When the Sabra family fled Israeli bombings on the city of Marjayoun, in southern Lebanonfor the southern suburbs of Beirut, in October last year, a monthly aid in dollars from the Hezbollah ensured that they did not go hungry. When they were displaced a second time, to the mountains surrounding the capital, by a wave of Israeli attacks south of Beirut, regular donations of meals, food packages and even cleaning products from Hezbollah-linked organizations kept them alive. “They are taking incredible care of us, even with everything that is going on. They don’t abandon us,” says Hind Sabra, whose name has been changed. 14 refugees from three families live in their house, and each of them receives a monthly benefit of 200 dollars, around 1,100 reais, in cash, in addition to discounted medicines and food baskets made up of rice, beans, oil and tuna.
The food, medicine and money are donated by a support network long maintained by Hezbollah, including a bank that flourished in Lebanon’s years-long financial crisis, a fund that cares for the families of those killed in battle, and an aid organization social organization that distributed cash payments to tens of thousands of displaced people earlier this year, according to a Hezbollah official. Over the past 20 years, the group has come to dominate the various sectors of Lebanon’s fragmented and sectarian politics, as well as exert control over crucial industries beyond agriculture and construction in the south. According to Lina Khatib, from the British think tank Chatham House, the group’s position has grown to “influence and control the state in Lebanon from within state institutions as well as outside them”.
