Palestinians in Lebanon believe they will be targeted if Israel intensifies its conflict with Hezbollah. But many say they’re prepared.
Shatila refugee camp, Beirut, Lebanon – Palestinians in Lebanon have watched Israel’s assault on Gaza with simmering anger and are now facing the prospect of a similar fate if Israel wages an all-out war against the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Hezbollah began engaging Israel almost immediately after the latter began its war on Gaza, which has killed more than 37,000 people and uprooted almost the entire population.
The Lebanese group has repeatedly said it would stop its attacks on Israel once a ceasefire took hold in Gaza and Israel stopped its bombardment on the people living there.
Israel’s assault followed a Hamas-led surprise attack on Israeli communities and military outposts on October 7, in which 1,139 people were killed and 250 taken captive.
In the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, many people involved in resistance movements told media that they’re not scared, and would fight to support Hezbollah and the wider “axis of resistance” in the region against Israel.
But they fear for their families and civilians, worrying that Israel would deliberately target densely populated residential areas in Lebanon, like the Palestinian camps, where tens of thousands of people live packed tightly together.
Some 250,000 Palestinians live in 12 refugee camps across Lebanon, fleeing there after Zionist militias expelled them from their homeland to make way for the creation of Israel in 1948 – a day referred to as the Nakba, meaning “catastrophe”.
Since then, Palestinians have longed to return to their homeland, Hassan Abu Ali, a 29-year-old man who grew up in Shatila told media.
If a major war erupted in the country, he said, he and his mother would grab a few belongings and head to the border between Lebanon and Israel.
“I think many Palestinians will try to go back to Palestine at once if there is a war. That’s what people in the camp talk about,” he said.
Abu Ali said he believes Israel could bomb Palestinian camps and then claim they harboured resistance fighters, justifications similar to those it has used when bombing neighbourhoods and displacement camps in Gaza, according to rights groups and legal scholars.
Ready to go home
Palestinians will have “no other option” but to return to their homeland if the camps in Lebanon are destroyed, said Abu Ali, adding that as stateless refugees, Palestinians face harsh legal discrimination and live in poverty in Lebanon.
“The only places I’d be able to go to are Palestine or Europe,” Abu Ali told media. “But to go to Europe, I need $10,000 or $12,000 for a smuggler to get out of here. That’s impossible.”
“First of all, there are lots of resistance fighters in all of the camps in Lebanon. Secondly … if a big war starts, then we are not scared. We have thousands and thousands of fighters that are ready to be martyred to free Palestine,” said a man who goes by Fadi Abu Ahmad, a member of Hamas in the camp.
Abu Ahmad acknowledged that civilians – especially children, women and the elderly – could be disproportionately harmed if Israel targets Palestinians in Lebanon. But he claimed that most Palestinian refugees believe “their blood is the price they must pay to free Palestine”.
He drew a comparison with Algeria’s war of independence from France, which lasted from 1954 to 1962 and led to the deaths of one million Algerians. However, other Palestinians said they feared for their families and loved ones if a war in Lebanon erupted.
“I’m not scared of the Israelis or what might happen to me,” said Ahmad, 20, a Palestinian in Shatila who declined to tell media his last name.
“But I am afraid of what they might try to do to my little brother and sister. They’re just 14 and nine years old. I don’t want anything to happen to them.”
Despite Israel’s threats, many Palestinians don’t expect a larger war on Lebanon due to the strength of Hezbollah.
They believe the group’s arsenal, which reportedly includes Iran-made guided missiles and sophisticated drones, is deterring Israel from seriously escalating the conflict.
But Abu Ahmad from Hamas notes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could still start a war on Lebanon to appease his far-right coalition partners and maintain power.
“Netanyahu is a criminal,” he told media. “And we know that if there is a war in Lebanon, then there will be lots of killing of civilians here, including Palestinians. It could be like Gaza.”
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