Beirut, Lebanon – Last week, the Israeli army created a mass displacement crisis, killing some 400 people, dropping bombs on all of Lebanon, including the capital, Beirut, and pushing its troops further into the southern part of the besieged country.
Israel is defining a new reality in Lebanon, analysts told Al Jazeera, with possible long-term consequences that could reshape the country in ways different from the 2024 war and the previous conflict in 2006, which also included mass forced exoduses and displacements, widespread killings and what experts called the urbicide of Beirut’s southern suburbs.
According to Michael Young, a Lebanese analyst and writer, Israel could “redefine the demographic map” of Lebanon to try to pressure Hezbollah and sever the connection between the group and its support base.
Once the war is over…
On February 28, Israel and the United States assassinated Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, launching a sustained war against Iran, now in its second week. Two days later, Hezbollah launched attacks on Israeli military facilities for the first time in more than a year in retaliation for Khamenei’s assassination.
In that same period, Israel had violated the November 2024 ceasefire with Lebanon on an almost daily basis with attacks, reportedly targeting Hezbollah, that killed hundreds of civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure.
Israel responded to that attack on Monday by declaring the truce over. Over the next few days, he threatened all residents of southern Lebanon to move north of the Litani River and all residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs – including the area known as Dahiyeh – to leave as well.
Many in Lebanon said the ceasefire – which Israel violated more than 10,000 times, according to United Nations peacekeepers – was always unilateral. Now even that has truly ended, as Hezbollah is attacking Israeli military sites daily and has been engaged in battles in the eastern Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon in recent days.
A Lebanese army source told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army has advanced a few kilometers (miles) into depopulated areas across southern Lebanon. This is in addition to the five points Israel has occupied since the 2024 ceasefire.
There are fears among the population that the Israelis will not choose to withdraw this time, although some analysts say they do not believe Israel has much to gain by holding on to that land.
“In the long term, it is not in Israel’s interest, strategically speaking,” Lebanese political analyst Rabih Dandachli told Al Jazeera. “I don’t think they will stay on the land. The presence of an occupation in this way will create another resistance like Hezbollah.”
Israel was already expelled from southern Lebanon by Hezbollah in 2000, after an 18-year occupation that began with its invasion in 1982, ostensibly to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) presence in the country. That invasion killed some 19,000 Lebanese and Palestinians.
Still, analysts believe that Israel’s actions in this war are part of its efforts to reshape the region under its hegemony, defusing any real or perceived threats. Those effects would also affect Lebanon’s relationship with Israel and the power and status of Hezbollah.
“Today, Israel’s actions in Lebanon are tied to the political conditions they want to impose on Lebanon once this war is over,” Young said.
Analysts said those conditions could include the imposition of a peace deal, in line with Israel’s Abraham Accords, or an economic zone that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has regularly touted.
Young said the intention could be to “demilitarize the area north of the Litani” to the Awali River near Sidon, similar to what Israel has demanded in Syria, insisting that the area south of Damascus be demilitarized. He recalled the 1976 Red Lines Agreement, a secret agreement between Israel and Syria, brokered by the Americans, which decided that Syria would not go south of the Awali.
Israel “is creating large pockets of internal displacement”
During the years before the 2023-2024 war, Hezbollah was the most powerful force in Lebanon. But the group was greatly weakened in that conflict. Israel killed most of its military leaders, including its former secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah.
The Lebanese government has since vowed to disarm the group and recently declared its military activities illegal. When asked if the Lebanese army is arresting Hezbollah members who carry weapons, an army source told Al Jazeera that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) are arresting anyone carrying weapons not authorized by the state.
With the group at its weakest in more than 40 years, Israel is now using the mass displacement to reshape the way Hezbollah exists in relation to its Shiite community support base. On March 5, Israel ordered all residents of southern Lebanon to move north of the Litani River. The next day, he ordered all residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs to also leave the area. Hezbollah draws most of its support from those two regions, as well as the eastern Bekaa Valley, where Baalbek has long been a stronghold.
“This is something new, the emptying of all of Dahiyeh, it’s a new phenomenon,” Young said. In 2024, Dahiyeh was heavily bombed every night for almost two months. At the beginning of that bombing campaign, tens of thousands fled Dahiyeh toward the waterfront. But this time, Young said, it is an effort to sever the link between Hezbollah and its base among the population.
Days after the US-Israel war against Iran and Lebanon became a fierce front, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatened to turn the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital into another Gaza Strip.
In a video shared online Thursday, Smotrich warned that the Dahiyeh area would soon resemble Khan Younis, a town in southern Gaza that has been decimated in Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the enclave.
“Today it appears to be a political decision and part of a broader strategy to break Hezbollah’s link with its own society, with Beirut and with the rest of Lebanese society,” Young said.
Analysts said the evacuation threats put enormous pressure on the party as well as the Lebanese state, in addition to impacting the lives of tens of thousands of ordinary citizens.
“By expelling populations from southern Lebanon, parts of the Bekaa and the southern suburbs, Israel is effectively reshaping demographic patterns and creating large pockets of internal displacement,” Imad Salamey, a political scientist at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, told Al Jazeera. “This redistribution puts pressure on host communities and state institutions, while increasing the economic and social costs of the war for Lebanon.”
Many Lebanese fear that the Israeli invasion of their territory could signal a return to the days of that Israeli occupation that lasted from 1982 to 2000. But even if southerners are allowed to return to their land, the rampant destruction and economic hardship in the deep south will have strong repercussions in the future.
“A 60-year-old person (from the south) has lived through six or seven wars and has had to rebuild three times,” Dandachli said. “At that age, what can he do now?”
Dandachli said attachment to the land may not be enough for some southerners. Before Monday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that around 64,000 Lebanese were displaced from their homes, many of them southerners.
Some displaced Lebanese are now in their third year of displacement without having returned home. Even if the land is freed and they can return, much of the local infrastructure and economy is destroyed and will take years to rebuild.
Dandachli said even those who love the south, their land and their communities will be forced to overcome that destruction if they want to return. People with children, for example, may decide to keep them in an area where they are already attending school.
“Anyone who has a job and a life outside their town (in the south) can choose not to return,” he said.
