- When Israel announced last month that it would target a Lebanese charity linked to Hezbollah that provides small loans, it sparked an intense search for a list of the organization’s branches.
People across the country tried to figure out whether they needed to flee their homes if they were close to a branch, before Israel began bombing.
Al-Qard Al-Hassan, a charity that provides small, interest-free loans, has gained popularity over the past decade amid US sanctions and the collapse of Lebanon's banking sector.
Hassan lives with his family in Beirut, 200 meters away from a branch of the Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association.
“We heard about it from this guy Avichai,” Hassan says, referring to Avichai Adraee, the Arabic-language spokesman for the Israeli military who announces evacuation orders on social media.
"Then the bombing started in the southern suburbs of Beirut, and we heard the sounds of explosions, and children were jumping with every sound," he added.
With nowhere else to go, Hassan took his family to the beach, where they spent a sleepless night crammed together in the car.
The Israeli Air Force attacked about 30 branches of the Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association that night, but the branch next to Hassan's house was not bombed and returned the next morning.
Israel has struck some civilian organizations linked to Hezbollah, as part of its campaign in Lebanon.
Aside from the Qard al-Hassan Association, Israel struck the Hezbollah-funded Islamic Health Organization, which runs hospitals and health centers across the country, and its search and rescue teams, killing dozens of rescue workers.
Israel says Hezbollah is "using the Islamic Health Organization as a cover for terrorist activities" and that those killed were performing military roles, a claim the organization denies.
Israel also struck buildings housing people displaced by bombing and evacuation orders.
Such attacks have raised widespread suspicions here in Lebanon that Israel is targeting the civilian population that supports Hezbollah, or what is known here as Hezbollah's "environment," that is, the party's social base.
Hezbollah's relationship with this social base, which is concentrated in the Shiite-majority areas of the south, the eastern Bekaa Valley, and the southern suburbs of Beirut, has long been a source of strength for the party, but it has also put it in the line of fire of its enemies.
Israel says the Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association funds Hezbollah's military activities, a claim denied by the association, which says it plays no role beyond providing small, interest-free loans to ordinary Lebanese, in line with Islamic law's prohibition on charging interest.
Following Israel's strikes on Al-Qard Al-Hassan branches in Lebanon last month, the then Israeli defense minister said on the X website that Israel was "destroying the terrorist organization's ability to purchase and launch missiles."
From an international humanitarian law perspective, experts say the Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association is not a lawful military target, regardless of Israel's allegations that it plays a role in financing Hezbollah.
According to Ben Saul, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, “international humanitarian law does not permit attacks on an adversary’s economic or financial infrastructure, even if they indirectly support its military activities.”
The bombing "erases the distinction between civilian and military targets" and "opens the door to an all-out war against the civilian population," Sol said.
So what can Israel hope to achieve by bombing civilian organizations linked to Hezbollah?
Amal Saad, a lecturer in politics and international relations at Cardiff University and a leading expert on Hezbollah, believes the attacks are aimed at dismantling what is also known as Hezbollah’s “community of resistance.”
“Hezbollah is probably the second largest employer after the state, and its civil institutions affect hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, especially Shiites, and the attacks are a way to further strangle the community,” Saad says.
This would not be the first time that Hezbollah’s social base has come under attack. During the last war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, Israel razed neighborhoods in the suburbs to the ground, and two years later, it unveiled a military strategy derived from that experience, which became known as the Dahiyeh Doctrine.
First articulated by Major General Gadi Eisenkot in 2008 when he was head of the IDF's Northern Command, the doctrine, as it came to be known, called for the application of "disproportionate force" against civilian areas from which Israel believed they were being attacked, with the aim of pressuring the Lebanese people to turn them against Hezbollah and undermine support for it.
“From our point of view, these are military bases,” Eisenkot said at the time, “and harming the population is the only way to rein in Hassan Nasrallah,” referring to the then-Hezbollah leader, who was killed in an airstrike in the suburbs in September 2024.
Now, Israel is striking at residents in areas far from the fighting, such as Wardaniyeh, northeast of Sidon, in addition to striking at Hezbollah's network of civilian organizations.
In response to the BBC, the Israeli military said it "operates only against the Hezbollah terrorist organization, not against the Lebanese population or medical facilities, and therefore takes many measures to mitigate harm to civilians."
"The IDF operations were planned on the basis of extensive intelligence gathering and in full accordance with international law," he added.
The Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association is just one of many organizations linked to Hezbollah that provide hundreds of thousands of Lebanese with various types of livelihood support, especially those who constitute the party’s base.
The story of the association is intertwined with the story of the financial and economic collapse in Lebanon.
The association was founded in the early 1980s, and provided loans to families and newlyweds, to help them meet their various personal needs. More recently, the association also began providing loans for things like agricultural projects and solar panels.
In 2007, the United States imposed sanctions on the association, saying it was used by Hezbollah "as a cover to conduct its financial activities."
It was again highlighted in August 2019, when the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Jammal Trust Bank, alleging, among other things, that it “knowingly facilitates the banking activities of US-designated entities publicly associated with Hizballah,” including the Al-Qard al-Hassan Association. The bank was forced to close less than three weeks later.
But U.S. sanctions, and then the collapse of Lebanon’s banking sector in October 2019, caused the association to grow like never before. As a result of sanctions on individuals and entities the United States said were linked to Hezbollah, Lebanese banks closed the accounts of people they suspected of causing them problems with the U.S. Treasury, many of whom transferred their money to the al-Qard al-Hassan Association.
Then, more people deposited money into the association due to the collapse of confidence in the banking system, after Lebanese banks withheld people’s savings, following the financial and economic collapse in 2019.
Al-Qard Al-Hassan ended up being a supporter of many Lebanese who were excluded from the financial system due to US sanctions, and then of more who had nowhere to deposit their savings in the wake of the collapse.
Now, many of them are among the million or so displaced people scattered across Lebanon today, mostly from the south, the Bekaa and the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Many of them are crammed together in government-run shelters and empty buildings, watching helplessly as many of their villages and towns are destroyed by Israeli forces.
Those whose homes are still standing live in anticipation of the next wave of bombing, while those with deposits with the Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association now fear that their savings have run out, at the hour when they need them most.
The displaced themselves have been bombed, in areas far from the fighting, such as the Christian-majority village of Ayto in the north, where 23 people were killed in an airstrike last month, and their host communities across the country are increasingly anxious; no one knows when or where Israel might strike.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah and the Israeli army have been clashing directly in the south for more than a month, after Israel launched a ground operation in southern Lebanon in early October.
Whatever direction the fighting takes on the ground, Israel is putting pressure on Lebanese society as a whole, through its strikes on civilian institutions such as the Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association.
Some believe that such attacks may be part of a strategy aimed at tearing apart the social fabric of Lebanon, and turning the country into an environment hostile to Hezbollah and the “resistance society.”
