Fatima Daoud on Thursday sits in the security guard’s room at Sobhi al-Mahmasani high school in Beirut, which she now calls home because her own home was destroyed.Photography by Oliver Marsden/The Globe and Mail
There was a time when Fatima Daoud supported Hezbollah and saw the group as defending Lebanon’s sovereignty. But her affection for the “Party of God” expired as it dragged her country into war after war, driving her family from one home to another.
The Israel-Hezbollah war that began Monday – just one front in the widening Middle East war – is the third such conflict in 20 years and the second in 15 months. The fighting has forced Ms. Daoud and her family to move seven times, from their destroyed home in southern Lebanon, via a succession of rented apartments and temporary shelters, to the high school where she and her family were camped Thursday.
Hezbollah’s decision to launch a volley of rockets at Israel on Monday – an attack it said was retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran, which has supported Hezbollah since its founding in 1982 – has provoked the predictably harsh Israeli military response, but also a firestorm of criticism within the country.
Opposition to Hezbollah had been hardening for years among Lebanon’s Christians, Sunni Muslim and Druze. What’s different this time is that many in the group’s own Shia Muslim community are expressing bafflement and anger at the decision to pull the country into yet another war. Many feel that Hezbollah, which has always professed to put Lebanon’s interests first, had shown that its ultimate loyalty has always been to Tehran.
Ms. Daoud with her daughters Zainab, left, and Reem. The women's lives were upended by the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that was carried out by Hamas.
“This was between Israel and Iran – so why did we launch rockets from south Lebanon?” Ms. Daoud asked. “We got displaced for what reason? Is this life, what we’re living now?”
It wasn’t clear whether she and her husband and four children would be safe spending the night on the floor of the high school or if they would have to flee to an eighth location. Shortly before dusk, the Israeli military warned all residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs, an area collectively known as the Dahiya and home to some 400,000 people, to evacuate ahead of expected heavy attacks.
In a video posted Thursday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich warned that the Dahiya would soon look “like Khan Younis,” the city in Gaza that was levelled by Israeli attacks in that war.
The Sobhi al-Mahmasani high school, where the Daouds had been sleeping since Monday on pieces of cardboard laid out on the floor, was roughly a kilometre outside the designated evacuation area. But that was too close for the comfort of many. The family in the next room packed up as soon as the warning was issued, leaving behind their meagre dinner of French fries and greens half-cooked on a camping stove.
Until 2024, the Daouds owned a small home in the village of Blida, near the Israeli border. They weren’t rich, but Ms. Daoud was able to grow her own vegetables in the garden, while her husband, Hassan, worked as an electrician.
Like many in the region, their lives were upended by the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that was carried out by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. As Israel launched a fierce counterattack on the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas, drawing retributive strikes. That exchange of fire gradually escalated until Israel invaded southern Lebanon a year later.
The high school the family is living in is roughly a kilometre outside the designated evacuation area.
Blida was one of the first towns captured in a punishing war that left Hezbollah’s military wing in tatters. The group has acknowledged losing thousands of fighters in the war, and military analysts estimated its fighting strength had been diminished by 80 per cent.
The Israeli assault sent the Daouds fleeing to another Beirut school that had been converted into a shelter for internally displaced persons. When the war ended and the Israelis withdrew, the Daouds discovered their home in Blida had been destroyed, so they moved to a rented apartment in the Dahiya. Now, they have no idea whether they’ll ever see that home again either.
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Like many Shia, Ms. Daoud is unaccustomed to criticizing Hezbollah, who were lionized for decades in Lebanon, particularly among the Shia, as “The Resistance” who had helped bring an end to Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation of southern Lebanon. But the party’s popularity among the country’s Shia has started to slip since the 2024 war, which saw the group’s charismatic long-time leader, Hassan Nasrallah, assassinated in an Israeli air strike.
Hezbollah was able to win back supporters after a previous war with Israel in 2006 by paying – with Iranian funds – to rebuild their destroyed homes and compensate families that had lost relatives in the fighting.
This time, there was no assistance fund, leaving families like the Daouds – who lost four male relatives fighting in the 2024 war – to face an uncertain future.
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The Globe and Mail
Where it was once dangerous to publicly criticize Hezbollah, its grip on the Lebanese state has weakened along with its military defeat in the 2024 conflict. Mr. Nasrallah’s successor, Naim Qassem, has always been far less revered than his predecessor – even before he led Hezbollah and the country into another war that looks unwinnable.
Still, Ms. Daoud chooses her words carefully. “What can I say? That you destroyed our houses, our lives, everything? I say, ‘God protect the resistance.’ I cannot say otherwise.”
Her eldest daughter, Zainab, said similar ideas were being whispered among the 53 families who were now sleeping on the floors of the high school. “All of my friends are saying the same things,” the 24-year-old said. “Everyone is asking why Hezbollah did this.”
Zainab Daoud, 24, with a young relative. She says all of her friends are 'asking why Hezbollah did this.'
The extent of the public anger was captured by Tuesday’s front-page headline in Beirut’s French-language newspaper, L’Orient-Le Jour: “Hezbollah is leading Lebanon to suicide.”
Later that day, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam declared that Hezbollah’s decision to fire rockets at Israel was “illegal.” He called on the country’s weak military to disarm the militia and for Israel to halt its offensive to give the Lebanese army time to do that.
Israel replied by continuing its air strikes and once more sending ground troops into predominantly Shia southern Lebanon. At least 123 Lebanese have been killed in the fighting this week, while four Israeli soldiers have been wounded in action.
Qassem Qasir, a political analyst close to Hezbollah, acknowledged that there was “a division” within Lebanon about the decision to enter the war and that some Lebanese “would be very happy to see the end of Hezbollah.” He dismissed Mr. Salam’s call for the group to be disarmed as something the government was too weak to implement.
Echoing a speech that Mr. Qassem, the Hezbollah leader, gave Wednesday night, Mr. Qasir said Hezbollah had not started a new war, but was only replying to the regular Israeli violations of the 2024 ceasefire. (Israel has continued to hit Hezbollah targets over the intervening 15 months, accusing the militia of failing to honour its commitment to disarm.)
Hezbollah, he said, was now preparing for a long fight. “The Americans and the Israelis want this to be a short war, because that’s best for them,” Mr. Qasir said. “I think it’s better for Hezbollah if it’s a prolonged war, because that way they don’t have to show everything they have at the beginning.”
That’s the last thing civilians like Ms. Daoud want to hear.
“Look at my daughters – they were born and raised and are still living in war,” she said, shortly before the panic caused by the Israeli evacuation order. “Everybody just wants to go back to their homes.”