“NO ONE KNOWS what’s going to happen next in Lebanon. My advice is to leave now,” said Charbel, an armed soldier standing watch in a Christian neighbourhood in East Beirut on Monday evening.
Hours later, Israeli troops that had amassed at the border walked into Lebanese territory, marking the first invasion since 2006, when Israel waged a brutal six-week war with Hezbollah and inflicted widespread destruction on civilian infrastructure in Lebanon including Beirut airport, highways and bridges.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that, with the support of airstrikes and artillery fire, the ground operation will target villages near the Lebanese border that pose a threat to northern Israeli communities. The IDF said the aim of the ground campaign was to enable 60,000 displaced northern residents to return home.
On Tuesday, an Israeli military spokesperson issued an order to residents of around two dozen southern Lebanon towns to immediately leave and move north of the Awali River, about 58 kilometres from the Israel-Lebanese border. This is significantly farther than the Litani River, which marks the UN buffer zone created after the 2006 war and which is partly overseen by Irish peacekeepers.
“Calling on residents of nearly 30 villages to leave “immediately” unlawfully suggests that civilians who do not leave will be deemed as combatants,” said Ramzi Kaiss, a Lebanon researcher with the NGO Human Rights Watch. “Civilians who do not, or cannot evacuate, are still fully protected by [international humanitarian law].”
The IDF has described its ground invasion in southern Lebanon as “limited, localised and targeted.” Beirut-based analyst Michael Young said he recalled that Israel’s incursion into Lebanon in 1982 “was also billed as a limited incursion. But as Sharon understood, there will always be someone shooting at you from the next hill, so self-defence mandates taking that hill… until they reached Beirut.”
Lebanese author and analyst Kim Ghattas said: “In 1982, Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon saw an opportunity to bring about a new regional order. Chaos ensued. If history is precedent, if Israel pursues further military strikes, ground invasion etc, we are on the precipice of disaster.”
Since the latest escalation between Israel and Hezbollah began in September, at least 970 Lebanese have been killed, including children and women, while a further 2,784 are wounded. Meanwhile the Lebanese government estimates that one million people may have fled their homes due to Israeli attacks.
On Sunday, the World Food Programme said it had launched an emergency operation to provide meals for those displaced by the Israeli attacks, while a hive of volunteer-run kitchens has sprung into action across Beirut to feed the many families now sleeping in open spaces around the city.
Beirut city was already shaken by an Israeli drone strike in Cola, a central Sunni neighbourhood outside of a Hezbollah stronghold, early on Monday morning, which killed four people including three linked to a left-wing Palestinian militant group. The owner of a café that faces the building targeted in Cola says he saw the drone attack.
He introduced himself as John (which is unlikely to be his real name). When John was asked if he was surprised by the drone attack, he said: “Of course, I was surprised!” He said that residents didn’t expect strikes like in southern Beirut, which is seen as a Hezbollah stronghold, as well as densely populated civilian areas.
John says he was worried about more strikes in Cola and what could happen next in the war. When asked where he might go, he said “to the mountain” or to a cousin in the Bekaa valley, which itself has come under heavy bombardment from Israeli strikes.
On the other side of the busy road, a Syrian family is waiting to leave Beirut in a small van. Holding a baby, a Syrian mother says they had fled the southern Lebanese city of Saida where they had lived for the last three years but which was now facing intensifying Israeli bombardments in the surrounding areas.
The family are now returning to Aleppo in northern Syria. “The number of people who have crossed into Syria from Lebanon fleeing Israeli airstrikes – Lebanese and Syrian nationals – has reached 100,000. The outflow continues,” Filippo Grandi, the chief of the UN agency for refugees, said in a post on X on Monday.
Over a million Syrians fled to Lebanon after an initially peaceful anti-government uprising in 2011 was met by a violent government crackdown, which spiralled into an ongoing civil war. Since the dramatic escalation between Hezbollah and Israeli forces in September, many Syrians had decided that an Israeli invasion was a bigger concern than what they faced from the Syrian dictatorship and the dismal economy it oversaw, as well as the risk for men of forcible conscription into Syria’s army.
Earlier this week, Assad issued an amnesty for crimes committed before 22 September including for those who dodged compulsory military service, which often involves Syrian men serving for indefinite periods for a few dollars per month. Some Syrian men, however, were not convinced by the amnesty and haven’t accompanied their families back to Syria over the past week. Still, others have decided to take the risk and accompany their families into Syria.
Buses and cars filled with people spent hours queuing to cross the Syrian border on Monday, with some families crossing by foot. Once on the other side of the border, many Syrians spent hours waiting to be processed by understaffed border officials while aid workers distributed food, water and blankets.
“Many will have to spend the night outdoors waiting their turn,” said Rula Amin, a spokesperson for the UN refugee agency. Amin said some of the people arriving from Lebanon had visible injuries inflicted by recent Israeli attacks.
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