BEIRUT: Fears of a major escalation between Israel and Hezbollah have left many Lebanese on edge, exacerbating mental health problems and reviving traumas of past conflicts in the war-weary country.
One 29-year-old woman, who lives near the southern city of Sidon, said she dreaded the thunderous, explosive boom of Israeli jets regularly breaking the sound barrier.
“I feel the house will fall down on top of me... Sometimes I freeze... or start crying,” said the woman, a contract worker for a non-governmental organization.
She was 11 years old when Israel and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah went to war in the summer of 2006, and said bombs fell near her house.
“Sometimes, unconsciously, you remember it,” said the woman, requesting anonymity in a country where mental health issues are often stigmatized.
“These sounds give you flashbacks — sometimes you feel you’re back at that time,” she said.
Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel sparked the Gaza war, Hezbollah has traded near daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army in support the Palestinian militant group, sending tensions soaring.
Lebanon has been on a knife’s edge since a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs last week killed Hezbollah’s top military commander, just hours before the assassination, blamed on Israel, of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Iran and Hezbollah have vowed revenge, amid fears that retaliatory attacks could spiral into all-out war, with airlines suspending flights to Lebanon and countries imploring foreign nationals to leave.
“I already had been suffering from anxiety and depression... but my mental health has deteriorated” since October, said the woman, who can no longer afford therapy because her work has slowed due to the hostilities.
“You feel afraid for the future,” she said.
Before the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, Lebanon endured a gruelling 1975-1990 civil conflict in which Israel invaded the south and in 1982 besieged Beirut.
The current cross-border violence has killed more than 560 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including at least 116 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.
Laila Farhood, professor of psychiatry and mental health at the American University of Beirut, said “cumulative trauma” has left many Lebanese with stress, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Individuals transmit their anxieties to their children as cross-generational trauma,” she told AFP.
“What is happening now triggers previous traumas,” causing some people to have panic attacks, said Farhood, who specializes in war trauma and its impact on Lebanese civilians.
On Tuesday, Israeli jets broke the sound barrier over central Beirut, causing intense sonic booms that rattled windows and nerves, just two days after the anniversary of a catastrophic blast at Beirut’s port in 2020.
“I had my first panic attack,” said Charbel Chaaya, 23, who studies law in France and is living with his family near Beirut.
“I couldn’t breathe, my legs felt numb... in that very first moment, you don’t know what the sound is — just like what happened on August 4,” he said.
Layal Hamze from Embrace, a non-profit organization that runs a mental health center and suicide prevention hotline, said people in Lebanon now are “more susceptible to any sound.”
“Baseline, the adrenaline is already high. It’s a stressful situation,” said Hamze, a clinical psychologist.
“It’s not only the Beirut blast,” Hamze added.
“The natural or automatic response” is to be frightened, she said, and while “maybe the older generation... are a bit more used to” such sounds, they could trigger “the collective trauma.”
Some on social media have urged people to stop letting off fireworks — a ubiquitous practice for celebrations — while humorous skits making light of difficulties like flight cancelations have also circulated.
With coping mechanisms varying greatly, some people are “going partying,” while others “are reaching out to the community more,” which helps them feel they are not alone, Hamze said.
Dancer Andrea Fahed, 28, whose flat was damaged in the port blast, said she panicked when she heard this week’s sonic booms.
She said she felt “lucky” to be a dancer, because with her community “we laugh together, we move together... you let go of a lot of things.”
But she said the “uncertainty” was a constant struggle, and now leaves her windows open, fearing another blast could shatter everything.
“Anything can happen,” Fahed said.
“If it’s happening with that intensity in Gaza, why wouldn’t it come here?“
Lebanese on edge amid fears of all-out Israel-Hezbollah war
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Lebanese on edge amid fears of all-out Israel-Hezbollah war
- “I feel the house will fall down on top of me... Sometimes I freeze... or start crying,” said the woman
- Iran and Hezbollah have vowed revenge, amid fears that retaliatory attacks could spiral into all-out war
Netanyahu and Trump to talk tariffs, Iran and Gaza
Netanyahu becomes the first foreign leader to meet Trump in the US capital since the “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement sent global markets crashing.
He was also due to discuss the war in Gaza, following the collapse of a short-lived truce that the United States had helped broker.
Arriving in Washington direct from a visit to Hungary, Netanyahu’s chief objective was to try to persuade Trump to reverse the decision, or at the very least to reduce the 17 percent levy set to be imposed on Israeli imports before it takes effect.
Upon arrival, Netanyahu met with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, according to his office.
Before leaving Budapest, Netanyahu had said his discussions would cover a range of issues, including “the tariff regime that has also been imposed on Israel.”
“I’m the first international leader, the first foreign leader who will meet with President Trump on a matter so crucial to Israel’s economy,” he said in a statement.
“I believe this reflects the special personal relationship and the unique bond between the United States and Israel, which is so vital at this time.”
Analysts said Netanyahu would seek to secure an exemption from the tariffs for Israel.
“The urgency (of the visit) makes sense in terms of stopping it before it gets institutionalized,” said Jonathan Rynhold, head of political studies at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv.
Such an exemption would not only benefit Trump’s closest Middle East ally but also “please Republicans in Congress, whose voters care about Israel, but are unwilling to confront Trump on this at this point,” he said.
Israel had attempted to avoid the new levy by moving preemptively a day before Trump’s announcement and lifting all remaining duties on the one percent of American goods still affected by them.
But Trump did not exempt Israel from his global salvo, saying the United States had a significant trade deficit with the country, the top beneficiary of US military aid.
The Israeli leader’s visit is “also a way for Netanyahu to play the game and show Trump that Israel is going along with him,” said Yannay Spitzer, a professor of economics at Hebrew University.
“I would not be surprised if there is an announcement of some concession for Israel... and this will be an example for other countries.”
Netanyahu will also discuss the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack, the Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, and the “growing threat from Iran,” his office said.
Israel resumed intense strikes on Gaza on March 18, and the weeks-long ceasefire with Hamas that the United States, Egypt and Qatar had brokered collapsed.
Efforts to restore the truce have failed, with nearly 1,400 people killed in renewed Israeli air and ground operations, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory.
Palestinian militants in Gaza are still holding 58 hostages, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
On Iran, Trump has been pressing for “direct talks” with Tehran on a new deal to curb the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.
But Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghai said Tehran’s proposal for indirect negotiations was “generous, responsible and wise.”
There has been widespread speculation that Israel, possibly with US help, might attack Iranian facilities if no agreement is reached.
Baghai also said that Iran was ready to respond in case of attack.
“Should the threats against Iran be realized, they would precipitate a swift, immediate and global response from Iran’s side,” he said.
Lebanon health ministry says one dead in Israeli strike in south
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli strike in the country’s south killed one person Monday, the latest such raid despite a delicate truce between Israel and Hezbollah, and after a US envoy visited.
The “Israeli enemy” drone strike on the town of Taybeh near the border “led to the death of one citizen,” the health ministry said in a statement.
An Israeli security source said the Israeli military “struck a Hezbollah terrorist” in the Taybeh area.
The official National News Agency (NNA) said the strike hit “in front of a motorcycle repair shop” in the town, in south Lebanon’s Marjayoun district.
Israel has continued to launch strikes on Lebanon since a November 27 ceasefire that largely halted more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah, including two months of total war.
Lebanon said an Israeli strike on Sunday killed two people in south Lebanon’s Zibqin, as the Israeli military said it targeted Hezbollah operatives in the area.
Israeli strikes last week also targeted other south Lebanon locations and even Hezbollah’s south Beirut bastion.
The NNA also reported Israeli strikes on prefabricated homes in south Lebanon’s Naqura area on Sunday. Such homes have usually been set up for returning residents whose homes were destroyed in the conflict.
The truce accord was based on a UN Security Council resolution that says Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be the only forces in south Lebanon, and calls for the disarmament of all non-state groups.
Visiting US deputy special envoy for the Middle East Morgan Ortagus discussed the situation in south Lebanon and economic reforms with senior Lebanese officials at the weekend, with talks also addressing Hezbollah’s disarmament.
In an interview with Lebanese television channel LBCI broadcast on Sunday, Ortagus said Washington continued to press Lebanon’s government “to fully fulfil the cessation of hostilities, and that includes disarming Hezbollah and all militias,” adding it should happen “as soon as possible.”
Hezbollah was left severely weakened in the latest conflict with Israel.
Israel strikes tents near hospitals in Gaza, killing and wounding reporters
- An attack on a media tent outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis at around 2 a.m. set the tent ablaze
- Israel also struck tents on the edge of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir Al-Balah
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Israel struck tents outside two major hospitals in the Gaza Strip overnight, killing at least two people, including a local reporter, and wounding nine, including six reporters, medics said Monday.
Fifteen others were killed in separate strikes across the territory, according to hospitals.
A strike on a media tent outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis at around 2 a.m. set the tent ablaze, killing Yousef Al-Faqawi, a reporter for the Palestine Today TV station, and another man, according to the hospital. The six reporters were wounded in that strike.
The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas militant, without providing further information. The military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames Hamas for their deaths because it is deeply embedded in residential areas.
Israel also struck tents on the edge of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir Al-Balah, wounding three people, according to the hospital.
Nasser Hospital said it received 13 other bodies, including six women and four children, from separate strikes overnight. Al-Aqsa Hospital said two people were killed and three wounded in a strike on a home in Deir Al-Balah.
Israel has carried out waves of strikes across Gaza and ground forces have carved out new military zones since it ended its ceasefire with Hamas last month. Israel has barred the import of food, fuel, medicine and humanitarian aid since the beginning of March.
Thousands of people have sheltered in tents set up inside hospital compounds throughout the 18-month war, assuming Israel would be less likely to target them.
Israel has raided hospitals on several occasions, accusing Hamas of using them for military purposes, allegations denied by hospital staff.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, rampaging through army bases and farming communities and killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. They abducted 251 people, and are still holding 59 captives — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — after most of the rest were released in ceasefires or other deals.
Israel has vowed to keep escalating military pressure until Hamas releases the remaining hostages, lays down its arms and leaves the territory. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will then implement US President Donald Trump’s proposal to resettle much of Gaza’s population to other countries through what the Israeli leader refers to as “voluntary emigration.”
Palestinians say they do not want to leave their homeland, and human rights experts have warned that implementing the Trump proposal would likely amount to mass expulsion in violation of international law.
Netanyahu will meet with Trump in Washington on Monday to discuss Gaza and other issues.
Israel’s military offensive has killed over 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were militants or civilians. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The offensive has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and at its height displaced around 90 percent of its population.
UAE foreign minister presses Palestinian cause during meeting with Israeli counterpart
- Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan emphasized the need to end the ‘worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip’
- Meeting comes as Israel continues to escalate its rampage in Gaza
DUBAI/RIYADH: The foreign minister of the UAE on Sunday pressed the need for a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict during a meeting in Abu Dhabi with his Israeli counterpart, the UAE foreign ministry said in a statement.
Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, who is also the UAE’s deputy prime minister, and Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar discussed “the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip” and efforts to reach a ceasefire, according to the statement posted on the ministry website.
It said the meeting was attended by Saeed Mubarak Al-Hajeri, UAE assistant minister for economic and trade affairs, and Mohamed Mahmoud Al-Khaja, UAE ambassador to Israel.
Saar wrote on the X platform that it was his second meeting with Sheikh Abdullah.
The UAE and Israel established relations in 2020 as part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords. But there has been little bilateral contact since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, after the Hamas attacks on Israel.
“Sheikh Abdullah stressed the priority of working towards a ceasefire and the release of hostages, as well as the importance of avoiding further escalation of the conflict in the region,” the statement said.
Sheikh Abdullah also “reiterated the urgent need to advance a serious political horizon for the resumption of negotiations to achieve a comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution,” it added.
“He reaffirmed the UAE’s longstanding fraternal and historic stance in support of the Palestinian people, underlining the country’s unwavering commitment to supporting the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination,” it also said.
The UAE foreign minister further “emphasized the importance of ending extremism, rising tensions and violence in the region.”
The meeting came as Israel continues to pummel Gaza, destroying homes and killing more civilians when it resumed its military offensive last month after disregarding a truce that the United States helped broker.
In the latest casualty count by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, more than 1,330 people have been killed since Israel’s military resumed the offensive.
The overall death toll since the war erupted is now 50,695, according to the ministry.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage. Fifty-nine hostages are still being held in Gaza — 24 of whom are believed to be alive.
Among the latest victims in Israel’s perceived deliberate targeting of civilians were 15 medics from the Red Crescent, whose bodies were recovered only a week after the incident in which they were killed.
Israel controls 50% of Gaza as Palestinians get squeezed into shrinking wedges of land
- The largest contiguous area the army controls is around the Gaza border, where the military has razed Palestinian homes, farmland and infrastructure to the point of uninhabitability
TEL AVIV: Israel has dramatically expanded its footprint in the Gaza Strip since relaunching its war against Hamas last month. It now controls more than 50 percent of the territory and is squeezing Palestinians into shrinking wedges of land.
The largest contiguous area the army controls is around the Gaza border, where the military has razed Palestinian homes, farmland and infrastructure to the point of uninhabitability, according to Israeli soldiers and rights groups. This military buffer zone has doubled in size in recent weeks.
Israel has depicted its tightening grip as a temporary necessity to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages taken during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that started the war. But the land Israel holds, which includes a corridor that divides the territory’s north from south, could be used for wielding long-term control, human rights groups and Gaza experts say.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that even after Hamas is defeated, Israel will keep security control in Gaza and push Palestinians to leave.
The demolition close to the Israeli border and the systematic expansion of the buffer zone has been going on since the war began 18 months ago, five Israeli soldiers told The Associated Press.
“They destroyed everything they could, they shot everything that looks functioning ... (the Palestinians) will have nothing to come back, they will not come back, never,” a soldier deployed with a tank squad guarding the demolition teams said. He and four other soldiers spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
A report documenting the accounts of soldiers who were in the buffer zone was released Monday by Breaking The Silence, an anti-occupation veterans group. A handful of soldiers — including some who also spoke to AP — described watching the army turn the zone into a vast wasteland.
“Through widespread, deliberate destruction, the military laid the groundwork for future Israeli control of the area,” said the group.
Asked about the soldiers’ accounts, the Israeli army said it is acting to protect its country and especially to improve security in southern communities devastated by the Oct. 7 attack, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. The army said it does not seek to harm civilians in Gaza, and that it abides by international law.
Carving Gaza into sections
In the early days of the war, Israeli troops forced Palestinians from communities near the border and destroyed the land to create a buffer zone more than a kilometer (0.62 miles) deep, according to Breaking The Silence.
Its troops also seized a swath of land across Gaza known as the Netzarim Corridor that isolated the north, including Gaza City, from the rest of the narrow, coastal strip, home to more than 2 million people.
When Israel resumed the war last month, it doubled the size of the buffer zone, pushing it as far as 3 kilometers into Gaza in some places, according to a map issued by the military.
The buffer zone and the Netzarim Corridor make up at least 50 percent of the strip, said Yaakov Garb, a professor of environmental studies at Ben Gurion University, who has been examining Israeli-Palestinian land use patterns for decades.
Last week, Netanyahu said Israel intends to create another corridor that slices across southern Gaza, cutting off the city of Rafah from the rest of the territory. Israel’s control of Gaza is even greater taking into account areas where it recently ordered civilians to evacuate ahead of planned attacks.
Neighborhoods turned into rubble
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians used to live in the land that now makes up Israel’s buffer zone, an area that was key to Gaza’s agricultural output.
Satellite images show once dense neighborhoods turned to rubble, as well as nearly a dozen new Israeli army outposts since the ceasefire ended.
Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives throughout the war have left vast swaths of Gaza’s cities and towns destroyed. But the razing of property inside the buffer zone has been more methodical and extensive, soldiers said.
The five soldiers who spoke to the AP said Israeli troops were ordered to destroy farmland, irrigation pipes, crops and trees as well as thousands of buildings, including residential and public structures, so that militants had nowhere to hide.
Several soldiers said their units demolished more buildings than they could count, including large industrial complexes. A soda factory was leveled, leaving shards of glass and solar panels strewn on the ground.
Soldier alleges buffer zone was a ‘kill’ zone
The soldiers said the buffer zone had no marked boundaries, but that Palestinians who entered were shot at.
The soldier with the tank squad said an armored bulldozer flattened land creating a “kill zone” and that anyone who came within 500 meters of the tanks would be shot, including women and children.
Visibly shaken, he said many of the soldiers acted out of vengeance for the Oct. 7 attack.
“I came there because they kill us and now we’re going to kill them. And I found out that we’re not only killing them. We’re killing them, we’re killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs, and we destroyed their houses,” he said.
The army said its attacks are based on intelligence and that it avoids “as much as possible, harm to non-combatants.”
Long-term hold?
It is unclear how long Israel intends to hold the buffer zone and other territory inside Gaza.
In announcing the new corridor across southern Gaza, Netanyahu said Israel aims to pressure Hamas to release the remaining 59 hostages, of whom 35 are believed dead. He also said the war can only end when Hamas is destroyed and its leaders leave Gaza, at which point Israel would take control of security in the territory.
Then, Netanyahu said, Israel would implement US President Donald Trump’s call to move Palestinians from Gaza, what Israel calls “voluntary emigration.”
Some Israel analysts say the purpose of the buffer zone isn’t to occupy Gaza, but to secure it until Hamas is dismantled. “This is something that any sane country will do with regard to its borders when the state borders a hostile entity,” said Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at two Israeli think tanks, the Institute for National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute.
But rights group say forcibly displacing people is a potential war crime and crime against humanity. Within Gaza’s buffer zones, specifically, it amounts to “ethnic cleansing,” because it was clear people would never be allowed to return, said Nadia Hardman, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Israel called the accusations baseless and said it evacuates civilians from combat areas to protect them.
