Juan Cole
Informed Comment / September 25, 2024
Ann Arbor – UNICEF Deputy Representative to Lebanon Ettie Higgins reported from Lebanon on the effects of Monday’s massive attack by Israeli war planes on southern and eastern Lebanon.
She said that the airstrikes had left 35 children dead from violence, more than in the previous 11 months combined. (Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in low-intensity tit for tat strikes since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023).
She added that the 1,645 Lebanese wounded on Monday included women and children.
Higgins added, ““Any further escalation in this conflict would be catastrophic for all children in Lebanon, but especially families from villages and towns in the south and the Beqaa, in Eastern Lebanon, who have been forced to leave their homes. These newly displaced add to the 112,000 people who have been displaced since October.”
Higgins continued, “87 new shelters are accommodating the increasing number of displaced people in the South, Beirut, Mount Lebanon, Baalbek – Hermel, Beqaa and the North governorates.”
CNN reports, “Israel said it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, but video shows destruction of residential areas and the large death toll reflects the scale and intensity of the strikes. The nearly 500 killed on Monday alone is roughly half the number of Lebanese killed throughout the entire 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.”
One of Israel’s justifications for its current attack is that tens of thousands of Israelis have been displaced from their homes in the north. It is seldom noted that even before Monday 112,000 Lebanese had been displaced from southern Lebanon by Israeli air strikes. Of the cross-border Israeli-Lebanon attacks since October 7, 80% have been launched by Israel.
Higgins lamented that UNICEF would have to scramble to provide Lebanese children with food, and that the country had just had its worst day in 18 years.
Lebanon is a country of some 5.8 million residents, though a good million and a half are refugees from Syria and elsewhere. It has seen its economy contract every year for the last 7 years, with the gross domestic product falling dramatically from $50 billion a year to only $20 billion a year.
The country was wracked by anti-corruption protests in 2019. In 2020, the Beirut port exploded because of criminal lack of oversight by port authorities. COVID struck the same year, deeply harming tourism and remittances, two of the country’s sources of income. Then the head of the country’s national bank stands accused of having embezzled much of the country’s reserves. The Lebanese pound has lost 90% of its value. The percentage of the population below the UN poverty line increased from 12% in 2012 to 44% in 2022. There has been intermittent exchange of fire between Israel and the Hezbollah party-militia in Lebanon since October 7.
The U.N. has characterized the Lebanese economic crisis as one of the worst in the world. The Economist estimates that the current Israel-Hezbollah will cause the economy to contract between 10% and 25% this year, depending on how long the Israeli campaign continues. If 44% of the Lebanese were already in poverty, an economic crash of that magnitude would likely make half the country poverty-stricken.
Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:
Al Jazeera English: “Israel and Hezbollah trade intense fire as thousands flee south Lebanon”
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment; he is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan and the author of, among others, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
