One year ago, there appeared no end in sight to Israel’s escalating military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, with constant airstrikes forcing tens of thousands of Lebanese to flee their homes.
As displaced Lebanese flooded into safe Beirut districts and southern coastal cities, their fellow citizens crossed sectarian lines and swung into action to feed and shelter them, with a community spirit well-honed by previous wars and disasters.
“As much as we can, we are doing,” Jad Hamdan, manager of the upscale Mezyan restaurant in Beirut’s central Hamra district, said at the time. Despite a wartime 70% loss in customers and limited staff, Mezyan was producing 300 meals a day, delivered by scooter to grateful families staying temporarily in nearby apartments.
Why We Wrote This
During the 14-month war between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanese people crossed sectarian lines to offer one another food and shelter. A year after a shaky ceasefire took hold, how is that community spirit enduring today?
Echoing the then-prevalent commitment among Lebanese to “stay every day” to help, Mr. Hamdan said: “Even if we close our doors, we will just keep cooking for the people.”
One year later, how are Lebanese channeling that community spirit?
From restaurants that fed the hungry, to renovated theaters and art centers that opened their doors to provide mattresses and sanctuary, the Lebanese desire to express solidarity during wartime has yielded new avenues of support and care. In some cases, it has manifested in preparation for any renewal of Israel’s onslaught against the Iran-backed Shiite militia Hezbollah, if a tenuous, yearlong ceasefire falls apart.
“Lebanese people, they have this [characteristic]: Whenever something bad will happen, everyone will come to help, whatever their religion or sect,” says Mr. Hamdan. “They have this, and have used it every [crisis] time, for 70 years.”
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His Mezyan restaurant is still recovering from the war’s costs – and current high taxes and prices, for everything from food to electricity.
“We are trying to do something. We are trying to survive,” he says. He notes how people came together during the pandemic, and how, in 2020 after the catastrophic Port of Beirut explosion, Shiite Muslims from the south came to the capital to give blood, though the blast hit Christian areas hardest.
That broader phenomena was obvious in the aftermath of the port blast, when, the Monitor reported, “As if by reflex, Lebanon’s civil society swung into action, its skills well practiced after a 15-year civil war, multiple armed conflicts, a collapsed economy, the absorption of 1.5 million Syrian refugees, and the pandemic – all crises created or made worse by chronic political dysfunction.”
Channeling the community spirit
The latest 14-month conflict kicked off when Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in October 2023, in solidarity with its ally Hamas after it attacked Israel from Gaza. Incremental exchanges of fire turned in September 2024 into a far wider Israeli offensive against Hezbollah.
All told, Lebanese officials say some 4,000 people were killed and more than 1.2 million – 20% of the population – displaced by the time a ceasefire was agreed upon in November 2024.
Mezyan no longer needs to deliver food to the displaced, and the staff – chefs had been on half-pay throughout the conflict – is back at full strength. So Mezyan is channeling its community spirit by showcasing local chefs at the restaurant, and introducing them to a wider audience.
“We are trying to help small businesses and support them,” says Mr. Hamdan. “We are finding a window of hope in this country.”
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A recent example was “Ethiopian Night” at Mezyan, where up-and-coming Lebanese-Ethiopian chef Stephanie Souaid introduced Ethiopian delicacies to a new clientele. Ms. Souaid, just 23, expects to set up her own high-end Ethiopian food truck within two weeks.
“Here [Ethiopian food] is very underrated,” says Ms. Souaid, as Ethiopian music plays in the background. Her Ethiopian mother, Mulualem, serves traditional coffee, poured from high into small cups, while the young chef serves eager Lebanese diners.
“I am stunned and excited, because I found that Lebanese people like this food, because it is full of spices and life,” she says. “I am sharing my other nationality with the world, in Lebanon.”
Further south, the coastal city of Sidon received legions of displaced Lebanese during the war – and exhibited its own solidarity. The manager of a shop selling flame-cooked shawarma wraps describes how the shop supplied 100 sandwiches each day to displaced Lebanese who were camped for two months on a nearby bus station parking lot.
His was just one restaurant among many others, as well as nongovernmental organizations, that fed the displaced.
“We have a policy in our place to help the needy,” says Mohammed al-Ali, manager of the El-Papito shop.
“I feel that these people are our families. They are Lebanese, they are displaced with no food, and it is our duty to feed them, if we can,” he says. With the war over, that community spirit continues another way, he says, with “a lot of donations to the poor.”
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Duty also called further south in the coastal city of Tyre, where Kassem Istanbouli, an actor-director who leads the nonprofit Tiro Association for Arts, ran art and theater workshops in the first months of the war for displaced children at a 1950s-era cinema renovated by Tiro.
When the Monitor first met Mr. Istanbouli in May 2024, he collected excited children in an old American school bus covered in graffiti.
“When you open the space during a conflict, it is resistance to be alive, to say, ‘We are here,’ to say, ‘We need to complete life’ – to give joy to the children,” he said at the time.
But when Israeli airstrikes targeted Tyre – including one near the theater that killed 6-year-old Selena al-Smarah and her parents – Mr. Istanbouli closed the cinema and raced to finish renovations on another theater in Beirut to house the displaced.
“We learned how we can help”
Today the Tyre cinema has reopened, though dozens of mattresses remain ready – piled up in the projection area behind the balcony – in case of a resumption of war. And at the Beirut theater, there is a kitchen in the basement, and full-time electricity, internet, and hot water.
“Now it’s like a hotel,” quips Mr. Istanbouli. “We learned how we can help. Before we reacted to the situation. Now, in case something happens, we learned how to manage with the people.”
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Yet for Mr. Istanbouli, the most critical harnessing of wartime community spirit is found in the last photograph taken of Selena, at a workshop one day before her death. She holds a drawing of a flower, which she planned to complete the next day, but never did.
“We say in Arabic, ‘The land has seeds, and the seeds will grow,’” says Mr. Istanbouli, noting with evident emotion how he frequently tells Selena’s story at public events. “Selena has started to become an iconic symbol for people – of freedom, of hope.
“Imagine if we close this space in the war, we would be nothing. The difference is that, in the difficulty, in the crisis, we are here,” he says. “It’s cultural resistance for life, for humanity, for freedom, for people. It’s something beautiful.”
One result of that commitment is the example of Raafat Mhawish, a refugee who fled Syria’s civil war in 2013. Interested all his life in movies, theater, and art, he found sanctuary at the Tyre theater when the war began, then came to Beirut with Tiro and helped renovate the cinema.
Mr. Mhawish now works for Tiro, and is part of a group learning acting “because I love movies too much.”
Sitting in the foyer of the Beirut theater, surrounded by movie memorabilia, he says: “I want to help, because [Mr. Istanbouli] helped me during the war – so I stayed.”
