A city on a knife edge – 5 days visiting Beirut
Rev Su McClellan
In this long-read, Embrace’s Rev Su McClellan shares a vivid personal account of her recent trip to Lebanon. She describes the lasting impact of the recent Israel-Hezbollah war, and how the local Christians that Embrace supports are rebuilding and continuing to serve their communities with love and compassion.
Arriving at a country on the edge of collapse
Sunday 12 January
With the 60-day ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel largely holding, now was a good time to join Embrace’s Programmes Manager for Lebanon, Sophia Peiris, on a solidarity visit to this beautiful but troubled country. Much had changed in the 11 years since my last visit. Back then, the country was learning to cope with the many Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war. I remember being shocked at the numbers of young Syrian children weaving their way through Beirut’s traffic jams, selling roses or packets of tissues. Our partners were, as ever, finding ways to respond with the compassion of Christ but there was a palpable sense that this was a country once again in crisis. Little did any of us know then, how much worse things were going to become.
Economic meltdown, the devastating Beirut Port explosion, Covid, political paralysis, and then the Hezbollah-Israel war have all played their part in taking Lebanon to the very edge of total collapse. It was therefore with some trepidation that I boarded the flight to Beirut.
The first surprise was that the flight was full – not a spare seat to be had. At the gate, excited children, exasperated parents, business people and elderly men and women waited patiently for the delayed departure time. Arrival into the almost deserted Rafic Hariri airport was in stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of Heathrow. The man at passport control raised a sardonic eyebrow as he asked me if I was visiting as a tourist. “I thought not” he said, after I explained that I was visiting for work.
My previous visits to Beirut had been notable for the amount of traffic. Car horns blaring and endless queues. I was surprised to find the roads quiet and mostly swathed in total darkness. Street lighting is a luxury most of the city can’t afford. Our taxi driver explained that hotels are almost giving rooms away in order to keep business going. They had hoped that the combination of Christmas and the ceasefire would lure people back to the city once known as the Paris of the Middle East. The full plane we’d travelled on had been a false flag. Most flights have been cancelled so people need to take a flight whenever one becomes available.
The hotel was similarly quiet when we arrived. All trepidation was gone. We’d done the right thing coming to visit our friends and partners. If we do nothing else on this trip, we can tell them that we care for them, we want to support them and we want to share their stories when we return home.
Faithful service amid destruction and displacement
Monday 13 January
Beirut is a city of contrasts. Designer stores, expensive restaurants and luxury car show rooms disguise a city of abject poverty and desperation. We left our hotel situated in a busy city street, with shops, tall buildings and city commuter traffic. Our destination couldn’t have been more different. Tucked away between a flyover and the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp is Hay el Gharbeh, an unofficial settlement of small streets, populated with ramshackle buildings patched with corrugated iron and plastic sheeting. The air carries the pungent smell of decay from the piles of uncollected rubbish, and small children jostle for position as young men on scooters weave between them.
The Hay el Gharbeh settlement, Lebanon, January 2025
As we get out of the taxi we are greeted by Abdel. His greeting is warm and welcoming as he says, “Welcome to Tahaddi”. He leads us up a narrow, dark staircase to his office, where we are joined by Brent, another member of the Tahaddi team. Tahaddi is a community-based organisation that provides primary healthcare, education and social services, primarily to the underserved Dom and Syrian refugee communities that live in Hay el Gharbeh.
The stories Abdel and Brent tell reflect the stories of tens of thousands of people in Lebanon today. Currently 60% of Tahaddi’s staff have been displaced by the war or are hosting those who were forced to flee. Many people are housing up to 15 people in their apartments.
At the height of Israel’s air strikes, one of the centre’s educators got stuck in the Bekaa Valley. Every house around the one she was staying in got bombed. Finding food was a challenge. A loaf of bread cost $5 – for context the average household income is currently $122 per month. She eventually got back to Beirut to discover that her home had been completely destroyed. Her story is repeated over and over again.
We met Dany, Tahaddi’s Medical Director. As the missiles began to rain from the sky back in October 2024, the medical team had to make some radical changes to their plans. As the war came closer and people began to flee, they gave out three months’ worth of medication to their patients, instead of the usual one-month supply. Many of Dany’s patients fled to two small villages 36km from the city. Once a week the medical team would make the journey over crumbling roads, to tend their patients. Without Dany and his dedicated colleagues, these people would have had no medical services at all.
Tahaddi’s wifi.
Modern technology has had its part to play. The centre’s social worker was able to offer ongoing community support through WhatsApp and the same applied in the education team. Tahaddi were able to supply a small number of grants to families who were not online to enable their children to carry on with at least some education during the war.
Amidst all the heartbreak and fear, I am astounded at the resilience of the staff. “How do you cope?” I ask Dany. He replies, “We’re used to it. One day we’re running for our lives. The next we’re on a picnic.”
Finding hope in the rubble
Tuesday 14 January
Spending time in Hadath, a suburb in South Beirut, was a truly multi-sensory experience. The crunch of glass beneath my feet, the feel of a spent stray bullet in my hand and the constant buzz of the Israeli drones overhead was almost overwhelming. Hadath is a predominantly Shi’ite area in South Beirut, but it is also home to The Village, one of the centres of the Al-Kafaàt Foundation (a long-running Embrace partner), providing education and training for children with disabilities. The centre was badly damaged in the war, with many of the surrounding buildings totally destroyed.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) claim that they only target terrorist infrastructure. I can’t claim to know what might have been in these buildings. I can only bear witness to what I saw. Bathrooms where perhaps children once splashed with their rubber ducks, beds where dreams were dreamed, illnesses suffered, love shared, and babies made. Kitchens that would have once smelled of lemon, garlic and za’atar, now acrid and desolate. And buildings that once provided shelter for people living with profound disabilities put beyond use.
Destruction in the Hadath neighbourhood
Pushing for change amid the legacy of the war
Wednesday 15 January (AM)
The contrasts of Beirut were once again brought into sharp relief as we sat in the garden of The Learning Centre for the Deaf. The oasis of peace and calm was only broken by the constant whine of the IDF drone circling overhead. As we sat with the centre’s director Dr Hussein Ismail, and Wafa the speech therapist, Dr Hussain joked that he was not in the least bit bothered by the drone! Dr Hussein lost his hearing when he was 7 months old after contracting meningitis. He speaks impeccable English and of course Arabic, but his first language is signing.
A profound and deep conviction that God was calling him to make a difference for deaf children in Lebanon resulted in Dr Hussein founding the Learning Centre for the Deaf in 2001, after completing his doctorate in Education Administration. Since then, the centre has worked with an average of 35 families a year, opening up opportunities for deaf children that would otherwise be impossible in Lebanon.
The centre has a beautiful and calm atmosphere. The classrooms are bright, light and well-resourced and the staff are clearly proud of all that they have achieved. But, like everyone else in Lebanon, LCD has been impacted by the war. Some of the families that use the centre were forced to flee their homes and went to stay with family in other parts of the country. This is cause for real concern at the centre as staff know that the children won’t find the same standard of education and support anywhere else in the country. At the same time, the centre hosted 22 displaced people as the war impacted their neighbourhoods.
Meeting Dr Hussein and Wafa at the Learning Centre for the Deaf.
Dr Hussein has made it his life’s work to advocate for deaf people in Lebanon. His latest campaign has been on the cost of using a smart phone. Smart phones have revolutionised life for deaf people. Their large visual screens make mobile communication possible. But, a smart phone requires data and mobile data packages are expensive and beyond the reach of many deaf people in Lebanon. He goes on to explain that there are 12,000 deaf people in Lebanon and he would like each one of them to have free data, so he is lobbying the government. As he says, “Politics impacts advocacy for deaf people”.
“The shadow of war still looms large”
Wednesday 15 January – PM
After driving up the steep roads of the Mount Lebanon district to reach Mansourieh, the first thing I noticed was the change in the air quality. The smell of diesel is almost a permanent feature of life in Beirut. Given the lack of infrastructure, people rely on either solar energy or, more commonly diesel generators, for their electricity. For those who can afford solar or good-quality generators that are housed in soundproofed basements, the system works quite well, but for Beirut’s poor it’s another story. In many of the areas that we visited, a tangled web of wires dangled just above our heads. This makeshift grid is fraught with danger and electrocutions and fires are commonplace, particularly in bad weather. It is a feature of life in Lebanon that the power will abruptly go off. You learn not to skip a beat if you are in the middle of a conversation and it has to continue in the dark for a few moments.
War, economic instability, lack of proper infrastructure, and dysfunctional governance have all played their part in the tragedy of Lebanon’s recent history. This is the context in which Embrace partner Thimar (formerly known as LSESD) works to affect tangible positive change in communities in Lebanon and beyond. Thimar means fruits in Arabic and reflects the organisation’s desire to see the transformative power of the Gospel working through communities so that they grow in love for God and neighbour.
The offices of Thimar are bright, airy and comfortable and seem a world away from the destruction and poverty that we’d seen elsewhere. But of course, appearances can be deceptive. We had lunch with two staff members and, like everyone else we met, they had been hugely affected by the war. The two women were used to war, they’d lived through conflict before but the observation of one of them made my skin go cold: “This last war was the worst because it’s been fought with 2025 technology. It was utterly terrifying. The children are traumatised.” One of the staff went on to tell us about how her sister had totally lost her memory after an airstrike. Sadly, her story is not unique.
Thimar supports a school in a very poor area of Beirut that was badly damaged by air strikes. Each of the school’s centres have been damaged. Being unable to go to school is awful for any child, but for a child with learning differences it presents an extra level of challenge. As the staff told us, “Online classes don’t really work for children with special needs”.
Another of the branches of Thimar’s work is MERATH – Middle East Revive and Thrive. There is widespread poverty in Lebanon’s northern governorate, and farmers have struggled to increase their yields, mainly due to misuse of land and water and over-reliance on chemical fertilisers. MERATH’s livelihoods programme works with farmers to help them farm organically. It was a joy to listen to Tamara, who runs the livelihood programme, proudly tell us of farms that have increased their yields so much that they are able to not only sell to their local villages but have enough produce to send to Syria and to support a feeding programme in local schools too. Milk yields have also increased, enabling farms to sell to dairy produce factories.
This is all good news, but no one takes this for granted. The ripple effect of the crises that have gripped Lebanon in recent years have a lasting impact and make development hard. The use of white phosphorous by the IDF further south has made some of the agricultural land in southern Lebanon unusable. Witnesses say that some farms and villages have lost their olive trees, which have been uprooted and taken to Israel.
Whilst the ceasefire holds, the shadow of war still looms large. People told us that the IDF distributed leaflets to the Christian villages telling them not to offer refuge to fleeing Muslim communities. This was an order that the Christian communities ignored.
In Beirut, Thimar provided shelter for 200 people at their theological seminary and fed a further 1,300 at their school. 64 of the staff from the school hosted people forced to flee and a further 54 staff were themselves displaced. The fact that the staff keep working, keep supporting their communities is testament to their resilience and total trust in the goodness of God.
Providing healthcare to those in great need
Thursday 16 January (AM)
The narrow streets of Bourj Hammoud.
The narrow streets of Bourj Hammoud are alive with little shops, cafes and bakeries. The ubiquitous electrical cables provide a canopy overhead, which combined with the narrowness of the roads, block out the sun. This Beirut suburb is the overcrowded home of the Armenian community, and nestled amidst its cramped buildings is Embrace partner, the Karagheusian Centre.
The Karagheusian Association for Child Welfare was established in 1941. The centre offers primary healthcare and a range of social programmes to support families and young people who otherwise would find it impossible to access such services.
As we walk through the centre’s courtyard, it’s alive with people coming for the first appointments of the day. Sick children sit on their mum’s laps, whilst their siblings run around the courtyard. An elderly man sits leaning forward on his walking stick and staring into the middle distance. But despite the busyness, there is a tangible calm. The staff are warm and friendly as people queue at the reception desk. Demand for the services on offer has rapidly increased over the last five years, with the centre now seeing in excess of 120,000 patient visits a year. As Serop, the General Manager reminds us, without Karagheusian these people would have no access to healthcare.
Whilst Bourj Hammoud was spared from the destruction of Israeli airstrikes, the war still left its indelible imprint on the local community. After the 2020 Beirut port explosion, the centre developed a crisis management system. This included preparing an underground shelter with enough equipment, water and food to shelter 200 people for five days. The system was put to the test during the war when they received a call from the IDF telling them that they were going to bomb the building next door, less than 10 metres away! They had to evacuate immediately. The system worked so well, they got everybody to safety in less than 15 minutes. To everyone’s relief, the threatened airstrike did not materialise but the fear generated must not be underestimated.
For one of the centre’s doctors, the war came right to her front door. She and her family lived in West Beirut, and they lost everything to an airstrike. Left homeless with two young children, the family moved in with a relative, but there were too many people for the small apartment. Another member of staff gave the doctor the keys to his home: “I can move in with my mum, take it”. The family moved and a week later their relative’s home was destroyed.
Throughout this turbulent time the centre remained open, seeing around 13,000 patients a month and an additional 500 for specific mental health support. Through grants given by the Ministry of Health, the centre is able to prescribe 50 generic medicines for free. Where patients need medicines that are not on the list of 50, their cost is covered by the Embrace-funded medical programme. This is a tangible example of how Embrace supporters are making a life-enhancing difference.
In common with other places around the world, the centre is seeing an increase in the levels of breast cancer. As a breast cancer survivor myself, this is an issue very close to my heart. They are aiming to buy a mammogram and ultrasound machine to help with early detection, which would help to save lives.
For Serop, everything he does is rooted in his profound belief that every human being is created in the image of God. Despite the enormous challenges he and his team have faced, he is still able to say: “Prayer counts. Knowing that there are people like you guys praying for us. Knowing that there are people overseas who care about us. We love that at Embrace you always ask us, ‘how can we help?’”
I left the Karagheusian centre feeling inspired and humbled by what I’d seen. Highly educated health professionals who could make a fortune either in the private health sector or overseas choose to stay to give vulnerable people the best chance they can of not just surviving, but thriving.
Sacrificing one’s life to find it is a persistent theme in the gospels and such sacrifices were evident in all the people we met, including the incredible Vartine Ohanian, the director of the Zvartnotz centre. I had last visited Zvartnotz in 2010, when it was struggling with an unsuitable building. The centre is unrecognisable today, in no small measure thanks to Vartine’s talent and tenacity.
Under Vartine’s leadership, beautiful classrooms, a multi-sensory room, and light and bright workshops have created a safe and stimulating place for both the children and adults that use the centre.
Multi-sensory room at Zvartnotz Centre.
Vartine is an Armenian Christian and is well known in her community as a person who gets things done. She served as a government minister for sports and youth throughout 2020 and 2021. She is passionate about working for the common good in Lebanon, and the centre itself reflects the diversity of Lebanese society. Teaching is done in four languages: Arabic, Armenian, English and French, and every family is encouraged to be part of the community.
Supporting and empowering marginalised women and children
Thursday 16 January (PM)
Dar Al Amal centre in Bourj Hammoud.
My final stop in Bourj Hammoud was a project run by Embrace’s partner Beit El Nour (Dar Al Amal). The project works to protect vulnerable children and empower women and girls. Like vulnerable communities everywhere, the Syrians and displaced Lebanese staying in the area are at risk from grooming gangs. Children as young as 12 are being sent to work or forced into child marriage. Even younger children are now sorting rubbish after classes and child trafficking is an ever-present danger.
The centre’s work continued throughout the war. Many of the people, both adults and children, who were fleeing north had been so traumatised by what had happened to them that they had become violent. Consequently, the centre had to increase its mental health emergency response. An added complication was the cultural and political context. Staff had to contend with visits from Hezbollah officials who came to check that girls were not dancing or playing music during the mourning period for the assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Despite such challenges, staff were still able to work with groups of children, using art therapy.
As our conversation continued, the lights went out and we were plunged into darkness. “Ah, the sun’s gone down so the solar panels have stopped working,” explained Germaine, the director of Da Al Amal. This seemed to me a metaphor for what I’d seen in Lebanon. There are places and times when all seems normal and possibly even prosperous. Then the lights go out and you realise that this is a country on a knife edge.
