During Syria’s five-year civil war, which ended in 2016, one and a half million Syrians fled to safety in Lebanon. Today, Lebanon is too dangerous for them, so hundreds of thousands are going back.
Israel, at war in Lebanon with Hezbollah, has not made it easy for them to cross the border into Syria, even as their homes in south Beirut and the country’s south are being destroyed.
On Oct. 4, Israeli warplanes shelled the road at the Masnaa border crossing in central Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, immediately west of the border with Syria. Israel said Hezbollah was using the Masnaa road, the main crossing between the two countries, to smuggle weapons into Lebanon from Iran and its proxies. The attack left two enormous craters five to six metres deep, forcing homeward-bound Syrians to traipse clumsily over desert-like terrain littered with stones and rocks.
On a sunny Wednesday morning, dozens of Syrians were making their way across, some slipping on the stones, others – elderly or simply exhausted – stopping to sit on their suitcases. Mothers carried young children and crying babies. Young men unloaded nine-litre plastic jerrycans of gasoline from car trunks and lugged them into vans on the other side of the craters. The gas is sold at a 50-per-cent markup in Syria, where fuel is scarce.
The Syrians were dropped off by taxi vans just short of the craters after passing through a Lebanese Army checkpoint. The soldiers never bother them. Lebanon is overwhelmed with refugees it cannot afford to house or feed in time of war.
Rafa’a Elma’alami, 37, who is five months pregnant, and her sister-in-law, Sabha Ayesh, 22, were struggling with bags and young children as they rounded the craters. Once they reached the other side, they plopped down on their bags to rest.
They are not Palestinian but lived in a Palestinian refugee camp in south Beirut, which has been bombarded heavily almost every night over the past three weeks by Israeli warplanes. Israel considers south Beirut a Hezbollah stronghold; it is where a massive bombing raid killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 27.
About 10 days ago, half their house was destroyed, and the two women decided to flee while their husbands stayed behind to sell family belongings such as furniture. “Years ago, we escaped the war in Syria,” Ms. Elma’alami said. “Now we are going back because of the Lebanese war.”
They paid US$300 for a taxi to the border, a fee that drained them. For seven days they waited while relatives sent money for the US$200 taxi ride to Damascus. “The adults were sleeping outside of a house that is owned by connections of ours, the children inside,” Ms. Elma’alami said.
She has no idea if she and her family will make it back to Lebanon. “We are not happy to go back, but Syria is actually safer than Lebanon now,” she said. “Always war, war, war. God knows what will happen to Lebanon.”
Rafa’a Elma’alami, left, and sister-in-law Sabha Ayesh, right, went ahead to Syria while their husbands stayed behind to sell the furniture and other belongings.
Not far from them, 63-year-old Hamda Hamad was moving slowly with a cane while her children and grandchildren loaded a van that would take them to a largely Kurdish area in Syria near the Iraqi border, where relatives live. “I cannot walk much,” she said. “This journey has been so hard for me.”
Their house collapsed in a bombing raid about nine days ago, wounding and killing some neighbours. “We lived in Lebanon for 10 years, and life was good for us here,” Ms. Hamad said. “But since we were getting bombed all over, we couldn’t stay.”
A census in June done by the UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, found that about half of the Syrian refugees who came to Lebanon during the Syrian civil war were still in the country before the Israel-Hezbollah war broke out. The Lebanese government said that, since the start of October, 300,000 Syrians have crossed into Syria, almost 40 per cent of the total number in Lebanon.
The intensity of the war will determine whether hundreds of thousands more will return to Syria. Since Israel has given every indication that it will not stop until Hezbollah is defeated, the war seems set to expand and become more deadly. The Lebanese Health Ministry said late Tuesday that 36 people had been killed in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of Lebanese deaths to more than 2,100.
Some Syrians are afraid to return to their homeland and will stay put, even if it means moving to refugee camps far from their Lebanese homes. One is Ibrahim El Beda, who, with his wife and two young sons, left southern Lebanon more than two weeks ago. They now live in a 30-tent refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, a few kilometres from the Masnaa crossing. “I left Syria in 2017 because of the economic collapse and because I did not want to serve in the Syrian army,” he said. “If I return before I am 43, I will need to serve three to six years in the army. I am 40, so I guess I am here in Lebanon for another three years, at least.”
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