Lebanon: Families stuck in Nabatieh watch as Israel destroys historic neighbourhoods
Israeli raids have wiped out almost all of Nabatieh's early 20th-century market, the heart of the city
Having nowhere else to go, Assad Bitar, 90, is one of Nabatieh's residents who has stayed in their city (Hanna Davis/MEE)
18 November 2024
From their
home in Nabatieh’s historic city centre, Amina Bitar and her family have
watched as homes and shops around them have fallen into piles of
blackened rubble. The family is one of roughly seven stuck in the
southern
Lebanese city with nowhere to go, as
Israel's heavy bombardment continues.
Amina, 31, gestured to the large cracks in her home’s 100-year-old
stone walls and to the window panes shattered by Israeli blasts, leaving
their Ottoman-style ornate frames bare.
She walked up to the terrace, where the extent of damage to her
neighbourhood was clear. Just across the street, a giant crater could be
seen where her neighbour’s home once was. To the left, two cars were
stuck in a pile of charred debris, their window panes blown out and
doors left ajar.
Despite the strength of the nearby blasts, the herbs potted on the
terrace were still alive. Amina dusted off a fresh basil plant and
plucked one of its leaves to breathe in its scent.
Just as she took a breath, an Israeli warplane swooped overhead.
“Warplane,” Amina screamed and rushed downstairs. Minutes later, a
thunderous explosion from an Israeli strike nearby shook the stone
walls, as she huddled in the foyer with her father, aunt and brother.
Since Israel escalated attacks on the country on 23 September, it has pounded Nabatieh with nearly-daily air strikes.
Israeli raids overnight on 12 October caused a massive fire to erupt, burning many shops and homes in the Ottoman-era market to the ground. On 16 October, Israel hit Nabatieh’s city hall, killing 16 people, including the city’s mayor, several members of the municipal council and the Lebanese civil defence.
“I pray for the war to end, I’m tired of everything,” Amina told
Middle East Eye, “Every day I’m nervous. My mental health is not good,
no one is ever relaxed in their home.”
Nabatieh’s ‘defining character’
Outside Amina’s family home, the once-bustling streets of Nabatieh’s
city centre were empty. Souvenir Lebanese flags, children's clothes, and
sports jerseys, which not long ago had been hung up for sale, were
buried under massive piles of rubble.
Nabatieh’s historic marketplace is believed to date back to the
Mamluk period, which came to an end in the early 16th century. Around
1910, the buildings were renovated in the late Ottoman-style.
Rescuers search for survivors at the site of an Israeli air
strike that targeted the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh on 16
November 2024 (AFP)
For over a hundred years, vendors have congregated in the city's
weekly market, held each Monday. Located in the town centre on a crossroads connecting the different routes in and out of the city, the market attracted locals and those from neighbouring towns and villages alike.
“The souk [market] in Nabatieh was the defining character of the
city,” Mohanad Hage Ali, a Lebanese political analyst with the Carnegie
Middle East Center, told MEE.
“Across history, it was a market where people came to from around the region,” said Hage Ali, who is from Nabatieh.
“The souk was the heart of economic activity. Its destruction is part
of a wider [Israeli] campaign to destroy the ability of these towns and
cities to come back to life.”
On a personal level, Hage Ali said that the destruction of Nabatieh’s
market is like “someone surgically removed a part of my memories and
wiping them out in a split second.”
‘Everything was delicious’
On Mondays - before Israel’s destruction of the market - spices,
nuts, meats, fresh fruits and vegetables, perfumes, clothes, and other
goods stood on display. Shoppers strolled
the crowded outdoor aisles, some sipping on sahlab (cinnamon Middle
Eastern milk pudding) or eating mashawi (grilled meat) kebabs.
“Everything was delicious [in the market]... chicken, meat, falafel,
anything you want,” Amina said, smiling. “I loved all the sweets.”
The Bitar family home overlooks destruction caused by Israeli strikes, Nabatieh, Lebanon (Hanna Davis/MEE)
Amina
had been working in a hair salon nearby, which she said was open for
almost 31 years and almost always had business. Her father, Afeef, was a
butcher, and had spent his days in the market selling local meat.
Nabatieh was well-known for its meat, especially its lahmacun (flatbread topped with minced meat and herbs), which locals said was smaller and juicier than elsewhere in Lebanon.
“Before the war, everything you could dream of was there,” Afeef said, “But now there’s nothing left, you can’t find anything.”
‘Where should we go?’
In a dusty, 90s Mercedes-Benz, Hassan Ali Sfewi, 57, drove around the rubble-covered roads of the old city centre.
For nearly 40 years, Sfewi worked as a taxi driver in Nabatieh,
normally picking up and dropping off passengers until the early hours of
the morning.
But he now circles around the destroyed city, delivering bread and medicine to those left behind, including to the Bitar family.
Afeef’s butchery was destroyed in the Israeli strikes and he can no
longer afford petrol for his car. He now relies on Sfewi to bring bread,
processed cheese, and canned food items, which the family has been
living off.
Afeef said he is hesitant to go to a displacement shelter because he
is worried there would not be space for himself, his two children and
sister. On 25 October, UNHCR announced
that about a fifth of Lebanon’s population had been displaced and that
all of the 1,059 government-established shelters were at capacity.
“Where should we go?” he asked.
Hassan Ali Sfewi, a taxi driver, now drives around Nabatieh
to deliver bread and medicine to residents who have stayed in the city
(Hanna Davis/MEE)
Sfewi
has also become the default caretaker of his 90-year-old neighbour,
Assad Bitar, who sat silently in the passenger seat. They keep a
kerosene stove and blankets in the back seat, in case it is too
dangerous to return home and they have to camp outside.
Sfewi told MEE he has also attempted to enter displacement shelters
multiple times, but each time the conditions were not suitable for him
or Assad, who needs a bathroom nearby and cannot walk up stairs.
“I went to a lot of shelters, but there wasn’t water. You need to buy water and you sleep in a very small space,” he added.
At least in his home in Nabatieh he still has running water and
electricity, he said: “Here, there is war, but at least there is
water.”
‘Very old, very beautiful’
As Sfewi drove around Nabatieh’s historic roads, he recounted
memories of the old souk. “It was very old and very beautiful, it was
part of our heritage,” he said.
'I fear going back to a place that I don’t recognise anymore, just a
flat piece of land and I have to remember what it used to be'
- Mohanad Hage Ali, analyst
He drove past an open square, where he said celebrations were held for Ashura, typically observed by Shia Muslims.
To his left, he pointed to a shop that imported clothes from Syria. He then turned a corner, where a sign for “Al Sultan Sweets” was still visible above the rubble.
“On a wider level, this is the Gaza approach,” Hage Ali said,
referencing Israel’s vast destruction of heritage sites, health
facilities, rescue centres and other infrastructure in Nabatieh and
around Lebanon.
“It is systematic destruction, targeting the Lebanese Shia [community] who are not forcibly displaced inside the country.”
“There’s no clarity on where this is going, and there’s no pushback from the international community, importantly the US,”
he added, “Israel has a free-hand to design, with violence, the
realities in the region… in really violent, non-inhibited ways.”
“I fear going back to a place [Nabatieh] that I don’t recognise
anymore, just a flat piece of land and I have to remember what it used
to be... where the places I spent time with the people I know or who
were part of my life - my father and my grandfather - are completely
wiped out," Hage Ali said. "It's painful to see.”