In Lebanon’s capital, Israel’s strikes stoke fears of a full-on war

It began with messages sent by Israel to radio stations and some cellphones in Beirut on Monday morning, warning of imminent military action.

“The IDF will be moving against military bases,” an automated voice said, using the acronym for the Israel Defense Forces. “The IDF don’t want to hurt you. If you are present in a building used by Hezbollah, you should leave.”

The alerts stoked alarm across the capital, the southern suburbs of which are dominated by Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group. Parents rushed to schools to pick up their children. By early afternoon, lines of cars and motorbikes snaked out from fuel stations and down streets in the city as many residents fled, hoping to find refuge in Lebanon’s northern mountains. Others wandered the mostly empty aisles of grocery stores, their carts stacked with water bottles, bags of rice and jugs of oil, uncertainty hanging in the air.

All the while, news updates flashed across people’s phone screens detailing the more than 1,000 Israeli airstrikes pounding southern Lebanon. Worn by decades of conflicts, many believed they knew what was coming.

“It’s a war,” said Daher Amdi, 34, as he sat outside a mostly empty cafe, taking slow drags from a cigarette.

Residents in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, have grown increasingly on edge as Israel has stepped up its airstrikes against Hezbollah. With Monday’s strikes across southern Lebanon, the prospect of the escalating conflict enveloping Beirut suddenly became real.

The attacks were the deadliest in a single day in Lebanon since 2006, with hundreds of people killed and thousands injured, according to the Lebanon’s Health Ministry, mostly in the south of the country. And with both sides vowing to step up the conflict’s intensity, many residents, like Amdi, fear the city will soon be caught up in a full-on war.

Late Monday morning, Lebanon’s education ministry ordered the closure of some public and private schools, citing “security and military situations” that could endanger students. Outside one school in east Beirut, dozens of secondary school students in light-blue polo shirts stood waiting to be picked up. Other, younger students hurried out of the building, many clutching their parents’ hands.

Joaelle Naser, 44, had come to pick up her three daughters, ages 6, 8 and 16. “I am scared, I’m scared,” Naser said, standing next to her two youngest, their neat ponytails held in place with fuzzy, rainbow-colored scrunchies. “I’m not prepared for if something happens.”

As the day dragged on, the extent of Israel’s deadly barrage became clearer. News outlets showed massive plumes of smoke hovering over villages across the south. People stared at their phones, watching the death toll tick up to 50, then 100, watching it double, triple — and then rise higher.

In Tariq El-Jdideh, a predominantly Sunni neighborhood in western Beirut, Habib Bazzi, 75, sat on a metal bench, his eyes closed, his face turned up toward the sun. Originally from Bint Jbeil, along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, Bazzi had been watching news channels on television since early Monday. He stepped outside, he said, to take a break from the seemingly endless destruction.

“I’m heartbroken,” Bazzi said. “What else can I say?”

In the City Center Mall just outside Dahiya, a southern suburb of Beirut dominated by the Iran-backed Hezbollah, Mirna, 38, and her 14-year-old son roamed the aisles of the Carrefour grocery store. They pushed two large, deep blue shopping carts brimming with bags of sugar, lentils and rice.

A resident of Dahiya, Mirna, who asked to be identified only by her first name for fear of retaliation, said that most of her neighbors had fled the neighborhood for relatives’ homes in other parts of the city or in northern Lebanon. Only three days before, Dahiya was rocked by an explosion that killed several senior Hezbollah commanders — a sign, she worried, of what was to come.

“I told my husband we should leave, we should definitely leave soon,” she said.

Nearby, Lama Abdul Sater stood behind the glass counter of a watch stand in the mall, neat lines of gold and silver bands in the case reflecting the fluorescent lights above. Her 10-year-old daughter, Manesa Tarshishi, stood next to her in a bright pink-and-blue sundress, fiddling with the zipper of her pencil case.

Tucked behind the counter was Sater’s large, navy handbag, holding her wallet and two passports. Before she left for work with Manesa, her husband advised her to take them just in case they had to suddenly evacuate the city. If there was bombardment so intense that they could not leave, he told her, they should stay at the mall — it was safer, he said.

“Death is very close, I’m worried it’s very near,” Sater said in a near whisper, so Manesa would not hear. But as certain as she was that war was coming, she did not know whether it was safer to leave or stay, or where she would go if they fled the city. “Any decision I make might not be the right decision, I’m not sure about anything,” she said.

Such impossible choices are familiar to many residents here. Even before the recent hostilities, Lebanon was deep in turmoil from a yearslong political and economic crisis that began in 2019 when the economy collapsed, taking the government along with it. The country’s current caretaker government has been unable to provide the most basic services since it came to power in 2020.

Against that backdrop, most Lebanese do not have an appetite for another big war.

“It’s not the time for this war,” said Bilal Borjawi, 37. He used to run a tourism agency, he said, but over the last year his business had sputtered to a halt, with many clients worried about the security situation. Now, he said, he works as a security guard making about $300 a month — nothing compared with the $20,000 a month he used to rake in when he had his agency.

“We cannot afford more pressure than we already feel right now,” Borjawi said.

Still, as they have throughout the decades of civil strife, war, economic downturns and political crises, Lebanese in the city have endured.

At a Total Energies gas station in the Mazra neighborhood of west Beirut, drivers honked their horns, impatient to fill their tanks. Farid, a driver in his 30s who said he lives nearby, was filling up his car as his family prepared to leave for eastern Lebanon.

“My family is really panicked, they’re crying and scared,” he said, pulling crisp $20 bills from his worn, leather wallet to hand to the station attendant. “I keep trying to calm them down, saying they aren’t going to attack, they won’t bomb us here, but honestly I don’t know.”

Later Monday night, the city’s fears were realized. About 6:30 p.m., news of another strike flashed across television screens. This time, the target was in Beirut.