Mariam Allawiya, 60, and Kafa Wehbe, 67, sit on a sunlit balcony in central Beirut, smoking and swapping stories. Both were raised among olive groves in southern Lebanon. Allawiya’s son married Wehbe’s daughter. Now both are grandmothers — and squatting in a vacant building after being driven from their homes once again.
They welcomed visiting reporters with the hospitality they can still muster, pulling up a donated plastic chair and recounting lives shaped by repeated wars in the south. “What can I say? It’s all anxiety and war,” Allawiya says.
They are among more than one million people the Lebanese government says have been displaced since a new round of fighting began last month, after Hezbollah militants fired rockets into Israel. Hezbollah said it was responding to U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran and to months of Israeli strikes on Lebanon that followed a November 2024 ceasefire. A fresh ceasefire has been announced, but both Israel and Hezbollah have warned civilians not to return south, and Allawiya and Wehbe say they will not — it’s too dangerous.
Allawiya was born in Maroun al-Ras, a village near the Israeli border. Israeli forces invaded in 1982, destroyed her family’s house and occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years. The family fled north to Beirut, settling in the city’s southern suburbs with other displaced Shia communities. Despite that exile, they returned each summer and rebuilt their house when they could — “Our village, our land, our houses, our trees, our olives, our apples — our soil,” Allawiya says.
Wehbe recalls checkpoints and soldiers, permits to move around, and she says bluntly, “We don’t want that again!” That memory helps explain why both women back Hezbollah. The group emerged during the 1982 invasion, presenting itself as a force against foreign occupation and winning local support. It also financed reconstruction for many families, often with Iranian funding, and celebrated when Israeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000.
“Allawiya remembers that withdrawal as a beautiful, perfect moment,” one reporter notes. But the relief was temporary. Israeli incursions returned in 2006 and again in 2024 as Israel pressed against Hezbollah militants, and the Allawiyas’ house was destroyed each time. After rebuilding once, they were displaced again last month — this time from an apartment in Beirut’s southern suburbs to the vacant building their landlord offered to displaced families. They have been moving from one temporary shelter to another.
Not all Lebanese blame Israel alone. Many hold Hezbollah responsible for drawing the country into repeated conflicts. Wehbe worries some might give up the south in exchange for peace — effectively conceding territory to Israeli control. Israel has said it may hold Lebanese land south of the Litani River, 10 to 20 miles north of the border, to create a buffer it says would prevent Hezbollah from firing rockets. “How could the south not be part of Lebanon? It’s on our map!” Wehbe says. “If we could all just stand together, united against Israel, then Israel would leave us alone.” She believes Hezbollah offers the best chance to force an Israeli withdrawal again, because that’s what happened in 2000.
For now, Allawiya, Wehbe and 35 relatives are crowded together in the vacant Beirut building. Their group includes a pregnant woman and many children; baby clothes hang from clotheslines on the balcony. They stayed up on April 7 awaiting reports of a ceasefire between the United States and Iran and expected Lebanon would be included. “We were happy! We started cleaning, preparing to leave this place,” Allawiya recalls.
Their hopes collapsed the next morning. On April 8, Israel struck Lebanon about 100 times in 10 minutes, killing hundreds, according to Lebanese authorities. Many strikes hit central Beirut and shook the building where Allawiya, Wehbe and their relatives were sheltering. That experience has made them wary of temporary agreements: a ceasefire announced as a 10-day pause by U.S. and Israeli officials on April 16 still feels fragile. “To be honest, we don’t feel safe going back,” Allawiya says. “The Israelis may break their promise.”
Neighbors displaced in the same wave keep calling to check whether homes in the southern suburbs still stand. The area has been targeted repeatedly because it hosts some Hezbollah offices. But Allawiya’s heart is not set on that Beirut apartment; it is with the family’s ancestral home in Maroun al-Ras, now once more under Israeli control and possibly part of the buffer zone Israel says it may hold for months or years.
In quiet moments, Allawiya watches a video one of her children made: a slideshow of photos of their old house set to an Egyptian ballad about Lebanon’s 2006 invasion. She replays it over and over on her phone, humming the refrain: “There is no one but us to protect our homeland.”
This latest fighting has also interrupted medical care for Allawiya, who had been receiving cancer treatment. A daughter-in-law is seven months pregnant. The grandchildren are out of school and restless. They cannot remain in the donated apartment forever, and with ceasefires repeatedly interrupted by strikes, they do not know when — or whether — it will be safe to return home and try to rebuild again.