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HomeRead, Watch, ListenIsrael
Israel Iran WarFeatureIsraelWorld

Lebanon’s painful reality: a country hostage to both Hezbollah and Israel

Israel’s deadly incursion to eradicate Hezbollah has reminded Lebanese of the need to create a government whose word has authority over all the country.
Alexi Demetriadi
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Funeral of journalists killed in Israeli airstrike in Lebanon

Mourners at the funeral of Beirut-based Al Mayadeen TV reporter Fatima Ftouni in Beirut, March 29 (EPA/Wael Hamzeh)

Published: 7 April 2026

Last updated: 8 April 2026

As northern Lebanon’s largest city, and the area’s political and economic centre, Tripoli provides an illuminating spotlight on the latest conflict in the Middle East and the direction of its country.

While physically left untouched amid Israel’s war with Hezbollah in the south and its strikes on the terrorist group’s strongholds in capital Beirut, the city and its people – like elsewhere across Lebanon – have much to lose.

Home to the area’s Sunni Muslim community, Tripoli includes small but longstanding enclaves of Christians and Alawites. Due to this Sunni majority and being nearer to Lebanon’s border with Syria than Israel, the city has long been relatively untouched by Hezbollah’s influence.

Its people and leaders are loyal to the state and its institutions, evidenced by billboards of President Joseph Aoun. The country’s confessional political system ensures the presidency is held by a Maronite, the prime ministership a Sunni, and the speaker a Shia. Representing one of Tripoli’s seats in the 128-member Lebanese parliament is Sunni Muslim General Ashraf Rifi.

A former national police chief and justice minister – who resigned from government in 2016 citing Hezbollah’s “malign influence” – General Rifi is the elder brother of Sydney GP Jamal Rifi, a prominent figure in Australia's Muslim community.

The general’s name is frequently brought up as a potential future prime minister, although elections scheduled for May have now been postponed due to the conflict.

We did not build our country as we should have built it, as a cohesive country

Sheik Mohammad Tariq Imam

General Rifi travels with an armed convoy and police detail, such is his profile, and strong stance against both Hezbollah and Iran, which has earned him swathes of supporters and dangerous enemies. In late March, a “close friend” of General Rifi survived an assassination attempt.

Speaking in Tripoli last month, he said what was happening in the south and Beirut was “very painful”.

General Ashraf Rifi (left) and Sheik Mohammad Tariq Imam (Alexi Demetriadi)
General Ashraf Rifi (left) and Sheik Mohammad Tariq Imam (Alexi Demetriadi)

“There is no doubt that the reality is very painful in Lebanon… the south is being subjected to violent attacks,” General Rifi said, speaking before the Israel Defence Forces expanded its “security zone” in southern Lebanon and before the IDF had hit Hezbollah targets in the district of Jezzine, which included journalists and health workers. President Aoun called the attack a “blatant crime”.

One of the journalists killed was Ali Shoeib, who the IDF has called a "terrorist" from Hezbollah's Radwan Force. It has provided no evidence to support its claim.

Israel’s response – and its attempt to use Hezbollah’s initial March strikes as its window to eradicate the terrorist group for good – has provoked outcry in its northerly neighbour and across the world, for both the extent of its expanding ground incursion and the number of civilian casualties.

Residential buildings in Beirut have been flattened while Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has said Israel would retain security control of its “security zone” up to the Litani River even after the end of the current conflict, a plan that has been criticised by the United Nations.

In April, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said there was no end to the war in sight, lamenting how Lebanon had become a “victim” of a conflict his country did not start and whose end he could not predict.

Thousands of Israeli citizens from the north have been displaced since the resumption of conflict, while the Lebanese government has said more than 1200 people have been killed and the UN has reported that more than one million Lebanese have been displaced since Israel’s response began.

General Rifi said Tripoli had housed scores of displaced communities since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war and ensuing regional conflict. “This is an (integrated) society: one place is being struck while another shelters the displaced,” he said.

A state or nothing

Last month the city observed Ramadan without a hitch. On Eid al-Fitr, at the Al Mansouri mosque, Sheik Mohammad Tariq Imam, the region’s mufti, called for Lebanese “national unity… from north to south”.

“We did not build our country as we should have built it, as a cohesive country,” he said, adding that “some in Lebanon had overpowered others”, in a veiled reference to Hezbollah.

“We should have faced (this conflict) with national unity… not with slogans, shouting and recklessness.”

In early March, days after Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel, which dragged a beleaguered Lebanon into the widening conflict with Iran, the government took the once unprecedented step of banning the group’s military and security activity.

Roundly criticised by Lebanese of all faiths for putting Iran before Lebanon, the government has since expelled the Iranian ambassador, but who at the time of writing is refusing to leave.

But warning that Lebanon had not appreciated the “scale of the danger” it now faced amid Israel’s incursion south of the Litani River, Sheik Imam said the country had been divided for too long.

“We were not up to the level of this danger, which we should have faced with national unity,” he said, calling for the Lebanese to “support our president, prime minister and state to end this war and rebuild”.

General Rifi would later make a similar intervention, telling a meeting of the Lebanese Forces party in Beirut late last month that the country’s sovereign decision making had been "hijacked" and that Lebanon had to correct course.

Blessed are the peacemakers

“We have been dragged into war not by a decision of the state or the will of its people, but by an entity that has placed itself above the constitution, government and its institutions,” General Rifi said, calling for the “definitive end” of frameworks outside that of the state’s, to affirm that decisions of peace and war rested resided with it, and to “extricate” Lebanon from a “game of axis”.

“What is happening is not a national choice but a usurpation of authority. Silence is no longer an option… either we are a state or we are nothing.”

Swathes of Australia’s Lebanese Sunni community have ties to Tripoli – the influential Lakemba-based Lebanese Muslim Association recently opened an outreach office in the city – and General Rifi emphasised the role that the diaspora in Australia, “our ambassadors”, could play in the country’s future. One of them being his younger brother.

Dr Jamal Rifi in Tripoli (Alexi Demetriadi)
Dr Jamal Rifi in Tripoli (Alexi Demetriadi)

Dr Jamal Rifi was forced into exile from Lebanon in 2021, when his cross-faith work with Melbourne-based health NGO Rozana was weaponised by Hezbollah’s “lackeys”, leading to a conviction at the hands of a military tribunal for “colluding with the enemy” – the “enemy” being Israel.

He was sentenced to a decade of hard labour, reflecting the extent to which his work with Rozana, which was founded by Jewish Australian Ron Finkel to support medical practitioners in the West Bank, had been exploited by his brother’s political opponents.

Dr Rifi’s conviction overturned

Dr Rifi had not returned to Lebanon since that ruling, until February, when he was escorted upon arrival in Beirut to the tribunal, which overturned the decision and cleared his name. One of the presiding judges said the original conviction had been baseless, unlawful and intended as a political smear.

“I was looking forward to visiting my mother’s resting place, and seeing my nieces and nephews, whose achievements I am so proud of,” Dr Rifi said.

“It was special to revisit where I grew up, which reaffirmed to me Tripoli’s impact on me, particularly how people of different faiths can live harmoniously together.”

The timing of Dr Rifi’s return was prompted by a recent dash to Damascus in an attempt to return the so-called ISIS brides and their children from the northern Syria al-Roj detention camp.

What Hezbollah is doing is not ‘resistance’. It’s a death warrant. Not just for Hezbollah, but for all of Lebanon - Dr Jamal Rifi

The cohort had been released but were turned back at a military checkpoint, with repatriation facilitators blaming premature leaks to the local media, and a central government in Damascus neither keen to let the Syrian Democratic Forces take lead or unnecessarily put Canberra offside.

“Security and countering violent extremism experts agree Australia will be safer with them returned,” Dr Rifi said.

“They are Australian citizens, entitled to their rights, otherwise citizenship becomes meaningless.”

Dr Rifi backed his brother’s warning that Lebanon must reclaim its sovereignty. “What Hezbollah is doing is not ‘resistance’ for Lebanon’s benefit,” he said, adding that Tripoli wanted what most Lebanese wanted: peace in the Middle East and peaceful coexistence within its borders.

“It is not resistance. It’s a death warrant. Not just for Hezbollah, but their community and all of Lebanon.

“The Shia community has suffered a lot. They have little hope of returning to their homes while some Beirut suburbs are now unliveable.

“They don’t say blessed are the fighters but blessed are the peacemakers.”

And for many fellow Lebanese – Christian, Sunni and Shia alike – the end of the war can’t come soon enough, nor can the rebuilding of a “cohesive” Lebanon.

They look forward to a time when the word of the state, its elected leaders and institutions is gospel, from “north to south”.

Postscript: On Wednesday, April 8, the United States and Iran announced the start of a two-week immediate ceasefire, mediated by Pakistan, whose prime minister said in a statement that the ceasefire had also been agreed to by the two countries’ respective allies, which would see a corresponding pause in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office later said that while Israel supported the two-week ceasefire with Iran, it did not include the conflict in Lebanon and, at the time of writing, it remained unclear if either Israel or Hezbollah were prepared to pause hostilities.

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About the author

Alexi Demetriadi

Alexi Demetriadi

Alexi Demetriadi is a Sydney-based journalist. He was previously a senior adviser at the NSW Government, and before that a state parliament reporter at The Daily Telegraph and political correspondent at The Australian. He is working with Jamal Rifi on his memoirs.

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