During the last war in Lebanon in September 2024, we, at the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Beirut Office, began documenting testimonies and reporting on what was happening to affected communities and people’s lives. We tried to shed light on the effect of war beyond the news headlines that often undermine the pain each affected person endures. Back then, our families and loved ones were amongst the directly affected.
Today, one and a half years later, we find ourselves again in the same situation: What should be done to let the world know that there, where bombings never stop, there are homes, children, families, dreams, and whole lives being destroyed with no humanity, with no respect for international law.
We are displaced again. We continue to live under war and uncertainty, leaving our beloved South to an unknown fate. We do not know what is happening in our neighborhoods and towns because reporting has become very risky following the ongoing targeting of journalists. We try to piece together fragments to understand what is actually ongoing.
We continue to follow the propaganda from both sides. From the Israeli narrative, it feels as though the South has already been lost, as though it is once again under occupation, taking us back to pre-2000. While Hezbollah claims that they control the battlefield, they say the South will never fall under Israeli occupation. Between these competing narratives, we are left suspended, disconnected from reality, and unsure of what to believe.
The war in Lebanon began on October 8th, 2023, nearly three years ago.
We feel abandoned. The international community barely knows what is factually happening in Lebanon. After the full-scale war on the 23rd of September 2024, a ceasefire agreement went into effect on the 26th of November 2024. In reality, the war didn’t stop. Attacks and bombings never stopped in the South and the Bekaa, and drones never left our air in Lebanon. Israel continues to breach Lebanon’s sovereignty and to dehumanize civilians through narratives related to terrorism and Hezbollah fighters.
And now, once again, a wider war broke out on March 2, 2026 in Lebanon, with biased international coverage. In this regional war, with more than ten countries involved, we are neither a center nor the powerful player.
However, for us, Lebanon and the South are at the center. It is our homeland, our lives. Nevertheless, that feeling becomes heavier when abandonment is not only external but also internal.
We can make sense of the international neglect. The war has global repercussions - economic and political- and many countries are directly involved. But what we cannot comprehend is the abandonment by our own Lebanese society.
Once again, divisions within Lebanese society surface and occupy the national discourse. I use the term that has long been circulated to enforce division, though I fundamentally reject it: “the other Lebanese.”
The others: Are those from other areas, religions, and sects. Since the end of the Lebanese Civil War, we have tried to resist this fragmentation, to challenge these narratives, and build a more unified country.
We fear the return of the civil war.
We fear the re-emergence of sectarian fault lines. We fear the language of division that once tore the country apart for more than 15 years.
Once again, rental ads specify “Christians only.” Once again, Shia communities—and Muslims more broadly—are excluded and stigmatized. Around one million displaced Shiites, pushed to seek refuge in East Beirut, enforcing the same division of the civil war: East Beirut and West Beirut.
Perhaps this is not surprising. Lebanon never underwent a meaningful transitional justice process after the war. No trials were held. No accountability was established. Justice remains absent. Without justice, we cannot move forward. The wounds remain open. People remain filled with anger and grief. The fate of 17,415 disappeared persons from the civil war remains unknown. Losses are unresolved, and the fight for answers and justice continues.
On the 13th of April each year, on the commemoration of the civil war, we repeat: Never again. Nevertheless, we continue to repeat it. We still marginalize the other; we oppress and threaten the other, and we are still divided geographically based on sects.
It appears that we have not learned from our own past, nor from the experiences of others.
Perhaps it is time to confront our past differently. To remember not only what happened, but what it cost us. To remember that no one truly won.
I write this with fear and with pain.
My family and I, and countless others, feel from the South, feel the pain of displacement. In less than two years, we are displaced yet again. Now, my family is scattered across different countries, each of us living in a different place. I remain in Lebanon—the country I chose to return to, even during wartime.
Three years of continuous war. Continuous emergency meetings. Evacuation plans. Safety plans.
And still, we survive, we write, we hope to return to our homes, our South.