In the Bekaa Valley, Hezbollah’s stronghold in Lebanon: “Whenever Israel kills a leader, a thousand others will emerge” | international

Abbas Osman arrived this Wednesday in Zahle, the capital of the Bekaa governorate, in the tracksuit he was wearing at the Munir Abu Asli school and an old T-shirt, with which he had gone shopping in the market of the historic city of Baalbek, in the east of Lebanon. Known for its Roman site. The 55-year-old Lebanese man, clad in whatever he was wearing, fled the city with his wife and children hours before loudspeakers warned its residents that more than 82,000 people lived there. The Israeli army has just ordered they leave it “immediately” in a message spread on social networks Anne Borde and Duris; About 100,000 inhabitants, the vast majority Shia. That declaration, which also ordered roads that the population was to avoid, made official the largest evacuation order issued in Lebanon since Israel’s military invaded the south of that country on October 1.

Israel believes the Bekaa Valley, home to the Shiite party-militia Hezbollah, is the origin of many of its Lebanese foe’s fighters, as it was for many of its leaders in the past. Its first Secretary-General, Subhi al-Tufayli, was born in Brital, in Baalbek Governorate, and the second, Abbas al-Musawi, who was assassinated by Israel in 1992, was born in Nabi Chit, in the same district. The Israeli military says the area, about 50 kilometers east of Beirut, serves as a security guard for Shiite militias and believes the group’s fighters who fight in the strip between the Litani River on Lebanon’s southern border , they retreat there and to the border with Israel, and to the Beirut neighborhood of Dahiya. That neighborhood has been partially destroyed by bombings across the country since the beginning of the Gaza war on October 8, 2023, which has killed more than 2,800 Lebanese and injured 13,000 others, according to official figures. Attacking northern Israel with rockets, it called it a “support front” for the Palestinian Strip.

A report by the Israeli think tank Alma, founded by a retired officer of that country’s army, says, without offering evidence, that Bekah – which housed Hezbollah’s first training camp in the year it was founded in 1982 – has ” General ammunition and logistics included “movement depots”, as well as “storage and launch sites for long- and medium-range missiles” of the group.

For those displaced from Munir Abu Asli School, the Israeli attacks have a different reason. One of them, who requested anonymity, says Israel sees its valley as “the home of resistance to the Israeli occupation”, whether in Lebanon or Gaza.

a strategic road

On the road linking Beirut to the Beqaa, near the town of Araya, about 10 kilometers from the Lebanese capital, there remained a small iron casing of a car destroyed by an Israeli drone this Thursday, in which a man was traveling. Had been. Whose identity has not been revealed. The mob was just meters away from the spot where, a day earlier, another unmanned Israeli military device had destroyed a van that, according to Israel, was carrying weapons for Shia militias. The route, which links Beirut to the Syrian border, is considered its main supply route for weapons, most of which come from the Shiite regime in Iran, Hezbollah’s main ally and economic backer.

Despite the first 11 months of the Gaza war and the confrontation with Hezbollah, before fighting intensified last summer, Israel valued the valley so much that the Bekaa area remained largely untouched by projectile exchanges between Israel and the party. Militia.

The respective barrages between the two were focused on the border area between Israel and Lebanon until late August. However, on the 25th of that month, the militia’s later-killed leader, Hassan Nasrallah, revealed that the drones with which Hezbollah had responded to the bombing that killed its number two in July, Fuad Shukr – who was originally from the Bekaa The resident was – had died. Was thrown from that valley. After this Israel intensified that front. In just one week at the end of September, Israeli bombing killed 160 people there. So far this week, nearly 90 people have been killed in new attacks in the region; 19 Following the evacuation order for Baalbek on Wednesday, this was repeated by Israel on Thursday.

Marat al-Fiqani, about 38 kilometers from that city, is one of the towns that has been almost deserted by Israeli bombing. At the entrance to this town, from which “80% of the population has fled,” says Jalil, a pseudonym for a man displaced by the war, Hezbollah flags wave next to portraits of Shukra and other militia leaders.

Khalil walks through a debris-filled street before pointing to a three-story building destroyed by an Israeli missile in September. The building’s pillars collapsed and its concrete encasement buried its inhabitants: a farmer who made his living by growing potatoes, his wife, and his five children, aged between 14 and three. Jalil remembers only the names of two girls: Mariam and Safa, and the youngest, Hussein.

Many displaced people from Maarat Al Fiqani now live in the Munir Abu Asli school in Zahle. At the secondary school, whose desks have been piled up to make room for those seeking asylum, most of the clothes hanging on lines in the courtyard belong to children. Sara Boustani, a 19-year-old displaced nurse who volunteers, estimates that, of the 400 to 500 displaced people at the school, about 300 are minors.

No one at school mentions Hezbollah. Imad, a 60-year-old displaced man, doesn’t even pronounce that name, but, who knows whether intentionally or not, he paraphrases Nasrallah: “It is not an achievement when Israel kills a leader (of that resistance) . Every time one is killed, a thousand others will emerge.”

The speech of many of these refugees conveys the idea that, like in Gaza, Israel is carrying out collective punishment against Shias. This traditionally marginalized community, which accounts for between a third and 40% of the approximately six million Lebanese people – the country’s last census dates back to 1932 – often lives in Lebanon’s poorest areas.

Like the Bekaa Valley, where many Shias depend on farming, like Khalil’s dead neighbor. Data from the German NGO Welt Hunger Hilfe puts the number of agricultural workers in poverty in Lebanon at up to 40%. The Beqaa, even before this war, had the highest unemployment rate in the Lebanese region, at 61%, as a 2020 survey showed. This barren future for many young Shias in the region is one of the reasons why experts Believes the valley is a breeding ground for Hezbollah terrorists.

La Beca is now a more deprived area than ever before. The Lebanese government estimates that 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced by the war. A report published in mid-October by the Independent Working Group for Lebanon, a group of Lebanese economists and public policy experts, estimated that the majority lived on the three main fronts of the conflict, where the Shia population is the majority: the suburbs of Beirut To the south, the southern border of Lebanon, the Baalbek-Hermel province and other areas of the valley. Before the Israeli invasion, these areas were home to “about 50,000 registered companies (60% of the total number of companies in Lebanon) and more than 70,000 agricultural farms (40% of the total), which have been destroyed or damaged.”

Muhammad, a 38-year-old displaced person, was a daily wage laborer at Zahle School before his house was destroyed in the bomb blast. He says he earned only ten US dollars (more than ten euros) a day working in construction, barely enough to support his wife and two children. A liter of milk costs about two dollars in Lebanon. The family was already poor, but, Muhammad laments, “even before they had a house.” The war Israel has declared on Hezbollah has left them with “no room for return.”

Hadi, his 9-year-old son, emaciated and emaciated, listens to his father’s story of the September day when they fled, along with their clothes, beneath their home in Riyak in Baalbek Governorate. A bomb had fallen “20 meters away from the house”, says the father. His cousins, sisters and seven children died in that attack. Now, Hadi has nightmares and “has trouble concentrating.” Muhammad’s 18-year-old second daughter has been in the hospital for a month. Shrapnel fragments from the bombing entered his leg. As a victim of the war, the Lebanese state has covered his medical expenses. Not so for Hadi, who fell ill with otitis and tonsillitis a few days ago, but for whose treatment his parents, with no income, could not pay. “They asked us for $50 to go to the emergency room and $100 to treat him. “We had to give up.”