Tyre, Lebanon – On March 4, Em Saeid was at her home near the el-Buss roundabout in Tyre when Israel issued a forced evacuation threat for the entirety of southern Lebanon. She moved frantically, trying to gather her things and wake sleeping relatives, when locals started firing their guns in the air to warn people to evacuate. Along with her husband, Yasser, her daughter, Samiha, and Samiha’s four-year-old daughter, she got in their Mercedes and headed towards Tyre’s port, which they thought would be safe from Israeli attacks.
Em Saied described scenes of panic on the road. Old people were making their way on foot,” she said. A car ride that usually lasts just a few minutes ended up taking the family three hours.
Once at the port, Yasser told his wife the family should head north to the capital, Beirut, and stay with a friend, as they had done when Israel escalated its attacks in September 2024, during what in Lebanon is called the “66-day intensification“. On March 2, Israel intensified its war on Lebanon for the second time in less than two years, unleashing havoc on large swaths of the country. Earlier that night, Hezbollah responded to almost 15 months of unanswered Israeli attacks for the first time, firing rockets across the border after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the US-Israel war on Iran on February 28.
In the coming days, Israel would issue evacuation demands for about 14 percent of Lebanon. Among the areas Israel declared unsafe to their attacks were the entirety of southern Lebanon, a few villages in the eastern Bekaa Valley, and the entirety of Beirut’s southern suburbs. Soon, 1.2 million people, or more than 20 percent of Lebanon’s population, were displaced.
Global rights group Human Rights Watch has said that Israel’s displacement of civilians in Lebanon is a “possible war crime”, with experts stressing that “war is not a licence to expel people from their land”. When the forced evacuation threats came in, southern residents of Lebanon had a decision to make. They had to calculate the risks of potentially being killed in Israeli attacks against the struggles of relying on the goodwill of others, or paying extortionate fees for temporary housing.
Aya and her family decided decided to stay put in the municipality of al-Abbassieh, about 8km (5 miles) away from Tyre. The recent graduate from the Islamic University in Tyre, who was displaced during the previous intensification in 2024, said she did not want to go through the indignity of being overcharged or disrespected by landlords again. Many southerners say they are particularly connected to their land.
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