Qlaileh, Lebanon – Abdelkhaliq Abdelsattar and his family, Syrians from Idlib, were suddenly awakened on Friday by the sound of a bomb dropped by an Israeli warplane in the southern Lebanese district of Tyre.
After a second explosion sounded closer to their home, Abdelsattar – who knew the sounds of war well – ran out of the house with his wife and seven children seconds before a third projectile exploded, sending what he described as a stone the size of a cow. through the roof of their bedroom.
“My kids are still scared; they have not slept; they had a nervous breakdown. They’ve been in the Syrian war, but they’ve never been in a situation like this,” Abdelsattar told Al Jazeera, sitting in his damaged home, where the family’s beds and carpets are covered in rubble.
Where the windows once were, blue plastic sheets flutter in the wind and the hole in the ceiling reveals iron rebar that sinks to the floor as light and wind stream in.
“We were saved by a miracle,” he says.
Hamas, Hezbollah and Israel
The Israeli bombing campaign on Friday came after 34 rockets were fired into its territory from the region just a few miles from the Lebanese border on Thursday, apparently in response to the Israeli attack on the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
The Israeli army blamed the Palestinian armed group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and has a faction in Lebanon, saying it attacked targets linked to the group.
Hamas did not claim responsibility for the attack, but in a statement the group said it held Israel fully responsible for the escalation in Lebanon and Gaza, “and for the consequences it will have for the region.”
The Lebanese government has said it is working to de-escalate tensions through the Iranian-backed Shiite armed movement Hezbollah – which also does not claim responsibility for the attack, despite its control over security in southern Lebanon.
Aligned with Hezbollah in shared enmity toward Israel, Hamas’ presence and power in Lebanon has grown in recent years and the group’s leadership meets frequently.
On Saturday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah met with Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh and other Hamas officials.
Nasrallah had previously said that any Israeli attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque would “set the entire region ablaze,” a position echoed by Hezbollah officials after the events of the past week.
On Friday, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said “Palestinian militias” were behind the rocket launches, “not Hezbollah at all.”
Bou Habib also said the government could not confirm whether Hezbollah approved the attacks, but, as is well known in the area, “nothing is happening in southern Lebanon without Hezbollah’s knowledge,” Heiko Wimmen, project director for Iraq, Syria and Lebanon for the Crisis Group, Al Jazeera told.
On Friday, Israeli officials announced that attacks on Gaza and Lebanon had ended “as long as there is no renewed rocket fire”.
According to Israeli media reports, Israeli forces have decided to attack only Hamas targets in Lebanon, recognizing that a “wider response against Hezbollah would likely result in the organization launching precision missiles into Israeli cities, which could escalate into war,” said Israeli journalist Barak. Ravid.
Hezbollah spoke similarly, saying that after this week’s violence “the terrifying balance of power is maintained,” the group’s deputy secretary-general Naim Qassem told Al-Manar newspaper.
No significant risk of escalation
“No one wants an all-out confrontation, both Israelis and Hezbollah know that in a real war no one will win anything and the losses will be very serious,” Wimmen said.
According to Wimmen, over the years since the end of the 2006 war, violence on the Israel-Lebanese border has largely been conducted in a quid-pro-quo manner and there is no significant risk of further escalation with regard to the latter incident.
But Wimmen also argued that the intensity of Thursday’s attack on Israel, the largest since the end of the war, was not something to ignore, as the increase in the number of rockets fired increased the likelihood of casualties in Israel, which inevitably led to a harder attack. answer.
“Whoever launches these missiles is definitely taking a much greater risk than in the past,” said Wimmen. “It only takes one of those missiles to hit a supermarket with people in it [in Israel] and then all hell breaks loose. That’s all it takes.”
Majed and Nawal, a retired couple born in Qlaileh who call themselves “products of war” and have lived through most of their lives, know this well: “If you’re Lebanese, you have to learn to expect the unexpected,” Majed says.
“You can’t think about what could happen because anything can happen,” he told Al Jazeera.
The couple is among the locals who came to see the site of the second bomb, which destroyed a bridge and an irrigation project in the middle of an orange farm. The sound of birdsong has replaced the booming sounds of bombs exploding.
While similar exchanges have taken place since the end of the war Israel launched against Lebanon in 2006, this week’s incident was the most significant since the unofficial end of the conflict 17 years ago, evoking memories of troubled times in the minds of the inhabitants.
“You hear the plane first – that whooshing sound we’re so used to. Then boom!” Nawal tells Al Jazeera.
They haven’t been able to sleep since Thursday’s attack; many of their family and friends left for Beirut as soon as they heard rockets. The couple, who survived the Lebanese civil war and visit Lebanon for Ramadan, were also here when war broke out in 2006.
“When you come to Lebanon, this is the first thing you worry about, because there is no security, there is no stability. You are always tense, you always expect something like this to happen,” says Nawal.
The presence of Hezbollah in their hometown does not worry them, but both Majed and Nawal say Hamas’ activities in Lebanon are harmful.
“We pay the price. I feel like we’re pawns in a game of chess, we don’t know what’s happening. We just live with it,” she says.
As for the Lebanese government, it has said little.
Since the attacks, the military has found several rocket launchers and projectiles in the area, as part of its joint investigation into the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in South Lebanon (UNIFIL) incident.
But beyond that, the military’s hands are largely tied.
Due to a previous agreement with the Palestinians, the Lebanese army generally does not enter Palestinian refugee camps in the country.
Bou Habib himself has even admitted that “it is easy” for Palestinian groups to operate in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah area
And yet the reality is that Hezbollah has a firm grip on security in southern Lebanon, and multiple missile launches without their knowledge seem unlikely.
That has left some Lebanese fearful that the group is dragging the rest of the country into conflict.
Wimmen said: “The constant complaint of anyone who criticizes Hezbollah is that they have hijacked and monopolized the decision on peace and war. Like, dislike: that’s the reality.”
The main road leading to Tire is lined with yellow Hezbollah flags and giant Nasrallah posters. The same portraits hang on the walls of Ghassan al-Tourak’s aluminum workshop.
The 30-year-old Lebanon-born Palestinian lives in the Rashidyeh camp, near where the first Israeli bomb hit on Friday. Al-Tourak’s windows were shattered, but he tells Al Jazeera he feels safe.
“As long as Hassan Nasrallah is here, we are not afraid,” he says, smiling and pointing to the pictures on the wall.
Although life in Qlaileh seems to be returning to normal, people like Abdelsattar are still feeling the shock waves.
Abdelsattar walks through the orange grove behind his house and shows him the way to the site of the bomb that nearly killed him and his family.
Fifty-five hectares (136 acres) of the forest are damaged and crushed oranges lie on the ground, filling the air with sweetness. Hundreds of dead bees from the hives Abdelsattar keeps lie on the ground, some still shaking. Abdelsattar points out that the rocket even dug up dozens of potatoes.
Closer to the blast site, the oranges and greenery are replaced by upturned earth, shattered structures and dust, as Abdelsattar and his son stand by the deep hole.
Still, the Syrian farmer says he will stay here because he cannot afford to repair their damaged house or move elsewhere.
“I ran away during the war in Syria. I didn’t die there and I didn’t die here. God has given me a new life,” he says.