Beirut, LEBANON – As I’m writing, it’s day seven of war in Lebanon. The threat we were worried about has come again, and with way more new things to worry about.
Listen to an audio recording of this article:
I guess most of you already heard about the bombings, attacks, assassinations and the threats we’re always receiving from the Israeli Defense Forces through social media.
We left our house Monday at 2:46 a.m. It was the worst night for me. I prepared my bag while they were bombing.
Everyone was running in the streets screaming, not knowing where to go.
I lost my mom for some minutes, then I heard someone screaming, telling us to go to a public place so I was repeating what he said and running with my mom.
Luckily we arrived at a safe place and after some hours, a relative came and took us.
We’re in a safe zone now, still hearing bombs all the time.
All we watch is the news on TV, the threats on our phones and requests from people for help.
What’s worse than war are that some Lebanese are making the rent unbelievably expensive in the safe areas. Most of them won’t accept displaced people depending on their religion and because they’re scared of assassinations.
What they’re doing is all against the law because Lebanon is for every Lebanese person.
More than 84,000 people are sheltering in 400 collective places in Lebanon, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency, which credited the Lebanese government as its source.
This time, they’re threatening whole cities, not like the war that ended last year in a ceasefire, when they were targeting buildings.
Israeli “warnings and displacement orders” in the south of Lebanon impacted more than 100 towns and villages and the complete evacuation of nearly all of Beirut’s southern suburb and the Bekaa region in the eastern part of the country, according to the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner.
This means hundreds of thousands of people are already affected, the UN said.
Watching the news and seeing what Lebanese resistance is achieving is giving us hope but our loss is bigger.
The idea of losing everything will be easier if it’s for reclaiming our lands.
It’s weird but I’m more scared of coming back after this war.
How will our life be and how will everything have become Are we going to lose our house again or will we be able to go back to normal?
Instead of knocking down some targeted buildings like last year before the ceasefire, the bombs this time are leveling entire neighborhoods and parts of the city.
We were starting our lives again after last time, but now they’ve bombed everything. They even bombed our ways of survival. Some of the people who had businesses and lost them in the last war rebuilt, only to find their shops razed again.
The things we were able to return to last time, the places that gave us a sense of normal life, like our coffee shops, markets and mosques – they’ve mostly turned to rubble.
But I believe in my people. They always rise up stronger than ever.
Larissa Ayoub is a Reporter with Youth Journalism International.
Larissa Ayoub is a Reporter with Youth Journalism International.
