Beirut, Lebanon – Jad Barazi’s roommates now leave their windows open. Not for air, but so they don’t shatter in the event of a sudden explosion.
Working on her laptop in a cafe in Beirut’s bustling Hamra neighborhood, the 27-year-old entrepreneur says she’s coping with anxiety about a potential full-scale Israeli attack on the city. Since arriving in Lebanon more than a year ago, the French-Lebanese woman says she’s gradually gotten used to living in a country that’s been locked in a low-level conflict with Israel.
But since a deadly rocket struck the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights last week, killing 12 children, Beirut has been gripped by a state of tension as its residents brace for a major Israeli attack.
Israel blamed the Golan Heights attack on Hezbollah, but the Lebanese armed group denied responsibility. Israel said the group would pay a “heavy price.” Since October 8, when Israel and Hezbollah began exchanging missiles in the context of the Gaza war, Lebanon has found itself in the middle of fighting that it hopes will not escalate into open conflict.
Today, as Israel threatens retaliation for the Golan Heights deaths, those fears have exploded.
“I’m a little anxious because I read the news about it every day,” Barazi told Al Jazeera.
“I’m not that scared, but I just want this (attack) to happen because then we can all move on,” she added.
On Tuesday, it happened.
Prepare for the worst
Israel does not appear to want to launch an all-out war and may limit its attack – or attacks – to Hezbollah targets, experts told Al Jazeera.
The Israeli military claimed responsibility Tuesday for an attack in Dahiya, a southern Beirut neighborhood considered by Israel to be a “Hezbollah stronghold.” Israel said it targeted a Hezbollah commander responsible for the attack in the Golan Heights.
However, Beirut residents fear that the violence could escalate further, leading to a wider Israeli bombing campaign.
Wael Taleb, a local journalist for the Lebanese daily L’Orient Today, had already convinced his family to leave Dahiya for the next few days. At first, his family was reluctant, but eventually they gave in.
“It is not an easy decision to sleep outside your home, even if your life is at stake,” Taleb said, explaining his mother’s reluctance to temporarily leave her home.
“My mother’s generation is very used to these kinds of situations. They are used to the low possibility that our house will be affected (by war), because their generation has lived through many wars,” he added.
Lina Mounzer, a Lebanese writer and commentator, noted that everyone she knows who owns a “house in the mountains” – far from areas expected to be affected, such as Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley – is already moving their belongings there.
“Everyone I know has gone up there and checked to make sure the house is well supplied, that the electricity is working and that they have good relationships with the people who supply diesel in the neighborhood, but I don’t make those preparations because I don’t have a place like that to go,” she said.
Resignation
Back in Hamra, in another cafe, Ramy Taweel, a writer and translator, drinks coffee on his laptop. The 50-year-old Syrian national said he has been living between Lebanon and Syria for years and is used to living under the specter of war.
He said – before the Israeli attack on Dahiya – that he was unable to “predict” or “anticipate” He asked how Israel would respond to the incident in the Golan. But he appeared agitated, saying that Israel claims to care about the 12 Druze children who died in the explosion, while it continues to kill thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.
According to the UN refugee agency (UNRWA), Israel has killed more children in Gaza than all the children killed in global conflicts over the past four years.
Taweel simply hopes that no civilians – and especially no children – will be killed in a future attack. For his part, he says he is resigned to any eventuality.
“I have not made any preparations. If there is a (total) war, then there will be a war,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Our people have been living at war for years.”
