Mariam Allawiya, 60, and Kafa Wehbe, 67, share a sunlit balcony in central Beirut, smoking and trading memories. Both were raised among olive groves in southern Lebanon; their families are now linked by marriage. They are grandmothers who, once again, find themselves living in a vacant building offered to displaced families after being forced from their homes.
They received reporters with the same hospitality they have long practiced, pulling up a donated plastic chair and recounting lives defined by recurring conflict. Allawiya sums up decades of upheaval as a life of anxiety and war.
Lebanon’s government says more than a million people have been displaced since a fresh round of fighting began last month after Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel. Hezbollah says its actions were in response to US and Israeli strikes on Iran and to months of Israeli bombardment in Lebanon that followed a November 2024 ceasefire. Although a new ceasefire was announced, both Israel and Hezbollah have warned civilians not to return to the south, and Allawiya and Wehbe say they refuse to go back because it remains too dangerous.
Allawiya was born in Maroun al-Ras, a border village that Israeli forces invaded in 1982; her family home was destroyed and her community endured an 18-year occupation. The family fled north to Beirut’s southern suburbs, joining other displaced Shia families. Despite that long exile, they returned each summer and tried to rebuild when they could. For Allawiya, the village, the land, the olive trees and the orchards remain central to her sense of home.
Wehbe remembers checkpoints, soldiers and travel permits and says she will not submit to that again. Those memories help explain why both women hold sympathy for Hezbollah. The group emerged during the 1982 invasion as a force against foreign occupation, winning local support by resisting Israeli forces and by helping finance reconstruction for many families, often with Iranian backing. The withdrawal of Israeli forces in 2000 was, for many like Allawiya, a moment of profound relief.
But the relief proved short lived. Israeli campaigns returned in 2006 and again in 2024 as tensions with Hezbollah flared, and Allawiya says her family house was destroyed each time. After repairing their home once, they were displaced again last month from an apartment in the southern suburbs to the empty building their landlord offered. Since then they have moved between temporary shelters.
Not everyone in Lebanon blames Israel alone. Many accuse Hezbollah of drawing the country repeatedly into armed confrontations. Wehbe worries that some will accept ceding parts of the south in exchange for peace, effectively giving up territory to Israeli control. Israel has floated holding land south of the Litani River as a buffer zone it argues would keep Hezbollah from firing rockets. Wehbe rejects the idea that the south could be removed from Lebanese sovereignty and says that if people stood united, Israel might be compelled to withdraw as it did in 2000. For her, Hezbollah still seems the likeliest force to force another withdrawal.
About 35 relatives now crowd into the vacant building with Allawiya and Wehbe. The group includes a pregnant woman and many children; baby clothes hang from lines on the balcony. On the night of April 7 they stayed awake expecting a U.S.- and Israeli-brokered pause to include Lebanon. They prepared to leave the shelter, cleaning and packing. Their hopes were shattered the next morning when, according to Lebanese authorities, Israel struck Lebanon roughly 100 times in 10 minutes, killing hundreds and hitting central Beirut hard enough to rattle the building where they were sheltering.
That attack deepened their mistrust of temporary accords. Even a pause announced on April 16 as a 10-day break by U.S. and Israeli officials feels fragile. The family says they do not feel safe returning to the south, fearing promises will be broken and strikes will resume.
Neighbors who fled in the same wave keep calling to ask if their homes in the southern suburbs still stand. That area has been targeted repeatedly because some Hezbollah offices are based there. But Allawiya’s longing remains fixed on her ancestral house in Maroun al-Ras, now under Israeli control and possibly within any buffer Israel might hold for months or years.
In quieter moments Allawiya watches a slideshow one of her children made: photos of their old home set to an Egyptian song about the 2006 invasion. She replays it on her phone, humming the refrain about the need to protect their homeland.
The latest violence has also interrupted Allawiya’s medical care; she had been receiving treatment for cancer. A daughter-in-law is seven months pregnant. The grandchildren are out of school and restless. They cannot live in the donated apartment forever, and with ceasefires so often violated by renewed strikes, the family does not know when—or if—they will be able to return and try to rebuild again.