As Israel invades south Lebanon, many worry they’ll never go home : NPR
Joseph Elias Issa, 56, was displaced from Kfar Houneh where he lived with his family in southern Lebanon after the Israeli invasion. A farmer, he took two mules and now lives in a shepherd’s hut in Jezzine, about 8 kilometers from his home.
Claire Harbage/NPR
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JEZZINE, Lebanon — Joseph Elias Issa fears he will never return to his country.
He comes from a long line of shepherds and farmers in the town of Kfar Houneh in southern Lebanon. In its 56 years of existence, it has stayed put – in these rocky olive and citrus groves of its ancestors – through almost every war Israel has fought with its neighbors. But this time it’s different, he said.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon – aimed at driving Iran-backed Hezbollah militants from these same rocky hills – triggered one of the largest and fastest displacements in Lebanon’s history, affecting more than a million people, or about a fifth of the population. Israel ordered residents to move north to the Zahrani River, downstream of which Israeli airstrikes have destroyed bridges, homes, highways and gas stations. This evacuation zone covers 15 to 20% of Lebanese territory.
View of southern Lebanon from a hill in Jezzine, located outside the evacuation zone. Waves of displaced people arrive and stay or pass through the city as they abandon their homes.
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Across the country, schools have been turned into shelters. People are also camping in tents at a football stadium in the capital Beirut. Issa took refuge in a shepherd’s hut in the forest, near a waterfall. It is on the outskirts of Jezzine, about 8 km north of Kfar Houneh. Both are outside the evacuation zone, but their outskirts have still been hit by Israeli airstrikes.
“The airstrikes, the warplanes, you hear it, you see it all around you,” Issa remembers of his arduous journey north, in a truck carrying his mules.
What Israel is doing in southern Lebanon
Rescuers arrive at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the village of Kfar Roummane, southern Lebanon, on March 26.
Abbas Fakih/AFP via Getty Images
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Abbas Fakih/AFP via Getty Images
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli army was “accelerating the destruction of Lebanese homes”, in line with tactics used in Gaza, where residential areas have been razed, to prevent militants from returning. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army was creating a “safe zone” designed to keep anti-tank missile fire away from Israel’s northern border.
Katz says that once hostilities end, Israel will “maintain security control” over a smaller border area, up to the Litani River, encompassing about half of the larger evacuation zone, or about 8 to 15 percent of Lebanese territory. He said more than 600,000 residents evacuated to the north will be “completely barred south of the Litani, until the safety and security of residents of northern Israel are guaranteed.”
Israeli officials have not said how long this might last. Hezbollah retains the support of many supporters in southern Lebanon and continues to fire rockets into northern Israel.
“You are displaced, you leave your home and maybe you will never come back,” Issa says. “We are under siege.”
Human rights groups say forced displacement constitutes possible war crime
Mustafa Alloush walks between the tents of a stadium where thousands of people displaced in Beirut sleep after fleeing their homes during the invasion.
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Israel respects international law when it warns civilians before bombing their cities. But when these warnings are so general, covering large swathes of the country, they “threaten to sow panic,” says Ramzi Kaiss, a Beirut-based researcher at Human Rights Watch. And when they are unlimited and last indefinitely, they can constitute a war crime, he says.
“You can’t tie people’s return home to some vague guarantee of safety that you decide,” Kaiss says. “People must be allowed to return home once hostilities have ended.”
If people think they may never be allowed into their homes, that could influence their decision whether to leave — even if they’re actually in danger, he says.
On the main shopping street of Jezzine, a mountain town just north of the evacuation zone, Haddad Cutlery has been in business since 1770. The manager, Grace Rizk, 65, prides herself on staying open “seven days a week, every war.”
Grace Rizk, 65, works in a store selling locally made cutlery in downtown Jezzine. After living here for 15 years, she says the war will never make her leave.
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“We are used to war. Right now, if an airstrike comes, I will not move. God will protect us,” Risk says. “At the end of the day, we stand firm. We will not leave.”
Lebanon has already experienced this
The mayor of Jezzine, David El Helou, recalls how Israel occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. Israeli soldiers set up a checkpoint near his house.
At the time, Israel was fighting Palestinian militants. Now it’s Hezbollah.
David El Helou, the mayor of Jezzine, stands in his office overlooking the city.
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El Helou believes that this war seems “more serious” than the previous ones. Israel has said it wants to drive militants out of the area south of the Litani once and for all. It’s a task the Lebanese army was supposed to accomplish, under the terms of a November 2024 ceasefire after a previous war with Israel. But that’s not the case.
“We are in an uncertain situation,” says El Helou. “You can never know for sure when it’s going to end, what direction it’s going to take, what’s going to happen. The fear is always there.”
