For Dr Saad Ramadan, the holy period of Ramadan should be a time of spiritual reflection. But he is worried about his family in Lebanon, who face “chaos and fear”.

In the early hours of Monday morning, his elderly parents and five siblings fled their village in southern Lebanon – under “indiscriminate Israeli attacks”.

“Imagine bombs are coming and you have an hour and a half to pack up,” he says.

A journey to Beirut that usually takes 90 minutes stretched into a 25-hour ordeal as families crawled through gridlocked traffic.

“North and south bound lanes were packed with cars heading to Beirut. There were no people left in south Lebanon, it’s a ghost town.”

Ramadan, who migrated to Australia in 1991, is part of a diaspora caught in a painful liminal space. Like many Lebanese Australians, the rhythm of daily life is now punctured by the chime of WhatsApp notifications and news bulletins about a homeland once again engulfed in conflict after Hezbollah – a Shia Islamist organisation considered a proxy for the Iranian regime – launched a volley of rockets at Israel in retaliation for the US-Israeli killing of the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israel responded, hitting the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Bekaa valley and south Lebanon and forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes.

Ramadan’s family found a two-bedroom apartment in Beirut. Five families – and his parents – live under one roof.

“They are lucky,” he says. “Rentals are not available, many don’t even have apartments.”

“The fact they have had to leave their homeland, their villages, ruins the spirituality of Ramadan. It’s a time for fasting and prayer.”

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Gamel Kheir, the secretary for the Lebanese Muslim Association – a Sunni organisation that predominantly represents communities from north Lebanon – said the impact of the conflict occurring during Islam’s holiest month was compounding the community’s pain.

“We’re beyond resilience at the moment. We’ve gone from one catastrophe to another catastrophe,” he said.

“You double that up with the huge rise in Islamophobia in Australia … It’s piling up. It’s the fact that we’re getting death threats at the mosque.”

‘Mentally, I’m not here’

Fatima Hassoun, 39, lives in Australia with her husband and children, but her mind is in Lebanon – where most of her immediate family is.

“I’m living in two places,” she says. “Mentally, I’m not here.”

She barely sleeps and is hypervigilant, checking her phone at all hours, fearing the worst for her family – who are all in Lebanon.

Hassoun is one of eight siblings. Nearly all of them, and her parents, joined the mass exodus from the south. They fled first to Saida, then to Beirut, only to find a capital so overwhelmed there was nowhere to sleep.

For four days, her brother, his wife, and their five children – including a four-month-old baby – lived out of their car on the streets of Beirut.

Desperate, exhausted and without shelter, the family made the difficult decision to return to the south – back towards the danger they had just fled.

Watching their displacement from safety has taken a heavy psychological toll.

“Everyone is exhausted,” Hassoun says. “My nervous system is worn out, even my husband’s.”

She finds it difficult to be a present mother, feeling “crushing guilt” for being safe in Australia.

“My mood is always bad. When my daughter comes home from school, I feel like I can’t listen to her tell me about her day. My eyes are always on the news,” she says.

The Shia Muslim Council said it was concerned about the impact for the Lebanese community in Australia which was witnessing their families endure “yet another wave of displacement and violence in Lebanon”.

The council said that unlike during Israel’s attacks on Lebanon in 2024, there was little available accommodation available for displaced families and an absence of government and private sector support.

“At the same time, daily indiscriminate bombings are intensifying, forcing families to move repeatedly as once-safe areas come under attack. Relatives on the ground are cold, hungry, and exhausted,” council directors Ali Alsamail and Julie Karaki said in a joint statement.

Stuck in limbo

Fadl, who requested his last name not be used, was diagnosed with aggressive leukaemia in March 2025. He collapsed while visiting family in Australia who had been evacuated from Lebanon by Dfat in October 2024; Fadl had stayed to care for his mother and in-laws.

The 57-year-old was in a Sydney hospital for months – including two and a half months in a coma.

Facing a terminal diagnosis, he made a decision: he would fly back to Lebanon to see his family and seek medical treatment there.

“Half of my family is there, I need to see them,” he says.

Halfway between Qatar and Beirut on 28 February the pilot announced the plane was turning back to Doha because the airspace had closed as the US-Israel and Iran war escalated.

Fadl, who requires a wheelchair and regular hospital treatment, spent nine hours in the airport waiting for answers.

“We waited and waited … one queue to another,” he says. “I was so tired, but I kept my composure.”

The airline offered only blankets and floor space – an impossibility for a terminal cancer patient and an infant granddaughter traveling with him.

The family is now stranded in Qatar, paying out-of-pocket for accommodation and the critical medical care Fadl needs to stay alive.

“We can’t go back to Sydney, we can’t go forward to Lebanon because the airspace is closed,” he says. “It’s unsustainable.”

‘We feel abandoned’

From his temporary shelter in Qatar, Fadl says his family in southern Lebanon has been displaced, with his mother and sister’s homes both located close to bombed areas.

He is disappointed with what he calls the “blind eye” turned to the plight of Lebanese civilians by the Australian government.

Ramadan likewise believes there is a “clear disparity in how the government acknowledges the suffering of different communities”.

“We feel abandoned,” Ramadan says. “We expect the Australian government to stand behind us and to name things for what they are.”

“We want more peace. We don’t want to wake up to the news to find more people being killed.”

The Shia Muslim Council said community members were carrying the emotional burden of watching their homeland “trapped in recurring conflict” that “is deeply personal and profoundly distressing”.

“Many are in constant contact with loved ones, providing what support they can while feeling overwhelming helplessness from afar.”

The diaspora continues to live between two worlds: one of physical safety in Australia, and another of mounting grief in Lebanon.