerous,” she says.
Farming communities and noncombatant villagers are not the primary targets of I.D.F. strikes, but she knows the missiles can fall anywhere. “There are also a lot of cross-border shootings, especially with artillery fire from Israeli tanks, and nobody knows who is shooting at whom or why. Our life has changed so much; we miss our houses and our life.”
Christian villages are safer than Shia communities, where the presence of Hezbollah fighters draws I.D.F. fire, but many Christian houses have also been hit and destroyed. Any site could be targeted especially as Hezbollah has begun to use abandoned houses as launching sites for its cross-border strikes.
Since the Hamas raid on Israel, the “axis of resistance” including Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and their sponsors in Iran have launched regular attacks on Israel in response to its campaign in Gaza. Hezbollah, the strongest independent militia in Lebanon, launches several rockets each day toward Israel. The I.D.F. responds with heavy shelling or air force bombing runs. Hamas is also present in Lebanon and has conducted its own strikes against Israel from within Lebanon’s borders.
Mrs. Semaan is the embodiment of Lebanese resilience. She is frightened, of course, but more for the sake of her children than concern for what might happen to her. “If I didn’t have my children, I would have stayed in the south,” she says, but “I do not want my children to go through the same things we went through back in 2006.” That was the period of the last major conflict between Hezbollah and Israel in southern Lebanon that displaced more than a million Lebanese over 34 days of fighting.
Her son, now an experienced soldier, was only a child then. “I had to hide his eyes often because the things we saw were terrible. This time around, we decided to come [to the north] and stay as long as it takes for things to calm down, but we don’t know when that will happen.”
Mr. Hajj, a Rmeish native, started Hadeal with his colleague François Alam. “When the war started, we thought we had to help even more. This is why we opened this center in Antelias. The building was available, and with word of mouth, people started coming in.”
Before Hadeal opened its doors, Christian Lebanese in the south had nowhere to turn, other than families and friends. He remembers the horrors of the 2006 war, when Rmeish was badly hit. “We have seen what war has done to the south, and we know what the consequences are,” Mr. Hajj says. “I do not want people to go through the same today.”
Hadeal relies on private funding. Help always comes right when needed, like “a gift from God,” says Mr. Alam. Still the organization struggles financially. “If we think of the finances too much, we would close tomorrow,” says Mr. Hajj with a laugh.
“But we are focused on giving back and applying our Christian values of helping our community,” says Mr. Alam. Although Hadeal’s services are offered to Lebanese of all faith traditions, its 70 current residents are all Christian. Mr. Alam points out that in the south, “the Shia community receives help from the parties like Hezbollah. The Christians do not have this kind of support. This is why we are here to help.”
Hadeal’s director, Mr. Merhej, says his staff are trying their best, but they know they cannot in the end truly transform the community center into a home. “People here are tired,” he says, “and they want to go home.”
“Going home” for now remains only a hope for the displaced people at Hadeal, who do not know when or how the war will end or how they will rebuild their damaged or destroyed communities and homes when they get back to them again.
