Lebanese civilians fleeing Israeli attacks face hardship and exploitation

As Israel escalates attacks on Lebanon, civilians brace for more violent consequences amid conflict with Hezbollah.

Beirut, Lebanon – Umm Hassan* says she was ready to die in her home when Israel began carpet bombing south Lebanon earlier this week.

Shrouded in her black abaya, she explains that the “resistance” – a reference to the Lebanese armed group, Hezbollah – ordered her to leave the governorate of Nabatiya with her husband and children, however.

She did as they said, believing that Hezbollah wanted civilians out of harm’s way in order to fight Israel, a country she calls the “Zionist state”.

“The [Zionists] don’t scare us,” she tells Al Jazeera at an elementary school that has been turned into a displacement shelter in Lebanon’s capital Beirut. “[Before we left home], I saw [an Israeli] warplane above me. Warplanes are all over the [skies] in the south.”

As the United States and France ostensibly pressure Israel to avert all out-war with Hezbollah, civilians from south Lebanon say they are already living through catastrophic levels of bombardment.