A New War Reminds Lebanese of a Past They’d Rather Forget

My friends in the United States and Europe barely picked up on the news. I get it. There’s so much war in the world right now.

Yet the April 5 Israeli airstrike in Lebanon jolted me to attention – and I know it was the same for many others who have spent much of their lives in the country. Israeli planes sent two U.S.-made precision-guided bombs plummeting into a house in Ain Saadeh, a mainly Christian area to the east of Beirut. Among the three people killed were Pierre Moawad, an official in the Lebanese Forces political party, and his wife Flavia.

Why are these details important? Because Lebanese Forces is a Christian party that has made anti-Hezbollah rhetoric one of its main themes. Suddenly, it seemed, even areas far removed from the Hezbollah heartland could become targets in Israel’s war against its enemies. An Israeli military spokesman later said that Moawad wasn’t the target of the attack, and promised an investigation, but that somehow didn’t make anyone feel better. (Subsequent reporting suggests that the Israelis were trying to hit a specific individual linked with Hezbollah – not much consolation, under the circumstances.)

Until this attack, it was possible for many non-Shiite Lebanese to feel that the conflict was contained, largely restricted to the south and known Hezbollah strongholds. But Ain Saadeh is geographically and politically distant from those frontlines.

For those reasons, the attack reignited a deeply sensitive question in Lebanon: the relationship with “the other.”

“We don’t want them living among us.” It’s a phrase that resonates with anyone who has lived through the worst periods of Lebanese history. I’m one of them. My own family was nearly torn apart by the conflict that emerged from just the same sort of divides.

Just days before the airstrike, as I was scrolling through Instagram, I noticed a video of a Lebanese man in Hazmieh – another predominantly Christian area near Beirut – speaking about families displaced from the south and Beirut’s southern suburbs. “We feel for them,” he said, “but we don’t want them living among us. There is no safety where they go.” That was a reference to the risk that Israel could target them if Hezbollah members were present.

“We don’t want them living among us.” It’s a phrase that resonates with anyone who has lived through the worst periods of Lebanese history. I’m one of them. My own family was nearly torn apart by the conflict that emerged from just the same sort of divides.

The roots of Lebanon’s modern instability lie in the 1932 census conducted under the French Mandate, which recorded a narrow 6-to-5 Christian majority. Although hotly debated, this census became the rigid foundation of the “National Pact” – an unwritten power-sharing agreement. It allocated the presidency to Maronite Christians, the prime ministership to Sunni Muslims, and the speakership to Shia Muslims. As Lebanon’s population changed over the following decades, however, this sectarian quota system remained frozen, creating a volatile disconnect between the law and the demographic reality. (Short version: Over the past century, the Muslim population has been growing much faster than others. Today only one-third of the country is Christian – substantially less than it was in the 1930s.)

This internal tension reached a breaking point with the 1969 Cairo Agreement, often cited as the “original sin” of the Lebanese state. By surrendering national sovereignty and granting the Palestine Liberation Organization the right to launch military operations from Lebanese soil, the secret deal established “Fatahland” – a state within a state where foreign interests superseded domestic law.

This autonomy acted as a violent catalyst: Maronite Christian elites saw the PLO as an existential threat to their historical hegemony, while Lebanese leftists embraced them as a strategic hammer to dismantle the rigid 1932 status quo. The agreement established an enduring and dangerous paradigm – the concept of a “resistance” that takes precedence over the central state. It’s a notion that continues to haunt Lebanon’s political landscape today.

A critical moment occurred on April 13, 1975, in the Beirut neighborhood of Ain el-Remmaneh. That morning, an assassination attempt on Phalangist leader Pierre Gemayel during a church baptism killed several of his bodyguards. Hours later, Phalangist militiamen retaliated by firing upon a bus carrying Palestinians, killing roughly 26 passengers.

This infamous massacre added accelerant to the sectarian and political tensions that had been building since the birth of the National Pact, spiraling into a full-scale civil war. Barricades split Beirut into a Christian East and a Muslim West, signaling the start of a “war of everyone against everyone.” For me, it was the moment displacement became a defining reality.

I was only six years old when my family fled our home in a desperate bid for survival. We endured constant shelling, the smell of gunpowder always in the air. My father was a soldier in the Lebanese Army, a man who believed in the state and the rule of law even as they collapsed around him. In the end his belief in order yielded to the necessity of survival. He made the desperate choice to settle us in an upscale neighborhood called Ramlet El Baida, in a seventh-floor apartment within a building owned by the Lebanese University.

We entered that home without permission, and for years, I believed it was truly ours. It took me a long time to understand that we were merely refugees in our own country. We would go on to live through the war’s most brutal chapters: the 1983 Mountain War in the Shuf, the War of the Camps, the “War of the Brothers” between Amal and Hezbollah, and the War of Elimination between Michel Aoun’s Lebanese Army and the Lebanese Forces. The fractures between groups reached deep. Our family, like so many others, would come to bear the scars.

The civil war ended in 1990, but its consequences endured. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people lived in homes and camps they thought would be temporary – yet many never left. The wounds the war inflicted on Lebanon’s fragile polity remained open.

Many of the warlords became political leaders, entrenching sectarian division within Lebanon’s political system. Meanwhile, Hezbollah began building a state within a state after it was officially recognized in Lebanon as “the resistance.”

Suspicion returned. People began to hesitate before renting an apartment to the displaced.  The language of fear came back: “us” and “them,” “among us” and “among them,” “our areas” and “their areas.” It all took me back to the civil war—and to “our” house in Ramlet El Baida.

Over time, Hezbollah grew – and the state shrank. So did the space for coexistence among Lebanese, many of whom came to see the group’s weapons and political direction as an existential threat.

These fears intensified in 2023, when Hezbollah launched what it called a “support front for Gaza,” once again turning Lebanon into a proxy battlefield for powers located outside the country’s borders. Politically, the group’s opponents demanded its disarmament, arguing that it had dragged the nation into war in defense of Iran.

But what mattered most were the consequences for ordinary people. Hundreds of thousands were displaced, just as they had been during the civil war.

As some Hezbollah members continued to reside in civilian buildings, fear grew among residents that their homes could become targets – just as happened in Ain Saadeh. Suspicion returned. People began to hesitate before renting an apartment to the displaced.  The language of fear came back: “us” and “them,” “among us” and “among them,” “our areas” and “their areas.” It all took me back to the civil war—and to “our” house in Ramlet El Baida.

During the 1970s and 80s, millions of Lebanese were victims of a war imposed on them, one that fed on their mutual suspicions. Today, millions of Lebanese are once again trapped in wars they didn’t choose – each one feeding on the fears and suspicions of the last.

The protests now unfolding in Beirut are not just about rejecting negotiations with Israel. They are about something more fundamental: who controls the country’s decisions on war and peace. Today, as the government moves forward with talks and the streets push back, Lebanon is once again caught between two realities – a state trying to assert itself, and a parallel power determined to shape the outcome.

The question today is no longer whether Lebanon can avoid another conflict, but whether it can finally break the cycle – and find a way to transcend it.