Lebanon may be no stranger to conflict, but Monday was the bloodiest day the country has seen in a generation.
The Israeli airstrikes killed about 500 people, including at least 35 children and 58 women, according to Lebanese authorities.
This is equivalent to nearly half the number killed during the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
That conflict was brutal. I still remember the smell of the decomposing victims in the refrigerated trucks because it was so dangerous to transport the bodies while Israeli drones and fighter jets were flying overhead.
When the fighting finally stopped, about 1,100 Lebanese had been killed. On the Israeli side, 21 Israeli soldiers and 43 civilians had been killed.
Fighting in the shadows: On the battlefield, Hezbollah fighters must be a formidable enemy. They fought an Israeli ground incursion in 2006 until their advance was halted. But throughout the war, I did not see a single armed Hezbollah fighter, thanks to their ability to hide.
The Iran-backed group operates as a “state within a state” in a deeply divided country with a largely bankrupt government and no president, where neighborhoods still bear the scars of a 15-year civil war.
Lebanese civilians are well aware of the horror that Israeli military attempts to target Hezbollah can cause.
On Friday, Israeli warplanes carried out an airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing several senior Hezbollah leaders. But missiles also destroyed a nine-story building in a densely populated neighborhood, killing 45 people, including women and children.
The Israeli army accuses Hezbollah of using civilians as human shields.
Families flee: But that is little comfort to Lebanese citizens like my mother-in-law, who was a block and a half away from the building that was destroyed by Israeli planes. For several hours, my family struggled to evacuate my wife’s grandmother—who had suffered a stroke and was unable to leave her apartment.
As happened with the exodus of terrified civilians who fled the Israeli bombardment of southern and eastern Lebanon on Monday, my relatives took refuge in another neighborhood.
Now, four generations live in one apartment, including a one-week-old newborn, and aunts and uncles who work as teachers and building contractors, and have no connection to Hezbollah.
We hope and pray that their neighborhood will not be bombed.
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