Shiite displaced in Lebanon face hostility amid Israel-Hezbollah war

When the Israel-Hezbollah war broke out in early March, Hussein Shuman fled heavy bombardment in the southern suburbs of Beirut. But as displaced families looked for shelter elsewhere, Shuman said he found that even areas considered “safe” because Hezbollah has no presence could still feel hostile to Shiites, with residents suspecting them of Hezbollah ties.

Shuman, 35, told The Associated Press that he did not try to rent an apartment outside the area. Instead, he headed to central Beirut and set up a small tent with his wife, their 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter. He said he even rejected an offer from a friend to move his family to the Christian mountain town of Zgharta, preferring to stay in the tent despite flooding twice in the past two weeks.

“By staying here I have my dignity and respect,” Shuman said as a barber cut hair outside his tent. “We will not stay in a place where we are going to be humiliated.” His account reflected a broader housing squeeze for more than 1 million people—most of them Shiite—who have been displaced as a result of Israel’s evacuation orders and airstrikes.

In Lebanon, those frictions play out along sectarian lines that remain sensitive after the country’s 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990 and largely broke down along sectarian lines. Residents described suspicion toward displaced Shiites in areas where Hezbollah is less visible, along with landlords refusing rentals or demanding large upfront payments that many displaced families cannot afford.

In one example from Beirut’s southern suburbs, Fatima Zahra, 42, told AP that she and her sister sold their finest jewelry to raise the $5,000 a landlord demanded up front for two months’ rent. In other neighborhoods, displaced families who could pay high rents were described as being allowed into apartments only after landlords informed security agencies to check whether the family had any links to Hezbollah.

The conflict’s military dynamics have sharpened these fears. AP reported that social frictions worsened after Israel’s targeted airstrikes killed Hezbollah officials or members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in predominantly Christian, Sunni and Druze areas, raising concerns among hosts that Hezbollah fighters could be mixing with civilians.

The report described how the war, which began after Hezbollah fired missiles into Israel two days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, has already left more than 1,300 people dead and over 4,000 wounded, according to AP. Lebanon is also still dealing with the aftermath of a historic economic crisis that broke out in late 2019 and has not fully recovered from the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024.

AP also described several incidents in which residents assumed displaced Shiites could be connected to Hezbollah after deadly strikes. In mid-March, an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Aramoun killed three people, prompting some locals to call for displaced people to leave. Days later, an airstrike on Bchamoun killed three people, including a four-year-old girl, who had been displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

In those cases, AP said Israel did not announce the intended target. Neighbors then assumed that people in the targeted apartments were Hezbollah members, and an angry apartment owner in Bchamoun said that if residents had known the people were linked to Hezbollah, they would have kicked them out. AP also described an episode in the predominantly Christian Keserwan region north of Beirut, where Lebanese military officials later said a missile that exploded over the area was an Iranian missile passing over Lebanon and whose debris fell in different places, but where many initially assumed it was an Israeli airstrike.

After the incident, a group of young men attacked displaced Shiites in the district of Haret Sakher near the coastal city of Jounieh and called for eviction, according to AP. A Haret Sakher resident told AP residents did not want displaced families there and said some displaced people refer to their hosts as “Zionists,” accusing them of being aligned with Israel because they criticize Hezbollah for dragging the country into the conflict. He added, “We don’t want national coexistence.”

AP said George Saadeh, a member of Jounieh’s municipal council, told the AP that he had called on residents to avoid any reaction “so that we can preserve civil peace.” Another AP account said plans to house displaced people in an abandoned warehouse near the port were suspended in Keserwan after backlash from lawmakers and residents.

As fears of civil conflict grew, the Lebanese army increased its presence on the streets. Maha Yahya, director of the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Center, told AP that Israel’s targeting campaign had created “a lot of paranoia” and that when people see displaced families, they may start to wonder whether they are targets. In a statement, the army said that last week its commander, Gen. Rudolphe Haikal, toured Beirut and the southern city of Sidon and told troops they should be “firm in the face of any attempt to undermine internal stability.”

Police forces, including a SWAT unit, were deployed at major intersections in the capital to preserve peace and prevent friction between displaced families and locals, AP reported. Police patrols also passed through a tent city on Beirut’s coast where Shuman and his family were staying.

Beyond security measures, local officials also sought to separate displaced groups to limit tensions. AP reported that an official in Naameh, a predominantly Sunni town just south of Beirut, said the municipality had received thousands of people displaced from southern Lebanon and opened a school in one district for displaced Shiites and another neighborhood for people displaced from Sunni border villages. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that there were concerns among people that conflict could break out.

U.S. and Lebanese officials also faced criticism over sectarian impacts. AP said U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa was criticized for stoking sectarianism after he told reporters in late March that the U.S. asked Israel for a commitment that Christian villages in southern Lebanon would not be attacked. Issa said Israel told the U.S. it would not touch Christian villages but added, “They (Israelis) said that they cannot guarantee” it if there was infiltration into those villages by Hezbollah members. Several Christian villages in southern Lebanon then asked displaced Shiites who had sheltered there to leave, fearing their presence could trigger Israeli attacks.

Legislator Taymour Joumblatt, leader of the Progressive Socialist Party and the largest Druze-led political group in Lebanon, told AP that the biggest concern in the country is “strife” and said the most important thing is “to reduce sectarian pressures on the ground,” adding that his party’s humanitarian duty is to help “our Shiites brothers,” who he said are part of the country.

AP reported that Bassem Mroue wrote from Beirut, with Isabel DeBre contributing from Beirut as well.