Lebanon: Families stuck in Nabatieh watch as Israel destroys historic neighbourhoods

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. 

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.” 

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. 

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.”