I was relieved when we crossed the makeshift bridge at Qasmiye. It was hastily constructed after Israeli air strikes destroyed it, but easy to drive on. It also meant I was approaching home. Bridges over the Litani River, connecting southern Lebanon to the rest of the country, had been blown up one after the other in Israeli air strikes.
With the 10-day ceasefire of the Israel-Hezbollah war set to expire, I decided to drive to the southern coastal city of Tyre, to check on my family home and check on the city in case it was going to be bombed again.
I arrived at the site of an Israeli air strike on a usually bustling street on Tyre’s waterfront. The strike came only a few minutes before the ceasefire took effect at midnight on April 17th. I imagine the people in those buildings had thought they survived the war.
Rescue workers were still looking for bodies. They said 26 people had been killed in the attack.
A man at the site told me there was one person still beneath the rubble. He pointed at a weary-looking rescue worker from the Risala Scouts — a civil defense organization — who was directing the search now on its fifth day and said he could answer my questions. I said a few words of respect, given all that he and his colleagues had been through. Dozens of healthcare workers and first responders in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli air strikes since March 2nd, yet they continued to run into danger to save lives.
A man speaking to a reporter nearby pointed to a set of tattooed lines on his right arm. He pointed line by line, yelling “gone!” at each one. They were the names of his family members. “Only this one remains… They are not Hezbollah, where is Hezbollah?” Most cars and motorcycles I passed had the photos of people killed in the fighting plastered on them. In the few hours I was there, there were three funerals. All of Tyre felt like one big funeral, and I guessed all of southern Lebanon did.
In a village a short drive away, journalist Amal Khalil was being laid to rest after being killed in Israeli air strikes the previous day, despite the so-called ceasefire.
Close by, a temporary burial site used in the 2024 war had rows of freshly dug numbered graves for people who couldn’t be buried in their ancestral villages because Israeli soldiers are still holding them as part of a “security zone.”
Despite the rubble around us, Tyre, either oblivious or out of a mothering kindness, was in her full April glory, all blue skies and clear blue water and swaying palm trees.
My grandma has been gone for many years, but the house still smelled of her when I opened the door. No one was there — my family was displaced to my home in Beirut. They were among more than one million people who have been displaced since March by the Israeli military’s overly broad mass evacuation orders.
I almost jumped out of my skin at the sound of a nearby explosion, automatically thinking it was an air strike. I realized then that it was likely the Israelis detonating homes in nearby villages. Relief followed by anguish. The so-called security zone Israel is holding several kilometers into Lebanon, and the Israeli army has been destroying civilian infrastructure and blowing up homes in the area.
The ceasefire was still holding in our neighborhood, but I was tense being in an empty building, and I worked quickly. I packed a huge bag of loose photographs. I had made it my winter holiday project to organize our family photos into albums and move them to my home in Beirut, fearing they could get destroyed in another round of fighting, but I hadn’t gotten through them all. I also grabbed some warm weather clothes for my grandpa since the weather had changed during his displacement before locking up the house.
I kissed the door frame before I left and said a prayer for the house’s protection; I asked it to stay, to wait for our return. And then I superstitiously regretted it — I had always walked out of this house nonchalantly. Perhaps I jinxed it by giving the goodbye so much meaning.
Everyone on the Amnesty International team in Beirut has been affected in one way or another. Some of us are hosting displaced people; others have themselves been displaced. The researchers and campaigners covering violations in Lebanon are living through the war they are documenting.
Days like Black Wednesday, on April 8th, when Israeli forces killed more than 357 people in air strikes across Lebanon, including in crowded civilian areas in Beirut, came frighteningly close to our homes and our office.
As we hear air strikes and worry about our own safety and that of our families, we also worry about the safety of the people whose cases we work on across the region, and we continue that work.
Despite the fragile ceasefire, the worry and grief have not eased. The destruction of homes and the killing of civilians in southern Lebanon, including first responders, continues. Israeli surveillance drones circle overhead in Beirut too — a nauseating reminder that death from above could revisit our homes and places of refuge at any time.
My family is eager to go home, to be on our balcony, see our neighbors, and enjoy the scents and comfort of the south. That cannot happen until we have a real, enduring ceasefire and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon.
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– Bissan Fakih, Amnesty International Middle East Campaigner
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