By Ahmad Al Kerdi and Raghed Waked
BEIRUT, May 5 (Reuters) - A private school in the heart of Beirut converted into a wartime shelter has become a flashpoint for social tensions brewing across Lebanon over the mass displacement caused by the war between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
Since Israel invaded Lebanon in pursuit of Iran-backed fighters who fired across the border in March, the Hariri School has been shut to students and converted to a collective shelter, with more than 1,500
displaced people living in its classrooms and tents in the school courtyard.
In early May, parents of pupils - who have been taking classes online - protested against the indefinite closure and called for their children to be able to return to class.
In a statement to Reuters, a representative of the school administration said it sympathised with the displaced.
"But just as we are sympathising with them, there are also rights for our students to be at their premises," the statement said.
The two-month war has displaced more than a million people in Lebanon. While most are staying with relatives or renting apartments, at least 124,000 are staying in government-run collective shelters.
The displaced mostly hail from Lebanon's Shi'ite Muslim community, from which Hezbollah draws most of its support. They have largely fled to areas predominantly inhabited by other sects, deepening sectarian tensions.
The Rafic Hariri School is named after a former prime minister whose 2005 assassination triggered an era of instability in Lebanon. An international tribunal found members of Hezbollah responsible for his killing.
This year, many of Hezbollah's critics have blamed the group for pulling Lebanon into another war by firing on Israel in support of Iran.
As internal divisions simmer, many Lebanese see echoes of the country's 1975-1990 civil war.
The representative of the Rafic Hariri School said she was worried history would repeat itself. She said that during a 2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah, displaced people broke into the school and damaged it, leaving the administration to foot the bill without state support.
She said displaced families again entered the school this year without administrators' permission.
Mohammed Hammoud, 40, who supervises displaced families in the school and was himself displaced from southern Lebanon, said the families had been handed the keys and did not force their way in. They would leave if the school administration formally asked them to, but the government should find them a new shelter, he added.
Lebanese Social Affairs Minister Haneen Sayed told Reuters in March the government was working on plans to cope with long-term displacement.
For those staying at the school, returning home is not an option.
Um Mahmoud's apartment was badly damaged in Israeli strikes, rendering it uninhabitable.
"Something might fall on me while I am in the house," she said from the school's kitchen. "We can't fix it because the war is still on. We want to fix it and go back, but we can't."
Volunteers helped the displaced families set up a kitchen to prepare thousands of meals daily, distributed both to the displaced and the surrounding community as a goodwill gesture.
Despite a ceasefire agreed on April 16, fighting has continued in southern Lebanon, where Israeli troops are occupying a strip of Lebanese land. Israel says their presence aims to shield northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah militants embedded in civilian areas.
Nearly 2,700 people have been killed in Israeli strikes across Lebanon since March 2, according to Lebanese authorities.
(Editing by Peter Graff)
