Lebanon: Voices from Chouf district
MSF patients share how the escalation of conflict in the Middle East has impacted their lives amid mass displacement and ongoing Israeli bombardment.
Since the conflict in Lebanon escalated dramatically on March 2, Israel’s intensified airstrikes across the southern region and on the suburbs of Beirut have caused death, injuries and widespread displacement. More than one million people have been forcibly displaced in Lebanon in just over two weeks, according to local authorities.
This escalation comes after 15 months of a so-called ceasefire that never translated into real safety for civilians. Israeli attacks and incursions have continued throughout this period.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has launched a nationwide emergency operation to respond to the humanitarian needs in Lebanon. Our teams are providing care through mobile clinics, distributing essential relief items and supporting hospitals, shelter and primary healthcare services.
Wide-ranging forced displacement orders, alongside ongoing strikes and incursions, are forcing families to flee repeatedly, often in the dead of night and with nowhere safe to go. Many people are left stranded in the streets or trapped in their towns. Some have returned to areas under threat of Israeli fire due to the lack of safe options for shelter, to check on their homes or to grab essential items.
In the Chouf district near southern Lebanon, where thousands of families have sought refuge, MSF operates in emergency mobile clinics and is supporting shelters to help address critical health and basic needs. Many of the families we meet there — especially mothers and children — have been displaced time and time again, carrying exhaustion and fear on top of immediate medical needs.
Hussein’s story
Hussein remembers the exact hour his family left Bint Jbeil: 3 a.m., during suhour, the meal Muslims eat before starting their Ramadan fast at dawn. What should have been a 90-minute drive to Saida became a 17-hour crawl to safety.
He travelled with his wife and their three daughters, moving in long stretches of traffic. By the time they reached Saida, they were drained in a way sleep can’t fix.
For the first three nights, they had nowhere to go. They slept in their cars, waking up stiff and hungry. Hussein’s back disc and leg aching. Around them, other families were doing the same, all trying to make a temporary situation feel survivable.
He lives with partial paralysis and relies on a leg brace to walk. Just three weeks ago, after months of saving, he was fitted for a new device that would ease his pain. In the rush to flee, he left it behind. His mouth tightens with anguish when he mentions it.
Hussein’s family carries more than displacement. Two of his daughters are widowed. Their loss was already heavy and the war made it heavier. A son-in-law — once a college teacher — has been unable to work due to the war.
Before all of this, Hussein was a school superintendent. He speaks about school the way people speak about something sacred: routine, purpose, the future. But his body has also been shaped by hardship. He lives with partial paralysis and relies on a leg brace to walk. Just three weeks ago, after months of saving, he was fitted for a new device that would ease his pain.
In the rush to flee, he left it behind. His mouth tightens with anguish when he mentions it. There’s a brief silence. Then he exhales and says quietly, “That is what was destined.”
Now the family is renting an open garage space, eight people living in a place never meant to be a home. They try to organize corners for sleeping, for privacy, for dignity, but the space offers little of any.
Hussein’s thoughts remain in Bint Jbeil. Some relatives are still there. One of his daughters’ house has been destroyed by Israeli bombardment. He has no news about his own home.
Amid the uncertainty, Hussein does what many parents do in times of crises — measuring each day by what his family needs and holding onto faith they would return to Bint Jbeil soon.
Khadija’s story
Khadija didn’t leave home with a suitcase. She left holding her children’s hands, followed by the sound of Israeli bombardment.
At around 3 a.m. on Monday, March 2, Khadija fled Ebba, in the district of Nabatiyeh, with her husband, daughter Sanaa and son Ali. In the darkness, the roads were choked with cars and the thuds of airstrikes. What should have been a short route to safety turned into hours, fear rising each time the night lit up in the distance. By noon, they reached Anout in the Chouf district, exhausted, hungry and unsure of what would come next.
They headed to a school that had been designated as a collective shelter, but the doors were still closed. They waited outside until 5 p.m., sitting near to other families doing the same. When the shelter finally opened, the reality inside was overwhelming: three families, up to 17 people, sharing a single room. Khadija tried to imagine her children sleeping there, living there, being children there. She couldn’t.
They left.
That night, they found a makeshift alternative: a repurposed metal container in a plant nursery. It was a small space where they could at least exhale. Her husband started working at the nursery, taking jobs on a truck when he could, trying to keep the family afloat.
Life inside the container is a constant negotiation with scarcity. The family carries water to wash and clean. At night, they rely on a small battery light or candles. Even the simplest routines — bathing, cooking, sleeping — take more effort than they once did. And nothing feels temporary anymore.
Khadija is trying to hold everyone together. Her husband is diabetic. She herself takes medication for a nervous condition that began after two years of stress — stress that started with the war and only deepened with displacement.
The children are not in school. Ali is restless, full of energy with nowhere for it to go. His mother calls him “hyperactive,” but what she sees most is a boy who used to have structure, friends and a normal day and now has only waiting.
Sanaa speaks about school as if it still exists somewhere, untouched. She misses her pink-and-blue Barbie desk. She misses physical education the most: running, moving, laughing. Her favourite sport is basketball. Now, when she hears airstrikes, her body tenses. Her mother says she picks at her nails until the skin around them breaks.
Khadija is trying to hold everyone together. Her husband is diabetic. She herself takes medication for a nervous condition that began after two years of stress — stress that started with the war and only deepened with displacement. “I don’t know where to go in case my condition worsens.”
Nonetheless, she smiles and thanks God often, quick to put others at ease. Exhaustion haunts her eyes and fear seems to have settled in her chest permanently.
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In the quiet moments, when the candles are out, Khadija holds onto the smallest hope: that her children will return to a classroom, that her husband will have his medicine, that her family will be together again and that one day, “home” will once again be something more than a place to hide.
Their larger family is scattered across the country: relatives displaced in Saida, Barja and Beirut. Everyone is somewhere else and no one is truly safe. Khadija says it feels like Lebanon has become a map of temporary stops.
Still, each morning, she wakes up and does what mothers do: she checks on her children, counts what they have left and plans the day around what’s missing. Inside the container, you can tell someone has tried to make a home: a clean swept floor, a wood-burning heater and clothes folded neatly in the corner. Khadija tries to sound calm when she tells her children everything will be okay.
In the quiet moments, when the candles are out, Khadija holds onto the smallest hope: that her children will return to a classroom, that her husband will have his medicine, that her family will be together again and that one day, “home” will once again be something more than a place to hide.
Hajje’s story
Hajje is from Yater, a mountainous town in southern Lebanon.
Her journey to safety in Anout was a struggle. Like many others, she spent hours on the road, sleeping upright in the car in short, restless stretches.
Now, 23 people live in a single classroom in a school being used as a collective shelter — trying to sleep despite a shortage of pillows, mattresses and blankets.
Her home in Yater was struck by Israeli forces. The loss is enormous, but Hajje speaks of returning with unshakeable resolve. She calls it simply “the land,” with a loving tenderness. Like most southerners, she is proud, steadfast and unshaken in her attachment to it.
In the clinic, that same resolve appears in small moments. The doctor asks her to stay for a second blood-pressure reading because the first was too high. Hajje lifts her head, eyes bright with defiance and says firmly: “Diabetes tried and couldn’t take me down. Neither will hypertension.”
