fbpx

Beirut in the Crosshairs: Civilians Will Not Hinder the Appetite for Killing

Hazem El Amin
Lebanese Writer and Journalist
Lebanon
Published on 02.10.2024
Reading time: 4 minutes

Beirut has become the last refuge for many. Around the targeted building, thousands of people, now living on the streets, spent their night under the Cola Bridge. The night airstrike on the building looming over them didn’t prompt them to leave. It’s likely that the Cola area is their second place of displacement, and there’s nowhere else for them to go.

Beirut is not beyond Israel’s reach. This is the clear message Israel conveyed through its airstrike targeting a building in the Kola area, at the heart of Beirut’s administrative district. The home of a local leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) is not a strategic target, and its location in Beirut does not shield it from being hit. This is what the airstrike asserts, and it also suggests that the illusions held by some Lebanese, who believe that an international agreement with Israel would spare Beirut’s administrative borders from attack, are nothing more than wishful thinking that should be discarded.

The PFLP belongs to a bygone era in the confrontation with Israel, and the Cola area is no longer the “Fakahani Republic,” once established by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 1980s in that same area. Thus, the airstrike serves as a mere message to the capital’s residents, telling them they are within the range of Israeli targeting.

The act of targeting in Israeli fashion disregards civilian considerations. The person being targeted will be killed by the plane, along with everyone around them. This happened yesterday in the town of Ain al-Delb, east of Sidon. Israel killed not only its “target,” but also about 40 civilians, including women and children, who were in the building that collapsed on them.

However, administrative Beirut, which underwent a sudden demographic shift overnight — with its affluent residents leaving and hundreds of thousands displaced from targeted areas in the south and the southern suburbs moving in — is unable to absorb this message. Beirut has become the last refuge for many. Around the targeted building, thousands of people, now living on the streets, spent their night under the Cola Bridge. The night airstrike on the building looming over them didn’t prompt them to leave. It’s likely that the Cola area is their second place of displacement, and there’s nowhere else for them to go.

This is Cola, an area belonging to another era, now a dense reservoir of people, perhaps the most crowded part of Beirut. The missile that destroyed two floors of the targeted building only added to the long-standing devastation still etched on these old structures. Cola, which saw the height of destruction during the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982, was struck again yesterday by an Israeli plane after four decades of absence.

Beirut is suffocating under the weight of displaced people living in cars parked along the streets, with families improvising seating areas around their vehicles, feeling that their homes, not far away, will become accessible at any moment of a potential “ceasefire.”

As you navigate the challenging journey through the congested capital, you are struck by the sudden emptiness of the streets as you approach the southern suburbs. From the bustling Badaro Street to the deserted Tayouneh roundabout is a distance of only a few meters. Crowded streets of Beirut are adjacent to the nearly empty southern suburbs. In both areas, faces carry an immense burden of confusion, fear, and need.

The message of the airstrike on Cola didn’t drive anyone away from the area. There is a state of necessary denial that allows people to continue with their daily needs. Looking away from the content of the message is the only way to survive.

Perhaps we were wrong in interpreting this strange airstrike on that building, which is well known to those of us from that era. The building housed the former MP Najah Wakim’s residence and the home of the late Communist Party leader Nadim Abdul Samad. It’s across from the Cola factory that Israel destroyed in 1982. The current residents are now mostly from the lower middle class, with poverty peaking as you head toward the Tariq al-Jdideh area.

After Sunday’s airstrike, the already overcrowded area has been inundated with thousands of displaced people, for whom schools could not provide shelter, leaving them to take to the streets.

Leaving Cola toward Khashoggi Mosque, passing through the intensely crowded Tariq al-Jdideh, you arrive at the Tayouneh roundabout, where the southern suburbs of Beirut begin — the most heavily targeted area, which witnessed the deadliest airstrikes killing hundreds and where Israel established the doctrine of “collective punishment.” The civilians will not stand in the way of Benjamin Netanyahu’s appetite for killing, and the faces of those fleeing the southern suburbs bear the unmistakable features of terror, which transfers to you as you pass through this haunting emptiness in a hurry.

But something compels you to explore further, leading you to Sidon’s old road, which was targeted by more than one airstrike two days ago. It separates the Chiyah area from Ain al-Rummaneh. The distances are shorter than you think. The building destroyed by an airstrike two days ago — where it’s said Hezbollah official Nabil Qawouq was the target — is closer than you had imagined.

From St. Michael’s Church to the Mashrahiyyeh area, the emptiness transforms into a space charged with the fear of Israeli drones. The silence of the empty streets is filled with the sounds of these drones, which are monitoring the streets to strike at any moment. These are the “zannanat” as they are called by the people of Gaza.

At this point, it’s clear that you need to leave immediately.