By Ali Abbas Ahmadi, BBC News
“Why, why us?” cries Milad Eid, his anguish clear over the breaking phone line.
An hour earlier, he was dousing a fire at a house that had been hit by an Israeli missile. While he was there, a bomb struck another one.
His village, Alma al-Shaab, lies in southern Lebanon just over a kilometre from the Israeli border.
Since October last year, it has been caught in cross-border fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim organization that is politically influential and in control of the most powerful armed force in Lebanon.
At least 800 residents have fled the village, and now there are only about 100 left, officials say.
“Nobody knows why they are attacking our houses,” Mr Eid says. “It’s not our war.”
Lebanon’s Mediterranean coastline is dotted with scenic towns and villages, where bougainvilleas droop over meandering streets.
Alma al-Shaab, its residents say, is the most picturesque of them all.
It is one of the Christian villages in the largely Shia-Muslim south, Alma al-Shaab’s position on a hill offers majestic views of the surrounding countryside, all the way to the sea in the distance.
It is also clearly visible from northern Israel.
This closeness to the border has seen it heavily targeted by Israeli forces over the past nine months.
A day after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, Hezbollah and its allies fired waves of rockets from Lebanon into a disputed area along the border in an apparent show of support for the armed group.
Israel retaliated with drone strikes, and both sides have since drastically escalated the scale and intensity of attacks across the Israel-Lebanon border.
By the end of May, Alma al-Shaab had been hit 188 times by Israeli forces, according to the Beirut Urban Lab, a research centre that uses data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled).
Many other villages in southern Lebanon have also been bombarded.
The Israeli army says it targets Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure and retaliates to attacks on Israeli army bases in northern Israel.
But some top Lebanese officials have accused it of implementing scorched earth tactics to make the whole area uninhabitable.
The villagers the BBC spoke to were reluctant to discuss whether Hezbollah or other armed groups were using Alma al-Shaab to attack Israel. One hinted that locals had unsuccessfully tried to stop fighters from using their land.
No one in Alma al-Shaab has been killed.
But so far, Israel’s bombardment has completely destroyed 10 houses, damaged 120 others and hit the town’s main water tank, according to the deputy mayor, William Haddad.
Some 12 sq km (3,000 acres) of agricultural and forest land have been burned, he adds.
Normally, there are 900 people in Alma al-Shaab – and around 1,500 in the summer, when emigrants return to spend time in their ancestral village.
Now there are only around 100 left, Mr Haddad says, and no children. The memory of past conflicts hangs heavily in the air.
People remember Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and subsequent occupation of the south until 2000, the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006, and countless skirmishes.
“Maybe 90% of people of Alma al-Shaab left directly in one day [after 8 October] because they don’t want to experience what they did in 2006,” says Mr Haddad.
Maria Shaya, 31, talks of a childhood of attacks and explosions, with a constant fear of violence around her home. She left aged 18 to study in Beirut.
“I don’t remember a time where there was no conflict.”
She can recall the sound of bombs, drones and fighter jets in detail. But during visits home in recent years, her “brain chooses not to hear it”, she says.
Since last year’s resurgence of fighting, she has not visited her father, who refuses to leave the village.
It is a painful reality, at odds with her pride for the place.
“I love Alma,” she says. “The air there smells different. It’s so green and lush, and you can walk around and pick things to eat off the trees.”
Spending time with her grandparents and cousins under the lemon trees is now a distant recollection.
She, like hundreds of others, do not know when they will be able to return.
“We don’t want to be in a war,” she says. “I just miss going home.”
Maria Shaya, 31, talks of a childhood of attacks and explosions, with a constant fear of violence around her home. She left aged 18 to study in Beirut.
“I don’t remember a time where there was no conflict.”
She can recall the sound of bombs, drones and fighter jets in detail. But during visits home in recent years, her “brain chooses not to hear it”, she says.
Since last year’s resurgence of fighting, she has not visited her father, who refuses to leave the village.
It is a painful reality, at odds with her pride for the place.
“I love Alma,” she says. “The air there smells different. It’s so green and lush, and you can walk around and pick things to eat off the trees.”
Spending time with her grandparents and cousins under the lemon trees is now a distant recollection.
She, like hundreds of others, do not know when they will be able to return.
“We don’t want to be in a war,” she says. “I just miss going home.”
BBC
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