Far from the southern border and Hezbollah’s spheres of influence, the latest Israeli attack in Aitou marked a clear expansion of Israel’s offensive in Lebanon. Hitting a Christian area, it made Aitou the latest in a series of strikes on Christian-majority villages, fearing the rapid rise of sectarian divisions, already triggered by mass displacement
Perched on a mountain in the mostly Christian district of Zgharta in northern Lebanon, Aitou is normally a quiet village. On October 14, an Israeli airstrike used the type of weapon that leaves a two-storey home and most of its inhabitants beyond recognition. Neighbours and Red Cross workers spent two days picking through the rubble for fragments of the people that lived there.
All 23 of those killed were members of the same family, and, like most of the 1.2 million displaced so far, they were Shias seeking refuge from Israel’s relentless bombing campaign in the south. Mass displacement has already heightened sectarian tensions in Lebanon. With the bombing of Aitou, many Lebanese believe this instability is precisely what Israel is fomenting.
Raymond Alwan is the village headman, and a member of the local Alwan family that owned the property that was hit. “We’re used to this. What can we do?” He shrugged. “It’s just our luck here.” This is not the first time war has come to Aitou. In 2006, a cell tower on a nearby summit was bombed by Israel.
Raymond does not know why Aitou was targeted this time. “No one knows, no one can know,” he told NOW. But residents said they saw two vehicles arrive that afternoon, before one person got out and entered the property, apparently to distribute money. The Israeli airstrike came shortly afterwards.
The UN launched a probe in response to the airstrike on Aitou, stating there were “real concerns” with respect to the laws of war. Israel in turn said it had struck a target belonging to Hezbollah, and that it would investigate reports of civilian casualties.
It was the first time the area had been hit in this war. Far from the southern border and Hezbollah’s spheres of influence, it marked a clear expansion of Israel’s offensive in Lebanon. Importantly, the strike hit a Christian area, making Aitou the latest in a series of strikes on Christian-majority villages. Ehmej, Mayrouba, and Qatarba have been other recent targets.
The significance of this was lost on no one. Sectarian divisions, never far from the surface in Lebanon, have already been tested by the mass displacement of Shias into Sunni and Christian neighbourhoods. People are scared that hosting displaced families with links to Hezbollah might make them a target of an Israeli strike, and recent incidents attest to the fragility of the situation. Some landlords have refused to take in the displaced altogether. And in Boutchay, a Christian neighbourhood of Beirut, residents prevented a truck from unloading, suspecting it might contain Hezbollah weapons.
The fear now is that airstrikes in non-Shia areas could be the spark that leads to the kind of intercommunal violence that pervaded the civil war. Some think this is intentional, part of Israel’s strategy.
“The targeting of Christian areas is the targeting of Lebanese Shia living in these Christian areas,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
“[It is] probably designed to increase tensions between the Lebanese. At the end of the day, any internal conflict in Lebanon will reflect positively on Israel’s security,” Ali told NOW. “It is part of the collective punishment inflicted on the civilian Shias for supporting Hezbollah.”
The view that Israel is trying to drive a wedge between Lebanese communities was reinforced by the Israeli prime minister himself. In a video message directed to the Lebanese people earlier this month, Benjamin Netanyahu called for the country to rise up against Hezbollah or face “a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”
In Beirut, the divisions between sects are particularly obvious. Not least in Achrafieh, a calm and affluent Christian quarter that has not seen displaced people settle there like in other parts of the capital, where many have nowhere to go but the streets. To some extent, they have been deterred. The rightwing Christian party, the Lebanese Forces, is headquartered there. Party flags have gone up on lampposts all over Achrafieh, reminding strangers of the neighbourhood they are entering.
Flags of the Lebanese Forces, a rightwing Christian party, in Achrafieh, Beirut. Photo credits: Alex Martin Astley
The strike on Basta, a mostly Sunni quarter, killed 22 people, the deadliest attack on Beirut yet. Sat on the rubble of what used to be his neighbours’ house, Mohamad Fakhry had a thousand-yard stare. The night before, the 23-year-old had been praying in a mosque down the road when he heard the explosion. “When I arrived, I saw dust and fire,” he said. “There were children, they were pulling out shoulders, heads and legs [from the rubble].”
But it was the target of that strike, not the country that launched them, upon which Fakhry put the blame. “For every one person [who is targeted], a hundred die, and for every hundred, a thousand die. Why is a target staying among civilians? They should go live by themselves,” he told NOW. If this is part of Israel’s strategy, it is having an effect, on some at least.
Recent strikes are exposing divisions between prominent Christian groups, too. After the strike on Aitou, Sleiman Frangieh, leader of the Marada Movement, said the strikes on Christian villages aim at “creating a negative atmosphere and internal conflicts, which is very dangerous, especially for Christians.” He went on to criticise his historic rivals in the Lebanese Forces, adding that “the owner of the targeted house is affiliated with the Lebanese Forces, who are now betting on Israel’s victory.” The Lebanese Forces strongly rejected these accusations.
Father Fares al-Khlaifat at the Monastery of the Holy Saviour, Joun. Photo credits: Alex Martin Astley
In spite of recent discord and those who seek to exploit it, displays of solidarity abound. With the first wave of displacement, civil society groups, restaurants, and volunteers sprang into action to cook and distribute meals. A month later, kitchens across the capital continue to chop, peel and boil en masse for those made homeless.
Beyond Beirut, intercommunal support is also the trend, as people continue taking in the displaced. The Monastery of the Holy Saviour lies a few kilometres from the village of Joun, on a breezy hilltop just north of the Awali river, which marks the limit of Israel’s expanded evacuation zone.
Sitting behind his desk, Father Fares al-Khlaifat seems calm despite his newly acquired responsibilities. As the director of the monastery’s school, he has taken in six displaced Shia families from the south, some 60 people in all. Dependent entirely on their own supplies, he thinks the monastery can support them for another three months at most. With ceasefire negotiations in a quandary, no one knows how long the war will go on. “We’re taking things day by day here,” he smiles.
