The steps of Lebanon’s largest mosque heaved with people on Saturday, as families huddled in the shade of its limestone archways. The most fortunate among them lay on blankets they had managed to take when they fled their homes in south Beirut. Evidence of a mass exodus littered the surrounding Martyr’s Square—an abandoned bag bulging with clothes, empty water bottles, plastic bags. Hundreds of people had left in fear only to sleep on the street.
Early the previous evening, Israeli fighter jets had bombarded the suburb of Dahiyeh. The strikes levelled multiple tower blocks and killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an underground bunker. This was the largest single attack that week. More than 1,000 people have been killed in the past two weeks of strikes, according to the Lebanese government.
Sitting with his wife and two children beneath the arches of the Mohammed Al Amin mosque, Ahmed Hamad, a refugee from Syria, told me of their terror at the ground shaking when the bombs hit. As darkness fell and Israeli forces issued evacuation orders for much of Dahiyeh, as well as the nearby Bourj al-Barajneh neighbourhood, Hamad heard an explosion from within the refugee camp where his family has lived since fleeing to Lebanon 12 years ago. As the air rang from the explosion, he and his wife Hadija grabbed their children and ran into the street.
The family used what little money they had to reach the Beirut coastline, before walking half an hour to the mosque. They slept on its grand stone steps, unable to access its opulent interior or the adjacent mausoleum for former prime minister Rafik Hariri: his assassination, believed to have been carried out by Hezbollah, changed the course of Lebanese history almost 20 years ago.
As morning broke, Nasrallah’s death hadn’t yet been confirmed by the Shia militia that he reshaped over three decades. “We are all Hassan Nasrallah, all of us!” yelled one woman nearby, cursing Israel and its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a French television crew.
“Sure, some of the people here are with Nasrallah, but some of us are from Syria and don’t want more war,” said Ahmed—a reference to Hezbollah’s partnership with the Syrian regime whose terror they had escaped. The woman continued to shout.
Since the sudden escalation of Israeli strikes on south Beirut, Martyr’s square and a nearby public beach have filled with former Dahiyeh residents. The working-class area has long provided a support base for Hezbollah. It was also the location of Nasrallah’s bunker, and is where several members of the group’s leadership have been killed. But these internally fled the dense clusters of Dahiyeh’s tower blocks for nothing more than the pavement and the open sky—a sign that Hezbollah can no longer offer them protection and patronage. With Nasrallah confirmed dead later on Saturday by Hezbollah, along with growing numbers of senior figures, the organisation that for so long has had a chokehold on Lebanese politics appears to be crumbling in real time.
Under Nasrallah’s leadership, Hezbollah rose from a militia to a force that loomed over a Lebanese political system riven by sectarianism. The organisation repressed and menaced its enemies while stymieing any attempts to reform or change a corrupt system that benefited Hezbollah and its allies. All the while, Hezbollah, backed by Iran, claimed to offer Lebanese citizens the only protection they had against Israeli military power. Israel and Hezbollah last went to war in 2006. Since then, with Tehran’s support, the militia has built up a missile arsenal able to strike deep inside Israeli territory.
In the aftermath of the 7th October attacks by Hamas on Israeli towns and kibbutzim around Gaza, Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel, causing mass displacement and wildfires. Israeli forces responded with airstrikes in south Lebanon that also sparked fires, including the reported use of white phosphorus, and which increasingly targeted Hezbollah. This strategy had been escalating for months, but Nasrallah’s killing is a watershed for Hezbollah, the people of Lebanon caught in the crossfire, and the region more broadly.
When I asked Ahmed where he and his family might go, he said: "We’ll see what happens tomorrow. We don't know.” Lebanon's government estimates that many as one million people have been displaced amid the recent bombardments. Shelters have sprung up across Lebanon, though there are growing numbers of reports that Syrian refugees are being turned away. Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, estimates that 100,000 Lebanese and Syrians have fled the Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon by driving or walking into Syria.
“I have no money, I have nothing—I have God,” said Khadijeh Ismail as she struggled to persuade her young son, Jaafar, to calm himself and put on his shoes. Ismail and Jaafar had come from Dahiyeh. She was taking turns with her husband to sleep on a bright orange bus parked next to the curb where she was sitting.
Across Beirut, as in Martyr’s Square, the only signs of a state presence were the large groups of soldiers loitering, apparently oblivious to the volunteer groups distributing food to the refugees. Doctors continue to treat the wounded—and Lebanon’s health ministry seems like the only truly functioning part of the government, as officials and medics carefully count the dead and the wounded arriving in overstretched hospitals.
There has been little response from the former warlords and sectarian leaders who make up Lebanon’s political core. Rocket fire aimed at Israeli territory in the hours after Nasrallah was confirmed dead showed that many lower-ranking members of Hezbollah remain active. Amid confusion over who will succeed Nasrallah, and even when his funeral will happen, an organisation once considered untouchable now appears overtaken by internal strife, and unable to provide the protection against Israel it upheld as central to its existence.
“A lot of Shiites are feeling completely abandoned, and this is where Hezbollah needs to reconvene, not militarily, but just in terms of being in control of their community and organising the next phase,” political and security analyst Georges Haddad told me. Haddad emphasised that one of the state’s main roles should be to control the flow of weapons at such a precarious moment.
In 2019, a series of anti-government protests demanded the removal of Lebanon’s stagnant leadership. For Haddad and others who demonstrated then, the loss of Hezbollah’s grip is both cause for fear and an opportunity. In recent years, Lebanon has weathered the complete collapse of its banking system and a profound economic crisis, the 2020 port explosion that destroyed large parts of Beirut, and the effects of Covid-19. Now its citizens are facing Israeli bombardment and mass internal displacement.
Hezbollah has long been a major block to change. The group is unlikely to disappear completely, but it has been decapitated. Israel’s recent assault began by targeting some 1,500 Hezbollah members via booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies. The attacks killed at least 12 people, including children, and injured thousands of bystanders. Israel has not officially claimed responsibility.
“There’s a chance for a long war, but also on the other hand to calm things and reform the country,” said Haddad. “Let’s be real, Hezbollah was in control and the country was dependent on their will. Everything is very uncertain. We are into the unknown now.”
Meanwhile, the threat of an Israeli ground invasion in the south looms. Lebanese governance analyst Fares Halabi tells me this should be enough to force even the most reluctant members of Lebanon’s government into swift action. Both he and Haddad believe that Lebanon’s underfunded and moribund military should be empowered to secure the country’s south, even though the institution is short of air power or resources, and soldiers have long complained about lack of pay. Caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati has said the army should be deployed to the south, but only to enforce a ceasefire rather than repel an invasion.
“It wasn’t the army that took the decision to go to war, but look at the situation now. We have to protect what’s left of the country,” said Halabi. “The army should play a role even if it’s not in the best financial situation.”
The weakening of Hezbollah has left a power vacuum, and there is pressure on the same leaders that the public rose up against just a few years ago to act. “We wanted a new system to protect people—but now we are relying on the same people to protect us and the country,” Halabi said. “We have no other choice.”
The crowds sleeping on Beirut's public beaches and gathering in Martyr’s Square are waiting to find out when they will have a roof over their heads. Meanwhile, the same uncertainty permeates Lebanon’s political system. Israeli strikes have now cut deeper into Beirut, hitting a densely populated neighbourhood closer to the city centre in the early hours of Monday morning.
For years Lebanese people have criticised their leaders for failing to respond to a string of crises and fighting among themselves instead. So far, Lebanon’s politicians have just delivered more of the same. Mikati has declared Lebanon will choose a new president for the first time in two years only after a ceasefire is declared between Israel and Hezbollah. But with mass displacement, growing fears of an Israeli ground invasion and a sense that Lebanon’s fragile leadership is asleep at the wheel, the greatest tests lie ahead.
