SOUTHERN LEBANON — Israeli fighter jets did not spare a single border town, and that included plenty of residential neighborhoods. The unprecedented air raids on southern Lebanon turned Monday into a long bloody day, the deadliest in the country since at least 2006 as Israeli strikes killed at least 492 people including 35 children and 58 women, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
Residents of villages in southern Lebanon woke up to text messages urging them to evacuate their homes and villages near the locations of Hezbollah missiles.
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“If you are in a building with Hezbollah weapons, stay away from the village until further notice,” was the first message. The next read: “If you live in a place where Hezbollah missiles are located, you must stay 1,000 meters (yards) away from your home.”
The first message assumes that the recipient is able to immediately evacuate their home and town. The second suggests that people should flee and makes sure that they didn’t miscalculate the distance to ensure their survival.
Aside from some linguistic clumsiness, both messages suggest that Israel cares about civilians. But Israel is also fully aware that Hezbollah members are fully entwined in the fabric of southern Lebanon. The messages suggest Hezbollah military facilities are known by the people, especially “the missile machine.” While in fact, Israel knows about Hezbollah capabilities more than the civilians who live among them in southern Lebanon.
Israel’s aim
It’s clear that Israel’s expanding attacks on southern Lebanon and civilians in the area aim at forcing the population to flee their homes. This means doubling the social and economic pressures that are supposed to accompany the displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents towards the north.
This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that the bombing occurred alongside a campaign of text messages from the Israeli army to residents advising them to leave “areas close to Hezbollah installations.” One of these messages reached a phone in the Lebanese Ministry of Information office.
Many strikes hit areas where there was no trace of Hezbollah fighters.
Given that residents are almost completely unable to determine their location in areas where Hezbollah is present, this is an explicit call to leave before they are targeted by airstrikes.
Dozens of airstrikes hit most of southern Lebanon, and reached the outskirts of the coastal city of Sidon. It was clear that many strikes hit areas where there was no trace of Hezbollah fighters. These are essentially blood messages to the Lebanese to force them fleeing their homes. There were villages that have never been targeted before, especially in the districts of Bint Jbeil, Marjeyoun, Nabatieh, and Tyre.
Panic, sleeping in cars
Many displaced families slept in shelters hastily set up in schools in Beirut and Sidon. Some who did not find shelter elsewhere slept in cars and parks and on the seaside corniche.
Hotels in Beirut were quickly booked to capacity and apartments in the surrounding mountains were snapped up by families seeking safe accommodations.
Some families used social media to offer up empty apartments or rooms in their houses, while volunteers set up a kitchen at an empty gas station in Beirut to cook meals for the displaced.
In the eastern city of Baalbek, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that lines formed at bakeries and gas stations as residents rushed to stock up on essential supplies in anticipation of another round of strikes, and an all-out war.
Israel has always used forced displacement to pressure the fighting fronts in southern Lebanon. But this time the title of its campaign is “returning the residents of northern Israel to their homes,” which leads to the belief that doubling the phenomenon of displacement from villages in southern Lebanon will be a form of pressure.
Mounting escalation
It appears that Israel has decided that the pressures of war should include the Lebanese government. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people will constitute a burden on the already exhausted government. It is likely that the move is a prelude to targeting other civilian infrastructure, such as roads and bridges.
Terror is almost the constant feature of our village.
It is noteworthy that the text messages once again reveals the extent of Israel’s penetration of communications networks in Lebanon, which adds to the psychological impact after last week’s unprecedented attacks via pagers and walkie-talkies.
Those attacks were followed by the assassination of Hezbollah military commander Ibrahim Akil, then the Hezbollah response, most of the villages in southern Lebanon have been living with daily violent escalation, with the scope of Israeli attacks expanding from the border villages to include distant areas in most of the villages in the south and the Beqaa Valley.
Terror spreads
Fear is also rising in northern Israel in light of this escalation, with the closure of schools beyond the villages of the border strip with Israel. Hezbollah’s response to the recent Israeli attacks forced the closure of educational institutions in northern Israel, including the city of Haifa.
The writer of these lines, like other citizens of southern Lebanon, is currently subjected to the most violent Israeli bombardment since the beginning of the war. Terror is almost the constant feature of the residents of our village… such fear extends to other villages to become a generalized terror across Lebanon.
People are being displaced already, but where do they go?
