UN warns civilian suffering at ‘unprecedented levels’ in Lebanon after a month of Israeli attacks

In Lebanon, “civilian suffering is reaching unprecedented levels” after almost a month of Israeli attacks that have left more than 2,300 people dead and displaced a further 1.2 million from their homes — a fifth of the country’s population. This was stated Wednesday by the United Nations coordinator in the country, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, in language reminiscent of the statements on the Israeli invasion of Gaza and highlighting the deterioration of the situation in a country where the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned the risk of a cholera outbreak, like the one in the Strip, is “very high.”

Lebanon is not currently experiencing a humanitarian crisis, the proportion of the population that has had to flee their homes is lower than in Gaza (where virtually all the Strip’s inhabitants have been displaced, some of them several times) and some parts of the country remain completely untouched by Israeli strikes. But the daily death toll is similar (between several dozen and 100) and, as the UN coordinator points out, “the scope and intensity of the exchanges of fire continue to expand.”

On Tuesday, the first Israeli airstrike on a predominantly Christian area in the north of the country killed at least 21 people, half of them women and children, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health. The UN human rights office has called for an investigation: it was a rented property housing displaced people in the town of Aitou.

On Wednesday, 15 strikes in Nabatieh, in the south of the country, caused at least 16 deaths, including the city’s mayor, Ahmad Kahil, who was attending a meeting of the crisis unit in a municipal building. An aerial video also showed the disappearance of an entire village (identified as Mhaibib, just a kilometer from the border with Israel and abandoned by its inhabitants) after several controlled explosions, one of which, conducted in a tunnel, was celebrated by Israeli soldiers in a video they posted on social networks.

The situation is currently reflected in now almost deserted areas (the south, the Beqaa Valley and the Beirut suburb of Dahieh) and in the rest of the country with a routine of families moving with their belongings, shops closed everywhere and more soldiers present in key areas. France has just sent 2.5 tons of emergency medical aid to the Lebanese army, according to a statement from its embassy in Beirut on Wednesday.

For all these reasons, Hennis-Plasschaert stated that “civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times,” that “violations of international humanitarian law are absolutely unacceptable” and that ― beyond specific cases ― “military solutions will not and cannot provide security on either side of the Blue Line,” the delineation between Israel and Lebanon that the international community uses as a reference point, although it is not a formal border.

The Institute of International Finance, a global banking association representing hundreds of banks, has just published its projections for the Lebanese economy for the rest of this year and 2025. It proposes two scenarios: the most optimistic involves a widening of the Israeli invasion, with hostilities ongoing until the middle of next year, during which GDP would fall by 7%.

In the most pessimistic scenario, the contraction would exceed 20% and 1.2 million people (approximately the same number of displaced people today) would leave the country. It would involve an extension of the conflict in terms of timeframe and in the number of actors, with the direct involvement of Iran and perhaps the United States, which has just sent a THAAD anti-missile battery to Israel. It will be operated by American soldiers in what — although it has gone relatively unnoticed — is the first direct U.S. military involvement on Israeli soil since the Gaza war began in October 2023. Months earlier, when Washington installed a temporary dock on the coasts of the Strip for the entry of humanitarian aid (and which it removed early because it was carried away by the current), the Pentagon insisted that U.S. soldiers would not set foot in Gaza.

Hopes for a ceasefire have also evaporated. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made it clear Wednesday that negotiations to end hostilities “will only take place under fire.” And Hezbollah’s number two, Naim Qassem, insisted yesterday that there would be no truce in Lebanon without a parallel one in Gaza and that, just as “the Israeli enemy is bombing all over Lebanon,” his men “have the right, in a defensive position, to do the same in the north, center, and south” of Israel.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah posted videos on its Telegram account presenting two missiles that it had never previously mentioned in its statements: the Nasr 1 and the Qader 2. It describes the former as “a precision ground-to-ground projectile developed by the engineers of the Islamic resistance” with a targeting error margin of five meters and a remarkable ability to overcome both Israel’s Iron Dome air defense systems and signal interference designed to make it difficult to guide the projectiles. This interference is noticeable in northern Israel, southern Lebanon and even on the nearby island of Cyprus, where GPS navigation systems such as Google Maps often incorrectly display the location of airports in nearby countries.

For four days, coinciding partly with Yom Kippur, the most solemn Jewish holiday, the Israeli army did not bomb Beirut. According to Israeli media, this was at the request of U.S. President Joe Biden, although it is not clear whether this was only in relation to the city itself (which has already been attacked three times in the offensive that began a month ago) or also to Dahieh, the almost deserted Shia suburb where the Hezbollah leadership was in hiding and which Israel has been eliminating.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Tuesday that he had “certain guarantees” from the Biden administration to “reduce the level of Israeli escalation in Beirut and Dahieh.” Israel, however, resumed its airstrikes there on Tuesday. Three of them hit a southern suburb, Haret Hreik, from where columns of black smoke could be seen rising into the sky, minutes after the army demanded that the population immediately evacuate the marked areas.

As is often the case with reports in which he may appear lukewarm, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come out to “make it clear” that the army will continue “to strike Hezbollah mercilessly anywhere in Lebanon, including Beirut. Everything is done on the basis of operational considerations. We have demonstrated this recently and we will continue to demonstrate this in the coming days,” he said while visiting the victims of the attack that left four dead and over 60 wounded when a drone hit a military installation near the city of Haifa, in the deadliest attack on the Israeli military by Hezbollah in a year of fighting.

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