Once upon a time in Dahiyeh: Israel's destruction of a people

Lebanon 2006. At the Shayyah bomb site Mayah Yatim, right, raises her hands as she grieves for her 25 year old 8 month pregnant daughter and 4year old grandson killed when their building collapsed after Israeli strikes targeted the southern suburb of Shayyh in Beirut. Rescuers continued searching for survivors and the dead amongst the rubble where already 15 have been killed and 65 injured, 8 August 2006
Mayah Yatim, right, grieves her 25-year-old, eight-month pregnant daughter and four-year-old grandson, killed in Israeli strikes on Shayyah, Beirut [Kate Geraghty/Fairfax Media via Getty Images]
Mayah Yatim, right, grieves her 25-year-old, eight-month pregnant daughter and four-year-old grandson, killed in Israeli strikes on Shayyah, Beirut [Kate Geraghty/Fairfax Media via Getty Images]

Beirut, Lebanon – Zeinab al-Dirani remembers her cousin’s engagement party, her parents and siblings, aunts and uncles all gathered in the street in front of their ground floor apartment.

Everyone was smiling as they danced to the loud music.

She remembers her father heading regularly to the barbershop near their house so Bob the barber, whose real name is Ibrahim, could give him a clean shave and a hair trim.

And she remembers a beloved teacher, a landmark in the neighbourhood and her life for 20 years.

Just memories now

A barber shop in Lebanon
[Lina Malers/Al Jazeera]
A barbershop in Dahiyeh, before Israel's destruction was unleashed on the people there [Lina Malers/Al Jazeera]

Al-Dirani, 25, lived in Hadath, in Beirut’s sprawling southern suburbs that Israel has bombarded heavily in recent weeks.

On September 27, an Israeli attack levelled six buildings in Haret Hreik and resulted in the assassination of Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.

A few hours later, with the public still not knowing Nasrallah’s fate, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman issued expulsion orders against people in swaths of Dahiyeh.

“The first nights under the bombs were terrifying,” Khodor Eido, a 26-year-old executive chef who was living in Bchamoun, near Choueifat, told Al Jazeera.

A woman sleeps on Beirut's corniche after fleeing the Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, Lebanon, Monday, Oct. 14
A woman sleeps on Beirut's Corniche after fleeing Israeli air strikes in Dahiyeh on October 14, 2024 [Bilal Hussein/AP Photo]

“The sounds of explosions shattered the stillness, leaving everyone on edge and filled with dread. Each thud echoed through the streets, reminding us of the fragility of our existence.”

Over the next two weeks, the Israeli military attacked Dahiyeh with incredible military force.

Lebanese news livestreamed the destruction every night, showing Israeli air strikes crashing into Dahiyeh and bursts of red and orange horror illuminating the night sky, sometimes drawing comparisons to the sunrise.

Claiming to be targeting Hezbollah weapons caches, Israel killed or displaced tens - if not hundreds - of thousands of people as their homes, shops and memories were eviscerated.

Flames and smoke rise from an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Flames and smoke rise from an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh on October 6, 2024 [Bilal Hussein/AP Photo]

“They bombed next to my house,” al-Dirani told Al Jazeera. “It’s destroyed now. The building is still there but everything inside is …” her voice drifted off for a second before she found her words, “My room has a balcony now because of the bomb.”

And her home is better off than those surrounding it.

“All the buildings by my house were destroyed,” she said. The barbershop is gone. So too is her teacher.

“They bombed his house and his whole family inside was murdered. Him, his wife, daughter and two sons. All of them,” she said. “Every day, you see someone die.”

Killing a city

BEIRUT, LEBANON - OCTOBER 6: Smoke and flames rise after an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh neighborhood in the southern Beirut, Lebanon on October 6, 2024. The Israeli army launched airstrikes in Dahiyeh, south of the Lebanese capital Beirut. As a result of the attacks, many buildings in the area were destroyed or heavily damaged. ( Houssam Shbaro - Anadolu Agency )
Smoke and flames rise after an Israeli air strike on Dahiyeh, Beirut, on October 6, 2024 [Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu Agency ]
Smoke and flames rise after an Israeli air strike on Dahiyeh, Beirut, on October 6, 2024 [Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu Agency ]

More than 2,500 people have been killed by Israel in Lebanon since October 2023, with most of the deaths occurring in the past month.

Dozens of those deaths have been in Beirut or Dahiyeh, while the sheer level of destruction that Israel has wrought has led some experts to call Israel’s acts urbicide, the destruction of a city, or “city killing”.

“It’s this huge obliteration of the place and the people and its memories,” Mona Harb, professor of urban studies and politics at the American University of Beirut (AUB), told Al Jazeera.


“It's tangible and intangible. But we’ve lost the intangible mostly, the practices and what people used to do in that place. It’s the destruction of what people hold in their memories,” she added.

“The attacks are severing the connection between people and their neighbourhoods, dismantling the social bonds that define the community,” a researcher with Public Works Studio, which focuses on urban planning and policymaking in Lebanon, who did not wish to be named, told Al Jazeera.

“As a result, these areas are not just facing physical destruction but a profound social disintegration, as people are forced to abandon the places where their lives, memories, and identities are anchored.”

Becoming the Dahiyeh

A woman in a veil walks past an old 1960s Mercedes Benz parked in front of a Hezbollah mural in southern suburb of Beirut during the civil war, 12th June 1986.
A woman walks past an old 1960s Mercedes Benz parked in front of a Hezbollah mural in Dahiyeh during the civil war on June 12, 1986 [Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images]
A woman walks past an old 1960s Mercedes Benz parked in front of a Hezbollah mural in Dahiyeh during the civil war on June 12, 1986 [Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images]

Back in 1955, Diana Younes’s grandfather Mohammad left Baalbek, in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, and settled in the area south of Beirut.“There were no suburbs at the time,” Younes said. “It was all olive groves.”

There, Mohammad laid a foundation. Amid the olive groves, he and his wife built a home with their hands.

As buildings expanded around them, and schools and universities popped up, so too did their family and the other families who moved in.

Its official name now is Sahel al-Matn al Janoubi, but this cluster of neighbourhoods and sub-neighbourhoods is referred to simply as “Dahiyeh” (“suburb” or “periphery” in English).


Dahiyeh comprises municipalities (Ghobeiry, Bourj al-Barajneh, Haret Hreik, Mreijeh-Tahwitet al Ghadeer-Laylaki), informal settlements (Ouzai, Bir Hassan, Horch el-Katil, Hayy al-Sellom), and Palestinian refugee camps - Burj al-Barajneh and Shatila.

“It’s as large as municipal Beirut,” Harb said. “If one starts with that, one [understands] there are multiple lives there, living, working, commuting, spending free time and then we see these layers of lives.”

During the civil war, two waves of displacement brought around one million people to what would become “Dahiyeh”.

The first was in the war’s early years - 1975 and 1976 - when some 200,000 residents of Beirut’s northeastern slums were expelled, sometimes in massacres by right-wing Christian militias.

The second large wave of migration came from south Lebanon amid Israeli invasions in 1978 and 1982 and the subsequent occupation until the year 2000.

That occupation, paired with fighting in the south during the country’s 15-year civil war (1975 - 1990), saw as many as 900,000 people, predominantly Shia Muslims, migrate to Beirut’s southern suburbs.

In those waves, Dahiyeh’s sizeable Maronite community was “forcibly and violently displaced”, said Harb. While some Christians still live in the area, most never returned.


Nevertheless, “churches and Christian cemeteries were restored in the 2000s”, Harb said, and “masses were held on Sundays”.

With so many new transplants, the southern suburbs became a dense extension of Beirut that is nearly as large.

As for Diana Younes’s grandfather Mohammad, each of his children got married, added a floor to their father’s home, and raised their own families.

What a label means

Hezbollah supporters hold flags to distribute among the attendants moments before the beginning of the funeral of a Hezbollah militant killed by IDF while clashing yesterday in southern Lebanon yesterday, through the streets of Dahieh district on October 23, 2023 in Beirut, Lebanon. Lebanese Hezbollah announced the death of ten militants in the past 24 hours, bringing to 25 the number killed in its ranks since the large-scale Hamas attack in Israel on October 7. Accentuating the fear of a general conflagration on the Lebanese-Israeli front. (Photo by Manu Brabo/Getty Images)
Hezbollah supporters hold flags to distribute among mourners at the funeral of a fighter killed by the Israeli army in Lebanon's south. The funeral was held in Dahiyeh on October 23, 2023 [Manu Brabo/Getty Images]
Hezbollah supporters hold flags to distribute among mourners at the funeral of a fighter killed by the Israeli army in Lebanon's south. The funeral was held in Dahiyeh on October 23, 2023 [Manu Brabo/Getty Images]

International media often reaches for the label of “Hezbollah stronghold” when describing Dahiyeh.

Even some Lebanese see it as a Shia “ghetto, a rebel territory,” Harb wrote in an article about Dahiyeh in 2009.

However, Harb said, such a view is simplistic and ignores a lot of what makes Dahiyeh, Dahiyeh.

“Hundreds of thousands of individuals with multiple belongings and identities live there,” Harb told Al Jazeera.

“And, at the end of the day, Beirut and Lebanon are so small that it is impossible to live in Dahiyeh or Beirut and not be connected to each other.”

Shia Muslims take part in a mourning procession marking the day of Ashura in Beirut's Dahieh region, Lebanon on October 12, 2016. Shiite Muslims are observing the Ashura, the tenth day of the first Islamic month of Muharram, to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, in the Iraqi city of Karbala in the seventh century. (Photo by Ratib Al Safadi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Shia Muslims attend a mourning procession on Ashura in Dahiyeh on October 12, 2016. Ashura is the 10th day of Muharram, the first Islamic month, when Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, was killed in the Iraqi city of Karbala in the seventh century [Ratib Al Safadi/Anadolu Agency]

While a number of groups emerged in the area in the 1960s, the civil war saw it come under the control of Amal, the armed wing of Imam Musa Sadr’s Movement of the Deprived.

In 1984, Hezbollah started gaining some followers in Dahiyeh and in 1989 it fought Amal, pushing it largely to the periphery of the suburb.

Today, the group still bases many of its political and patronage networks out of Dahiyeh.

Hezbollah’s flags, among other parties, were not an uncommon sight and the group often held rallies or speeches in the area.


Many of the group’s supporters also live in Dahiyeh.

But to call an area a Hezbollah stronghold is an idea that Harb and many others reject. They believe terms like stronghold not only removes the layers of non-political and alternative political life in the area but also attempts to legitimise the violence against it.

There are “all these stereotypical, dehumanising associations that the Western media has with [regard to] whoever lives in such places,” she told Al Jazeera.

Urbicide, deliberate and cruel

A child stands in front of store at the Palestinian refugee camp of Burl al Barajneh in Beirut, Lebanon on October 26, 2023. Camp was built in 1948, in the aftermath of the 'Nakba', a period during which Palestinians were compelled to leave their homes and villages. It was established on a one-square-kilometer piece of land with the intention of accommodating 10,000 refugees. Today, Burj al Barajneh is the residence of approximately 31,000 refugees, including a significant number who have sought shelter there after escaping the conflict in Syria.
A child stands in front of a shop in Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp on October 26, 2023. The camp was built in 1948 after the Nakba to accommodate 10,000 refugees. Today, about 31,000 refugees live there, including many who sought shelter after escaping the Syrian war [Jose Colon/Anadolu via Getty Images]
A child stands in front of a shop in Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp on October 26, 2023. The camp was built in 1948 after the Nakba to accommodate 10,000 refugees. Today, about 31,000 refugees live there, including many who sought shelter after escaping the Syrian war [Jose Colon/Anadolu via Getty Images]

Al-Dirani, who danced in the street at her cousin’s wedding, had only moved to Dahiyeh from Kasarnaba in the Bekaa Valley for work in 2021, two years into one of the century’s most severe economic crises.

She had strong ambitions and put a lot into her career - often working 14-hour days - and her studies in chemistry and medical diagnostics.

While she says she was never enamoured with her neighbourhood, she still had “many nice memories” of sitting with her parents and recounting the events of their day, or when her aunt, who lived next door, used to pass by.

“It was home and it was good and safe,” she paused briefly and then added, “before.”

More than a million people, or 20 percent of the population of Lebanon, have been forced into displacement. Many are without any kind of shelter and are sleeping on the streets, in parks or by the sea.

A girl holds the stones she has painted
Displaced girl Nassim, 11, from Dahiyeh, shows off stones she painted during art activities set up by volunteers, in Beirut on October 16, 2024 [Louisa Gouliamaki/Reuters]

“For those displaced, the trauma is twofold - not only are they driven from their homes under threat, but they are also witnessing the erasure of their cultural and physical ties to their land,” the Public Works Studio researcher said.

“In this context, the strikes are not only a means of military pressure but a deliberate attempt to erase the community’s very existence.”

The destruction of Dahiyeh is continuing. Fifty locations were attacked by Israel between September 27 and October 11.

The attacks stopped for about a week before resuming a few days ago, the nightly horror returning on October 23 said to be one of the worst nights of bombing to date.

Seventeen Israeli raids destroyed at least six buildings and took out the office of the pro-Iranian media outlet Al Mayadeen.


Mapping the destruction is difficult, but what is clear is that Dahiyeh has “endured relentless and brutal attacks on a daily basis”, the Public Works Studio researcher said.

“While earlier strikes on Dahiyeh were more targeted, the scale and intensity surged dramatically during this period.

“What stands out about the strikes on Dahiyeh is the brutal intensity of each attack and the indiscriminate violence against civilians and urban areas,” they added.

The attacks on Dahiyeh have been particularly dystopian, as the Israeli military’s official Arabic language spokesperson released nightly expulsion orders on social network X, formerly Twitter.

The orders were often accompanied by maps of Dahiyeh, with particular buildings highlighted in red.

The first night, residents were given about an hour to evacuate, as if that time was sufficient to pack up their entire lives, but even that diminished as each night the time to flee became shorter.

“Buildings, streets and entire neighbourhoods have been systematically identified, mapped and then targeted by the Israeli occupation,” the researcher said. “This mapping by the IDF is not just tactical - it [symbolises] a calculated strategy to eradicate civilian spaces.”

Al-Dirani and her family were given evacuation orders on September 27. Her family left home with her aunt.

Her parents moved in with her sister, who lives in a Christian neighbourhood, which she considers safer for the moment. Al-Dirani sleeps in a shop in Ain el Remmaneh, a predominantly Christian neighbourhood in Beirut, not far from the suburbs.

Meanwhile, the expulsions have continued, despite drawing criticism from Amnesty International for being “misleading and inadequate”.

In at least one instance, Amnesty found that the warnings were given less than 30 minutes before Israel attacked. And then some attacks have come without any warning at all.

‘Dahiyeh is gone’

Tents set up as temporary shelters by displaced families fleeing the Israeli airstrikes in the south and Dahiyeh, are seen along the Ramlet al-Baida public beach in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday Oct. 8
Tents set up as temporary shelters by displaced families fleeing Israeli air strikes, along the Ramlet al-Baida public beach in Beirut on October 8, 2024 [Bilal Hussein/AP Photo]
Tents set up as temporary shelters by displaced families fleeing Israeli air strikes, along the Ramlet al-Baida public beach in Beirut on October 8, 2024 [Bilal Hussein/AP Photo]

Mazen used to run a gift and perfume store called Mazen Kado (French for gift) in Mreijeh. He lived what he described as a calm life with his beloved cat Cici, the star of his TikTok account.

When the bombing started, he sent his family to stay elsewhere while he and Cici remained. On one of the first days after the bombing began, he stepped out to buy a few things and while he was out, an air strike hit his building.

“Cici was in the building,” he told Al Jazeera. “I tried to cover my face with all the fire and smoke but I wasn’t able to go inside and bring her out. The building was 10 storeys high and it collapsed.”

In a video that went viral on his TikTok account, Mazen films the rubble of his building and sobs audibly, screaming out for Cici. The comments are mostly crying faces or heartbreak emojis.


“Everything's gone,” he told Al Jazeera. “My house is gone ... no problem, I’ll get another house. And as the days have passed, everything I owned is now gone. No problem.

“The thing that matters to me is if Cici is dead. God willing, she didn’t die.”

Mazen hasn’t given up on finding Cici. On his TikTok account, he still posts videos of the rubble that was his home and calls out desperately for his missing cat, no matter how unlikely it is that Cici survived.

“I’m out looking every day,” he said.

“I stay in Dahiyeh because I take care of the cats so they don’t die,” he said.

“I sleep in the street. One night I’ll sleep on the street, one night on a verandah, every night is different.

"I still live a calm life. I don’t care about any party or sect, I’m a Lebanese man and I love life and cats and animals.”

@cadeauxmazen24

♬ لوصلك تاقت عيوني وقلبي أناشيد إسلامية - Hamza Boudir

Dahiyeh’s once-bustling streets are now largely abandoned. Some people come back during the day, in the moments they feel air strikes are less likely, to grab clothes or check on their homes.

“The situation is a disaster,” Younes said. “Dahiyeh is gone.”

In 2006, war came to Dahiyeh once again. Hezbollah and Israel fought a 34-day war in which more than 1,220 people were killed, the vast majority of them people in Lebanon. Israel destroyed about 245 buildings and developed a tactic of disproportionate damage that came to be named The Dahiyeh Doctrine.

Despite those prior wars, Younes’s family continued to grow in Dahiyeh. But now, some family members don’t see a future there.

She said her maternal uncle’s family has decided they won’t return once the war is over.

“They’re thinking that once this all ends, they’ll sell everything they own in Dahiyeh and buy something outside the area. Nobody wants that Dahiyeh any more.”

Three-year-old Doua Nabou sleeps on a street corner while waiting for her family to decide where to evacuate to along with hundreds of other residents of Beirut's southern neighborhoods who are evacuating in anticipation of Israeli airstrikes August 10, 2006 in Beirut, Lebanon. After leaflets warning residents to evacuate were dropped by Israeli aircraft Thursday, thousands of people have left the southern districts. At least 41 people were killed with as many as 61 people injured on Monday during an Israeli air strike on a Beirut suburb.
Three-year-old Doua Nabou sleeps on a street corner while her family decides where to evacuate in anticipation of Israeli air strikes on August 10, 2006 [Spencer Platt/Getty Images]

Harb, the AUB urbanist, also grew up in Dahiyeh but left about 30 years ago. Her father, however, went to Burj al-Barajneh for bread, meat, cheese and labneh until just a few weeks ago.

“He’s not doing it because there’s no bread or cheese elsewhere. It’s because he wants to go through the streets of his childhood and needs to do this pilgrimage through the small alleyways to feel a connection to this place and see familiar faces around,” she said.

“This is one example of something close to me that has been completely obliterated.”

As for al-Dirani, she often dreamed of a life outside of Dahiyeh.

“I wanted to go away, but not like that,” she said. “I feel like all of my dreams are collapsing.”


“I’m still processing … I’m kind of traumatised,” she said, her voice solemn, soft and introspective. “I don’t want to think about what happened because I feel like I'm in a nightmare and I don't want to wake up because it’s hard to think what I'm going to do when I do.”

The good memories of home still exist in the corners of her mind. But at the moment they’re superseded by the horror of the last few weeks and the fear, or resignation, of what may await so many people living through the war in Lebanon.

“I can't even describe it but I'm trying to tell you what we experienced,” she said, reaching deep for the words.

“We’re just sitting and waiting for our day to come. It’s bad for me to say this but we wait for the time we’re going to be killed like our relatives and our loved ones.”

Two vendors selling oranges and vegetables from a cart walk through a war torn street in the Shatilla Palestinian refugee camp after heavy rains.. (Photo by Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Two vendors selling oranges and vegetables from a cart walk through the Shatila refugee camp on January 13, 1984 [Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images]
Two vendors selling oranges and vegetables from a cart walk through the Shatila refugee camp on January 13, 1984 [Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images]
Source: Al Jazeera