IN APRIL, WHEN Israel and Lebanon announced a ceasefire, Maya Jaber and her family believed their agony was about to end.
The Israel-Hezbollah war had forced Maya and 11 members of her family to flee their home in Hay El Maslakh, Nabatieh. Taking only the essentials—money, documents, clothes—they spent four days living in two cars before pitching a tent along Beirut’s waterfront. The ceasefire announcement offered hope that their weeks of displacement was ending. But that hope lasted just 12 days, before strikes resumed.
“There was no real ceasefire,” Maya said. “They started shelling houses and killing people. We had to leave again.”
When another US-brokered conditional ceasefire was announced on June 4, neither Maya nor her family took it seriously. The word had lost its meaning. “For me, it is a joke and a staged performance,” she said.
While the US, Israel, Lebanese government and Hezbollah debate the way forward, the civilian toll continues to mount. Since the start of the war, more than 20 per cent of Lebanon’s population had to abandon their homes. Each of the 1.2 million displaced people carries a distinct story of loss, uncertainty and survival. Between airstrikes, evacuation warnings and broken promises of peace, their lives remain suspended beneath the constant buzz of Israeli drones overhead.
Before the war, Maya was building her future. Fluent in three languages and holding a master’s degree in business, she helped manage a local restaurant while preparing for further studies. She loved reading about psychology and dreamed of opening a mental health clinic.
“We had a house. We had work. But we lost everything,” she said.
Now she spends her days in her blue tent on a municipal plot in downtown Beirut. Nabatieh is one of the hardest-hit regions in south Lebanon. Israeli ground forces reached its outskirts in May, and much of her town—including her university and the restaurant where she worked—has been damaged.
For many families, the trauma of displacement has brought with it food insecurity, unemployment, interrupted education, a lack of privacy and a loss of control over their lives. Tents serve simultaneously as bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms and storage spaces. Mattresses sit beside hastily packed bags and suitcases. Access to food and water depends on dwindling savings and donations from local residents and charities.
“Life here is very difficult,” said Ahmed, 41, from Al-Khiyam. “We get no attention from the government.”
Despite the toll of the war on their lives, support for Hezbollah remains strong in southern Lebanon. Zeina Bani, a mother of two from the Kafr Kila neighbourhood, said Hezbollah was the only one standing up for the safety of her family and the sovereignty of their land. “Hezbollah gives blood for our land and protects it from the enemy,” she said.
Michael Young, a senior editor at Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said Israel, under international law, had no right to do what it was doing to Lebanon. But he also disagrees with the idea that Hezbollah is defending Lebanese territory.
“We have dozens and dozens of Shia villages that have been erased from the face of the earth,” Young said. “The political, economic and psychological costs of this war are devastating. Hezbollah hasn’t defended anything. It has basically brought the Israelis back into Lebanon.”
As the conflict continues, Maya’s wait to get back to her house seems endless. “I don’t know if my home will be there; I hope it is,” she said. “But if not, I will pitch my tent there. I just want my land.”
Airy is a New Delhi-based journalist reporting from Beirut.
