Inside Beirut’s National Theater, displaced Lebanese families seek shelter

The Lebanese National Theater in Beirut had become a shelter for displaced families, including a mother and her five sons who arrived 11 days earlier. The building’s stage and lobby were absorbing the pressure of Lebanon’s widening war displacement as families searched for a place to sleep, eat and wait out the fighting.

In March 2026, founder actor and director Kassem Istanbouli opened the venues he helped build in Tyre, Beirut and Tripoli to families forced from their homes by renewed violence. In Tyre, the theater sheltered Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian and other families, and children took part in puppetry and storytelling workshops.

UNHCR counted over a million people displaced in the late-2024 escalation of hostilities between Israel and armed groups in Lebanon. The International Organization for Migration counted more than 900,000 people displaced across Lebanon in the escalation that began in October 2023, while the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre recorded nearly 1.1 million movements in 2024 and 985,000 people living in internal displacement at year-end. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs counted 350,000 internally displaced people in a Sept. 29, 2024 assessment, then 834,746 on Oct. 26 and 842,648 on Oct. 31.

The Nov. 27, 2024 ceasefire did not end the crisis. UNHCR counted thousands still internally displaced into 2025 because of security threats, economic hardship and damaged living conditions, even as Lebanon continued to host about 1.3 million Syrian refugees as of mid-2025. OCHA later said hostilities intensified sharply again on March 2, 2026 and drove another wave of displacement.

Inside the Beirut theater, Rajaa Bacharach, 66, held weekly storytelling sessions for displaced children to ease their stress, while the theater in Tyre also sheltered Fatma Hakim, who fled the al-Raml neighborhood after evacuation warnings and repeated targeting.