ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The war between Israel and Hezbollah has displaced more than 1 million people in Lebanon. Some have relocated to other parts of the country away from the bombing in the south, while others have crossed the border into Syria. NPR's Eyder Peralta reports.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: At the Aboudieh border crossing, we see the same thing over and over, cars and buses full of people and their belongings stopped at the border. They get out in a hurry and head from one war-torn country to another. We find one woman behind the wheel of an SUV. It's her, her three daughters and their beloved pets.
She has two little lovebirds.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Hi, my name is Nara (ph).
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRD TWEETING)
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: Nara. Mustard, it is mustard.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Through interpreter) We love Nara so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRD TWEETING)
PERALTA: Oh, she's so sweet.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRD TWEETING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Through interpreter) My daughter raised them, and she's very attached to them. She said either we go together or we don't go.
PERALTA: Like everyone in this story, she didn't want to give her name because she fears retribution from the Syrian government. She fled to Syria a couple of weeks ago as Israel intensified its airstrikes in Lebanon, but she didn't find peace there.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Through interpreter) It's either you would have to stay up all night just to fill up on water - electricity comes only four hours a day. Internet is absolutely horrible. So the real war is there.
PERALTA: So she packed up her bags, her kids and the two lovebirds and drove back to Lebanon.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Through interpreter) I would rather die in my home, Lebanon. Till now, it's still viable. Syria is not.
PERALTA: But according to Syrian authorities, 83,000 Lebanese and 233,000 Syrians have entered Syria in the past few weeks. Some Lebanese, mostly Shia Muslims from the south, are driving past Syria into Iraq, where they feel safer. Both of those countries have loosened their border restrictions to allow more freedom of movement. It's a reversal of fortunes, because for more than a decade, Syrians had been fleeing to Lebanon, 1.5 million of them, as the Syrian civil war raged on.
JUAN GABRIEL WELLS: One in three people in Lebanon is a Syrian refugee.
PERALTA: That is Juan Gabriel Wells, the country director for the International Rescue Committee. He says Syrian refugees have been shunned by Lebanese society, denied legal status. And some were forced to live in tents for decades.
WELLS: So what we're very worried about is you've got people that have been displaced from their homeland - that are protected by international law, that have been now more systematically discriminated, some even persecuted - that are displaced once again.
PERALTA: What's more, the humanitarian groups responding to this new war were already stretched thin dealing with a deep economic crisis, the Beirut port explosion and now a new war that has already displaced more than 1 million people.
WELLS: Now what is being added on is beyond the capacity of every actor that is trying to do something.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE HONKING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
PERALTA: Back at the border post, a herder takes his sheep to Syria.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELLS JINGLING)
PERALTA: Most of the Syrian refugees don't talk on mic. They fear that the government in Lebanon or Syria could take action against them. But they tell us they are leaving Lebanon, not because they want to or because Syria is safe, but because they have nowhere else to go. One elderly Syrian man walking home across the border tells us he took in a Lebanese family, a woman with three children. Syria, no suffering, he said, so he wanted to help people he calls his brothers.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Through interpreter) I'm poor, and she came to us. And I told her, even if I have to sleep outside, the house is yours.
PERALTA: Eyder Peralta, NPR News, at the Aboudieh border crossing in Lebanon. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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