Beirut reels from a growing displacement crisis as war rages

Beirut’s coastline and open spaces have filled with tents and makeshift housing as more than 1 million people flee Israeli strikes and evacuation orders in Lebanon, reshaping the city’s daily life while fighting between Israel and Hezbollah continues. Many families who arrived from southern and eastern parts of the country and from Beirut’s southern suburbs have crammed into increasingly limited areas where the bombs have not yet fallen, according to the account from Beirut described by the Associated Press.

The scale of the displacement has also raised concerns about how quickly it is changing the city’s social and physical landscape. The fighting has emptied villages in south Lebanon and pushed almost the entire population of the southern suburbs into Beirut, leaving residents and aid workers to contend with housing shortages, improvised shelter, and growing health and safety risks.

United Nations refugee-agency spokesperson Dalal Harb said that the displacement figure of 1 million is “almost certainly an undercount,” adding that people who have not formally registered as displaced with Lebanon’s Ministry of Social Affairs would not be counted. She described the “scale and intensity” as “just unprecedented,” highlighting how the move has accelerated into the capital over a matter of weeks.

Lebanon’s government has responded by converting hundreds of public schools into shelters and pitching tents for displaced families beneath the bleachers of Beirut’s main sports stadium. Charities have also adapted existing facilities: one group refashioned an abandoned slaughterhouse destroyed in Beirut’s 2020 port explosion into a dormitory for almost 1,000 displaced people, while families have set up camp in areas such as the grassy field between a yacht club and a nightlife venue.

For many families, access to shelter has meant making choices between unsafe options. Families described struggling to find space at government-run shelters in Beirut, and said they would rather endure harsh conditions near the waterfront than travel north to cities where they have no relatives or connections. Noor Hussein, who settled at the waterfront after fleeing the first Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh in early March, said in an interview that “It’s horrid because we feel this tension, that we’re not wanted here,” and added, “We don’t want to be here. We have nothing here and nowhere to go.”

Researchers and urban experts say the visible presence of displaced families is a new feature of the capital’s wartime reality. Mona Harb, a professor of urban studies at the American University of Beirut, said the displacement has placed many people in open spaces and that the conditions are “very precarious,” while also leaving residents to confront the crisis as they go to work and school. She said the situation has produced “strong, mixed feelings associated with this presence that’s unregulated,” describing how the settlement’s expansion strains informal norms and planning.

Displacement has also brought renewed anxiety in a country where sectarian representation is built on power-sharing and long memories of past conflict. Maha Yahya, director of the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Center, said the influx is generating anxieties in Beirut about whether it could cause a “significant transformation” in Lebanon’s demographic balance within certain spaces and cities.

As the camp at the waterfront grows, displaced families and residents described mounting pressures. Children have started to complain of skin rashes, heavy rainfall recently flooded the grassy lot and seeped into tents, and a fight broke out when volunteers arrived to distribute donations. Lina Shamis, 51, said she and her daughters and small children set up camp after heeding Israeli evacuation orders for Dahiyeh and described her family’s loss of normal life: “Now the kids are out of school and hungry, and our neighborhood is gone,” she said. “All I feel is despair.”

With Israel thrusting deeper into Lebanon and threatening to seize territory as far as the Litani River, the situation for displaced people in Beirut is expected to deteriorate further, according to Harb of the U.N. refugee agency. She warned that “The needs will continue to increase,” and that the crisis is “an imminent humanitarian catastrophe.”