From the Frontline: Eid without joy — Lebanon’s displaced mark holiday in war’s shadows

Along the western seafront of Sidon, some 40 km south of Beirut, rows of makeshift tents face the Mediterranean. Their fabric walls flap in the wind. Inside, families live on thin mattresses, their few belongings stacked in plastic bags.

With no school to attend, children tape colorful paper cutouts onto tent flaps. The shapes are rough, but they echo the decorations that once brightened their homes in the south.

“Eid remains, and we will celebrate even if everything around us has changed,” said Raeda Qabalan, who fled her home village of Mays al-Jabal, one of the southern communities closest to the Israeli border that bore the brunt of the conflict.

For Lebanon’s displaced, this is how Eid al-Fitr arrives, one of the most important holidays for Muslims: without new clothes, without trays of sweets, with only a quiet, anxious wait in makeshift shelters.

This photo taken with a mobile phone on March 8, 2026 shows the destruction caused by Israeli airstrikes at the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Sidon, southern Lebanon. (Photo by Ali Hashisho/Xinhua)

More than a million people have been uprooted across Lebanon since Israel’s military campaign intensified in the south and east, forcing families from border villages into public schools, mountain towns, and tent encampments along the coast.

The latest flare-up began not long after the beginning of Ramadan. For many, nearly the entire holy month and now Eid have been spent in shelters.

In a tent along Sidon’s coast, 10-year-old Mohammad Sobeh drew the house his family lost to an Israeli airstrike. “This is how our home looked before the strike,” he said. “We used to celebrate Eid there.”

His 7-year-old sister, Sarah, recalled the absence of holiday traditions. “We used to make Eid cookies with our grandmother,” she said. This year, the family relies entirely on aid supplies.

Samia al-Abdallah, from Kfar Kila, said her 5-year-old grandson struggles to distinguish thunder from explosions. “He even asks how we will rebuild our house and buy new clothes,” she said. “All we wish for is for the war to stop so that we can return to our homes and land.”

People search for their belongings among the wreckage of a residential building destroyed in Israeli airstrikes near Sidon, southern Lebanon, March 17, 2026. (Photo by Ali Hashisho/Xinhua)

In Beiteddine, a mountain town that has absorbed waves of the displaced, families have been living in converted school classrooms for months. The setting is different from the coastal tents, but the feeling is the same.

Samira Srour, a mother of three, said her children still ask about the customs they can no longer keep. “They used to wait for Eid to buy clothes and toys,” she said. “Now we are living through a war that has taken away the joy of occasions.”

The holiday, traditionally a time for extended family gatherings, has been hollowed of its social architecture. The conflict has scattered families that once spent it together, each stranded in a different place.

“Eid used to bring the family together,” said Dawoud Ayash, 70, who now sleeps in a classroom. “With families separated, the festival lacks a soul,” he said.

A displaced man is seen on a road in Sidon, Lebanon, March 15, 2026. (Photo by Ali Hashisho/Xinhua)

For many of the displaced, what is hardest to bear is not the current hardship alone. It is that they have been here before.

Israel’s large-scale military offensive triggered a sweeping wave of displacement across Lebanon from October 2023 until a fragile ceasefire was reached in late 2024. Many families had barely begun to rebuild their homes before they were forced to flee again.

For them, this Eid is not just a missed celebration, but another chapter in a cycle of loss that refuses to close.

“I don’t know what to tell my children,” Samira said. “It’s a senseless war. It has taken the joy of the holidays, and so much more.”