Lebanon’s displaced find solidarity and community in empty hotel

Beirut, Lebanon - Ali, 26, and his friends approached an abandoned hotel, surrounded by an exhausted and desperate crowd in Hamra, a bustling district in Lebanon’s capital Beirut.

The crowd waited eagerly as his friends took a hammer and banged the lock and chain off the sealed door.

As soon as it was open, displaced families quickly settled in the dusty, smelly rooms of Hamra Star, a former hotel that had been closed for more than 10 years.

They were tired and hungry after sleeping on the streets and were desperate for a roof over their heads. While this seemed like a miracle to them, they didn’t expect it to bring along a new set of problems.

The Hamra Star apartment hotel used to be a spot for secret romantic encounters, according to local journalists.

A nondescript building along the bustling Hamra Street, where crowds shop, eat, party and pass through, it boasted a modest little sign and not much else to identify it.

Then, about 10 years ago, someone was reportedly murdered there, prompting authorities to chain the door shut and mark it with a red X - the sign that it had been ordered to close down by the authorities.

When the displaced people were able to move in that evening, they found it littered with rubbish and infested with insects and rats.

Bonded by their ordeal, they came together to clean the building and install basic provisions.

“We all cooperated and fixed the place up ourselves,” said Mohamad Zahran, who now lives on the first floor with his two daughters and wife.

With the help of donations and volunteers, they furnished the rooms with blankets and cushions, fixed the plumbing and connected the building to water and electricity.

Hamra Star was still far from perfect, yet the collective efforts made the place liveable.

Abu Hadi, a middle-aged man with a grey beard who lives in the hotel, said everyone grew quite close, cooperating to help make life comfortable for the elderly and children among them.

Volunteers and local NGOs began donating meals and other forms of support, filling the void left by the state and political parties, said Abu Hadi.

“No political party or anyone from the government helped us,” he told Al Jazeera. “We all just worked together for the service of the people staying here.”

“I saw myself in them: I saw women that could be my mother and girls that could be my sister,” said Ali, who sometimes works at a currency exchange in Hamra and volunteers to find shelter for those uprooted by Israel’s war on Lebanon.

Days earlier, on September 28, thousands of people fled the residential district of Dahiyeh after Israel dropped at least 80 bombs on several apartment buildings. The strikes killed the leader of the Lebanese group Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and an unknown number of civilians.

Hours later, Israel issued expulsion orders to thousands of people who had to leave their homes in nearby neighbourhoods, claiming it would be targeting Hezbollah’s weapons caches in the area, but provided no evidence such caches were there.

Those who fled ended up in school shelters, staying with friends and relatives or on the street. For dozens of families, Hamra Star became an unlikely home and community.

“I felt happy when they went inside [the hotel],” recalled Ali, sitting in an empty cafe. “When you see humans on the street who are hungry and desperate and you finally help them, then, of course, it makes you feel good.”

Reeling from an economic crisis and political paralysis, Lebanon’s caretaker government has been heavily criticised for failing to provide enough aid for the 1.3 million people uprooted by Israel’s attacks, which have been called disproportionate and indiscriminate.

By the time the displaced families had fixed up the Hamra Star, police arrived with several buses to evict them on October 19.

Najah Itani, a Lebanese judge whose family owns Hamra Star, had filed a court order to have her family’s property vacated.

But the people sheltering there did not want to leave, not knowing for sure where they would be taken and fearing they would end up in shelters in areas under Israeli bombardment.

Some people said the police told them they would be taken to Sabra, a slum in south Beirut where the sound of Israeli warplanes and bombing are too close for comfort.

Others were told they might be taken to Sidon, a coastal city about 38km (24 miles) south of Beirut, where eight people were killed in an Israeli strike on October 27. Just two days later, several more people were killed in the city by another Israeli bomb.

After pushback from the displaced families and activists, the police gave the occupants 48 hours to leave the building.

Itani did not disclose why she wanted the displaced families to leave.

“I am noticing that everyone is forgetting that other shelters were provided and that this is my family’s property,” she told Al Jazeera. “Why do I need to provide any other explanations is beyond my understanding.”

Speculation was rife in Hamra, however, that the reason was the increasingly common fear in Lebanon that Israel is deliberately bombing the places that the majority-Shia displaced people are escaping to.

A woman who lives down the street from the hotel, but who did not disclose her name, said some neighbours, and possibly Itani, fear that a Hezbollah operative may visit the hotel, giving Israel a pretext to attack it.

Israel has frequently claimed that a Hezbollah member was present in displacement centres that it bombs.

The strikes inflame sectarian tensions by making communities fearful of welcoming displaced Shia civilians, who are the main constituents of Hezbollah.

Lebanon runs on a confessional system where political posts are allocated proportionally based on the country’s sectarian makeup.

The president is always a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament a Shia Muslim.

Since the end of the civil war, Hezbollah has consolidated control over Shia politics in Lebanon by blending identity, resistance to Israel’s occupation, and religion into a political movement that has resonated with many.

Several families staying in Hamra Star said nobody from any political faction is staying in the hotel, pointing to the complete lack of support they are receiving from political factions as proof.

“People around here are so scared that Israel will bomb the building because Shia are here,” the woman told Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera asked Itani if this was why she wanted the hotel vacated, but she said she was “unable to answer”.

“I was advised for my own security not to issue any press release at this time,” she told Al Jazeera over the phone. “I’m still waiting for the place to be evacuated and I was promised it would happen in an amicable way.”

When police returned to Hamra Star two days later, the occupants were defiant.

Most of the men exited the building in order not to provoke a violent confrontation but the women stayed in the lobby with the children, refusing to leave.

They didn’t expect the police to attack them.

However, officers stormed the lobby and began dragging women out by their hair and hijabs. As the women cried in pain and for help, the police beat them with batons on their heads, thighs and backs.

The men - husbands, sons and brothers - rushed back in, clashing with the police to protect the women.

Zahran showed Al Jazeera a video of him screaming at an officer who was preventing him from going back inside Hamra Star to rescue his unwell nine-year-old daughter Maram, who is waiting for a second heart surgery to improve blood flow and oxygen circulation in her body.

When Zahran saw police beating and wrestling down women and children, he feared they would harm Maram, too.

“I was so scared because the police were dragging children and women out of the hotel by their hair,” he told Al Jazeera. “I thought they were going to do the same to my daughter.”

Samah, an elderly woman from Dahiyeh, tried to stand in front of the police to protect the women and children in the lobby. Having lived through countless conflicts and wars, she said, she wasn’t afraid of being attacked or thrown to the ground.

“Everyone staying in Hamra Star is like my family,” she told Al Jazeera. “I wanted to try and protect them.”

Three weeks earlier, Samah turned up at Hamra Star alone. She had fled Israel’s bombing in Dahiyeh with her son, who has cancer, but left him at a school shelter in Beirut, which has no more space to welcome more people.

Her other son is married with children and struggling with kidney disease. He’s staying at a relative's house, where there is no space to host more people, not even his mother.

Samah thought she was going to sleep on the streets due to the lack of space in school shelters, yet somehow she stumbled upon a home and community at Hamra Star.

“I’m not afraid if [the police] toss me on the street,” she said with resignation.

“I always follow where God takes me.”

The police couldn’t handle the pushback.

On that fateful afternoon, the displaced families pushed the officers into the lobby and barricaded them inside.  The army was deployed to restore order and help get the police officers out of Hamra Star.

By sunset, the authorities agreed to grant the families another 48 hours to leave the building.

Many occupants remained anxious, believing authorities would return to throw them out or drag them to shelters in areas close to bombardment.

“When the police first came, they said they wanted to shelter us in a clinic in south Beirut, but we know the Israelis bomb hospitals and clinics all the time,” Zahran said.

On October 21, two days after the attempted eviction, police returned to Hamra Star and placated the families. They registered the names of all the occupants and promised to move them to a safe government-run shelter once one became available.

Several inhabitants told Al Jazeera they are willing to relocate but to areas far from danger, away from south Beirut.

For now, they have no idea what fate awaits them or their country tomorrow and they blame Israel for their plight.

“If Israel has a problem with any specific group, then they should attack that group,” Ali told Al Jazeera.

“Why are they bombing the whole world?

“Why are they bombing civilians?”

Philippe Pernot contributed to this report.