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Challenges confront Lebanon on the long road to reconstruction

“The Gulf countries are waiting to see what will happen next, how the new government will run the country, and if it will fall into the hands of Hezbollah.”

The site of an Israeli airstrike on a building in the southern coastal city of Tyre. Hanna Davis/TNH
The site of an Israeli airstrike on a building in the southern coastal city of Tyre.

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Over the past week, Lebanon gained both a new president and prime minister-designate, raising hopes for a recovery from years of economic collapse and reconstruction after the 14-month war between Israel and Hezbollah that ended in a ceasefire late last November.

On 14 January, in his first speech since being asked to form a government, prime minister-designate Nawaf Salam pledged to ”rescue, reform, and rebuild” his country. But with one early estimate putting the impact of physical damage and economic losses from the conflict at $8.5 billion, and donors either strapped for cash or unwilling to give, finding that much money will be no easy feat.

The need to rebuild is stark in Nabatieh’s historic marketplace, where business owners were hauling piles of dusty debris and tattered merchandise out of shops in the south Lebanon city when The New Humanitarian visited in mid-December.

Walaa Karamboush, 33, surveyed a pile of massive rubble in the market, which had been a shop called “V-Real Shoes and Bags”. Before Israel’s bombs – which it said were targeted at Hezbollah but also hit residential areas and civilian infrastructure – there had been rows of shoes and colourful handbags, carefully displayed behind large glass windows.

For nearly six years, Karamboush was one of the shop’s 10 employees. “Our lives were there, my friends were there. I felt like it was my second home,” she said. But the shop was hit while she was displaced in Beirut, and without an income the single mother of four can no longer afford the rent on her flat in her nearby village of Zawtar.

Karamboush is staying with her sister for now, but there’s no telling when – or if – she’ll have a job or her own place again. Since the ceasefire, an estimated 900,000 people like her, who fled the fighting and Israeli bombardment, have returned to their home cities and villages. 

While many celebrated their initial ability to go back to the battered south after so long, they are now facing the harsh reality of what life after the war really looks like, with little help to deal with their losses.

Walaa Karamboush, 33, is pictured wearing a black hoodie. She points to a pile of rubble in Nabatieh's market, which once was 'V-Real Shoes and Bags', where she worked for six years.
Hanna Davis/TNH
Walaa Karamboush, 33, points to where the shop she worked at for six years once stood, in Nabatieh’s historic market.

Political promises

Although it is early days, both the government and Hezbollah – a political and militant group that was weakened by the war but still commands huge support in some parts of the country – have already announced some plans to help the estimated 166,000 people who lost their jobs, and those who lived in the 100,000 homes that were either partially damaged or fully destroyed. Some 115,000 people are still displaced across the country.

Early in December, Lebanon’s cabinet released the equivalent of $7.9 million to help people in the south, although this money is likely for immediate needs like shelter, food, and healthcare, as opposed to longer-term reconstruction.

Hezbollah says it has already given over $50 million in cash to families affected by the war, and party leader Naim Qassem said last month it planned to distribute more than $77 million in total; between $300 and $400 per person who registered for assistance.

In addition, Qassem said Hezbollah would be providing families whose homes were destroyed with one-time payments of $8,000, plus between $4,000 and $6,000 for rent. This money, he said, would mostly come from Hezbollah’s close ally, Iran.

Hezbollah’s development arm, Jihad al-Bina, has been sending out engineers and other experts to assess the damage and compensation claims. 

But some residents of the south – many of whom cannot return to border villages that were completely destroyed or too dangerous to go back to – say this help is not enough and too slow. On 30 December, the owners of about 5,000 businesses in Nabatieh organised a sit-in to protest the slow compensation from Hezbollah and the Lebanese government’s South Lebanon Council, which is tasked with organising aid for the south. The following week saw more protests in Nabatieh.

‘Arab countries have stepped away’

While people are frustrated, they may still have a long wait ahead of them, given the scale of the damage as well as new geopolitical realities. 

In 2006, Israel and Hezbollah fought a 34-day war that took a massive toll on civilian infrastructure and housing in parts of Lebanon. This time, Israel bombed further into Lebanon and for a much longer period, and the scale of the damage is even worse.

Back then, reconstruction money came in early. Even before hostilities ended, Arab foreign ministers met to discuss the issue, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar committing to give hundreds of millions of dollars each.

That fighting ended in mid-August, and by mid-December 2006 Arab countries had reportedly deposited $645.3 million in reconstruction aid directly into Lebanese government accounts, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar major donors. The US, the EU, and the UK also gave hundreds of millions.

But the landscape is different today. Saudi Arabia and Iran lead opposing blocs of allies in the Middle East, and Hezbollah is increasingly at odds with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

While they have been flying in tonnes of food, medical aid, and shelter materials, “Arab countries have stepped away and haven’t talked at all about supporting or financing the rebuilding of Lebanon, like they did in 2006,” Hassan Kotob, a political analyst with the Lebanese Center for Research and Consulting, told The New Humanitarian.

He said this is in part because after 2006, Hezbollah increasingly allied itself with opposition parties in the region that have opposed Saudi-led leadership and policies.

“Today, some Gulf countries don’t want money going toward Hezbollah’s communities,” Kotob said, referring to parts of the country where many Hezbollah supporters live, like Beirut’s southern suburbs and the south of Lebanon.

But Kotob was hopeful that the parliament’s election of Joseph Aoun as president — with the backing of several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia — could change the calculus and attract aid from the oil-rich Gulf states. “The election of Joseph Aoun was an important condition from the international community, especially Arab countries,” he said.

Aoun’s pick for prime ministerSalam, is a technocrat who does not have Hezbollah’s support, which may be useful if the Gulf is to pitch in. This may also play a role in Lebanon’s ability to make the reforms previously demanded by the International Monetary Fund and others to help its economic recovery.

However, Kotob still expressed caution: “The [Gulf] countries are waiting to see what will happen next, how the new government will run the country, and if it will fall into the hands of Hezbollah.” 

Aid money vs. reconstruction 

There are other hurdles, too. Elie Yaacoub of Mercy Corps’ Lebanon Crisis Analytics Team told The New Humanitarian that after years of economic crisis, the Lebanese government’s capacity to support reconstruction is “extremely limited”.

“Unlike after 2006, the Lebanese state does not have recourse to foreign debt markets following Lebanon’s debt default in 2020 and subsequent failure to obtain a loan from the International Monetary Fund,” he said.

He pointed out that the economic crisis has also meant that many families who lost their homes cannot afford to rebuild with their own money. Meanwhile, donors are also stretched thin by competing global crises, and funding for Lebanon — already limited — has been largely directed towards emergency humanitarian assistance rather than long-term rebuilding.

An October Paris conference raised pledges of $775 million for humanitarian aid in Lebanon, but a month later only 14% of the money had been deliveredDonors have given more than 78% of the $425.7 million the UN asked for in October – as the war escalated – and the UN is now asking for $371.4 million more to address “immediate needs” in the first three months of the year.

The numbers for a true reconstruction effort will be much bigger. “Without substantial and sustained financial support, reconstruction cannot begin at the scale required to meet the immense needs,” he stated, noting that there were also likely to be challenges in safely accessing parts of the country – an issue that hindered the capacity of local NGOs to help people in need during the war.

Yaacoub noted that the election of Aoun was a positive step to “unlock funds for reconstruction” — particularly from Arab donors — but said it was too early to tell what it would really mean. 

Israeli airstrikes on south Lebanon reduced shops in Nabatieh’s historic market to rubble.
Hanna Davis/TNH
Israeli airstrikes on south Lebanon reduced shops in Nabatieh’s historic market to rubble.

Local debts climb

In the meantime, local communities and governments are doing what they can to return to normalcy. The mayor of Zawtar, the small village near Nabatieh where Karamboush lives, has been working with limited resources to begin repairing homes and shops that were left in ruins by Israeli airstrikes.

Wassim Ismail came back with most of Zawtar’s 4,500 residents shortly after the ceasefire. He was shocked by the level of destruction he found, which he estimated has left roughly 25% of homes in Zawtar unlivable. “In some places, [the buildings attacked] were not even related to Hezbollah,” he told The New Humanitarian.

The municipality rented two bulldozers to clear rubble, but they cost $350 per day and, without any central government funding, Ismail said the village was already roughly $5,000 in debt. “[The Lebanese government] told us there’s money. Hopefully, they’ll give it to us soon,” he said.

In the city of Tyre, roughly 30 kilometres south of Zawtar, mayor Hassan Dbouk says government funding has not yet reached him either. “The period after the war has been harder than the war itself,” Dbouk said.

On the day The New Humanitarian visited Tyre, Dbouk was working out of the city’s disaster management unit, where local aid groups and the municipality are coordinating the aid response together. One of their biggest challenges has been restoring water supply after an 18 November Israeli airstrike hit the city’s main pumping station — leaving nearly 100,000 people in Tyre city and surrounding neighborhoods without running water for 15 days, and 25,000 cut off through December.

Dbouk said the cost of a new pump was around $5 million, and while they have found temporary solutions to restart the flow of water, it’s an ongoing problem.

Yaacoub from Mercy Corps said infrastructure was likely to be a challenge across the country. “There has been extensive damage to water and power infrastructure,” he said, adding that at least 40 water facilities had been damaged, affecting approximately 450,000 residents in southern and eastern Lebanon. He quoted government estimates for repairing these facilities at $160 million, plus another $300 million to fix electricity infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Mortada Mhanna, who heads the disaster management unit in Tyre, is still dealing with the immediate needs of people impacted by the war. He said there are still around 600 people in five government-run shelters across Tyre, mostly schools, and around 21,000 people displaced from Tyre province as a whole.

Some people lost everything, and still need almost everything: shelter, clothing, food, and clean water. For them, reconstruction is not on the cards anytime soon.

“These people, they can’t go back to their villages, many don’t have places to go,” Mhanna said. “They need a lot of support and no one is talking about compensation, for now.”

Edited by Annie Slemrod.

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