Israeli Strikes in Beirut’s Center Shatter a Tenuous Sense of Security

The strikes, the first in weeks inside Lebanon’s capital, forced residents to come to grips with another escalation of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

The typically congested streets of Beirut were unusually empty on Monday morning. Schools that had temporarily shuttered earlier this fall when war first escalated were closed again. Many people who had come back to Lebanon’s capital after fleeing to the northern mountains a month ago had headed north once more.

Since Israeli airstrikes hit two neighborhoods within Beirut on Sunday, a sense of disbelief and frustration has washed over the city. In recent weeks, the initial shock of the intensified war between Hezbollah and Israel had given way to a feeling that relative safety had returned to Beirut, as the pace of strikes slowed and the city center remained largely unscathed.

Now that tenuous sense of security has once again been shattered — and a city already weary from two months of war is coming to grips with yet another escalation of violence.

“There is no security anymore,” said Hussein Zahwi, 49. “There is no security at all.”

On Monday morning, Mr. Zahwi stood across from one of the buildings hit in the Mar Elias neighborhood the day before. Wisps of smoke were still wafting from its shattered store windows. The strikes ignited a large fire that burned through the night and blackened the facade of the building. An acrid smell hung in the air. The strikes on Sunday killed at least six people and injured around two dozen more, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.

The Israeli military declined to comment on the strikes.

Mr. Zahwi had rented an apartment on the third floor of the building with his wife and three children weeks earlier, after Israeli airstrikes began raining down near his home in the southern suburbs of Beirut. The cramped collection of neighborhoods there, known as the Dahiya, is in effect governed by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group and political party in Lebanon that is at war with Israel.

His three children were shaken but not injured when the strikes tore through the building in Mar Elias on Sunday evening, Mr. Zahwi said. But now, with the Dahiya still too dangerous to return to, he was at a loss for where his family might go, and wondered if anywhere was really safe.

“Before I was in Dahiya. Now I’m here. The question is, where can I go next?” he said.

Hezbollah began launching rockets into Israel last October in support of Hamas, igniting a year of tit-for-tat cross-border strikes. That simmering conflict escalated this fall, after Israel detonated pagers and walkie-talkies distributed to Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, assassinated the group’s leader and launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Israeli officials say the airstrikes and ground invasion are targeting Hezbollah’s leaders and military facilities in Lebanon, which are often embedded within residential areas.

Israel appeared to ease the pace of air attacks around Beirut in late October, after American officials said they opposed the scope of its strikes in the capital. But in recent days, the strikes have roared back, and the attacks on Sunday were the first within Beirut’s city limits in about a month.

Over the past week, Israel has unleashed its most intense bombardment yet of the Dahiya, hitting the area day and night. In the south, Israeli forces appear to be making incursions deeper into Lebanon, moving beyond border villages that have been left in ruins.

Hezbollah said on Monday that it had repeatedly attacked Israeli forces near Khiam, a large town in southern Lebanon that Israeli troops have been pushing toward in recent days. Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported heavy airstrikes on the town and the surrounding area.

Israel’s intensified push appears aimed at pressuring Hezbollah to accept the terms of a cease-fire plan devised by Israeli and American officials, analysts say. Amos Hochstein, a White House envoy, is expected in Beirut this week for talks on that proposal, according to Lebanese officials.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said on Monday that Lebanon’s initial response to the U.S. plan was “positive,” but that some points still required discussion. In an interview with Al Araby TV, a Qatar-based broadcaster, Mr. Mikati said that he hoped Mr. Hochstein’s visit would allow for the points to be “resolved face to face.”

In Lebanon, the recent escalation has stoked concerns that Israel may have been emboldened by the incoming administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, whose nominees for key diplomatic positions have signaled fervent support for Israel.

As the conflict has intensified, so too has the simmering resentment among Lebanese who do not support Hezbollah and feel dragged into a war that is not theirs. Even some who support Hezbollah have voiced frustration, suggesting that the group — the real power underpinning the state in Lebanon — has not delivered on its promise of deterrence and protection against Israel.

The fresh barrage of Israeli airstrikes has offered brutal, daily reminders of just how fragile any sense of security is in Lebanon, a country that has careened from crisis to crisis for decades.

“I lived through the civil war,” said Jamal Sharaf, 67, referring to the country’s bloody, 15-year civil conflict. “The destruction now feels much, much worse.”

As he spoke, Mr. Sharaf looked at the smoldering remains of his bookstore, which was on the ground floor of the building struck in Mar Elias on Sunday. He opened the store, Sharaf Library, 30 years ago and had spent nearly every day since amid its stacks of notebooks, stationery and calendars.

His daughter, Noura Sharaf, 33, stood beside him, gently touching his arm. She described Sunday as “a simply cursed day.” The trouble began in the early afternoon when an airstrike destroyed a seven-story building one street away from their family home in the Ras al-Naba neighborhood. The strike shook their apartment, she said.

Her father returned home from the bookstore, and two hours later, around 8 p.m., a strike tore through his shop. “Imagine if it was a weekday — the shop would have still been open, he would have been there,” Ms. Sharaf said, tears welling in her eyes.

Mr. Sharaf said he could not even begin to contemplate resurrecting the store. He did not have the savings to rebuild it. The Lebanese government, crippled by years of political paralysis and economic crisis, was not expected to step in. And while Hezbollah led a multimillion-dollar reconstruction effort after its monthlong 2006 war with Israel, the group has not indicated that any similar plan is on the table this time around.

“Where is the government? We pay our taxes, we do our duties, we pay our bills, but where are they now?” Mr. Sharaf said. “Its regular people here are paying the price” for the war, he added.

Few in the crowd in Mar Elias on Monday seemed optimistic about the prospects of a cease-fire. Mustafa Muhammad Mosleh, 84, said that even if a truce were reached, the real test for the country — already reeling from crises and deeply divided along sectarian lines — would be what came after the fighting ends.

“Those who are fighting will reach a deal, reconcile and then act as if nothing happened,” Mr. Mosleh said, referring to Hezbollah. “But people are dying. The country is broken.”

Euan Ward contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Johnatan Reiss from Tel Aviv.