The deserted hangar in Karantina, Beirut, on March 23, 2026. (Credit: Téa Ziadé/L'Orient-Le Jour)
In the alleys leading to Beirut Port, at the entrance to Karantina in northern Beirut, the acrid smell from the nearby fish market seeps into a vast abandoned warehouse. Its tin roof lets in diffuse light and rain, which collects in brownish puddles on a cracked floor.The space, which includes 74 isolated rooms, was originally intended to become a market. But the possibility that local authorities might convert it into a shelter for people displaced by the war between Israel and Hezbollah, without prior communication from the government, sparked sectarian hate and controversy on social media over the weekend.Beirut MP Ghassan Hasbani, affiliated with the Lebanese Forces, referred in a post on X to "residents’ fears of chaotic demographic expansion," referring to the fact that most people displaced are from the Shiite community....
In the alleys leading to Beirut Port, at the entrance to Karantina in northern Beirut, the acrid smell from the nearby fish market seeps into a vast abandoned warehouse. Its tin roof lets in diffuse light and rain, which collects in brownish puddles on a cracked floor.The space, which includes 74 isolated rooms, was originally intended to become a market. But the possibility that local authorities might convert it into a shelter for people displaced by the war between Israel and Hezbollah, without prior communication from the government, sparked sectarian hate and controversy on social media over the weekend.Beirut MP Ghassan Hasbani, affiliated with the Lebanese Forces, referred in a post on X to "residents’ fears of chaotic demographic expansion," referring to the fact that most people displaced are from the Shiite...
