Beirut- Fouad leaves his shop in the southern suburbs of Beirut, upset and angry, saying, “I want to travel. The situation is no longer bearable, and the losses have become great.”
What the merchant said – who works in the clothing sector and has more than one shop in this area, including one close to the place where Hezbollah leader Fouad Shukr was assassinated– It is the voice of most merchants, not only in the suburbs but in all of Lebanon.
“We live in a war environment, and we are struggling to survive, but the aggression on Haret Hreik was the final blow to our business,” Fouad adds.
A short and quick tour of this densely populated area, crowded with popular markets, confirms that people are now buying necessities – especially food and medicine – and saving their money for fear of the deterioration of the security situation and a slide into war.
rush on consumer goods
In contrast to “non-essential” goods, there was clearly a rush for food and fuel, as if people were preparing for a war that might surprise them in its timing and wanted to be ready for it, even if it meant securing “food, drink, and essential goods for our families despite our limited capabilities,” according to one of the women who was pulling a shopping cart filled to the brim.
We leave the suburb and head south. The roads are unusually empty, there are no traffic jams. “People are afraid and living in a war atmosphere,” says Abdullah, a young man who works as a taxi driver in the morning and a security guard at night.
Abdullah tells the story of a traveler who told him she paid thousands of dollars to move her departure forward and flee the country before the war broke out.
We get out of the taxi to the sound of the words of the thirty-year-old young man saying to us, “Anticipating war is more difficult than it happening.”
These words were accompanied by local media reports claiming that Rafic Hariri International Airport would cancel incoming and outgoing flights after midnight local time, but Lebanese Public Works Minister Ali Hamik denied the news, describing it as “false.”
The tourism sector is groaning
We arrive in southern Lebanon and ask Hassan, the owner of a car rental office, about how he is affected by this atmosphere. His answer comes as a shock, revealing that more than 75% of the reservations have been cancelled, and some people have left their cars despite having paid in advance for their rental and have left the country.
Hassan says, “Before Shukr’s assassination, it was not like after it. Despite the war on the border, Lebanese expatriates and a fair number of tourists were coming to Lebanon, and the demand for rental cars was greater than the supply. But the strike on the suburbs killed the entire tourism sector and paralyzed it.” He ended his speech, moved, “We can no longer stand firm.”
Since the tourism sector is the most affected by the “war atmosphere” that Lebanon is experiencing, we completed our journey to the town of Arsoun in Mount Lebanon Governorate – which is about 40 kilometers away from the capital Beirut – to talk to the owner of one of the tourism projects there, who was affected by the Israeli strike on the southern suburb of Beirut despite the distance.
Rania says, “A day after the strike, about 75% of the reservations were cancelled, even though the project was fully booked for the coming days. It is a huge loss because we depend on our own efforts, which are diminishing day after day, especially after our deposits in the banks were stolen.”
Rania was referring to the severe economic crisis that hit Lebanon in 2019, when the lira fell by more than 90% against the dollar, and the World Bank described the Lebanese crisis at the time as the worst since 1850, which prompted the authorities to impose stifling restrictions on the withdrawal of deposits.
We left the project, which was almost empty of visitors, carrying a sentence that Rania said to us: “I hope what is coming will not be worse. The country is tired and we are exhausted.”
