Bright vs. Blurred Boundaries: Social Resilience and Ethnoreligious Dynamics During the 4th Lebanon War
Jad Malas, Visiting Fellow, Institute for Migration Studies, Lebanese American University
This article was commissioned under the Resilience and Inclusive Politics in the Arab Region Project funded by the Carnegie Corporation.
Introduction
The recent armed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is estimated to have cost Lebanon 8.5 billion USD in physical destruction and economic losses. Extensive damage has also been dealt to a significant portion of Lebanon’s social fabric, with more than 1.3 million people affected and nearly 900,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) prior to the US-brokered ceasefire of November 27, 2024. At the height of this latest catastrophe, cross-community solidarity efforts between the various inhabitants of Lebanon surged. Similarly, however, instances of ‘othering’ along sectarian and ethnic lines also surfaced. Against this backdrop, what effect do these fluctuating inter-group dynamics have on Lebanon’s resilience? In what follows, I argue that the blurring and parallel brightening of ethno-religious boundaries between the different components of Lebanese society could potentially threaten Lebanon’s notorious resilience in the face of adversity. To do so, I mainly draw on secondary, open-source material such as newspaper articles, blog entries, and social media posts. I also draw on primary material such as informal conversations and chats conducted with landlords and real estate agents during the war.
The UN defines resilience as “the ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate, adapt to, transform and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner”. But out of this broad definition of resilience, top-down, state-level or system-wide resilience represented by formal institutions and governing structures’ ability to withstand crises is not my direct concern here. As I am more interested in social dynamics within Lebanon rather than the workings of state institutions, I instead focus on the bottom-up, socially oriented understanding of resilience vested in informal, solidarity-based social relations and network structures, better known as social resilience.
In a deeply divided country like Lebanon, where political resources are split among 18 sects on the basis of a confessional power-sharing model and where histories of sectarian conflict still occupy considerable spaces in Lebanese collective consciousness, contemporary realities of ethnic categorization become more and more relevant in the context of social resilience. To address this, I draw on Alba’s framework distinguishing between bright and blurred ethnic boundaries. Bright boundaries clearly demarcate ethnic groups, restricting cross-community interaction, whereas blurred boundaries allow for more fluid intergroup engagement. In the following sections, I discuss several instances where bright and blurred ethnic boundaries in Lebanon manifested during the recent episode of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
Bright Ethnic Boundaries: Us vs. Them
Examples of ethno-religious boundaries in the Lebanese context are many. From the demarcation of parliamentary seats between Christian and Muslim members to the sectarian segregation of much of the country’s geography, categorizations along ethno-religious lines have been a hallmark of the Lebanese condition for generations—an outcome of several years of past sectarian violence which displaced communities over time. This was even apparent in the targeting pattern of Israeli airstrikes during the recent conflict with Hezbollah, whereby Israel almost exclusively targeted Hezbollah strongholds—regions in Lebanon that are traditionally dominated by the Shia community, as well as small Shia pockets in majority Christian and Druze regions.
The ensuing mass displacement of predominantly Shia civilians from vast areas of South Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley created an enormous strain on the country’s geographic composition. In Beirut, following the expanded Israeli strikes on the city’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh, thousands of displaced people flocked into the central district’s neighborhoods seeking safety from the Israeli attacks. The displacement situation gradually deteriorated over time all across the country, and 86% of the government shelters—overcrowded and lacking in basic necessities—neared maximum capacity by mid-October 2024.
But welcoming spirits in some Sunni and Christian areas that were considered safe dwindled amid fears that displaced people’s religious backgrounds would make them targets of the Israeli strikes. One such area was the southern village of Marjayoun, a majority-Christian town that opened its schools and churches to shelter the displaced. However, increased Israeli attacks against the Shia community led local town folk to voice their concerns and call for the displaced to leave the village. Similar incidents in several other areas across the country added a layer of tension to the existing web of sectarian strife.
Other examples relating to housing practices appeared as manifestations of bright ethnic boundaries during the conflict. As a lifelong resident of Beirut’s southern suburb, I had to find alternative housing options outside of the area once the range of the fighting expanded. A useful observation while searching the rental market was of the prospective tenant criteria set by landlords in areas outside of Beirut. Throughout real estate agents would ask for background information on the tenants’ religious affiliations as well as the presence of cultural symbols and artifacts as part of the vetting process. I was told on multiple occasions that the landlord would not accept Muslim tenants, and in a separate incident that the only rent condition required by the building’s residents committee was that no veiled women were to be allowed as tenants.
When it comes to non-Lebanese communities, the experience of Syrian refugees during the recent conflict is quite telling. An already vulnerable group in Lebanon, Syrian refugees displaced by the Syrian civil war and now residing in Lebanon were forced into a new cycle of displacement when Israeli strikes began threatening their lives. As a result of a single Israeli strike on the town of Younin in the Bekaa Valley, 23 Syrians were killed. Displaced Syrians, however, were designated separate sheltering facilities from those earmarked for displaced Lebanese. This led certain shelters to turn away displaced Syrians seeking safety. In one testimony, a displaced Syrian woman in the Sidon area said that the local municipality refused to allow her and her family into schools and shelters after the extended Israeli bombing campaign had started in the south, prioritizing Lebanese beneficiaries only. The situation in the housing market was no different, as landlords hiked rental prices for Syrians in several areas across the country and evicted refugees to make room for Lebanese families.
When symbolic distinctions such as nationality, religious and cultural preferences take on a constraining character, they become socially exclusionary. In this case, a sense of differentiation between an ‘in-group’ and ‘out-group’, an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ showcases the brightening of ethnoreligious lines and a rigid outlook on solidarity.
Blurred Ethnic Boundaries: We Are All Lebanese
In contrast to incidents where rigid lines were drawn between ethnoreligious groups, examples of cross-community solidarity efforts were also widespread, from grassroots volunteering initiatives to major businesses that were engaging in the relief effort during the conflict. Granted, this would not have been the first time Lebanese groups put aside their religious, political, economic, social and cultural differences in times of need, with the October 2019 protests turnout and the local response to the August 4th port explosion in 2020 being two of the most relevant recent episodes of national unity in the Lebanese collective memory.
In the context of the recent expanded conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, however, local volunteering initiatives played a significant role in responding to the needs of the displaced. One such initiative was that of the local NGO Nation Station’s communal kitchen, where more than 300 volunteers prepared meals for displaced families in and around Beirut. Headquartered in the Geitawi neighborhood of Beirut—a majority Christian area—Nation Station started out in response to the August 4th port explosion in 2020. But in comparison to the limited geographic and temporal scale of the port explosion, this war’s consequences expanded to a national-level crisis over an extended period.
Improvised individual student-led volunteering efforts were also crucial, providing essential aid to displaced families. As a result of the relative weakness of state intervention efforts and the inability of international support to fill the void—a standard reality in Lebanon nowadays—individual and grassroots efforts, local NGOs and civil society initiatives must bridge the gap between needs and services. While unable to efficiently cover the overwhelming scale of the crisis, such initiatives pumped feelings of solidarity and national unity as people from different ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds converged on a common assertion: “We’re all the same”.
Finally, when it comes to religious unity, spirits of solidarity transcended religious differences in certain Christian and mixed villages around the country during the conflict. In Rayak, an ethnically mixed village in the Beqaa Valley, Israeli strikes targeted homes that housed Shia residents and a Christian cemetery in the village. However, religious differences could not separate Rayak’s inhabitants. In fact, a local priest pointed to how the strikes eased tensions instead and said that “the Israelis need to understand that when they attack Shia communities, they kill us too.” Similarly in Broummana, a traditionally Christian town and a Lebanese Forces stronghold, a public school housed around 40 displaced families, courtesy of the personal initiative of the school’s teachers and administrative body and without local government guidance or support.
When symbolic distinctions between groups lose their exclusionary character, they enable looser cross-community maneuvering, and potentially, spirits of unity and solidarity that transcend demarcated lines as we have seen in the case of the local response to the recent conflict in Lebanon. While the examples presented here are non-exhaustive, they showcase how ethnoreligious boundaries were blurred, and indeed crossed, allowing for a more fluid and inclusive community-led response.
Conclusion
The resurgence of ‘us vs. them’ narratives and practices and the parallel upheaval in community-led efforts that transcended differences during Lebanon’s 4th war illuminate significant insights into the current state of social resilience in the country. Whereas the recent conflict showed a certain level of strength in unity within Lebanese society, it also displayed an alarming scale of division between the different ethnoreligious groups. These fluctuating group interactions, characterized by instances of unity and strife, threaten prospects for building a socially resilient society in Lebanon and underscore the urgent need for policies that foster inclusive resilience. By analyzing these dynamics, more elaborate future academic efforts could potentially unearth the dangers of salient ethnoreligious boundaries and provide the necessary groundwork for addressing the gap between challenges and opportunities.
Nonetheless, the insights presented here could also be viewed as a wake-up call for the national leadership on its path toward post-war restoration and reform. As we have seen, the salience of ethnoreligious identities exists along a spectrum of rigidity and flexibility. With the election of a new president and the prospective formation of the new government, ample attention must be given to bridging identity divisions between communities through governance reforms, the promotion of intercultural education, and ensuring inclusive urban planning policies. However, in addition to macro-level policies, serious consideration must also be given to policymaking that prioritizes intra-communal initiatives. As Joseph Helou emphasizes in a recent contribution to this series, promoting a grassroots approach to governance could capitalize on existing social forces and help “foster incentives for the participation of individuals in governance affairs without having to make binary sectarian choices.” Adopting a similar approach to blurring rigid ethno-religious boundaries could yield comparable benefits and help achieve a more resilient society.