This story has been updated since it was first published.
A GROUND invasion of Lebanon by Israeli troops this week was followed by a barrage of more than 200 Iranian missiles directed at Israel, in a further expansion of the conflict in the Middle East.
Most of the Iranian missiles were intercepted by Israel and a “defensive coalition led by the United States”, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman, Daniel Hagari, said on Wednesday. He warned that there would be “consequences” for the attack.
Addressing the nation on Tuesday evening, the UK Prime Minister condemned an attempt by Iran to “harm innocent Israelis, to escalate this incredibly dangerous situation, and push the region ever closer to the brink. . . Iran has menaced the Middle East for far too long. . . Britain stands full square against such violence.”
What Israel described as “limited, localised, and targeted ground raids” against Hezbollah targets and infrastructure in southern Lebanon follow bombing of both the south of the country and of Beirut. Christian charities have warned that the country is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Since the launch of Israel’s “Operation Northern Arrows” on 23 September, more than 1000 Lebanese have been killed, including 87 children and 56 women, and 6000 have been wounded, the Lebanese government reports. One million people — one fifth of the population — have been displaced.
Christian organisations in the country — where Christians make up abour one third of the population — are serving on the front lines. On Sunday, a member of the Al-Kafaàt Foundation, which provides rehabilitation programmes and services for disabled children and adults, described driving early on Saturday morning to evacuate residents and staff from one of its units in the capital. It followed a night when “all hell broke loose” in the form of Israeli air strikes on Dahieh, a suburb in the south of Beirut. Among those killed was the secretary-general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.
In a message to Embrace the Middle East, which helps to fund the charity, the Al-Kafaàt Foundation worker described roads “nearly empty, except for the displaced who were carrying their belongings in trash bags, trying to escape the neighbourhood.
“The residents were not fully understanding what was going on. They looked traumatised. I cheered them up, cracked some jokes, while rushing the team to get going. We waited for the bus, the teams with their trash bags, and our special children and adults to be lifted, carried, or rolled on their chairs. One bus, two buses, and I am still cracking my jokes and laughing with the kids. We could hear some pounding in the background, but we kept the momentum going. Quickly, quickly. . .
“Under one hour, we were ready to go. ‘All the kids are with you?’ I shout to the director as she waves goodbye to me from the bus. ‘Yes, yes,’ she replied. ‘They are all with me. All 14 of them!’ I wave goodbye. I turn my back, and I start to cry.”
The UN Deputy Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Imran Riza, has described recent days as “the deadliest period in Lebanon in a generation”, as fears rise that the crisis in Gaza will further spread beyond the enclave. For almost a year, the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, which operates as both a Shiite Muslim political party and a militant group, has launched rockets into Israel, leading to the displacement of about 60,000 people in the north of the country. Israel has vowed to secure its border to enable their return.
On Monday, the Archbishop of Canterbury called for prayer for a region “on the brink of catastrophe. . . The monstrous violence and fear that so many are enduring is an affront to the God in whose image every person is made. It cannot go on.” An end to the bloodshed could be achieved only “through a ceasefire-hostage deal that creates possibilities for security, justice and peace for all”.
Last Friday, Tearfund’s regional director for the Middle East, Safa Hijazeen, warned that Lebanon, “already on the verge of collapse”, was “heading towards a humanitarian catastrophe”.
“People in Lebanon are terrified and confused, waiting for death and destruction to arrive,” he said. “Tens of thousands of children are missing school because it’s not safe to go out — instead, they’re learning to tell the difference between a sonic bomb or another type of missile overhead.”
The impact of the strikes would “last for a generation”, he said. “Bombs have wiped out much of the olive harvest for this year, and their toxic content means the ground won’t be safe to grow food for at least ten years.”
The charity is working through partners, including churches in the country, to provide aid, including shelter and food for people displaced from southern Lebanon. Its partner IHP is also bringing in shipments of medicine.
The head of Asia, Middle East and Europe for Christian Aid, Julie Mehigan, said last week that the charity was “gravely concerned” about the possibility of an Israeli ground invasion. “The patterns we’re seeing from the attacks of the last few days are reminiscent of what we’ve seen in Gaza. . . Massive displacement and killing of civilians, whole families killed in their homes, and schools converted into shelters.” The region was “on the precipice of yet another humanitarian calamity”.
The Foreign Office has advised all British nationals to leave Lebanon immediately. On Monday of last week, the Bishop in Cyprus & the Gulf, the Rt Revd Sean Semple, travelled through Beirut airport en route from Iraq to Cyprus.
“From the air, I could streams of vehicle lights stretching along major highways, as people sought to escape the most dangerous regions of Lebanon,” he wrote in a letter to the diocese on Wednesday. Waiting to board his flight, he had observed a father on the phone, “making desperate arrangements to get other members of the family to the airport, warning them of target areas and militia — his young son all the while trying to get his attention, unable to understand why his father was so preoccupied”.
He pledged that the diocese would offer its support to those displaced in Cyprus, and urged readers to pray for peace.
Israel’s air strikes follow the explosion in Lebanon of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operatives, killing at least 39 people and injuring thousands (News, 20 September). Israel has not confirmed its involvement.
The President of Lebanon’s Council of Ministers, Najib Azmi Mikati, told the UN Security Council last week that his country was a victim of “electronic cyber aggression” in a campaign that threatened “all-out regional war. . . The aggressor is claiming that they are only targeting combatants and weapons, but I assure you that the hospitals of Lebanon are full of civilian injured people, including dozens of women and children.”
On Monday, Sophia Peiris, Embrace’s programmes and partnerships manager, said that the detonations had been a turning point in Lebanon. A partner of the charity had said that “‘the collective psyche is traumatised. People are scared to open their laptops, or to turn the aircon on.’” While it was usual for partners in the country to describe living “from day to day”, the mentality was now “hour to hour, or minute to minute”.
Since 2019, Lebanon has been engulfed by what the World Bank describes as “the most devastating, multi-pronged crisis in its modern history”, including one of the world’s worst economic crises since the mid-19th century, brought on by the accumulation of government debt.
Protesters have complained about endemic corruption and mismanagement of the economy (News, 1 November 2019). GDP more than halved between 2019 and 2021, while poverty has more than trebled to 44 per cent of the population in the past decade. Last year, inflation reached almost 270 per cent. A long-running fuel crisis is evident in regular widespread blackouts.
The country is also home to the highest number of refugees per capita worldwide: 1.5 million Syrian refugees, according to government estimates, 180,000 Palestinian refugees, and 13,715 refugees of other nationalities. On Monday, the UNCHR reported said that more than 100,000 people had crossed into Syria.
Embrace’s ten partners in the country, including those working in health and education, faced a “huge struggle” amid the mass emigration of professionals, Ms Peiris said on Monday. State schools were hugely overcrowded and frequently closed. Resentment against Syrian refugees had grown, with social tensions and violence escalating (News, 22 March).
Embrace has launched an urgent appeal for Lebanon, where partners are already responding to the latest crisis. Several have converted their schools, community centres, and buildings to host newly displaced families, including the Learning Centre for the Deaf, Beit El Nour, which normally educates out-of-school children.
In a blog published last Friday, Thimar (formerly the Lebanese Society for Educational and Social Development), another Christian charity, described working alongside others to supply food to families who had travelled for hours to shelter in a school in a village just outside Beirut. Some rooms were housing ten families on just a few mattresses.
Thimar’s Beirut Baptist School and Al-Kafaàt’s Ain Saadeh university campus are both hosting IDPs. A partner described how some of the families hosted at the school during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict had “reached out, asking if we can host them again, 18 years later”.
Amid calls from both the United States and the UK for a ceasefire in Lebanon, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told the UN General Assembly on Friday that the military campaign would continue: “As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice, and Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safely. . . There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.” The IDF is also carrying out strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, in addition to its campaign in Gaza.
War in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah (whose manifesto calls for the destruction of Israel) was ended with a UN Security Council resolution that called for Lebanese forces and UN peacekeepers to be the only armed force south of the Litani River — something yet to be implemented.
Among the Christian leaders who have publicly mourned Nasrallah is the former President Michel Aoun, who forged an alliance with the Hezbollah leader in 2006. He described him on social media as “a distinguished and honest leader who led the national resistance on the paths of victory and liberation”. The Maronite Patriarch, Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, said that his assassination had “opened a wound” in Lebanon, Reuters reports.
It is estimated that about one third of the Lebanese population — 2.24 million — is Christian. By convention, the President is always a Maronite Christian, but, amid a political crisis, the office has been vacant for almost two years.
Asked on Sunday about the strikes on Lebanon, Pope Francis said that “defence must always be proportionate to the attack. When there is something disproportionate, a domineering tendency that goes beyond morality is evident.”
Myriam Shwayri, whose father founded the Al-Kafaàt Foundation, told the Radio 4 Sunday programme that the charity and the country were used to rebuilding.
“It’s very sad to say that we are used to going through such trauma,” she said. “We have a road map for this; we know exactly what to do when such a horrible thing happens.” Founded in 1957, the organisation had 14 centres, and three in “delicate areas” that had been “occupied and destroyed” 15 times during the Lebanese Civil War. “Every time we pick everything up and we say we will construct again. . . And, sadly, this seems to be the 16th time.”
Read more on this story in Paul Vallely’s column here