Traced in the powdery dust on the hood of a damaged car are the words in Arabic, “We are here for you, Nasrallah,” in reference to the Hezbollah chief assassinated by Israel in a series of explosions in Beirut in September.

Among the 1.3 million people displaced from Hezbollah strongholds in the south and east of the country, some Shiites have recently found their way to this community, making residents wary.

“We are a peaceful village, but when strangers come, refugees – we don’t know them – then trouble starts,” says Toni, a Christian whose family home sits a few hundred yards away from the two targeted buildings. “We have nothing to do with this war. ... So this was a shock to us.” He declined to give his family name.

“Trust me, before this happened, we were friends,” says Toni, speaking of his targeted Shiite neighbors. “There was nothing bad about the [Shiite] people who lived there for years, for 100 years. We are talking about the newcomers.”

Yet some residents voiced concern over what they say have been Hezbollah’s long-term aims in their community. “Our friends, they don’t show it, but they support [Hezbollah] in their hearts,” says another Christian, who gives the name Samir. “For a long time, Hezbollah is supporting them financially to make a base for them here, maybe to take over the area.

“We believe they had weapons here a while ago,” he adds. “My concern is why they have guns in our areas. It’s far away from Israel and the border. It’s against us [Christians]. Those weapons give power over us.”

Hezbollah’s unique status

In years past, Hezbollah enjoyed widespread popular support in Lebanon, often well beyond its Shiite base, for its self-declared role as the armed defender of Lebanese sovereignty. But in the past two decades, periodic resentment of the group has sharpened into more widespread hatred, owing to an increasing number of events linked to Hezbollah even before this hugely destructive war, which many Lebanese see as unnecessary.

Those include the 2005 assassination of popular Sunni Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; a costly all-out war with Israel in 2006; the use of force against political opponents and rival sects; and the massive 2020 Beirut port explosion, which killed more than 200 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

Hezbollah operatives also helped violently suppress the anti-corruption, anti-sectarian protests of the October 2019 revolution.

For Lebanese exhausted by chronic state failures and economic collapse, Hezbollah’s unique status as a heavily armed state-within-a-state is increasingly a key part of the problem, not of the solution.

Some now see the first chance in years of changing Lebanon’s internal political equation.