Abu Bilal and Em Bilal at their daughter's house in Kfar Zabad, Bekaa district, two months after displacement on Dec. 8, 2023. (Credit: Marguerita Sejaan/L'Orient Today)
On Nov. 26, the eve of the truce between Hezbollah and Israel, Riad Khalife was thinking about how in the morning he would finally go home, to Kfar Shuba, to his olive groves, to his garden where he takes care of his fig trees, the grape vines and brightly colored flowers that line the entrance to his house. And then, just before the cease-fire came into effect, Israeli jets bombed his home and the homes of his two sons in the village which sits along the Blue Line. Khalife’s home had almost managed to avoid what then — at the eleventh hour — became its sixth destruction at the hands of Israel in nearly 60 years. Khalife, more commonly known as Abu Bilal, was born in 1944 in Kfar Shuba amid shifting tides of colonialism and nationalism. Lebanon was barely one year into its independence, Syria was two years away from its own and in four...
On Nov. 26, the eve of the truce between Hezbollah and Israel, Riad Khalife was thinking about how in the morning he would finally go home, to Kfar Shuba, to his olive groves, to his garden where he takes care of his fig trees, the grape vines and brightly colored flowers that line the entrance to his house. And then, just before the cease-fire came into effect, Israeli jets bombed his home and the homes of his two sons in the village which sits along the Blue Line. Khalife’s home had almost managed to avoid what then — at the eleventh hour — became its sixth destruction at the hands of Israel in nearly 60 years. Khalife, more commonly known as Abu Bilal, was born in 1944 in Kfar Shuba amid shifting tides of colonialism and nationalism. Lebanon was barely one year into its independence, Syria was two years away from its own and in...