Essay , | 03/24/2026 : Lebanon: Solidarity in Times of War

For more than a week now, Lebanon has once again been in a state of emergency. On Monday, 2 March, at around 1:30 a.m., Hezbollah forces in Lebanon fired six rockets toward Israel. Scarcely an hour later, Beirut was rocked by explosions: Israel’s retaliatory strike jolted nearly everyone in the city from their sleep, signalling a new phase of war with the neighbouring country. The following morning, neighbourhood initiatives, organizations, and groups of friends immediately returned to the work that they had put aside with relief when the ceasefire was declared in November 2024. Exhausted, and with limited resources, hundreds of people in various initiatives are trying to ensure that the many displaced by the fighting are provided with basic necessities, a responsibility that the government is failing to fulfil. 

Weary, but Still Showing Up

Since the beginning of the war, a flurry of appeals for donations has spread via social media, aiming to mobilize funds for a variety of projects. The primary focus is on organizing the direct supply of aid to the very large number of people displaced by the conflict. Even before dawn on Monday, the first day of the war, thousands began fleeing north. Long traffic jams formed along the highway connecting the southern part of the country with the capital. On the first day of the war, the Lebanese government immediately opened numerous schools as shelters — especially ones situated in neighbourhoods with either multi-faith or predominantly Muslim populations. Meanwhile, as during the last war, few schools in the nightlife and tourism precincts of the city’s Achrafieh district were opened.

In the heart of this predominantly Christian neighbourhood, known as a stronghold of the right-wing party Lebanese Forces, there is a large community kitchen operating under the name of Nation Station. Under normal circumstances it provides daily meals to older inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Founded by a group of friends in reaction to the 2020 port explosion and already a key location for the coordination of scores of volunteers during the last war, on the first day of renewed fighting this community organization also immediately began to reorient its programme — from its regular operations to the provision of support to displaced people.

The aid is made possible by the work of dozens of volunteers, who have been forced to put their lives abruptly on hold.

Kitchens can often be stressful places to work. At Nation Station, however, the stress can hardly be separated from the wartime situation. The few permanent staff members work with dozens of volunteers to cook more than 1,000 meals a day for emergency shelters and the displaced, many of whom are seeking refuge in tents or living on the street. Given the mammoth task, there’s barely time for a quick chat or a check of the news. With practised skill, but also exhausted from the previous war, crew members chop, stir, and pack so that the thousand meals can be delivered to various locations in the capital. Many of the volunteers at Nation Station come from abroad and, unlike most other foreigners, have made the decision to stay. In Achrafieh, they generally still feel safe. Many of the emergency shelters, meanwhile, are located closer to Beirut’s southern suburbs (Dahieh), and some of them at their edge.

On the fourth day of the war, the Israeli army told the inhabitants of these suburbs in the capital’s south to evacuate. In the following days, the Lebanese authorities reported that 830,000 people had been displaced, 1,933 injured, and 773 killed. Some of the shelters are located within the neighbourhoods that were ordered to evacuate. The volunteers at Nation Station are aware of this danger when they get in their cars to deliver meals to the shelters. Everyone here needs courage. The Israeli military also regularly bombs without warning outside the evacuation zone, including recently at Beirut’s public beach with its seaside promenade. The strike left 11 dead and injured 30. Many displaced people who had been unable to find room in the emergency shelters had set up their tents here or slept out in the open — with a feeling of relative safety.

War Again

It is barely a year since the last war between Israel and Lebanon. The 27 November 2024 ceasefire agreement is officially defunct now, but in fact Israel’s attacks never stopped. During the period of the “ceasefire”, the Israeli military staged 14,500 airstrikes in Lebanon and occupied five strategic positions in the country’s south. The daily strikes led to a systematic fragmenting of the south. Despite the Lebanese government’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah south of the Litani River, and claims by Beirut that it had actually done so, the Shiite militia was able to fire hundreds of rockets toward Israel. Due to the war, the Lebanese army withdrew completely from the south, with the government barring Hezbollah from undertaking any military activity and affirming its readiness to enter into indirect talks aimed at normalizing relations between the two countries. The Israeli government rejected the offer of talks, however.

Several of the initiatives and friendship groups that have established themselves independently of international aid funding — slashed over the past year in any case — have done so primarily out of mistrust and worries about corruption.

Under these conditions, popular cafés and restaurants have also been working alongside charities to cook meals for the many displaced people in Beirut’s neighbourhoods and streets. In the city’s west, one café opened its kitchen to displaced women who volunteered to cook for the people sheltering in the neighbourhood. Practical solidarity with others during the war is being enacted by numerous small friendship circles and private individuals. In the absence of government money, this assistance has been financed by private donations and individual appeals for donations across the diaspora. And it has been made possible by the work of dozens of volunteers who have been forced to put their lives abruptly on hold. Volunteers traverse the streets of Beirut in vehicles packed to the roof with mattresses, blankets, and pillows, distributing bedding to people in need. Others rustle up refrigerators or distribute gas bottles, or whatever else the 640 or so official emergency shelters might lack.

Several of the initiatives and friendship groups that have established themselves independently of international aid funding — slashed over the past year in any case — have done so primarily out of mistrust and worries about corruption. Direct aid is understood as a means to avoid high personnel costs and ensure that the money gets to where it is most needed. In the wake of the economic crisis, the financial policies of the dominant class have impoverished the country’s middle class, while Lebanese banks and many of those who have profiteered off the collapse continue to enjoy extreme affluence. While imperial interventions and fantasies of geopolitical domination have thrown the region into a deadly crisis, it seems absolutely necessary — alongside direct aid — to think through and also organize forms of collective defence against a murderous status quo. The movements and groups active in this moment are not instrumentalizing the relationship between practical solidarity and the crisis. Even if some of them espouse a clear political position, at a time of life-threatening crisis their assistance is not being provided on a conditional basis. After all, support for and participation in this political project is best organized through compelling positions and practices, not via relationships of dependence.

At Beit Aam, a community centre in Beirut’s Badaro neighbourhood, there had recently been discussion of running a campaign focused on social issues in the lead-up to the Lebanese parliamentary election, scheduled for May. Now, because of the war, the elections have been postponed for two years, and the large-scale evacuation order covering the southern suburbs has forced Beit Aam to temporarily close. Currently it is open again, serving as a hub for volunteers and the distribution of aid.

Solidarity Riven by Conflict

Outside a mosque to the north of Beirut, the car park is noticeably fuller than usual. It’s bustling with activity, even late into the evening. The congregation here are also organizing practical solidarity with those fleeing the south, from Baalbek and Dahieh. They find apartments for people, distribute food packages to last several days, and register people for the shelters that are closest. When a large water tanker from a well-known NGO drives into the mosque’s courtyard, it is escorted by around ten staff members. The tanker is only carrying a light load, and delivers around 200 litres of water. The scene typifies the extent of the mistrust of institutions like these.

And trust is also limited within the self-organized groups supporting the displaced. A Syrian dentist, for whom Beirut is a second home, reports that during the last war he helped out at an emergency shelter. Just a few hours and multiple hostile encounters later, he left the shelter. The mistrust displayed — both by those sheltering and others volunteering — toward a Syrian man, who could have gone elsewhere once the war broke out, was simply too great. These sorts of political dividing lines and narratives about religious groups lead to conflicts in the various contexts in which support is being organized.

People are also denied “secure” accommodation at the official shelters — and not primarily because space is lacking, but owing to racism.

Among the Shiite population, who are Hezbollah’s strongest supporters and also tend to be hardest hit by forced displacement, frustration at the renewed war and its consequences is widespread. Within other confessional communities, mistrust of the Shiite population runs high. The narrative, laden with religious prejudice, that stigmatizes all Shiites as terrorists and thus as legitimate targets, is simply too powerful, and the fear of being targeted by Israeli attacks looms correspondingly large. Owners of buildings and apartments exploit this fear when they profit off the crisis by demanding exorbitant rental prices from displaced people looking for accommodation, or simply reject them out of hand.

People are also being denied “secure” accommodation at the official shelters — and not primarily because space is lacking, but owing to racism. Migrant domestic workers, mostly women from Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Sudan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, get systematically exploited under the kafala system. Their position becomes especially precarious under wartime conditions. Often lacking papers, they are frequently dismissed by their employers during wars or crises, only to be rejected by the official shelters. The group Migrant Workers Action works closely with these women and supports them, among other things by funding community kitchens, supplying essential items, or placing them in secure emergency shelters or apartments.

War, and What Then?

In times of absolute, violent crisis, the work being done by Migrant Workers Action, and many others who are also translating their political convictions into action, is not the least of the factors arousing hope for a different kind of life together, based on principles of solidarity. At the same time, the sometimes individualized form that practices of solidarity are taking deprives them of the potential that collective political organization could reveal in the fight against the injustices and divisions running through Lebanese society. The latter would possess the power to develop relationships of mutuality that would not merely seek to stop the gaps left by a plundered, dysfunctional state.

Even in times when, appallingly, extreme violence forms part of everyday life, moments of effective collective action emerge in which practical solidarity seems to offer opportunities to overcome isolation and frustration at the country’s political dead ends — moments in which it appears possible to organize together against violent, life-denying circumstances. It is these moments and movements that call into question customary narratives of a divided Lebanese society. At the same time, whether neighbourhood initiatives like Nation Station or the groups from the Beit Aam community centre will be able to translate these experiences into a political movement, and challenge these deadly circumstances, remains an open question.

Translated by Marc Hiatt & Samuel Langer for Gegensatz Translation Collective.