The Current - How the Lebanon-Israeli war is affecting civilians

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

As the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel escalates, we hear from people in Lebanon about how the fighting is affecting their lives. From Israel, political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin describes the sense of insecurity among Israelis, especially along the border, pushing the government's actions.

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Hear that conversation now on cue with Tom Power on your favorite podcast app. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Israel's ground invasion has driven deeper into Lebanon this week in a war against the Iranian-based-backed militia, Hezbollah. Entire villages in southern Lebanon have been destroyed. More than a million people have been left. displaced in Lebanon, more than 3,000 people have been killed. On the Israeli side, 24 of its soldiers and four civilians have been killed since the start of this war. Israel has created a so-called

buffer zone occupying large swaths of the south of Lebanon. In a moment, we'll hear about renewed ceasefire agreements and the political maneuvering from both sides. But we'll begin in Lebanon, where citizens are caught in the middle of a war that's taking everything they hold dear. Our producer James Shirani has been speaking to some of these people and he joins me in studio. Good morning, James. Good morning, Mark. You've been able to reach people in Lebanon. What are you hearing from them? Yeah, so I'm Lebanese myself, but from the north, which has been largely untouched in this war. But I reached out to Maggie Chablay, who runs a hotel on the outskirts of Beirut with her husband. The hotel itself has been around for a while. It opened in

1958 by her husband's grandfather, who then passed it on through the generations. She herself is Christian, but when the war began, she started taking in. She had Muslims fleeing the South, who were displaced. And that's when their hotel was struck by an Israeli missile. It was the first time that anything like this has ever happened, and there was only one casualty, their receptionist. So in my conversations with Maggie, she stressed that they were only letting women and children into the hotel because they were worried about single men who may have ties to Hezbollah, which would then make them a target to the Israel Defense Forces or IDF. But despite their efforts to screen people, Maggie said that the receptionist checked in a family,

which included a man with his wife and child. But just to be clear, there was no way for us to confirm whether this person had ties to Hispola. We were very strict about who we are getting in the hotel, who's checking in. So what happened is that the last moment, the girl that she passed away, she reserved for this man and the wife and their son. So if you see their pictures, they don't look like they are in Hasballah, they don't look like, nobody looks like anything anyways, you know. You cannot see that it's written on their forehead that they are in Hasab Allah or not, you know. So she checked in for them at 8.30. At 12, he checked out because the air condition was not hot enough. So he checked out after four hours, the explosion happened.

Oh, and is it the thought that maybe it had to do with him? I don't think, I'm sure, because after two weeks, they killed him and hazmeya, the same person. So when the journalists came around and asking us, who did you have? Who did you have? My husband just took the paper and said, these are the families I had. And the room that was bombed, it was empty. But there was a person. He checked in at 8. He checked out at 12.

And he explained, we did not know that this person is in Hasbala or anything. Obviously, they did not see him checking out. I don't know what happened. But we were bombed, like, for no reason. There was no one here. I heard many rumors that they were Iranians. They were Khazah, but there was no one. Yeah, and really, to stress again, there was no way for us to confirm whether he had ties to

Hisbalah. I did reach out to IDF about this but didn't hear back by the time of broadcast. But you can really hear how upset she is. It was a traumatic event. And it seems like she was looking for answers about what actually happened that day. I think a big part of this story also is that this receptionist who died wasn't just a receptionist to Maggie and her family. Her name was Fatima Hamda. and when I asked Maggie about her,

Maggie's child was in the room listening to her conversation and she told them to leave. Tiffany, Mommy, can you go outside? Right? I'm not to have the telephone. You cannot listen. No, I'm not going to hide because you don't know him. Bye, Mom.

Okay, because my children, they don't know about Fatima that she died, so I didn't want to talk in front of them. Okay, so Fatima has been here living here since the COVID, because when COVID started, she had difficulties to go home, you know, at 7 o'clock because they closed everywhere. There were no taxis and so on. So we suggested to her that she lives here in the hotel and we gave her room. And she was sleeping in the room beside the targeted room. When the room exploded, she got hurt as well.

After three days, she died in the hospital. She used to help me with studying my children, their lessons. We used to cook to each other. Our hotel here is like a family. It's like home because I live here and my brother-in-law lives here. So she was part of our family. You're right, James. I hear the anger in her voice.

Who does Maggie blame for all of this? I'd say she's pretty conflicted. It's a pretty complex war. It's a complex issue and there are a lot of emotions around it. Hezbollah is not fighting for Lebanon. Hezbollah is having agendas and he's doing the agenda. that's why the war started when Khaminah died and who's

paying the price, the people. The government cannot do anything because if the government, at our Lebanese arms, this is my own opinion, I'm giving you my own opinion, if the Lebanese government and the army attacked Hezbollah for the weapon we're going to have a civil war in the country.

Neither the government nor people are ready for this now. So I think what they are doing is letting, you actually deal with it, which is it's not good as well, but what can we do? We have many questions. We say if this happens, this might happen,

if that happens. I don't know. We are not happy that Israel is doing what they are doing, and not from now, like many wars we had with Israel. We know how they fight. They target civilians, they target children, they don't care. We're not happy that USA

is doing what they are doing. We are not happy what Iran is doing and Hezbollah what is doing, but we cannot do anything. told me this, but you can really hear she feels stuck between all these different forces. There's Hezbollah, there's Israel, there's the Lebanese government. And as she says, the Lebanese people are paying the price. What happens to Maggie and her family now?

They are trying to rebuild their hotel, but the damages amount to about half a million dollars, which they don't have. The Lebanese government hasn't offered much help either to rebuild, but they do have a swimming pool at the hotel, which wasn't damaged. They're going to be reopening that this month, so maybe that could help. but, you know, no matter how much they rebuild, Fatima's gone, and there's going to be a moment where she's going to have to tell her kids about it. And I can only imagine how heavy all of this is on her. Maggie and her family are on the outskirts of Beirut.

The fighting hasn't been as severe there as it is in southern Lebanon, and you were able to connect with people in the South. Tell me more about that. Yeah, I did have a chance to speak with one man from there who didn't leave. But just to take a step back, so the South has been largely cut off from the rest of the country. There's the Latani River, which is pretty famous there. It's a sort of natural border from sort of dividing north to south, and all the bridges across the river have been destroyed. So people who remain in the south are isolated.

A lot of the villages in the south have faced serious shelling. Some have been destroyed completely. And the majority of the people in the south have left. And about 1.2 million people have been displaced by this war. But yeah, so I started reaching out to people. in the south, and I found George El-Mille. He's a Maronite Catholic priest serving a community in a southern village in Lebanon. It's called Ramesh. It's about two kilometers from the Israeli border. There are about 11,000 people there. He really described it as a very beautiful place under normal

circumstances. People like to get married there. They do about 35 weddings per year. There's olive trees and pine trees and all of that sort of stuff. But Father Al-Anil, he's been there his whole life. He comes from a family of priests, and he told me that there's nothing that would make him leave, even if there were evacuation orders. He wouldn't leave, but the really strange thing is, and something that really surprised me was that despite, you know, large swaths of the South being told to evacuate by Israel, their town wasn't. They were told to just stay in place. Father Al-Alemil only speaks Arabic, so you'll hear me translating here. Regarding the evacuation of the town here, our towns of Ramsh, Stabal, and Alp, there were no direct warnings to them from Israel.

That means when other villages were requested to evacuate, our villages were not mentioned. So at the time, we contacted the Papal Embassy and Unifil to confirm this matter. The answer was that since they did not name these villages or warn them to evacuate, you should stay in your places and do nothing until they say. Again, I reached out to IDF asking why this village and the surrounding villages were told to stay in place, and I didn't hear back. Father Al-Anmel did say that six homes were hit on the outskirts of the village, but that's it. And to them, that's not a lot. So they have been relatively safe from the worst of the fighting. He assumes that it's because they're a Christian town, not a Shiite Muslim town, but we don't know for sure.

We heard from Maggie about who she holds at fault for this, but what about Father Alamele? Yeah, he was a little different. He believes that His Bala is completely to blame for this 100%. You know, that said, he sees Israel's actions as unprecedented, especially with the destruction of villages. Both sides actually make him feel pretty unsafe, but he doesn't think that his Bala has the best interests of the Lebanese people in mind. And in fact, I was actually texting with him after the interview. and he was telling me how he'd like to see normalized relations with Israel, that he thinks that that could lead to peace. He also knows how tough that would be with Lebanon's history,

but he does think it's possible and he hopes that it is. You spoke with others in the South. What did they tell you? Yes, so I was put in touch with Maya Shouker. Her family is from the South from a village called Taibe, which in some context translates to delicious or tasty, and it's just a few kilometers from the Israeli border. But Maya, she actually now lives here in Toronto.

However, she spent a lot of her summers in Taipei as a kid at her grandmother's house. And this tension with Israel is really nothing new in the South. Israel occupied southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. His below was actually created during this time. And this violence has continued until today. This past April, the IDF posted videos on social media of mass. detonations of several villages, which included Taipei. So Maya's village has been raised to the ground, and Maya's grandmother's home has been

destroyed to the home that she spent a lot of her summers at, and they only learned about this through satellite imagery. And she was actually in Lebanon not that long ago, and she feels deeply, deeply displaced. A lot of her family is now living in Beirut, displaced as well. but when it comes to who she blames, she doesn't think that the Lebanese politicians have acted in their favor, and she's disappointed and feels somewhat hopeless

for the future there. I think what I'm most worried about is that the land is gone forever, and we've just allowed it as a global society. And I also worry about what precedent that sets for the world. There's going to be so much rebuilding that needs to happen if we get the land back. And then what do you do to the one in five people that have been displaced across Lebanon?

That's my fear. And my fear is that what's happening there is putting a mirror up to our global institutions, our politicians, and showing us that there really is no international law. And where does that lead to? What was really universal with all the people that I spoke to is regardless of the religion or background or whatever, everybody is. frustrated and they're angry and they all want peace. And there's a big question of whether they'll actually get this piece. There seems to be a partial ceasefire now, but it seems shaky. And the

tensions remain pretty high. And regardless of the geopolitics, the people who are living through this just say they want a normal life. Important to hear their voices, James. Thank you so much for this. Thank you. James Sharani is a producer here at The Current. Wallace Soza was a Brazilian TV host and crime reporter who always managed to arrive at a murder scene before the police. Cameras rolling, exclusive footage, and sky high ratings. But how was he always in the right place at the perfect time? Was his inside information more inside than he wanted to let on? I'm Kathleen Goldhar and this week on Crime Story, we dig into the story of Wallace Sousa's killer rating.

Find us wherever you get your podcasts. As you mentioned, as of now, there appears to be some sort of agreement from Israel, Hezbollah, and the United States to move towards a ceasefire. Dalia Shenlin is a political analyst, columnist, and the author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel. She's in Tel Aviv. Dalia, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me again. U.S. President Donald Trump posted on social media yesterday afternoon that had spoken to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and through intermediaries, representatives of Hezbollah. He said both sides agreed that all shooting will stop.

However, today's skirmishes are continuing. How confident are you that the shooting, in fact, will stop and there will be a genuine ceasefire? I'm almost 100% confident that the shooting will not stop. The question is at what pace and when it will escalate. President Donald Trump has a habit of trying to create geopolitical realities by statements of oftentimes wishes. thinking. And sometimes, you know, his government does try to act on them. That is evident in the sense

that the U.S. has compelled the first ceasefire, which is, as you pointed out, not only very shaky, but, you know, in many ways not really a ceasefire because there has been so much back and forth shooting. And also compelled the two sides to do something more important in a way, which is negotiate together formally for bilateral negotiations between the Lebanese government and the Israeli government, which is, you know, really a breakthrough considering the Lebanese president have been offering for weeks to do just that. And the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had not responded until, as we understand, American pressure got them there. So I won't say the statements are completely disconnected from reality, but I think we're a very long way from anything like

a sustainable ceasefire. The negotiations haven't so far, we don't see them yielding any sort of, you know, clear or open set of principles for an agreement or, you know, even a horizon for an agreement. And, you know, the escalation is ongoing. And also if you look at Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu's statement yesterday following the same call. He basically said we're going to continue, you know, taking military action in southern Lebanon. And if there is continued firing against Israeli targets, we will possibly, you know, continue with the possibility of striking at Dachia in the neighborhoods around southern parts of Beirut as well in the future.

Yeah. And members of his own government are saying tell President Trump, no, that we're not going to agree to this. But give me a sense, Dali, about the people in Israel. You're in Tel Aviv. How do they feel about this when the fact that more than 3,000 people in Lebanon have been killed during this war? How do they feel about that? Well, I mean, Israelis are in a hardline mood towards Chisbalah.

They have no sympathy for Hezbollah. They understand that Chisbala is the enemy of Israel, but also of the Lebanese people. That's how they've been, you know, talking about it here. And it was very interesting to hear the previous report because, you know, all of that critique of Chizbollah is something that is very, very powerfully covered in Israel, especially by the right-wing media outlets who want to portray that see even the Lebanese people blame Chisbullah. The government's messaging around these negotiations has been that we share a common goal of getting rid of Chisbala. The only problem is that the Israeli people have really been told year after year, decade after decade, that the only way to remove military threat is through military

action. And I can tell you that in the most recent survey by the Institute for National Security Studies from late May. We see that 59% of Israelis, so really almost six and ten, think that Israel should intensify the fighting against Chisbalah. And if you talk to people, just try to get their explanations, you know, what about the fact that so many people have been killed in Lebanon? They say, well, it's a shame of Chisbala put them in that situation. Although before they even say that, they're really much more concerned about the situation in the north of Israel, which has been living under, you know, ongoing drone fire. There is no normal life there. There is a huge outcry from the people in those various towns of northern Israel, the border towns, who are saying the government

has abandoned them. The government has completely sacrificed them to this ongoing firing. So that is their first priority. And is Benjamin Netanyahu concerned about his reelection and doesn't want a ceasefire as a show of weakness? He is obviously very concerned about the next election. He is concerned about every single election. He is a person who never wants to lose elections. I don't know if he's looking at it like this, but as a political analyst, I will say the North could very well be his undoing. This is an area with very high levels of support for right-wing parties, either Mr. Nizhaniahu's party or the other parties that have supported him and gone into political alliances to form coalitions. What we're hearing and what we're seeing is that they have been

suffering so much, you know, ever since October 7th, ever since Chisbalah's decision to join first in Hamas' attack by attacking Israel the very next day. And with all the escalations we don't have time to go through, but also, but particularly joining in the war on the side of Iran, that began in late February. So I think that, you know, the situation of people in the sense that the government has undertaken its actions, including starting the war with Iran, without sufficiently preparing for what was likely to be his well as response, makes people feel, again, the word abandonment is just everywhere in Israel right now. In general, during the war with Gaza, people felt like the government had abandoned them and the hostages, but now all of that

anger and sense of abandonment is coming from the north. And other Israelis feel it too. So I don't know Netanyahu feels about it, but if him, I would be pretty concerned that those people either will vote against him or his coalition parties, or maybe just won't turn out to vote. Is that going to be driving his policy? I mean, it's very hard to prove that kind of connection, but I think certainly the tough talk yesterday, which we see was not really accompanied by action, right, that the statements in the morning from prime minister and the defense minister that they were going to begin, you know, bombing targets near Beirut didn't actually happen and probably were intended to, you know, show the Israeli public and the public in the north that they're doing something, which won't really work because,

of course, they backed down under pressure from President Trump. Dahlia, we'll leave it there for now, but thank you for talking to us this morning. Thank you for having me, as always. Dalia Shenlin is a political analyst, columnist, and the author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel. We reached her in Tel Aviv. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.