Teachers, parents, and staff held a sit-in protest at the Rafic Hariri Second High School in Beirut after displaced individuals temporarily housed there refused to relocate from the school's premises, Lebanese media reported on Thursday.
The school has been closed since March 2, and its premises have been used to house hundreds of Shia families relocated from southern Lebanon.
Around 1.1 million, 20% of Lebanon’s total population, was displaced when Hezbollah dragged the country back into war with Israel following the targeted assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to data published by UNICEF on Saturday.
Displaced families were reportedly received “by force and without the consent of the administration, with the support of armed elements who continue to guard the entrance to prevent the school administration from accessing it,” a source told L’Orient Today, without explicitly naming Hezbollah.
One parent commented on the school’s Facebook page, “We raise our voice to demand our fundamental right to education. We emphasize the need for immediate return to our school.
"We also demand that the school be evacuated immediately from any occupation that prevents the normal resumption of the school year. Our children are not numbers, and their futures are not postponed. School is a right, education is a priority, and the dignity of students is not neglected.”
Another mother was recorded complaining, “What exactly happened? How did the school turn into a Husseiniya (a Shiite religious gathering place)? During Ramadan, there were religious lessons or mourning gatherings; I’m not sure where they brought in reciters.
"We rejected this, and thanks to the officials we contacted, it stopped. Now there is partitioning of classrooms, rooms inside the school are being rented out, and even the parking lot is being rented. We can no longer enter unless we get their permission to access our own school.”
Children forced to change schools
She complained that many parents had been forced to withdraw their children from the school and send them to alternative institutions.
“I don’t know how it turned into a shelter, and even a centralized one. They entered it under arms. Not with our consent, at 4 a.m., they broke down and smashed the school doors and stormed in, without permission or request, under threat of weapons. Now we no longer even know - is it a shelter, or some kind of headquarters?” she continued.
Hezbollah MP Amin Sherri denied that Hezbollah occupied the school by force, telling local outlets that “All reception centers were selected in coordination with the emergency committee under the Office of the Prime Minister.”
Adding to the resentment, the Rafic Harari Second High School has become a site of sectarian divisions, according to the Lebanese media outlets L’Orient Today and El Nashra. There was reportedly outrage when a hijab ceremony, celebrating the transition young girls make to wearing the head covering, included partisan flags and slogans.
“We have nothing against the displaced people or against religious duties, but holding this ceremony with elaborate decorations and partisan flags has nothing to do with displacement anymore, and has become a real provocation for the displaced students and their parents,” a mother told L’Orient-Le Jour on condition of anonymity.
While photos posted online showed no Hezbollah posters were present at the ceremony, the organizers flew the flag of the Hezbollah-linked Mahdi Scouts.
Iran created the Imam Al-Mahdi Scouts Association, a youth movement that aims to train youth to take part in the fight against Israel and to instill in them radical Shiite Islamic ideology, in 1985. Many of the youth involved in the scouts go on to join Hezbollah as suicide bombers, according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.
Nir Boms, a research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University and at the International Center for Counterterrorism, told The Jerusalem Post that the unrest at the school is just the latest issue as Lebanon grapples with its identity.
Based on a confessional system, there is a “thin balance” in keeping the country unity, a balance that is being shaken by Hezbollah and its supporters taking space in territories uninterested in paying the price of a costly and unnecessary war, he explained.
The displaced supporters of Hezbollah are trying to push the narrative that being against the institutional takeovers is threatening Lebanon’s unity and is a sign of standing with Israel, he continued, adding that he had spoken to a number of Lebanese individuals of all religious sects recently who complained of provocations and escalating sectarian division.