Nearly 10 months of cross-border violence have left some 558 people dead in Lebanon.
Beirut:
Batoul and her family have scrambled to secure housing outside the southern suburbs of Beirut, where an Israeli attack last week killed a senior Hezbollah commander, but rising demand has sent prices soaring.
Many in the southern suburbs – a packed residential area known as Dahiyeh that is also a Hezbollah bastion – have tried to leave, fearing an outright war between the Iran-backed group and Israel in the wake of its commander’s killing .
“We are with the resistance (Hezbollah) to the death,” said Batoul, a 29-year-old journalist who declined to give her surname because the matter is sensitive.
“But it is normal to be afraid… and to seek a safe haven,” she told AFP.
Iran and its regional allies have vowed revenge for the assassination blamed on Israel of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last week, just hours after an Israeli strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed Hezbollah’s top military commander Fuad Shukr .
Hezbollah has exchanged fire with Israeli forces almost daily in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s attack on Israel on October 7 sparked the war in Gaza.
Fears of an all-out war have increased following the twin killings, with foreign airlines suspending flights to Beirut and countries urging their nationals to leave.
Last week’s attack in Beirut also killed an Iranian adviser and five civilians: three women and two children.
“Anyone who says he wants to stay in Dahiyeh while it is being bombed is lying to himself,” Batoul said.
‘No choice’
On Tuesday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said his Shiite Muslim movement and Iran are “obligated to respond” to Israel “regardless of the consequences.”
Batoul said she had tried in vain to rent in “safe areas” – not affiliated with Hezbollah – outside Beirut, but the landlords charged “exorbitant prices”.
She said a landlord suddenly gave notice even after she agreed to pay six months’ rent in advance for a condo in the mountain town of Sawfar.
A 55-year-old teacher and Hezbollah supporter, who requested anonymity because the matter is sensitive, said she was lucky to find an apartment about 15 kilometers outside Beirut.
But it came with a price tag of $1,500 a month, in a country ravaged by more than four years of economic crisis.
The teacher, also a resident of Dahiyeh, said price hikes were rampant, noting that another apartment was listed online for $1,500 a month “but when we arrived they asked for $2,000.”
“They know we have no choice. If there is war, people will pay any amount of money to be safe,” she said.
But “many people will stay in Dahiyeh because they cannot pay the rent,” she added.
Riyad Bou Fakhreddine, a real estate agent who rents houses in the Mount Lebanon area near Beirut, said the apartments were sold “within half an hour to an hour after they were listed.”
Some landlords have asked him to increase apartments that normally cost about $500 a month to as much as $2,000, he said.
He said he refused.
“I tell them that I am not a crisis profiteer. “I don’t want to take advantage of people’s fears,” he said.
‘Polarization’
Nearly 10 months of cross-border violence have killed some 558 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters, but also at least 116 civilians, according to an AFP count.
On the Israeli side, including on the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 25 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.
Ali, who rents serviced apartments in central Beirut, said his phone “had not stopped ringing” ahead of Nasrallah’s speech.
“I booked 10 apartments in two days,” he said.
“A lot of people came in and booked on the spot… Or called me and were here within an hour,” said the 32-year-old, who asked to be identified only by his first name.
In 2006, Hezbollah fought a devastating war with Israel, whose air force bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs every night for a month, razing hundreds of apartment buildings.
At the time, many people across Lebanon’s sectarian divides expressed support for Hezbollah and their solidarity with the Shia Muslim community, many of whom lost their homes and livelihoods.
But this time, Dahiyeh resident Batoul said solidarity was lacking and politicians were divided after Hezbollah unilaterally decided to attack Israeli positions on October 8.
In 2006, “there wasn’t such polarization,” she said.
Landlords and others who take advantage of the high demand for housing are now simply driven by greed, Batoul said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)