Audio Excerpt - [Street noise]

RUBY:

On a street in downtown Beirut there’s a five story building - an old derelict hotel.

It was empty for eight years. Until recently, when hundreds of displaced people started living there.

Audio Excerpt - Farah:

“And the people here in the building, some of them don't have places to go anywhere here.”

RUBY:

Their story of fleeing southern Beirut to find safety in the city’s busy neighbourhoods is being repeated across Lebanon right now, as Israel’s bombardments continue.

There has been a massive effort to help shelter the 1 million displaced Lebanese, but in this building and in many others they aren’t welcome, with religious divides from the civil war still palpable decades on.

Audio Excerpt - Heidi Pett:

“So the police have just shown up. They've forced their way into the entrance of the apartment building where all of the women are standing…”

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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Today, journalist Heidi Pett on the old wounds being re-opened in Lebanon right now.

It’s Friday, November 1.

[Theme Music Ends]

RUBY:

So, Heidi, you're in Beirut right now, and I believe you flew there right around the time that things were escalating and many people were trying to leave. So what was the journey like?

HEIDI:

Yeah, it was one of the strangest flights I think I've taken. So I flew in from Paris. There were nine of us on the plane and we were all sort of seated spaced apart. So it was myself – a journalist, a priest and a doctor for MSF, which really felt like the beginnings of a bad joke, you know, like the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Something, something terrible has happened in your country if all of the flights out are full, all of the flights there are empty, save for journalists, doctors and priests.

So you fly into the airport in Beirut. There's only one airport and it's on the coastal strip just south of Beirut. And so it's directly next to what is called the Dahieh, Beirut's southern suburbs, which has been the focus of a lot of the air campaign. And so my flight I didn't actually see any bombing as I came in. People have, and there have been flights landing within sort of 10 or 15 minutes of large explosions quite close to the airport.

So you get in and as soon as the airport doors opened into the night, the first thing I heard was a surveillance drone. And the first thing I smelled was smoke from strikes that had hit the southern suburbs just an hour or so before.

RUBY:

And so for the past year, in a general sense, Israel has been at war with Hezbollah. Tell me a bit about what has been happening in Lebanon on the ground for the past 12 months.

HEIDI:

Yeah. So after the 7th of October, when Hamas in Gaza launched that assault on Israel, immediately afterwards, Hezbollah, which is a militant group, but also a political party here in Lebanon, they opened what they call a solidarity front. The idea being to harass Israel, meaning that they couldn't deploy all of their troops to Gaza. They had to keep troops on the northern border for fear that cross-border rocket fire might escalate into a ground invasion or something more serious and so about 60,000 people have been evacuated from villages in the north of Israel. And roughly double that number have also been evacuated from Lebanon.

So we'd seen this kind of controlled tit for tat where it seemed like there were rules of engagement. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah was necessarily looking to escalate. There were a couple of assassinations of Hezbollah figures over the summer, but everything changed in September.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“The unprecedented attack in the Middle East. Thousands of pagers belonging to members of Hezbollah exploded across the country, injuring thousands of people.”

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“New York Times is reporting Israel hid explosives in those pagers and then triggered the explosion simultaneously.”

HEIDI:

And that indicated a real escalation, a real step change.

Ten days after that, Israel assassinated the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, who had an underground bunker in the south of Beirut.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“Tremendous devastation as the Israeli forces hunted down one man, the leader of Hezbollah, who'd been meeting deep underground. Parts of Dahieh, in Beirut's southern suburbs, have been reduced to ashes.”

HEIDI:

And then shortly after that, Israeli troops launched a ground operation and crossed the border into southern Lebanon and started engaging directly with Hezbollah fighters on the ground.

More than 2600 Lebanese have been killed since October the 7th last year, but most of those have been in the last month. A quarter of the country is under evacuation orders and about a quarter of the population, a million people has been displaced.

RUBY:

And so once you touch down in Beirut in this almost empty aeroplane, what did you do and where did you go?

HEIDI:

Yeah so, I headed into downtown. I walked along the Corniche, which is this beautiful waterfront promenade that heads out to the Mediterranean Sea on the, on the western edge of Beirut.

And just inland from from the Corniche, where all of these displaced people are sheltering, is a neighbourhood called Hamra, where you've got hotels, it's densely populated, apartment buildings, it's banks, it's businesses, and it is absolutely packed at the moment.

There are cars double parked on every street, either people sleeping in their cars or sleeping on the streets. There are also a number of abandoned or empty apartment buildings, And one of them was this empty hotel called the Hamra Star, which is on the main drag through Hamra.

It was clear that displaced people had taken up residence in that you could see from the street that there was, you know, wash washing. Hung on the balconies and belongings kind of pile there. And there were always a number of people in the street outside. Volunteers had started coming and delivering hundreds of meals every day for people. I got talking to a few people and the first people I ran into were two young siblings.

Audio Excerpt - Wadih:

“I'm here with my sister. She's 16 and my family is not together.”

HEIDI:

And a girl named Farrah. She's 16. And her brother Wadih.

Audio Excerpt - Farrah:

“Yeah.”

Audio Excerpt - Heidi Pett:

“It's nice to meet you. I'm Heidi.”

Audio Excerpt - Farrah:

“Heidi. It's really nice to meet you.”

HEIDI:

Their family is originally from Baalbek, which is in the east of Lebanon. But they had grown up in Dahieh and lived there their entire lives. And Dahieh is, of course, one of the main targets of the bombing campaign that we've seen.

Audio Excerpt - Farrah:

“Our homes are broken.”

HEIDI:

Farah’s home in Dahieh hasn't been destroyed yet. But areas really close by have been bombed, she said, you know, she could hear it in the night. The house would shake and it was terrifying.

Audio Excerpt - Farrah:

“We listen to bomb. It's so scary to live here.”

HEIDI:

And so, yeah, her and her brother and her grandmother decided that, you know, it was only a matter of time and they needed to leave.

Audio Excerpt - Heidi Pett:

“How much notice did you have? Was it a big rush?”

Audio Excerpt - Farrah:

“It's so sad to see Dahieh bomb being destroyed. No building. We miss our life, our life in it. People in Dahieh are so simple and so good. So, so, so funny.”

HEIDI:

You know, they were doing their very best to kind of hold on to some semblance of normality. Farrah had obviously taken the time every morning she'd done, you know, she had this, like, perfect winged eyeliner that she'd put on.

Audio Excerpt - Heidi Pett:

“What did you bring with you when you came here?”

Audio Excerpt - Farrah:

“Clothes, of course. The important things. Brushing teeth. Our makeup.”

HEIDI:

I got talking to a number of people, and they explained that, you know, they had nowhere else to go. And so they'd entered the building about a month previously, and they'd had some contact with the owners. So the owner is a local judge. Her family owns the building. The brother had been down. And they'd had a discussion. They'd arranged for a generator, they'd arrange for water deliveries and they'd pool their money together. All of these displaced families, in order to pay for the water deliveries and some modicum of electricity and things like that. And so I think they felt that they would have been allowed to stay.

For whatever reason, the owners of the building changed their mind. And so they came down and said, in 48 hours, you'll have to leave. The police will be coming on Monday morning in order to enforce the eviction notice.

Audio Excerpt - [Street noise]

HEIDI:

So the police came down the road. About an hour later, a mass of police with riot shields. And things got pretty hairy pretty quickly.

So they pushed all of these women and children out from the entrance to the apartment building. I saw people hit in the face with riot shields. And then what actually happened is the police then shut the doors of the building and locked themselves inside.

Audio Excerpt - Farrah:

“She is hitting us, she is hitting people and children, they are all women, women. They are no man inside. They are all women. They are hitting us. They want us, they want us to go.”

HEIDI:

You know, there was rocks thrown. People were throwing things down from the upper floors of the building. Things got quite violent very quickly. And I was horrified to see through the viewfinder of my camera Farah being carried out by her brother bleeding profusely from the head.

Audio Excerpt - Wadih:

“Farah! Farah!”

HEIDI:

Her brother put her on the back of a motorbike and rushed her down to the American hospital here in Beirut where she had to be stitched up.

RUBY:

Coming up after the break - the sectarian divides further splintering Lebanon.

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RUBY:

Heidi, being evicted from an abandoned building in your own country during a time of war that seems unexpectedly harsh. Do we know why the landlord changed their mind? Why they decided that these people could not stay?

HEIDI:

Yes. So I've reached out to the landlord and she hasn't responded to my attempts to contact her. But I asked a number of people. What changed? The people who were staying there told me that they'd offered to pay rent and they'd been refused. And I asked one man, Wahid, who it was clear he was a bit of a community leader. I asked him, why do you think that she changed your mind? Why are you being evicted? And he just looked at me. He said, because we're Shia.

Audio Excerpt - Heidi Pett:

“Why did she not. Why would she not accept your money?”

Audio Excerpt - Wahid:

“Let me tell you. Because we are a Shia. That's all.”

RUBY:

Right. And Hezbollah is a Shia organisation.

HEIDI:

Yeah, it's a military group. It's a political organisation, but it is largely Shia. And its support base, again, is largely Shia. So Farah, she's from an area in the south of Beirut called the Dahieh. it's a 10 or 15 minute drive from where I am. And it's often described as a as a Hezbollah stronghold, but it's a civilian neighbourhood where hundreds of thousands of people live and work. And it's largely Shia, but it's not exclusively Shia.

But the idea behind the Israeli military attacking Dahieh is not new. There is actually an official Israeli military strategy called the Dahiya Doctrine which we first saw during the 2006 war, what's known as the, you know, the second sort of Lebanese Israeli war. And it explicitly involves disproportionate attacks on civilian areas through strikes on what Israel will say is, you know, Hezbollah military infrastructure.

Audio Excerpt - Benjamin Netanyahu:

“I say to you, the people of Lebanon, free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end. Free your country from Hezbollah…”

HEIDI:

But what has happened in the last month is quite explicit.

So the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has said that essentially the Lebanese people need to rise up against Hezbollah or Lebanon will face destruction like Gaza.

Audio Excerpt - Benjamin Netanyahu:

“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”

HEIDI:

And so now the idea is to put so much pressure on Shia and on civilian supporters of Hezbollah through airstrikes and through these military operations that that support for Hezbollah among those people would falter.

RUBY:

And does it seem like that strategy is working, that support for Hezbollah is diminishing?

HEIDI:

I mean – I think only time will tell. It's only been a month.

There's been concerns about rising sectarian tensions here in Lebanon since the war escalated. There's obviously a long history of that. There was a civil war for 15 years in this country between different sects.

And so what has happened is that when Shia from the south of Lebanon or from the Dahieh, from Beirut, southern suburbs have fled those areas when it has become intolerable or unsafe for them to be there, sometimes those airstrikes have followed them. So a couple of weeks ago, a number of displaced people had moved to a village called Aitou, which is in the mountains here in Beirut. It's a predominantly Christian village. And so those people moved there because they thought that they would be safe there. And there was a massive airstrike on a building that a number of displaced families had taken shelter in. And so there's concern among all different people in Lebanon here that if you take in Shia families and you don't know who they are or what their political affiliations are, whether they have any contact with Hezbollah's political or military wing, whether your home, your building, your property, your village, your community will also become a target.

RUBY:

And I imagine that is really only stoking these kind of long standing divisions that already exist within Lebanese society.

HEIDI:

Yeah, exactly.

You will always find people within Lebanon who hate Hezbollah, who have always hated Hezbollah. You know, I ran into somebody in the street actually down in town on the Corniche. And he said to me, You know, every time I hear the bombing at night in Dahieh, I say, Thank you for cleaning up our country.

But what I've also seen is incredible solidarity of grassroots organisations, volunteers, groups of friends who have mobilised to fill the gaps left by the Lebanese state and who are caring for displaced people, of Sunni or Christian communities and volunteers who are cooking hundreds and hundreds of meals per day. And bringing it to these formal and informal shelters.

RUBY:

So what will happen to Farah and the other people who were evicted from the hotel building? where will they go now?

HEIDI:

So they have now been scattered across Beirut. Some of them went back to the streets. Others have joined other, you know, informal shelters. The police did make an attempt to register everyone and said that they would find places for everyone. But the problem is that a lot of these shelters, they're just full. So Farah and Wadih are with their grandmother. They're now in a hotel in downtown Hamra. They're paying $25 a night, which is way more than they can afford. They're not sure how many more days they can keep that up, essentially. But I'm grateful that they didn't go back to Dahieh, which is what Farah initially said that they would do.

Audio Excerpt - Heidi Pett:

“So where will you go now?”

Audio Excerpt - Farrah:

“I would go to Dahieh. And if we die, we die.”

HEIDI:

For now, they're safe, but they're not sure how much longer they can keep that up or how long this war will go on for.

RUBY:

Well, Heidi, thank you so much for your time today.

HEIDI:

It was nice to talk to you.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today –

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has taken legal action against Optus, alleging it sold phone products to hundreds of vulnerable customers.

The ACCC alleges the customers often did not want or need the services and that Optus then pursued them for debts associated with those sales. Many of the customers were living with disability, diminished cognitive capacity or learning difficulties.

And, as more politicians come under scrutiny for their perks in the job, Opposition leader Peter Dutton has admitted to using Gina Rineheart’s private jet to travel to a Bali bombing memorial.

Speaking at a press conference in Perth, Dutton said his office requested the ride between Rockhampton, Sydney and Mackay in November 2022.

Earlier in the week when asked if he had ever personally requested flights from Gina Rinehart, Dutton responded ‘no’. When asked about this discrepancy, he clarified that it was his office who asked for the flight and not him personally.

7am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper.

It’s made by Atticus Bastow, Cheyne Anderson, Chris Dengate, Daniel James, Erik Jensen, me - Ruby Jones, Sarah McVeigh, Travis Evans and Zoltan Fecso.

Thanks for listening. See you next week.

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