SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Israel's killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has triggered an outpouring of grief and rage in many parts of Lebanon. But there are also people in the country who believe that Hezbollah may now drag Lebanon back to the days of invasion and division. NPR's Ruth Sherlock brings us this report about people caught in a fast-expanding war, not of their own making.
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: Three Israeli airstrikes seconds apart.
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSIONS)
SHERLOCK: They collapse whole tower blocks in a densely built-up area. Wissam Tarif sends me this video. His home is in the picturesque Beqaa Valley in the country's east.
WISSAM TARIF: Now I'm standing, and I still see the smoke behind the lake, right?
SHERLOCK: He has a panoramic view and says the Israeli airstrikes are happening all around him.
TARIF: The towns that are bombarded are Marjeyoun, Chouf, Nabatieth, Tyre (ph).
SHERLOCK: Tarif says thousands have come to his village in search of shelter.
TARIF: People are just opening their homes, receiving their neighbors, receiving people that - I have people in my house that I don't know, but they are women and the children. So we receive them. We share our food. We share our resources.
SHERLOCK: As Israel began its air campaign in Lebanon, Tarif said, in conversations at night among the refugees in his home, there was anger at Israel, yes, but also, even among some Hezbollah supporters, at Hezbollah for storing weapons in civilian areas.
TARIF: People are just, like, feeling very much defeated, I think, and cheated in many ways, and scared.
SHERLOCK: Cheated out of the chance to live safely by these Israeli attacks, cheated by Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon into war and, says Lebanese politician Najat Aoun Saliba, cheated by the corruption of Lebanon's leaders and their failure to prevent another disaster.
NAJAT AOUN SALIBA: This is the problem. They let Hezbollah strive in the south, and they managed to continue having their business as usual, not caring about the people, not caring about the benefit of the country.
SHERLOCK: Hezbollah attacked Israel in 2006, dragging Lebanon into a devastating war. And more recently, the corruption and the squandering of state funds by Lebanon's top politicians - some of them former warlords - helped trigger in Lebanon one of the world's worst economic crises. It gutted the middle class and reduced the Lebanese army to relying on foreign aid to even feed its soldiers. Saliba condemns Israel's invasion and also warns this conflict could reopen sectarian fault lines from the civil war that tore the country apart in the 1980s.
SALIBA: Absolutely. Absolutely.
SHERLOCK: Hezbollah has its heartland of support among Shia communities.
SALIBA: And now they are forced to leave their homes. They are forced to leave the group and disperse all over Lebanon.
SHERLOCK: So there's potential for friction as this population is forced to mix with people from other religious and political groups. For now, most Lebanese are opening their homes to refugees regardless of their background.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: We don't want to be part of this conflict.
SHERLOCK: This man, who asks not to be named for his safety, says the vast majority of Lebanese just want to do their jobs, raise their kids and enjoy their grandchildren.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: However, these dreams are not within our control. The government take one half, while Hezbollah take the other. Corrupt government has took our money, and Hezbollah has restricted our freedom.
SHERLOCK: And he says what Israel is doing in Gaza, where almost 42,000 people have been killed in the war there against Hamas, and now in Lebanon is brutal. And it's the civilians dragged into a war they don't want that suffer the most.
Ruth Sherlock, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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