Any criticism of the Shiite movement inside the country has been temporarily muted.
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Medical teams in Beirut were shocked by the severe injuries and mutilations they witnessed and treated following the Tuesday, September 17, pager explosions targeting Hezbollah members, followed by a new series of blasts the next day, also attributed to Israel. “The most frequent injuries were to the eyes and hands. When an eye is injured, when it is traumatized, it is irrecoverable. In some cases, both eyes were affected. Overnight, patients underwent their first operations. Some young people won’t be able to see again. It’s very intense,” said Dr. Elie Gharios, medical director of Mont Liban University Hospital, on the outskirts of Beirut, on Wednesday.
Around a hundred patients were admitted to the hospital on Tuesday, most of them affiliated with Hezbollah, the militia party allied with Iran. By Thursday morning, the provisional death toll from the two attacks was 32, with over 3,000 injured. “What’s happening is despicable, unacceptable,” said Gharios, not trying to hide his disgust. “Even in war, there are ways and means. Those who carried out such attacks are savages. As a doctor and a Christian, I suffer from the political divisions in my country, but I cannot accept what is happening.”
Hezbollah members were the target of these unprecedented, large-scale attacks. But the fact that the explosions took place in indiscriminate locations – markets, busy streets, homes – with the risk of collateral casualties, and not on the front line, provoked the indignation of many Lebanese. On Wednesday, one of the explosions took place during the funeral of four Hezbollah members killed the day before where a large crowd had gathered in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Call for ‘national solidarity’
Among the dead was the son of Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar. When condolences were offered in the Beirut suburbs on Tuesday evening, the mood was one of unity. Gebran Bassil, the president of the Free Patriotic Movement (a Christian party), which has distanced itself from Hezbollah after having been an ally, went to the scene and denounced an “attack against the whole of Lebanon. […] At a time when Israel is attacking us, we must show our strength through our unity, which alone protects us.” The pro-Palestinian Druze leader Walid Joumblatt, who has repeatedly expressed his support for the Shiite party since the start of the war in Gaza, after having long been an adversary, had sent one of his relatives to express his “total solidarity with the resistance [against Israel, a term which designates Hezbollah and its allies]” and called for “national solidarity.” Any criticism of the fighting carried out by Lebanon-based Hezbollah on the border with Israel since October, in “support” of Gaza, voiced on the political scene mainly by the Christian Lebanese Forces party, has been temporarily muted.
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