Like the Lebanese, Syrian refugees living in the border area, the scene of violent fighting between Hezbollah and the Israeli army, fled to safer places. Some plan to return to Syria, others want to attempt the crossing to Cyprus.
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From our correspondent in Beirut,
A woman in her fifties works around a wood stove installed in the open air in front of a small warehouse of agricultural equipment transformed into makeshift housing. Children run in all directions, like a flock of birds, uttering joyful cries in the two rooms of around forty square meters. Oum Khaled calls them to order in an authoritarian tone by stoking the fire which is starting to burn in the improvised stove.
This Syrian mother left the town of Maroun el-Ras, in the central sector of the border area in South Lebanon, about two weeks ago, which had become too exposed due to the daily clashes between Hezbollah and the Israeli army. These fighting have already left nearly 85 dead on the Lebanese side, including a dozen civilians. She settled in a village in Mount Lebanon, more than 160 kilometers from the front, in the company of her children and around twenty members of her family. “ This is the fifth time in eight years that war has driven us from our homes », sighs fatally this refugee from the province of Hama, in central Syria.
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Lebanon hosts more than 830,000 Syrians registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The Lebanese authorities, however, estimate the number of Syrians at more than two million, or a third of the population, given that Beirut asked the UN in 2015 to stop registering displaced people from Syria and that the flow of Illegal immigrants have never dried up. “ We finished picking the olives as best we could, then we left almost at the same time as most of the Lebanese inhabitants, explains Oum Khaled. We are all day laborers anyway. There is no more work either on the construction sites or in the fields “.
“ In Syria, there is no work, but it is safer »
More than 30,000 Lebanese residents of towns near the border have left their homes since the intensification of fighting between Hezbollah and the Israeli army. Many were housed in towns and villages further from the front, others settled with relatives in Beirut or other regions of Lebanon.
However, the number of Syrians who have fled is not precisely known. 500 people were settled in the town of Tyre, 25 km from the border. An Interior Ministry source interviewed by RFI estimates the number of displaced Syrians who have left border villages for other regions of the country at 15,000. The majority of them went to relatives in the eastern Bekaa plain.
Mohsen is one of them. This tiler in his forties does not hide his concern in the event of the war spreading to the whole of Lebanon. “ We came to Lebanon in 2018 for economic reasons, he said. Here, we could still work and send money to our family members who remained behind. In Syria, there is nothing to do “. However, this “economic refugee” does not rule out the option of returning to his native village of Homs if war breaks out in Lebanon. “ It will be harder for us to work, yes, but at least we will be safe. If Israel unleashes itself on Lebanon as it does in Gaza, there will be no safe places left in the country », worries Mohsen.
Rumors fuel anti-Syrian psychosis
His cousin Taleb did not wait for the conflict to spread to send his wife and four children back to Syria. “ The hostility of part of the population towards the Syrians has increased since the start of the war, some view us with suspicion “, he said. This professional blacksmith refers to rumors spread on social networks in the form of texts or sound recordings claiming that Syrian refugees were recruited by Israeli intelligence services to provide coordinates of Hezbollah positions in the mountains facing the border. Reports of the arrest of several Syrian nationals suspected of collaboration with Israel have not been confirmed by the Lebanese security services or by Hezbollah.
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Local elected officials and public figures denounced the climate of anti-Syrian psychosis and warned against attempts to provoke unrest between the Lebanese population and the refugee communities present in almost every city and village in Lebanon. Khalil, who manages an olive press on behalf of a Lebanese landowner in a village in southern Lebanon, also complains about this climate of suspicion. “ I have been in Lebanon for more than 15 years, that is to say before the Syrian war, but I no longer feel comfortable. With the money I have saved, I will try with my family to go to Europe », he announces.
The dream of crossing to Cyprus continues to attract, perhaps more than before, some of the Syrians present in Lebanon. On November 10, the Lebanese navy was able to rescue 25 illegal migrants whose boat broke down off the coast of North Lebanon. And despite the risks of war, illegal entry attempts by Syrian nationals into Lebanon have not decreased. The Lebanese army announced that it had prevented some 600 Syrians from crossing the border illegally on November 8.