In south Lebanon, schools resume classes as displaced shelter inside
Hezbollah steps in as municipalities struggle to respond to the growing number of displaced.
February 2024
Tyre, Lebanon – Schools are back in session in Lebanon’s southern city of Tyre after a long holiday. This year, however, students are being joined by dozens of families displaced by the fighting along Lebanon’s border with Israel.
Clotheslines line the courtyard at the Lebanese Technical School in Tyre. Between classes, students mingle underneath the freshly washed garments, next to displaced families who have been living in the school compound for months.
Israa, a 17-year-old student, told Al-Monitor that she is getting used to sharing the school corridors with the families. “We feel for the displaced,” she said.
The technical school is one of five schools in Tyre that have been converted into shelters and now house nearly 1,000 displaced persons. Mortada Mhanna, head of the city’s Disaster Management Unit, told Al-Monitor that all of the shelters are at full capacity.
Over 87,000 people have been displaced since Oct. 8, 2023, when clashes erupted between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group, according to the Displacement Tracking Matrix. The clashes have steadily intensified, with strikes reaching deeper into each territory. The cross-border escalation has led to over 250 deaths so far in Lebanon, including over 30 civilians and three journalists.
On the Israeli side, 15 people have been killed, including nine soldiers and six civilians, according to the Israeli military.
Students attend classes upstairs at the technical school, while Mustafa Sayyed and his wife and children are downstairs trying to create a sense of normalcy in a classroom they have called home for the past four months. Sayyed, who fled the border village of Beit Leif on Oct. 17, 2023, is one of 150 people sheltering at the school.
In Sayyed’s room, a chalkboard is used as a coat rack while a row of school desks doubles as a kitchen counter. Lockers sit in a corner beside the pile of mattresses the family brings out each night to sleep on. “The situation here is safer,” Sayyed told Al-Monitor, but “no one is comfortable.”