After 15 months of a fragile ceasefire, Lebanon woke up on March 2 to the familiar sounds of Israeli bombs. As the violence escalates and tens of thousands are displaced, Lebanon’s social divisions threaten to worsen an already dire situation.
March 6, 2026
MONDOWEISS
The aftermath of a massive Israeli attack in the Dahiya area of Beirut on September 27, 2024. Photo shared by Lebanese journalist Ahmad El Hajj on social media.
On March 2, millions of people across Lebanon woke up to a barrage of Israeli airstrikes.
For the first time since the “ceasefire” with Israel of November 27, 2024, Hezbollah had launched missiles toward the northern occupied territories of Palestine. Hezbollah said in a statement that it had launched rockets and drones from Lebanon to Israel in response to the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and as a response to ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Israel quickly responded with a series of airstrikes across Lebanon’s southern towns, the Bekaa and Beirut’s southern suburbs, throwing the entire country into chaos. Israel also ordered full evacuation orders for all of the areas south of the Litani river, all of Beirut’s southern suburbs, and six entire villages in the Bekaa, effectively forcefully displacing more than 1.2 million Lebanese civilians.
The Lebanese government convened an urgent cabinet meeting on March 2nd that ended with the declaration that Hezbollah’s actions were “unlawful” and that the group’s military activities were to be restricted. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said the state would ban Hezbollah’s military activity and insisted that decisions of war and peace belong to the Lebanese state, and that those who fired the missiles will be brought to justice. Different Lebanese right-wing parties denounced Hezbollah’s action as “dragging Lebanon into a war for Iran.”
Today, with the main discourse in Lebanon centered around Hezbollah dragging the country into this war “on behalf of Iran,” social gaps in the country are deepening, furthering a crisis that is quickly spiraling out of control.
A rupture in the one-sided ‘ceasefire’
The violence that broke out this week officially marked the end of the so-called “ceasefire” between Hezbollah and Israel, which began in November 2024. Though March 2 was the first time Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel, the ceasefire has repeatedly been violated by Israel, with local and international monitoring groups reporting more than 15,000 ceasefire violations during the fifteen months of the agreement. Israel killed almost 500 people across the country in this period, especially in south Lebanon.
The latest Israeli strikes this week have killed dozens of people. Official tallies in the first 24 hours varied as the bombardment continued: Lebanon’s Health Ministry initially reported 31 killed and 149 wounded, and later figures from the ministry and other official sources put the toll higher, with more than 50 people reported killed, including all seven members of a single family in Nabatiyeh. By Friday March 6, at least 217 people have been killed in Lebanon, and 798 have been wounded.
Fatima, 32, is pregnant in her last trimester, and lives in Choueifat, a suburb on the southern edge of Beirut that many consider relatively “safe.” She spoke to Mondoweiss the morning after an Israeli airstrike hit near her house.
“Just like everyone else, we heard about missiles fired from Lebanon but everything was very unknown, we didn’t even think that Hezbollah might be the one that fired them,” she said.
Within minutes the [Israeli] bombs began, “many and very loud,” she told Mondoweiss. Just like thousands who live in Beirut’s suburbs, Fatima began searching for information on where the airstrike hit. “I kept thinking about my sister and her children who live in the southern suburbs and my parents who don’t have a car,” she said.
“It was very hard and terrifying.”
By the afternoon on Monday, March 2, Lebanese citizens were coming to terms with the fact that an extended war with Israel had, in practice, begun again. As a response to the Lebanese state’s position, Hezbollah’s parliamentary leader, Muhammad Raad, who was reported killed in the first strikes on Beirut’s suburbs, issued a statement defending the missiles as a response to repeated Israeli violations over the past year-and-a-half, saying the Lebanese government lacked the capability to stop those violations.
The next day, on March 3, the state pulled the Lebanese army from some of the border villages it entered after the ceasefire, leaving the land to fend for itself. To be more specific, after the emergency government meeting that declared Hezbollah’s military wing as unlawful, the Lebanese Army Chief Commander Rodolph Haikal suggested that the Lebanese Army actually defend the country against the Israeli invasion. The response came from the government as “this is suicide,” and president Joseph Aoun instructed the Army to leave some of its southern border positions. The same day, Israelis said that Hezbollah had fired the first missiles while the cabinet was meeting and approving the wider invasion of Lebanon.
Social rifts widen
Fatima is very worried about the situation. “I’m in my last trimester and I could give birth any moment now, where would I go? The rent prices are soaring and I cannot afford that, in fact many people can’t. It’s really hard.”
With thousands of people forced to evacuate under heavy fire, internal social cracks are widening. After Israel targeted the homes of those housing displaced people who were seeking refuge under Israeli bombardment in 2024, many Lebanese citizens are now refusing to house refugees from evacuated areas. Roads clogged, people slept in cars or on highway shoulders, and many spent the first 24 hours of displacement trapped in traffic with nowhere to go. A woman even gave birth on the road.
Meanwhile, some people decided to return to south Lebanon. On social media, people were expressing feelings of sorrow at the situation, saying they prefer to die with dignity in the confines of their own homes, rather than putting up with the humiliation they’re facing trying to seek refuge in other parts of the country.
The Israeli attacks this week have further exacerbated preexisting internal social rifts which had widened during the last fifteen months since the last Israeli onslaught. The country is divided between those who believe that Hezbollah is responsible for Israel’s actions, and if it didn’t exist then Israel would stay put and not attack Lebanon, and those who believe in resistance and believe that the only way for Israel to step back is to fight it.
But as more people become displaced, and Israel continues to bomb Lebanon, the prevalent discourse is one critical of Hezbollah, and the perception that it dragged Lebanon back into war “on behalf of Iran.” Several municipalities in “safer areas” in northern Beirut and the Lebanese mountains, where the population is predominantly Christian, issued strict orders requiring prior notification and “identity checks” before anyone could host displaced people from the southern areas of the country, where the population is majority Muslim Shia, supposedly out of “fear” that those who are seeking refuge might have ties to Hezbollah, and anyone housing them could be targeted by Israel as a result.
Some towns have even gone to the extent of completely not allowing displaced people in their towns at all.
One Lebanese citizen told Mondoweiss that when they inquired about a house advertised for rent in Journieh in the Keserwan area, the answer they received over WhatsApp was “sorry, Christians only.”
The Lebanese government has taken no position to stop these humiliating actions, instead affirming that every municipality has the right to handle its town’s internal affairs separately, and make the decisions that work best for them.
Fatima’s biggest disappointment, like many Lebanese, she says, is not the bombs but “the society, the people we call ‘partners in this nation.’ All the hate we’re seeing from them, it’s unbearable.”
Fatima says that that even though she knows deep down inside that she’s currently surrounded by danger, what she keeps thinking about is that “there are some people who left their homes, families, to fight for our homes and land, so what I am going through is nothing compared to what the fighters are going through.”
Layla Yammine
Layla Yammine is a Lebanese journalist and reporter based in Beirut. She writes critically on vital issues from local perspectives, in the service of public interest. She has covered politics, social justice issues, the public sector, and culture.
On March 2, millions of people across Lebanon woke up to a barrage of Israeli airstrikes.
For the first time since the “ceasefire” with Israel of November 27, 2024, Hezbollah had launched missiles toward the northern occupied territories of Palestine. Hezbollah said in a statement that it had launched rockets and drones from Lebanon to Israel in response to the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and as a response to ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Israel quickly responded with a series of airstrikes across Lebanon’s southern towns, the Bekaa and Beirut’s southern suburbs, throwing the entire country into chaos. Israel also ordered full evacuation orders for all of the areas south of the Litani river, all of Beirut’s southern suburbs, and six entire villages in the Bekaa, effectively forcefully displacing more than 1.2 million Lebanese civilians.
The Lebanese government convened an urgent cabinet meeting on March 2nd that ended with the declaration that Hezbollah’s actions were “unlawful” and that the group’s military activities were to be restricted. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said the state would ban Hezbollah’s military activity and insisted that decisions of war and peace belong to the Lebanese state, and that those who fired the missiles will be brought to justice. Different Lebanese right-wing parties denounced Hezbollah’s action as “dragging Lebanon into a war for Iran.”
Today, with the main discourse in Lebanon centered around Hezbollah dragging the country into this war “on behalf of Iran,” social gaps in the country are deepening, furthering a crisis that is quickly spiraling out of control.
A rupture in the one-sided ‘ceasefire’
The violence that broke out this week officially marked the end of the so-called “ceasefire” between Hezbollah and Israel, which began in November 2024. Though March 2 was the first time Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel, the ceasefire has repeatedly been violated by Israel, with local and international monitoring groups reporting more than 15,000 ceasefire violations during the fifteen months of the agreement. Israel killed almost 500 people across the country in this period, especially in south Lebanon.
The latest Israeli strikes this week have killed dozens of people. Official tallies in the first 24 hours varied as the bombardment continued: Lebanon’s Health Ministry initially reported 31 killed and 149 wounded, and later figures from the ministry and other official sources put the toll higher, with more than 50 people reported killed, including all seven members of a single family in Nabatiyeh. By Friday March 6, at least 217 people have been killed in Lebanon, and 798 have been wounded.
Fatima, 32, is pregnant in her last trimester, and lives in Choueifat, a suburb on the southern edge of Beirut that many consider relatively “safe.” She spoke to Mondoweiss the morning after an Israeli airstrike hit near her house.
“Just like everyone else, we heard about missiles fired from Lebanon but everything was very unknown, we didn’t even think that Hezbollah might be the one that fired them,” she said.
Within minutes the [Israeli] bombs began, “many and very loud,” she told Mondoweiss. Just like thousands who live in Beirut’s suburbs, Fatima began searching for information on where the airstrike hit. “I kept thinking about my sister and her children who live in the southern suburbs and my parents who don’t have a car,” she said.
“It was very hard and terrifying.”
By the afternoon on Monday, March 2, Lebanese citizens were coming to terms with the fact that an extended war with Israel had, in practice, begun again. As a response to the Lebanese state’s position, Hezbollah’s parliamentary leader, Muhammad Raad, who was reported killed in the first strikes on Beirut’s suburbs, issued a statement defending the missiles as a response to repeated Israeli violations over the past year-and-a-half, saying the Lebanese government lacked the capability to stop those violations.
The next day, on March 3, the state pulled the Lebanese army from some of the border villages it entered after the ceasefire, leaving the land to fend for itself. To be more specific, after the emergency government meeting that declared Hezbollah’s military wing as unlawful, the Lebanese Army Chief Commander Rodolph Haikal suggested that the Lebanese Army actually defend the country against the Israeli invasion. The response came from the government as “this is suicide,” and president Joseph Aoun instructed the Army to leave some of its southern border positions. The same day, Israelis said that Hezbollah had fired the first missiles while the cabinet was meeting and approving the wider invasion of Lebanon.
Social rifts widen
Fatima is very worried about the situation. “I’m in my last trimester and I could give birth any moment now, where would I go? The rent prices are soaring and I cannot afford that, in fact many people can’t. It’s really hard.”
With thousands of people forced to evacuate under heavy fire, internal social cracks are widening. After Israel targeted the homes of those housing displaced people who were seeking refuge under Israeli bombardment in 2024, many Lebanese citizens are now refusing to house refugees from evacuated areas. Roads clogged, people slept in cars or on highway shoulders, and many spent the first 24 hours of displacement trapped in traffic with nowhere to go. A woman even gave birth on the road.
Meanwhile, some people decided to return to south Lebanon. On social media, people were expressing feelings of sorrow at the situation, saying they prefer to die with dignity in the confines of their own homes, rather than putting up with the humiliation they’re facing trying to seek refuge in other parts of the country.
The Israeli attacks this week have further exacerbated preexisting internal social rifts which had widened during the last fifteen months since the last Israeli onslaught. The country is divided between those who believe that Hezbollah is responsible for Israel’s actions, and if it didn’t exist then Israel would stay put and not attack Lebanon, and those who believe in resistance and believe that the only way for Israel to step back is to fight it.
But as more people become displaced, and Israel continues to bomb Lebanon, the prevalent discourse is one critical of Hezbollah, and the perception that it dragged Lebanon back into war “on behalf of Iran.” Several municipalities in “safer areas” in northern Beirut and the Lebanese mountains, where the population is predominantly Christian, issued strict orders requiring prior notification and “identity checks” before anyone could host displaced people from the southern areas of the country, where the population is majority Muslim Shia, supposedly out of “fear” that those who are seeking refuge might have ties to Hezbollah, and anyone housing them could be targeted by Israel as a result.
Some towns have even gone to the extent of completely not allowing displaced people in their towns at all.
One Lebanese citizen told Mondoweiss that when they inquired about a house advertised for rent in Journieh in the Keserwan area, the answer they received over WhatsApp was “sorry, Christians only.”
The Lebanese government has taken no position to stop these humiliating actions, instead affirming that every municipality has the right to handle its town’s internal affairs separately, and make the decisions that work best for them.
Fatima’s biggest disappointment, like many Lebanese, she says, is not the bombs but “the society, the people we call ‘partners in this nation.’ All the hate we’re seeing from them, it’s unbearable.”
Fatima says that that even though she knows deep down inside that she’s currently surrounded by danger, what she keeps thinking about is that “there are some people who left their homes, families, to fight for our homes and land, so what I am going through is nothing compared to what the fighters are going through.”
Layla Yammine
Layla Yammine is a Lebanese journalist and reporter based in Beirut. She writes critically on vital issues from local perspectives, in the service of public interest. She has covered politics, social justice issues, the public sector, and culture.
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