Beirut, Lebanon – At Nation Station, a communal kitchen in the Geitawi neighbourhood, volunteers move to and fro, stacking food on a table.Behind them, others stir meat, cook rice or chop lettuce while trading small talk.
“Fifty meals!”, one of the volunteers shouts out to his comrades, noting a benchmark.
They return the enthusiasm with a communal cheer, without breaking from their tasks.
The volunteers in the petrol station-turned-communal kitchen are working to prepare meals to be delivered to shelters for people who have been forced to flee their homes.
Volunteers at the non-profit organisation Nation Station prepare meals for people displaced by Israeli bombardment, in Beirut, Lebanon, September 26, 2024 [Mohamed Azakir/Reuters]
One million displaced
Before Israel began relentlessly bombarding Lebanon’s south, Bekaa Valley in the east and Beirut’s southern suburbs on September 23, more than 110,000 people had already been displaced from their homes in southern Lebanon during the 11 months of cross-border attacks.
Last Monday’s escalation forced many more to flee and the situation became even more dire on Friday when Israel levelled an entire block in a southern suburb of Beirut while assassinating Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and other officials from the group.
The Israeli army then demanded that large parts of Beirut’s suburbs, already reeling from the previous week’s attacks, evacuate.
Displaced children play at a makeshift encampment where scores of displaced people live at a beach in Beirut, Lebanon, October 1, 2024 [Louisa Gouliamaki/Reuters]
In the days that followed, P …
