ANNAYA, Lebanon — When Hezbollah announced that Hassan Nasrallah, its longtime leader, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, the conversation among many of the group’s Shiite Muslim followers was one of defiance.
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But others in Lebanon say this is not their war. “How does anyone benefit from what is happening?” said Rana Khalil, 45, owner of a clothing store in Beirut, the capital. “We are the ones who are getting hurt and killed.”
Hezbollah, Iran’s allied militia, began firing rockets at Israeli positions a year ago. He said he was acting in support of Hamas, the Iran-backed Palestinian armed group that controls Gaza and was targeted after carrying out the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.
Since then, a conflict largely confined to the border region had been simmering. But in recent weeks, Israel has unleashed attacks aimed at erasing the threat that Hezbollah poses to northern Israel — killing commanders, bombing large areas of the country and mounting a ground invasion. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have fled their homes and bloodshed has reached previously calm areas.
Lebanon has 18 officially recognized religious groups in a population of only 5.4 million. Now, regardless of their opinions on Hezbollah, everyone finds themselves caught between Israel’s offensive and the militia’s decision to keep fighting.
Many people are outraged that Hezbollah is dragging Lebanon into a war that can only mean more disasters for their crisis-stricken country, already fragile after one of the world’s worst economic collapses and years of political paralysis.
In Annaya, a Maronite Christian village in the mountains north of Beirut, residents were frightened by the sound of a bomb hit in a neighboring Shiite village.
“This is between the Palestinians and the Israelis,” said Ibrahim Ibrahim, 55, a small store owner. “Why do the Lebanese have to pay the price?”
Armed with a vast arsenal, Hezbollah does not answer to any Lebanese authority. Many Lebanese in the Shiite heartland of southern Lebanon and in the Dahiya area outside Beirut still see him as their only protector in a country where they have been historically marginalized. The group has been providing them with support and services for a long time.
But for Ahmed Issa, 33, who recently fled the south for Beirut with dozens of family members, what really mattered was his confidence that Hezbollah was fighting for his homes.
“People think that in the South we just love death, war and blood,” he said. “We love life. But at the end of the day, this is the reality that is imposed on all of us.”
Khalil is also from southern Lebanon. But if the war continued, all he saw was catastrophe. “I understand the need for Hezbollah,” he said. “We are loyal to the leaders of the resistance, to Nasrallah, but we are not willing to sacrifice the lives of our children.”
Many people in Beirut and in Christian-dominated towns blamed both sides.
“They both had a chance to stop him and they didn’t,” said Marina Matta, 15, who was working at a cafe in Annaya while waiting for the school year to start. It has been delayed by the war.
For many, the killings in Gaza and Lebanon have hardened attitudes against Israel.
“I am with anyone who fights against Israel,” said Yasser Tabbara, owner of a small grocery store in Tarek al-Jdideh, a Sunni neighborhood of Beirut.
Outside a shelter for displaced people, Mohamed al-Atrash, 53, who evacuated his home in the south days before Nasrallah was killed, said that since Hezbollah members’ pagers and walkie-talkies exploded, killing and maiming thousands of Lebanese, people from diverse backgrounds had donated blood and banded together to get help.
For all their sympathy, many fear the crisis will fuel tensions between Lebanon’s sects. When Hezbollah announced Nasrallah’s death, some in Beirut burst into tears. Others celebrated.
“We haven’t learned to live with each other,” said Bassam Sawma, 61, who sells flatbread in the Christian mountain village of Mechmech.
However, even if the Lebanese make distinctions among themselves, he said, the effects of the war do not. “They say the conflict is with Hezbollah,” he said of Israel, “but they are attacking everyone.”
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