'The state is on vacation': Lebanese 'vigilantes' take refugee emergency response into their hands

Almost 500,000 people displaced by Israel’s aerial bombardment need shelter, and squatting in empty buildings is a solution

An elderly woman who fled her village in southern Lebanon takes refuge at a school being used as a shelter in Beirut. AFP

Ali is squatting with 15 other family members in an abandoned residential building. It’s one of numerous empty houses in west Beirut that he helped appropriate with the co-ordination of other neighbourhood volunteers.

Technically, breaking into and forcibly squatting in empty buildings without their owners' permission is illegal. But practically, nearly 500,000 people displaced by Israel’s extensive aerial bombardment of south Lebanon and other parts of the country need shelter.

“People were sleeping on the beach or under bridges yesterday,” Ali told The National, speaking under a pseudonym to avoid legal repercussions. “Wherever we find an apartment or building that’s empty, we open it. It’s as simple as that. We try to get mattresses, food and water to people.”

Lebanon’s government on Monday ordered numerous schools throughout the country to shelter people displaced by the intense Israeli raids. By Tuesday morning most of the schools were filled beyond capacity, with many people still seeking shelter.

The state has been able to do little more to address the refugee crisis, leaving municipalities and grassroots co-ordination groups -- sometimes backed by politically-affiliated gangs -- to grapple with the challenges. When The National asked Ali why he resorted to vigilantism rather than allowing the Lebanese government to take control, he scoffed.

“The state? It’s on vacation,” he said. "When there's a war the state disappears. When the war ends it comes back to enforce the law."

By Wednesday, displaced families in Beirut and the surrounding mountain villages still peppered roadsides as they tried to find housing. People crammed eight or 10 to a car were parked on winding mountain streets after being rejected from shelters, attempting to find alternatives.

When Israel’s assault on what it said were “Hezbollah sites” began on Monday – killing more than 558 people in two days – Ali moved his siblings and their family members to Spears Street in west Beirut, where he grew up, worked, and maintained a connection. He immediately joined an impromptu committee of volunteers helping to find housing for other displaced people.

They did so in the absence of co-ordination from the paralysed Lebanese state.

'Necessary vigilantism'

It may be a form of vigilantism, but “it’s necessary,” Ali said. He is also a member of the Amal Movement, a political party and militia that holds considerable influence in Spears and some of the surrounding neighbourhoods.

“We’re co-ordinating housing on our own, not on the orders of the party. We’re just an independent group of neighbourhood volunteers who want to help our countrymen,” he clarified. “But you could say we have the party’s cover, too.”

Like most of fragmented Lebanon’s major political parties, the Amal Movement is both embedded into the country’s crumbling governance and a feudal entity that feeds off local clientalism. Political strife, 15 years of civil war (1975-1990), and severe economic troubles have over several decades gradually rendered the state’s central power impotent while empowering the patronage of militias-turned-political parties. Currently, the state operates with no president, no functioning parliament and only a caretaker government at the helm.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah – the most powerful of Lebanon’s militias – is embroiled in a major war with Israel that has sparked fears of a potential ground invasion.

Lebanon’s central power has become so eroded over time that most citizens have no expectations for it, automatically deferring to political patrons and local councils controlling their areas. Ali said he had helped “open” apartments in about 12 multi-storey buildings in Spears and the surrounding area in the three days since Israel’s assault on parts of Lebanon began.

Displaced families sheltering in the neighbourhood now rely on donations from nearby residents. When he is not helping people squat in empty apartments, Ali and the other local men co-ordinate donations of food, water, mattresses and other essentials.

His group is only one of many spontaneously formed co-ordinating committees in neighbourhoods, villages and municipalities that are sheltering people throughout Lebanon, particularly in Beirut and the surrounding mountain villages.

'We're on our own here'

In the suburb of Choueifat, to the south of Beirut, about 1,400 people are sheltering in all eight of the village’s public schools – each of them at maximum capacity.

“We only have 800 mattresses,” said the municipality’s mayor, Nidal Jourdi. The cost of 200 of the mattresses came from his own pocket, in addition to the cost of food and water for several shelters. Non-governmental organisations and other individual donors from the village were also contributing what they could.

“We still need almost a thousand of everything, from mattresses to blankets and pillows,” he stressed. “We’re getting by on food and water through donations. For now.”

Another high-level municipal employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was unsure how the municipality would be able to continue sheltering people if the violence dragged on in the southern half of the country.

“In the rest of the world, countries have crisis and disaster ministries, with real emergency planning. We have none of that in Lebanon,” he told The National. “We need state institutions to help us because this isn’t ending any time soon.”

While the country’s municipalities are technically under the mandate of the Ministry of Interior, the employee said they have essentially been left to their own devices: “We’re on our own here.”

In the nearby village of Ain Anoub on Tuesday, one of the public schools was preparing to accommodate the overflow of refugees from Choueifat and other nearby villages such as Bchamoun.

A committee made up of the school’s principal, a municipal employee, and representatives from the two rival Druze militias-turned-political parties who hold sway over the village were all hurriedly attempting to organise bedding and essentials before people's arrival.

Within minutes, around eight displaced families were on the school’s doorstep.

'Nowhere to go'

People with extra space in their homes have also welcomed relatives and strangers alike.

Seventeen relatives were staying in Em Elias’s two-bedroom home in Choueifat on Tuesday after they fled the Israeli onslaught on their southern Lebanese village, Nabatiyeh.

Em Elias immediately opened her home to her siblings and their families “even though we don’t have nearly enough rooms or mattresses”, she said. “My house is usually just enough for me, my son and my daughter.”

Two of her siblings are still trapped in their villages in south Lebanon, surrounded by bombing. The rest – along with their families – eventually made it to her house after an arduous overnight trip.

“We didn’t have time to bring anything,” her sister Zainab said. “It was all I could do to grab the kids and leave. I got here wearing mismatched slippers. We can’t stay here because it’s too much for my sister. At the same time, we have nowhere else to go.”

Back in west Beirut, Ali was still co-ordinating his neighbourhood’s response. Even during the July 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Ali said the task of sheltering the displaced fell to politically-affiliated groups and spontaneously formed co-ordinating committees. The distinction between the two is often a blur.

“Last time they [the government] slapped me with 10 breaking-and-entering charges for sheltering people wherever we could find a place for them. But where was the state? At least we were helping.”