Joel Gunter/BBCAn airstrike on the edge of the Dahieh area completely destroyed one building and damaged adjacent buildings, including a large gynecological clinic.
The airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah shook the ground hundreds of meters in all directions.
A few blocks away, in a Beirut suburb known as Dahieh, Mehdi Moussawi thought his building would collapse.
From their balcony, the 45-year-old taxi driver and his wife Zaraa (who requested that their names be changed for this article) watched as a thick blanket of smoke and dust enveloped everything around them. I could hear debris falling in the distance and the familiar noise of Israeli drones overhead.
Over the past few days, drones have become so frequent over Dahie that they barely notice them. Dahieh, a Shiite-majority suburb in southern Beirut, was once again under Israeli surveillance. More than 500,000 residents are once again under threat of death from the skies.
“Missiles fall from the sky,” Mehdi said, gesturing as the projectiles arc down to Earth, “and suddenly everything you have is gone.”
He was sitting on a dirty, sun-baked pavement on the edge of Martyrs Square in central Beirut. It is now home to a married couple and their teenage boys. Around them were hundreds of people in similar circumstances, many of them from Dahieh. The suburb bore the brunt of the recent Israeli bombing of Beirut, causing a mass exodus of virtually the entire population.
Getty Images
In the aftermath of the attack that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and destroyed four homes in the process.
Dahieh is primarily under the control of Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed political and paramilitary group that is a powerful force throughout Lebanon.
Hezbollah refused a request from the BBC for permission to enter the suburb for this article to see the bomb damage, but a BBC analysis of video footage, Israeli evacuation warnings and recent satellite imagery found that at least 65 It has been shown that the bombs were severely damaged or completely destroyed by air strikes. building. Some of those attacks consisted of dozens of individual bombs, many of which destroyed or seriously damaged not only the obvious target building but also several adjacent buildings. I did.
Such was the fate of Mehdi and Zarah’s apartment – next door to an Israeli attack. Zahler wept as he watched footage of the blackened and ruined building. “Please look at us,” she begged. “Our home is gone. We have no hygiene, we can’t wash. We have nothing.”
Someone filmed the damage to Mehdi and Zaraa’s apartment after the strike.
Dahiyeh is often cited as a Hezbollah stronghold. The term does not reflect the entire suburb, a densely populated area where other political parties are active and not everyone supports Hezbollah, but the group is the strongest force there. That is certain. On the ground, the social and political fabric of the suburb is interwoven, providing services such as welfare and education. There are bunkers and tunnels underneath, from which you can operate.
The IDF has targeted Dahiyeh with the aim of assassinating Hezbollah leaders and says the group uses underground bunkers to store weapons on civilians. It says it is targeting Hezbollah in order to safely return 60,000 of its citizens to northern Israel, which has been hit by rocket attacks from Lebanon over the past year.
Unlike other parts of Beirut, Dahieh does not have its own name. This word simply means “suburb.” This is one of the most densely populated residential areas in all of Lebanon, with narrow streets and alleys where buildings seem to be jostling for free space. It was heavily bombed during the last war in 2006 and the scars are still visible.
Israeli airstrikes hit Dahieh
“Dahieh was originally a very beautiful place, but all the wars took a toll,” says Rasha al-Amer, a novelist and publisher who was born, grew up and still lives in the suburbs. Her brother, a prominent critic of Hezbollah, was assassinated in Lebanon in 2021.
“It’s still a very vibrant place, a very diverse place. There are cultural institutions there, there’s a lot of political activity,” she said. “It would be a disaster if Dahieh were destroyed. Much has already been destroyed by bombing.”
Israeli airstrikes destroyed or damaged not only homes, but also shops, businesses, restaurants, and clinics. “It’s destruction upon destruction,” Mohaned Khalaf, 45, a Sunni Muslim bakery worker, said of his street in Burj el-Brajneh, the most targeted suburb.
Reuters
Damaged vehicles lying in the rubble after an airstrike in the Chiyah district of Dahiyeh
Khalaf, a Syrian refugee who is already a refugee, returns to Dahieh regularly to check on the furniture left in the apartment he shares with his two brothers and their mother. “The buildings around our house were destroyed,” he said. “There is no life left, and there is not a soul to be seen.”
The destruction tested Hezbollah’s patience with some Dahieh residents, especially Sunnis and other non-Shias. “This war is hurting everyone,” said Khalaf’s mother Samira, crying on the street. “I’m 63 years old,” she said. “I want a place where I can do laundry.”
Samira does not want to return to Dahieh even after the war. “Yes, we can go back and rebuild, but Hezbollah and Israel will repeat this war over and over again,” she said. “And Dahie will suffer again.”
Shia Muslims, Hezbollah’s more natural support base, even those whose lives have been completely upended by the conflict, held more supportive views. Hezbollah members handed out food and $100 bills to displaced Shiite families on the streets of central Beirut, and also helped support shelters, according to families.
“We used to support Hezbollah and we still support Hezbollah,” said Gharib Ali, 61, a janitor who fled the suburbs. Around him, his family was nodding in agreement. The war’s impact on their lives “doesn’t change anything for the Shiite community,” he says. “If anything, it just increases our support. Every Shiite feels the same way.”
EPA
Signs at some entrances to Dahiyeh warn that it is dangerous to enter or take photographs without permission from Hezbollah.
In this light, Mehdi and Zahraa, a Lebanese Shiite couple who have lived in Dahiyeh for decades and criticized Hezbollah’s role in the conflict, may be an anomaly of sorts.
“Dahiyeh is not Hezbollah, we are not Hezbollah, our buildings were not Hezbollah,” Zahraa said angrily. “We went to sleep one night and woke up in someone else’s war.”
The family’s apartment is currently uninhabitable, but the building may be salvageable. The Israeli military sometimes issued warnings on social media ahead of airstrikes, but there was no warning about the attacks that hit Mehdi and Zara’a’s buildings. The eldest son had taken advantage of a seemingly quiet moment that day to go home to take a shower, but when the bomb hit, he was knocked over by flying glass and suffered a cut.
International humanitarian law generally requires effective advance warning before attacks that may affect civilians. However, the BBC found evidence of repeated Israeli attacks on Dahieh and other areas of Beirut, where no warning had been issued. And if there is a warning, it can be sent as little as 30 minutes in advance, and sometimes in the middle of the night.
“That deadline is not a valid advance warning for people living in Dahiyeh,” said Ramzi Kays, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. “People here are sleeping in their beds. They’re not looking at social media.”
Case said Hezbollah may also be violating international humanitarian law by placing military commanders in and around civilians. “But that doesn’t give you a free pass to bomb as hard as you can,” he added, referring to Israel.
“Using 2,000 pounds in a densely populated area would put civilians at significant risk of harm.”
Lebanese authorities estimate that more than 2,400 people have been killed in the country over the past year and more than 1.2 million people have been displaced. Israel announced that 59 people were killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights during the same period.
Reuters
After the attack, smoke rises above Dahie. Israel has bombed suburbs at least 54 times in the past few weeks
Back in the 2006 war, after Israel attacked Dahieh and massively bombed Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, a senior Israeli Defense Forces officer, Lieutenant General Gadi Eisenkot, issued a policy that became known as the “Dahieh Doctrine.” I drew an outline of something. It called for the use of “unreasonable force” against civilian areas with the aim of pressuring the Lebanese population to turn against Hezbollah.
Professor Amal Saad, a Hezbollah expert and lecturer in political science at Cardiff University, said Israel’s recent escalation “went beyond the Dahiyeh doctrine”. “This is similar to the Gaza doctrine. It’s similar, but with the goal of targeting and displacing specific communities.”
Israel’s actions in Dahiyeh are currently “between the doctrines of Dahiyeh and Gaza,” she said.
Professor Saad said the destruction would not result in a decline in support for Hezbollah in places like Dahiyeh, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly expressed hope.
“Every time Israel invades like this, it only increases support for Hezbollah among Shiites,” she says. “Support has skyrocketed since 2006. I don’t know if we can go much higher than 90% at this point, but this will solidify it.”
EPA
A statue of a Hezbollah fighter is raised above the rubble after an Israeli attack on a suburb
The airstrikes came two weeks after the bombing of Dahiyeh began and came under pressure from the US government, which said Israel had made it clear it was dissatisfied with the “scope and nature” of targeting Beirut. It was canceled.
A day passes without a strike, and then another, and another. Three days later, on Monday and Tuesday, residents began returning to check on their apartments and collect their belongings. Among them was Mehdi, who returned to the dilapidated area around the building on his eldest son’s scooter to deliver clothes to the boys.
Then, early Wednesday morning, Israel began bombing Dahiyeh again.
“We knew it was just a matter of time,” Mehdi said. A few hours after the strike resumed, he was sitting with Zahler and the boys near a makeshift tent on the street. The tent was actually just two rugs placed on an improvised frame.
Towering over them was a completely empty, upscale new apartment building. Zahler said it had a similar name to their apartment building. “But for the cost of one of these apartments, you can buy the entire district of Dahieh,” she said.
They plan to go back and rebuild, she said. She raised her arms in imitation of bicep curls to show the strength of the Dahieh people. “We have no choice,” Mehdi said. “Some people have a choice, but we don’t.”
He said they would return as soon as a ceasefire was announced. He knew the building would be without electricity, running water, or windows. But it was still better than being on the street. Israeli drones buzzed overhead. Mehdi looked up at the empty apartment across the street and down at the tent they were sleeping in. “If God is willing, there will be a ceasefire before it rains,” he said.
Joanna Mazjoub contributed to this report. Paul Brown contributed to the research.
