Elias can barely sleep these days. Israeli missiles haunt his city in the dead of night and, although he is hopeful that no strikes are aimed at the overwhelmingly Christian area where he lives, he usually stays up until his alarm goes off at 6 a.m. Since Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon forced more than a quarter of the country’s population to flee their homes in mid-September, this 27-year-old film director from Beirut has been getting up earlier than usual to help the displaced families settle in his hometown.
But many around this young Beiruti do not feel this crisis as a call to action. Lebanon’s sectarian divides have long been a feature of its politics and society. The events of the past month have accentuated these cleavages, but they have also highlighted how youth have sought to transcend them, throwing themselves into relief for the displaced even as Israel continues to pummel the country.
In Christian neighborhoods of Beirut, the invasion of southern Lebanon is followed from the sidelines, though with growing dismay as Israel proves willing to attack Christian villages the same way it does Muslim towns.
Elias’ volunteering does not sit well at home. His father took part in the war that ravaged the country from 1975 to 1990. Back then, he fought for the Lebanese Forces, a Christian-supremacist party on the right of the Phalange that coordinated with Israel to kill thousands of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. “He is still stuck in those times. And now, with my involvement in the war, he thinks I am betraying my country. Isn’t that ironic when these people are actually from the same piece of land as us?” he says.
The filmmaker wonders if he would also despise his Muslim neighbors had he grown up during his parents’ time. “Probably,” he admits, certain that the tensions he finds at the dining table are generational. “War leads people to bounce back to sectarian structures,” says Omar al-Ghazzi, an associate professor who researches media and activism in the Middle East at the London School of Economics. “However, it also builds solidarity.”
In 2024, the first major war since 2006 is reawakening old prejudices among many, but also testing the ideals of a new generation that came together in opposition to the ruling elites governing the country in 2019, in the biggest anti-government protests in modern Lebanon, which began exactly five years ago on this day, Oct. 17.
Like Elias, young people have turned out en masse to shelters and community kitchens nationwide to assist the survivors of an assault that has now claimed over 2,000 lives. “Sectarian tensions in Lebanon exist alongside a sense of citizenship that grows stronger at times when the country is targeted. Young people play a crucial role here, as they tend to experience crises from a national level and reject mainstream party and sect values,” says al-Ghazzi.
Jean-Paul, who like other volunteers in this report asked to go by a pseudonym, is also joining different initiatives these days as he volunteers for Caritas, a Vatican-based nongovernmental organization run by the Catholic Church. This 20-year-old, who wears a tattoo of a cross that stretches all over his arm, says that his involvement is “completely nonpolitical” and that it comes from “solidarity and his values as a Christian.” In a school turned into a shelter, Jean-Paul works side by side with youth groups from Amal, a party mostly affiliated with the Shiite community in Lebanon. Both for him and for Elias, these encounters are rare, but reassuring of their national identity. “We need to bring peace to every Lebanese, once and for all. Our souls are with those in the south, and our gates are open to anybody who seeks refuge in Beirut,” he says, though he has not dared ask his parents to host some of the families left out of the jam-packed shelters.
Elias is willing to go further than accommodating those from the country’s south in Beirut. Since Israel intensified its offensive against his homeland, he has also begun acknowledging “the importance of the resistance” as the only actor who can “defend Lebanese sovereignty” over a land where the state has very little authority. “Israel needs to be defeated if we want liberation. And this isn’t just about Palestine,” he says. “It is about our own existence. Those terrorists don’t tell Christians and Muslims apart, as much as [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu tries to pit our people against each other.”
Elias feels that while his ethos places him alongside the self-proclaimed “resistance” embodied by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, this does not translate into direct support for a party that is the epitome of the very sectarian system he tried to topple during the 2019 anti-government protests. When Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed last month, Elias praised his role at the head of the armed resistance to Israel in Lebanon, but at the same time refused to mourn him: “Glory to the resistance, but never to the man who oppressed the popular uprising in Beirut, endangered thousands by storing ammunition in the port, murdered dissidents left and right, massacred Syria, and never once stood up for the rights of Palestinians in Lebanon,” he says. “I might not oppose the actions of the resistance, but I’ll never mourn him.”
In recent days, Netanyahu has urged nonsympathizers to “stay away” from Hezbollah-ruled spaces, as any area where this party is present could be a “legitimate” target of new strikes.
The threat has prompted a new wave of sectarian feeling among non-Shiites in Lebanon, who are estimated to make up two-thirds of the population. In the Christian-majority Ashrafieh neighborhood, many have bought into the narrative. “The day they got rid of Hassan Nasrallah was one of the best in my life,” says 63-year-old Samir, days after the Israeli strike responsible. “We need them to help us eradicate these savages for good,” he adds, using harsh language to describe fellow nationals whom he blames for destabilizing Lebanon, weakening the state and unnecessarily dragging the whole country to war.
On the same street where Samir lives, where the graffiti reads “Iran out” and “Free Lebanon from Iran,” Lina makes her way to church. She disagrees with her neighbor, as she fears another war will be fatal for her country. Instead, she prays for peace. She passes by a primary school that, although it is now closed like most others in Lebanon, has not been allowed by the district authorities to open up to host refugees. “I am glad they didn’t let them in. I am also glad most people here are not renting their spare rooms to them. May God protect the displaced people, but I would not feel comfortable having them around,” she admits.
Like Lina and Samir, many middle-aged and older Christians are apprehensive about the arrival of tens of thousands of newcomers from the south. They feel these mostly Shiite populations are a threat to their stability, as they may turn “safe” neighborhoods into potential targets for Israel. For them, Hezbollah is also the heir of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a major enemy of Christian factions during the Lebanese civil war. “[Yasser] Arafat — leader of the PLO — doomed our country when he arrived in 1969. The Palestinians started a civil war, and now the followers of Nasrallah are doing the same,” says Antoine, a stationer from Ashrafieh. “I sleep well, I know the Jews aren’t coming for me.”
However, the course the current war is following suggests that sectarian logic like Antoine’s may be outdated. In recent months, Israel has struck Christian-majority villages in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley, a region 18 miles east of Beirut. Towns like Qartaba, Mayrouba and Ehmej, in the predominantly Christian central district of Keserwan, were also attacked by the Israeli military in late September. “How can these old men unsee that the Israeli army is currently razing entire Christian towns?” asks Elias angrily. According to the Lebanese journalist Pierre Akiki, writing in an essay for Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, these strikes “seek to stir sectarian tension among the towns’ residents in a bid to prevent them from welcoming displaced people.”
If this is Israel’s strategy for non-Shiite Lebanese, it does not seem to be succeeding on all fronts. “People my age have woken up against this ‘divide and rule’ strategy that they’re trying to drum into our people,” says Shireen, a 42-year-old mother of one. Last month, Shireen stepped aside from the restaurant she owns to focus on connecting forcibly displaced families with people from all around the country willing to take them in.
“Some would ask me: ‘Why do you get so invested? You’re a Khoury!’” she jokes about her Christian surname. “There’s no reason why I wouldn’t be standing with them. These people could be me tomorrow. The ‘good Lebanese’ Netanyahu is appealing to simply doesn’t exist — most of us are well aware that Israel is able to kill anyone in this country without thinking twice.”
The cleavages Elias experiences with his parents also exist in other Christian families in Beirut. Antoine, the stationer from Ashrafieh, feels uneasy about his daughter’s take on the political situation in the Middle East since war erupted in Gaza in October 2023. “She keeps feeding the monster,” he grumbles, alleging that her whole generation has been “brainwashed by the TikTok algorithm.”
Both Elias and Antoine’s daughter had their political awakening during the 2019 protests in Lebanon. For months, young people from all religious backgrounds took to the streets of the country condemning economic stagnation and decades of corrupt rule. “What happened back then was unprecedented,” says al-Ghazzi, who has conducted much of his academic research on the role of media in 21st-century Arab revolutions. “The protests intersected class, sect and geography. The wider Lebanese population was stunned to hear the same slogans in cities like Beirut, Tripoli and Tyre. Young people led the revolt against sectarian leadership — the oligarchy, in the language of that uprising. The widespread awareness of the complicity of all political leaders and parties in the country’s crises was key to imagining a new political subjectivity that identifies the entire ruling class as the enemy.”
Five years on from the uprising, many young people are witnessing the Israeli aggression on Lebanon through the lenses they formed during the protests. Although they did not eventually lead to a regime change, al-Ghazzi believes they did bring about long-term results. “Activism is never a one-off. Civil movements often get stuck in the dichotomy between success and failure. But the experience does not die out that easily once the protests dissolve. Now, well after the revolution concluded, there is a younger generation who think of themselves as Lebanese and who are dusting off the solidarity networks that they hatched during the revolts,” he says.
Every evening, when Elias finishes his volunteering, he goes back to a neighborhood, a house and a dining table ruled by a wartime understanding of Shiite Muslims. “In Lebanon, this structure of society is still weaved into everyday life. Whether we’re talking about public and urban space, university campuses or even health care, everything is determined by sectarian schemes,” says al-Ghazzi.
However, some of these boundaries get blurred in times of emergency. A doctor from the Armenian minority of Beirut recounts how hospitals responded to the attacks on pagers and devices belonging mostly to Hezbollah combatants: “Many of us [the health workers] are political opponents [of the wounded], but the cases we admitted have been appalling. Blown-out eyes, smashed livers, bruised faces,” he says. The biggest hospitals in town are either Jesuit, American or Greek Orthodox, and many of their doctors come from a Christian background. “Still, none of us hesitated to work 20 hours a day and give our best for them,” he says. After a successful blood donation campaign for the victims of the attacks, Lebanese of all religious backgrounds have also offered their organs to the wounded: “There is a waiting list for kidneys, lungs, corneas, even,” says this doctor enthusiastically.
Another phenomenon in recent days has further helped dissipate sectarian tensions. After Israel assassinated Nasrallah on Sept. 27, religious and political authorities of all hues condemned the decapitation of Hezbollah and toned down criticism of the Shiite group. Bechara Boutros al-Rai, the Maronite patriarch known for voicing animosity toward the party, offered his condolences to the family and community of the deceased and stated that Lebanon was “deeply saddened” by the casualties among Hezbollah members. Saad Hariri, a former Sunni Muslim prime minister, called the killing of Nasrallah a “cowardly act,” despite a U.N.-backed tribunal ruling that Hezbollah was implicated in the assassination of his own father, also a former prime minister, Rafic Hariri, in 2005. Among the Greek Orthodox community, the recent killing of the Rev. Gregorius Saloum of the parish of Ibl al-Saqi on Oct. 1 has been a wake-up call for many.
“Today, for the first time, Israel is understanding that there is a new force in Lebanon,” says Shireen as she feeds her 2-year-old daughter. “If the war goes on, we will only come closer together. So let them invade, let them hurt us — it will be the best opportunity for us to show them we are a country of hope and unity,” she says. “They think they can occupy us like they did back in 1982, but let them come. For the first time, they will crash into a people ready to defend themselves.”
Elias is not that optimistic. Last weekend, he had a heated discussion with his parents when he asked them to lend their summer cabin in the Cedars region of Mount Lebanon to a family from the south who had been forced to flee Nabatieh after Israel ordered their city to be evacuated. “They thought I was kidding them. They told me not to ever think about it again, and asked me if I wanted our house turned into a terrorist warehouse that the Israelis would later destroy,” he says.
Two days later, Elias’ mother approached him and said: “I don’t know what you think of us, but we are heartbroken over everyone suffering, all of the dead people, and all of the displaced. We are worried all the time. We are not sad over Nasrallah, but we are devastated about what is happening to people. We are both very proud of what you are doing,” she told him.
To Elias’ surprise, she also handed him a spare key: “Here, go down to the basement. There are loads of old clothes I’ve been stockpiling for years. I wanted your future children to wear some of them. Go, have a look. You may want to give them to the Shiites from the south instead.”
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