Beirut, Lebanon – In late March, a government-planned center in Beirut's Karantina neighborhood for people displaced by Israel's war was canceled following a public outcry. Politicians and protesters opposed the center's establishment, citing reasons such as increased traffic near Beirut's port and health concerns. However, sectarian motivations also played a key role: some of Karantina's Christian population led objections to housing the displaced, who are predominantly Shia Muslims, raising demographic fears and using sectarian slogans reminiscent of the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War era.
A major source of tension is that Israel has targeted displaced Lebanese, leading many to fear that hosting their compatriots may bring increased danger to their own homes and families. Additionally, extreme polarization over the war exists within Lebanon. Supporters of Hezbollah, the Shia armed group fighting Israel, claim it avoided war for 15 months while Israel repeatedly violated a November 2024 ceasefire, whereas its critics accuse it of giving Israel an excuse to invade by launching attacks on March 2, which led to the forced displacement of 1.2 million people.
As Israel's war on Lebanon exacerbates internal disputes, some fear the violence may push Lebanese communities into confrontation or even civil war – despite a 10-day ceasefire set to begin. On March 2, Israel intensified its war on Lebanon for the second time in less than two years. After over a year without responding to Israel's continued attacks, Hezbollah fired rockets across the border following the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran on February 28.
The cancellation of the planned displacement center in Karantina is particularly significant due to the area's history during Lebanon's Civil War. Before the war, Karantina (named from the French word for quarantine) was one of Beirut's poorer districts, home to a mix of communities including Christians and Sunni Muslims, as well as Armenian, Kurdish, Syrian, and Egyptian laborers, and many from southern Lebanon or the Bekaa Valley who had come to the capital seeking work.
In the early days of the war, the right-wing Phalange movement waged a campaign to rid the area of Muslim communities, culminating in the 1976 Karantina massacre. Diala Lteif, a research fellow at the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies who is writing a book on Karantina, told Al Jazeera that the exact number of victims remains unknown but is estimated at 1,000 to 3,000. Many victims who weren't killed were expelled to areas that became known during the war as predominantly Muslim West Beirut.
Sources familiar with the planned displacement center, including an aid worker with an international charity speaking anonymously, said the controversy was part of a campaign that started on social media and was then picked up by Lebanese media and right-wing Christian political parties. Lteif noted that the rhetoric currently directed towards displaced people in Karantina echoes the civil war: "This foundational logic that areas need to be segregated is the logic that motivated the [Karantina] massacre. It is particularly fascinating how these right-wing forces bring this up as a danger when the real danger was them. They killed and displaced these people, not the other way around. But it brings back this trauma from that time."
A further complicating factor is that many in Lebanon associate displaced populations from southern Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs with Hezbollah. While support for the group is not universal among Shia Muslims, the party draws the vast majority of its support from that religious community. Hezbollah and its ally Amal also often claim to be the sole legitimate representatives of Lebanon's Shia Muslims.
The Disaster Risk Management Unit, reporting to the Lebanese prime minister's office, told local media that the site of the displacement center was being prepared as a precaution but there were no plans for it to be put into use. Not far from that site is another displacement center in the same Karantina district, which has taken in about 1,000 displaced people from southern Lebanon, Beirut's southern suburbs, and the Bekaa Valley.
At the center run by a Lebanese charity called Offre Joie, children play football while adults sit on plastic chairs and chat. The center first opened in 2024 to receive displaced people who were sleeping in tents in downtown Beirut. When war returned in 2026, many of those people also returned. Volunteer Marie Daou told Al Jazeera that the center has had no problems with the local community, and some displaced individuals work with the charity to help manage themselves. Daou added that the charity knows the identities of all the displaced, and security forces closely monitor the center's data to ensure they know who is on site.
Daou said the center has ample hot water and its residents receive decent meals, which is better than many other centers around Beirut and the country. In some other locations, displaced people found conditions so difficult that they decided to return to their homes in areas under blanket evacuation orders from the Israeli military. However, Daou noted that in the Offre Joie center, no one has left despite over 40 days of displacement and war.
Outside Daou's office, 30-year-old Nadine corralled a group of children. Displaced on March 2 from her home in Burj al-Barajneh in Beirut's southern suburbs, she came to the center in Karantina with her five siblings. She expressed a desire to return home but acknowledged that if the war is prolonged, she has little choice: "For now, we're staying here. You can't go back there [to her home] because there is danger, but now, of course, nowhere is safe. But some places are better than others. We'll be patient. We'll endure."
Source: www.aljazeera.com