Once Syria’s war sent refugees pouring into Lebanon.
Now, with Israel pounding Hizbullah positions, thousands are heading for the Syrian border instead.
At Lebanon’s Al-Masnaa border crossing with Syria on Monday, thousands waited to cross.
Among the crowd were two brothers, Hassan and Hammoud, who sat despondently beside their car, piled high with their families’ belongings.
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Originally from the city of Aleppo in Syria, they have spent 13 years in Lebanon. Now, they have decided to return home.
“They’re not letting us cross – only the Lebanese,” says Hammoud, who said he had been waiting for five hours. “When we fled the war at home, they tried to stop us coming. Now there is war here, they’re not letting us leave.”
In the early hours of Monday morning, several rockets belonging to the Iranian-aligned armed group Hizbullah careened into the night sky before being eviscerated by Israeli air defences.
The group, a cornerstone of Iran’s “axis of resistance”, claimed that the attack came in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday.
In response, Israel unleashed a wave of strikes on the country, killing 31 and injuring 149, according to the Lebanese ministry of health. Senior Hizbullah members, including the group’s second-in-command, were reportedly assassinated.
This comes days after Israel and the US launched a joint attack on Iran that has set large parts of the region on edge and dragged a long list of countries into the fray.
The past few days have been defined by trepidation in Beirut: fear that the country, which emerged from its last bruising war with Israel only 15 months ago, could be pulled into yet another firestorm.
For the first three days of the war, it looked like Lebanon might escape as Hizbullah condemned the attack on Iran but refrained from announcing its involvement.
That has changed now, and this time US sources speaking to a Lebanese media outlet reportedly said Israel’s “gloves are off now”, and that the Lebanese state must classify Hizbullah as a terrorist organisation or Israel will no longer distinguish between Hizbullah and Lebanon.
The Lebanese government moved quickly to declare Hizbullah’s actions illegal, ban it and ordered the military to disarm – even though some analysts say the group is more powerful than the state itself.
Hizbullah’s last war with Israel left it decimated, so it is unclear how much military might it still wields.
This decision seemingly places the Lebanese state on a direct collision course with Hizbullah, which has the potential to rip Lebanon, a country defined by a fragile sectarian fabric, apart.
Hizbullah is perceived by many Shia Muslims in Lebanon as the primary steward of their political aspirations, and many of them would consider an attack on Hizbullah by the state to be an attack on their social and political survival.
Yet, it remains unclear if Lebanese armed forces, many of whose rank and file stem from the Shia community itself, has the capacity to take on Hizbullah and whether the fragile sectarian fabric of the military itself can withstand an internal conflict.
After all, Lebanese armed forces all but disintegrated, among growing sectarian violence, in the prelude to Lebanon’s civil war between 1975 and 1990.
Meanwhile, Israeli bombs rained down on the country throughout Monday, forcing thousands to flee their homes in southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Dahiyeh, where Hizbullah’s presence is most strongly felt.
Lebanon has little infrastructure to deal with mass displacement like this and, as happened in the opening hours of the 2024 war, families of displaced people have been taking shelter in Beirut’s schools, parks and pavements.
Ali was fortunate enough to find refuge at his sister’s home in Beirut. He fled the town of Ghaziyeh in Lebanon’s south in the middle of the night. This is his second time displaced in a little over a year.
“It’s just like last time,” he said. “Our lives are so frustrating.”
Yet, his new refuge may only offer little protection.
In the last war, Israel struck just 100 metres from his sister’s home.
He has no idea of when he might be able to go home, and with both Iran and Hizbullah embroiled in a seemingly existential fight, there seems little chance of this war ending soon.
