When a ball of fire hit a building in Lebanon in July 2006, before the eyes of Alaa Makki, the American boy, who was 11 at the time, thought that it was “some really nice fireworks.” But it wasn’t. Makki, who was born and raised in Dearborn, was on his first visit to Lebanon. He was ignorant of war and the destruction that it entails.

Little did he know that the ball of fire was an Israeli air missile that was launched as part of a 33-day war that would claim the lives of 1,191 Lebanese and 44 Israeli civilians.

The conflict, known in Lebanon as the July War and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War, ensued after Hizbullah had abducted two Israeli soldiers.  Israeli forces launched a bombing campaign against Lebanese civilian infrastructure, in an effort to return the soldiers and disarm Hizbullah.

As the war escalated, Israel attempted a land invasion, and Hizbullah fired rockets daily at northern Israel.

The war, whose outcome is still disputed, ended in an internationally brokered ceasefire, which represented the beginning of the longest period of time without any military confrontation between Hizbullah and Israel, since the group’s establishment in 1982.

The war, however, still lives on in the memory of those who experienced it firsthand and those who suffered, and continue to suffer, from it.

Thousands who experienced the 2006 war in Lebanon were young U.S. nationals, who were visiting their families, like Makki.

The traumatic experiences that local kids experienced in Lebanon seven years ago has not left their conscious.

This month marks the seventh anniversary of the war that lasted from July 12, to August 14, 2006. 

Makki, 18, says he only recently has started realizing the severity of what he had gone through during the painful 12 days that he spent in the southern Lebanese village of Tebnin, before leaving Lebanon, through Syria, and travelling back to the United States.

“It was a scary situation. I can’t believe that I overcame it,” he said. “There is so much more I can do in my life now. I could have died then.”

Tebnin was heavily shelled by Israel during the war, and Makki experienced approximately two weeks of bombing in his grandmother’s basement, which was not equipped to withstand Israeli airstrikes.

He then left the village in a car, with a white flag flying out of its window, as a mark that it was carrying civilian passengers. He says that he was lucky to make it to Syria.  He saw many bombed cars and dead bodies along the dangerous way.

“I was alone in the airport with my mom, who did not speak English. My dad could not come with us,” he explained. “He stayed to work with the Red Cross.”

The United States supported Israel politically and militarily during the war. Makki voiced his objection to the role that the American government played.

“I went there to see family and have fun. I was not used to seeing and experiencing this kind of stuff,” he stated. “The U.S. government did not do anything except support Israel and make it seem like the victim, while we really were the victims.”

Reem Tamim was in Beirut when the war broke out. She stayed in the Lebanese capital for two weeks during the war, until she left Lebanon on a navy ship that cleared American citizens out of the country.

Beirut itself, the home of foreign embassies and billions of dollars in foreign investments, was not hit during the war. However, the capital’s southern suburb, which houses a million Hizbullah supporters, was the most targeted area in the country.

“We stayed in the city, but the bombs falling a few miles away were so loud that the whole house would shake. We stayed next to a mosque, and every day we would wake up to the bombs before the morning call for prayers,” she said. “The sounds were getting closer, and we were scared, because we would hear that the Israelis will bomb Beirut.”

Tamim, who was 13 in 2006, says that after leaving Lebanon, she felt compassion, to the point of guilt, for other children who had to suffer through the entire war.

“I got lucky. Why didn’t they?” she said.

Tamim suffered from nightmares upon returning to Michigan. She said that she would fall asleep with the sound of bombs in her head, thinking that she was still in Lebanon.

She described her experience on the navy ship that took her from Lebanon, to Cyprus, and finally to Ireland as “terrible.” She said that the ship, which had “too many people smashed together,” had no halal food, or a place to shower. 

However, Tamim was grateful for the American government’s efforts to bring U.S. citizens back to America.

“They could have left us there,” she said.