Displaced Lebanese beg to go home as country braces for escalation in fighting

When Manahel Rammel looks at videos of her home, she cannot believe what she has left behind.

“I miss my house, my life in the village, I miss everything,” she said.

Ms Rammel and her family fled their village of Adaisseh in Lebanon’s south to avoid Israeli air strikes and artillery fire, reprisals for attacks in Israel by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

“Believe me, I used to enter my home and feel secure and content,” she said.

“I wish it could stop and we could return. We cannot handle this anymore. Get us back to our homes or take us to another country.”

Ms Rammel has been living in an old hotel away from the border for 10 months, but recently managed to return to her house to retrieve some possessions.

“I cried like never before,” she said.

“The destruction is immense. My house was newly renovated, it is all smashed. Windows are shattered, even the wall tiles have collapsed. But there was fear. I was taking some of my belongings, and I was so scared.”

The hotel she lives in is dark and derelict, and there are 270 people — 60 families — living there.

Many, like Hussein Abed Turmos, don’t have habitable houses to return to.

“There are no doors anymore because of the bombing. Windows are shattered, everything is destroyed,” he said.

Mr Abed Turmos feels helpless and unable to see a way home.

“We need to endure, we don’t have the choice,” he said.

“We cannot leave our country. We left our house and found it destroyed.”

Overall, nearly 100,000 Lebanese have been displaced by Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel in Lebanon’s south.

Psychologist Abbas Mezher is employed by UNICEF to help the displaced children.

“The damage is so great,” he said.

“The mental toll can be seen in the bad school results, chronic fear among the children, they are always frightened.

“Even their facial expressions seem in shock and fear, they are always afraid of danger.”

Hezbollah has been firing rockets, drones and missiles into Israel since the October 7 Hamas terror attacks in southern Israel, saying it is supporting the group by diverting Israeli attention and resources to the Lebanese border.

Its attacks have led the Israeli government to evacuate 60,000 Israelis from their homes in the north.

Israel’s retaliation has in turn devastated villages in southern Lebanon, but has not stopped Hezbollah’s rockets, leading to calls within Israel to invade.

In June, Israel’s military said it had approved operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon against Hezbollah.

The impact on Lebanon’s south is bad enough, but Lebanese people fear the conflict could spread when Hezbollah delivers a promised “harsh response” to Israel’s assassination of military commander Fuad Shukr in the capital, Beirut, last month.

Recently, multiple countries have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon immediately, as airlines cancelled flights.

In the Port city of Sidon, 60 kilometres from the border, greengrocer Mahmoud Kiblawi said his business was struggling.

“The situation is on edge,” he said.

“People are not getting out of their homes. They are frightened. One minute the parties want a war, the other they don’t. Therefore, people get scared and stay home and there is no movement. Everyone is anxious.”

Hours after the ABC interviewed Mr Kiblawi, the Israeli Air Force blew up a car not far from his shop, saying it killed a member of the Palestinian militant group Hamas who worked in a nearby refugee camp.

It demonstrated how the conflict has stretched deep into Lebanon.

Hezbollah has promised to stop attacking Israel if there’s a ceasefire in Gaza.

It might not guarantee a lasting peace, or that thousands of people can return to their homes with any assurance of safety, but it could prevent a war in Lebanon, at least in the short term.

Psychologist Abbas Mezher said the displaced children will remember their suffering for a long time and will blame Israel, not Hezbollah.

“Honestly, the memory is what will decide our future path,” he said.

“We have children who have told us how their father was martyred, or how their family was killed, or how their homes were destroyed, or how they lost their toys or their active space, the garden in which they played.

“This child could grow with a sense of revenge, he could wish to exact revenge from this Israeli enemy and that is why the resistance starts to be passed from generation to generation.

“Because this struggle will not allow this person to emerge with a love of peace or to love the Israelis or anyone who has attacked his country.”