Meryam Elkadri constantly monitors the breaking news from Lebanon, worried for her home, but mostly about her parents, located just a few metres away from where bombs have landed.
Even with explosions near their home, her family has insisted on staying in the heart of the conflict.
“‘If it’s our time to go,then it’s our time to go. We’re not leaving because we feel safe,’” Elkadri recalls her parents saying.
“But when I see the news, I think, ‘Holy shit, you’re going to get bulldozed!’”
This past summer, Elkadri was skeptical when her mother, father, brother and teenage nieces and nephews relocated to their home in Al Wardaniyeh — located 35 minutes south of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, and three hours away from the Israeli border.
Three bombs launched from neighbouring Israeli troops have since struck their village. It’s something Elkadri says hasn’t happened since the 1980s.
“You can hear the bombings and the breaking of the sound barriers. Essentially every day they wake up looking at the sky,” she says.
While witnessing the destruction of Al Wardaniyeh, Elkadri predicts that, “morally and culturally, the Lebanese people are going to feel that missing piece of their heritage, of who they are, what they take pride in.”
“But somehow these people have no worries. They’ve been displaced from their homes. They don’t know if their home has been hit or not, if people that stayed behind are sacrificing themselves,” she says.
Opening their home to welcome up to 20 refugees at a time, Elkadri’s parents recall seeing a temporary influx of over 7,000 refugees from neighbouring villages and countries, many of whom show up with “their hookah in hand and only the clothes on their back.”
“I spoke to my parents and they were saying the village seems very eerily quiet because the refugees — even people who do live in the village itself — have fled,” she says. “They’re afraid there might be a second strike where they won’t have enough warning or time to get to safety if need be.”
Before bombing hospitals, schools, apartment buildings and other populated locations, Israeli troops typically give just hours’ notice to evacuate, “but a lot of the times they strike before that time limit is over.”
“Because my parents constantly hear Israeli aircraft breaking the sound barrier, it’s so normalized for them at this point. Everyone in Palestine and the surrounding areas wake up not knowing if they’ll live or die that day,” Elkadri says.
Tensions continue to escalate
Though political tension between Palestine and Israel has existed for decades, the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack intensified the situation.
At a UN General Assembly meeting this past October, several delegates denounced the Israeli military response, with one labelling it a “settler colonial genocidal assault against the Palestinian people.”
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, Israeli bombings in areas densely populated with civilians, like the Gaza Strip and Beirut, have resulted in over 42,000 deaths — enough people to fill the Rogers Centre baseball stadium in Toronto. Their tally grows by thousands each day.
Since September, Israel has also conducted attacks in southern Lebabon, directed at the militant group, Hezbollah. The BBC reports that the U.S. has presented a cease-fire deal which is being considered by the Lebanese government.
In the meantime, commercial flights between Middle Eastern countries were one of the only guaranteed ways for Elkadri’s parents and others in danger to escape.
“It was unpredictable and risky for my parents to take any route to the airport because they didn’t know when it was going to get hit, so it was safer for them to stay put,” Elkadri adds.
Elkadri’s brother, sister in-law, nieces and nephews fled to Dubai — a trip four hours away by plane from Beirut.
Ticket prices have climbed to over $4,000 per person, and cancellations are often abrupt with little to no notice. Elkadri managed to secure two non-refundable commercial flight tickets to Dubai, only telling her parents after she purchased them.
“My dad wasn’t too happy,” Elkadri says. “Thankfully I had the resources to get them each a ticket, but it’s not the same story for everyone. For my parents to be with all their family every day, then leaving, even having the option to leave, I think they feel guilty.”
Reluctantly, her parents agreed to reunite with their family in Dubai. The plan is to stay there until tensions de-escalate in Lebanon.
“It comes down to the fact that they really have nothing to lose. Because they suffered so much, this little extra stretch of time is more so a little hurdle in their life, rather than a big obstacle,” she says.
Elkadri has since taken to social media to create awareness and change — spreading pictures she has received from family members experiencing the attacks firsthand — a practice of activism she urges everyone to participate in.
“Being on social media is part of everybody’s daily life,” she says. “Spreading what the Western media is not showing or trying to conceal through social media censorship creates awareness.”
“At the end of the day, Lebanese people love life. We will put a picture of destruction and then right beside it, put a picture of people having a party and rebuilding, and saying, ‘We’re going to be there again.’”