Driven away by the destruction, Imad Shami, 60, a Lebanese barber, stops to feed an injured cat: an absurd image of life against the broken tomb of buildings around him.
The shattered state of Beirut’s densely populated Dahiyeh neighborhood – largely under Hezbollah control – suggests it was the target of Israel’s worst bombing.
Behind the father of five, civilians scrambling to save things scramble through the bones of the half-destroyed tower, which tilts into the ground at a shocking 45-degree angle.
In front of him, ash covers the moon from bomb craters.
Imad was one of the few people who stayed during the 14 months of bloody conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, because he wanted to feed the 70 or so stray cats in the surrounding streets. He remained even during the last hours before the end of the war when Israel pounded these streets into oblivion. Stopping the fighting has calmed the explosion, but Imad worries that it won’t end the problem.
“Lebanon and Lebanon have no future; we jump from disaster to disaster,” he says wistfully, emptying cans of cat food next to the concrete that was, until Monday night, a seven-story multi-family building.
A family photo album, dental exam papers in English, and a neon baby bag are some of the signs that people lived here.
Imad Shami, 60, feeding cats around his neighborhood (Bel Trew/The Independent)
“I am 60 years old. When I was a child, my mother showed me a bullet tracer. My whole life has been like this.”
“Every ten years, we have a war or a disaster – we try to stand up, and we get crushed.”
Lebanon, he says, went from civil war and conflict in the 2000s with Israel to an unprecedented financial collapse a few years ago, a major explosion at Beirut port, and now.
“We try to work hard and save. We were working hard and trying to make our lives better when this war came and set us back 20 years.”
As the dust settles on some of the country’s hardest-hit areas, Lebanese residents have been returning to their bombed-out homes, facing an uncertain future. A U.S. and French-brokered ceasefire ended more than a year of violence that saw Israeli strikes kill at least 3,800 people in Lebanon and displace 1.2 million others. More than 70 people in Israel – more than half of the population – were also killed, along with many Israeli soldiers who fought in southern Lebanon.
Lebanon is facing a devastating crisis, with the World Bank saying there are at least $850 million (£6.7bn) in damages and losses from the war.
The NGO Mercy Corps, which also warns that Lebanon’s economy has “taken a dramatic hit,” said this week that the country’s GDP contracted by 6.4 percent – equivalent to $1.15 billion – during the escalation of the conflict since mid-September, when Israel began. ground attacks over its airstrikes, until the end of November only.
A boy makes a ‘V is for victory’ hand sign on a dilapidated building in one of Dahiyeh’s rough areas (Bel Trew/The Independent)
Even now that the active fighting is over, problems may be starting, says Laila Al Amine, Mercy Corps’ Country Director for Lebanon.
“With more than half of the population now living below the poverty line, resources increasingly scarce, and more than 1 million displaced people enduring the extreme cold without shelter or supplies, the worst human impact is likely to lie ahead,” he adds.
And just two days in, the weakly-predicted US truce is under serious pressure.
On Thursday, Israel’s military bombed Lebanon for the first time since the ceasefire, saying it fired in the south after it said it saw Hezbollah activity at a rocket storage facility.
Two people were also reportedly wounded in separate Israeli fire, according to Lebanese media. The Israeli army said it fired on people trying to return to areas in southern Lebanon, which it said was in violation of the ceasefire agreement, without giving details.
The backlash has raised concerns about the accord, which includes the start of a 60-day ceasefire. Under the agreement, Hezbollah fighters must withdraw to the north of the Litani River, and Israeli forces must return to their side of the border. The buffer zone would be monitored by the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers.
Families on both sides of the border are expected to return. But in the devastated areas of Lebanon, what are people returning to?
Manal Najjar and her family (Bel Trew/The Independent)
“We are not 100 percent confident that anything will catch,” says Hassan Kollaylat, 60, sweeping his family’s athletic shoe business, which was damaged in an Israeli airstrike last week in Chiyah, southwest of Beirut.
He has decided not to rebuild the glass warehouse, which costs $5,000, as “we don’t know when it will be bombed again.”
“We have no money to rebuild Lebanon—who will pay for this?” Our government, international aid? Yes, no,” he says.
Back in Dahiyeh, Manal Najjar, 44, walks frantically around the destroyed remains of her community. He was hoping to salvage some things, but found his house was about to collapse and was not safe to enter.
“We don’t know how we will rebuild—but we did it in 2006 after the war ended. However, now we were already in a financial crisis,” he says. “We need a miracle.”
Some in the community are optimistic and point to the fact that Lebanon has risen from the ashes several times as proof of how things will turn out.
Imad however sees “no hope”, as he does for his cats.
“Every ten years the same thing happens. There is no answer for Lebanon. “