Damaged documents on Oct. 21, 2024 in the southern suburbs of Beirut, after an Israeli strike against a Qard al-Hassan branch the day before. (Credit: Mohammad Yassine/L'Orient-Le Jour)
No fewer than twelve large-scale Israeli airstrikes were carried out on the night of Sunday to Monday against branches of Hezbollah's financial association, Qard al-Hassan, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the party's stronghold. Other strikes targeted and destroyed branches in south Lebanon, Nabatieh and the Bekaa, notably in Baalbeck-Hermel. A series of attacks that marked a new milestone in the military escalation led by the Israeli army against Hezbollah since Sept. 23.
Israeli officials, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, claimed that "the aim of the strikes on the Qard al-Hassan branches is to reduce trust between Hezbollah and the Lebanese people." On his X account, Arabic-language Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote that "these sites have been identified by intelligence as being used to store cash used by Hezbollah's military wing" against Israel.
Hezbollah's financial association published a statement on social media shortly after the first strikes, stating that it had already taken measures to protect citizens' deposits. Founded in 1983, a year after Hezbollah was founded, and registered as a non-governmental organization in 1987, Qard al-Hassan collects non-interest-bearing deposits under the principles of Islamic finance, in dollars or lira, and grants microcredits. Some deposit money there, others their jewelry or other valuables.
Gold jewelry in Qard al-Hassan
Despite the association's reassuring statement, are its depositors worried about the fate of their assets? When asked about this, a Hezbollah source replied that it was not possible to put us in contact with the association's officials and that L'Orient-Le Jour would be "notified as soon as it has published an official statement on the situation."
Many depositors also preferred to remain discreet and not speak out, even anonymously, due to the tense climate in the country. Some were even surprised by the question, saying that the association "paid back everything after 2006, why wouldn't it do it today?" Two of them, however, agreed to speak.
A woman who emigrated to a Latin American country, originally from the Bekaa, but who refused to provide any other details about her identity, recounted having placed all her gold jewelry in one of the branches of Qard al-Hassan a few years ago.
“It was safer for me to know that they were in this institution than at home, whether with me here or with one of my relatives in Lebanon,” she said. Each time she visited home, she would take the opportunity to extend the mortgage contract, and the money collected would be used to cover the expenses of her stay, among other things.
“Then I would repay the money in small amounts each month, it was very advantageous for me,” she explained.
Is she worried about the fate of her jewelry today?
"When I think of all those people who were killed or lost loved ones, or even their homes, I tell myself that I am no better than them and that my loss would be nothing compared to theirs," she stated. However, she admitted to "having received impersonal messages, like the ones we always receive, given that we have no contact with the management of the association, who reassure us that the gold and silver were removed from the branches well before the strikes, that they are safe and that we will not lose a cent of our money."
For the jewelry she deposited, she received, in cash, approximately 40 percent of their value on the condition that she repays the sum over 30 months, a period extended to 36 months thereafter, without interest or other costs than the symbolic sum paid at the time of opening the account.
'Shaking the trust between the resistance and its public'
“The strikes on Qard al-Hassan did not shake us at all, we are used to dealing with the association and it has never failed us.” A 25-year-old employee, who also wished to remain anonymous, said that her parents had deposited money in the institution. She also had done so previously but withdrew the amounts deposited before the start of the current war. For her and her relatives, the trust is absolute.
“In all wars and crises, we have never lost a cent, even though the banks had stopped reimbursing their depositors. Once again, Qard al-Hassan assured its depositors, in its message on social networks, that they would not lose any of their money,” she said.
She and her parents, displaced from Chiyeh in the southern suburbs of Beirut since the start of the Israeli escalation against Hezbollah on Sept. 23, therefore received the news of the Sunday evening strikes without much concern.
"We know that the institution took the necessary measures to protect the deposits, well before these strikes," she stated.
So how does she interpret the bombing of potentially empty branches?
"This has been Israeli policy from the beginning, they want to frighten and demoralize the resistance public, in the hope of an angry reaction from them. This is to misunderstand the nature of the link between the two."
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour
