No ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel pummels residential apartments

Tehran considers the ceasefire in Lebanon an essential part of the agreement. ‘The United States must choose: either the ceasefire or continuing the war through Israel. They cannot have both.’

It takes just ten minutes to realize that things are different in Lebanon. Ten minutes of hell. 

It is around 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Several explosions are heard in Beirut. A few minutes later, the sound of ambulance sirens coming and going becomes constant. The government asks citizens to keep the roads leading to hospitals clear. There are at least seven bombings in places not directly linked to Hezbollah, right in the city center, during rush hour. They hit residential areas like Corniche al-Mazraa and Ain Tineh, transportation hubs like Daura (home to one of the capital's two main train stations) and heavily trafficked areas like Manara and Ain el-Mreisseh along the Beirut waterfront.

The acrid smell of gunpowder spreads instantly throughout the city. “I can't stop crying,” says Rita in a mix of fear, anger and helplessness in Ain el-Mreisseh, where the Beirut waterfront begins. 

Rescuers scramble to pull out the living and the dead. Traffic on the streets makes rescue efforts even more difficult: thousands are trying to leave death behind. The roads leading to the north of the country are a river of people; ambulances perform impossible maneuvers against traffic, squeezing into emergency corridors. 

“We live in Dahieh, a southern suburb of Beirut, and our mother was supposed to have surgery today,” says Hassan, a 30-year-old taxi driver. “She was injured in the bombings a few days ago and was scheduled for surgery today. We scraped together the money for her surgery, God knows how [in Lebanon, healthcare is almost entirely private] but today it was impossible.” Also in the taxi are a mother and son fleeing toward Tripoli, looking for shelter, hoping to find anything.

Two more female journalists have been killed in the line of duty since March 2: Ghada Dayekh, a host and reporter for Sawt Al-Farah radio station, and Suzanne Khalil of Al-Manar. A dozen rescue workers have lost their lives. The attacks on Beirut, as well as those across the rest of the country, continued after those ten minutes of bloodshed. In the late afternoon, a ten-story building in the dense residential Tallet al Khayyal neighborhood was struck.

Wednesday night's preliminary toll was that of a massacre: in central Beirut, 92 dead, 742 injured; in Dahieh (southern Beirut), 61 dead, 200 injured; Baalbek, 18 dead, 28 injured; Hermel, nine dead, six injured; Nabatieh, 28 dead, 59 injured; Aley, 17 dead, six injured; Sidon, 12 dead, 56 injured; Tyre, 17 dead, 68 injured. That adds up to a total of 254 dead and 1,165 wounded.

During Wednesday's military operations in Lebanon, the Israeli army also struck a convoy of vehicles belonging to the Italian contingent serving in the UNIFIL mission. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani reported that “Israeli warning shots damaged one of our vehicles; fortunately, no one was injured, but the convoy had to turn back.” A few days ago, Israel destroyed 17 surveillance cameras along the Blue Line (the buffer zone between Lebanon and Israel). There are countless documented incidents of deliberate attacks on UN peacekeepers by Israel from October 2023 to the present.

Tel Aviv's message could not be clearer: Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire. The operation – “planned for several weeks,” according to Israeli army Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee writing on X on Wednesday – came, however, just hours after the signing of the ceasefire in the war that Israel and the US launched against Iran. For Donald Trump, the Lebanese operation is “a separate skirmish.” 

Tehran, however, considers the ceasefire in Lebanon an essential part of the agreement, as Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian clarified on Wednesday, while the commander of the Revolutionary Guards' Aerospace Force stated that “any aggression against Hezbollah is an aggression against Iran.” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X that “the terms of the ceasefire between Iran and the United States are clear and explicit. The United States must choose: either the ceasefire or continuing the war through Israel. They cannot have both.”

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Wednesday night that Israel was ready to resume the war with Iran at any moment and that the ceasefire “is not the end of the military campaign, but only a step toward achieving all our objectives.”

His challenge seems directed more at Washington than at Iran. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt announced in the evening that Trump will continue to discuss with Netanyahu what to do in Lebanon. The feeble voices of Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam could do nothing but condemn the incident.

The sirens did not stop for a single moment in Beirut on Wednesday. Hospitals in the capital and in the affected areas were multiplying their appeals for blood donations. From the sky, the sound of the Lebanese army helicopters transporting the wounded mingled with the piercing noise of Israeli drones – like a drill boring into nerves already stretched and shaken by an exhausting war – which strike without warning in any area, at any moment. The streets emptied out in the evening. People were locked indoors, hoping that the next apartment building to be blown up would not be their own. There was an apparent calm in the air, a sense of waiting – but things were anything but calm.

© Il Manifesto Global