Israel’s attacks in Lebanon — and the threat of more to come — have caused more than a million people to flee their homes. This is nearly one-fifth of the entire population of a country that already hosts the world’s highest number of refugees per capita.
For the last two years, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has mapped Israel’s strategies of displacement in the occupied Palestinian territory, which have forced the people of entire refugee camps and neighbourhoods to flee, often under the immediate threat of air strikes or ongoing military operations.
We are now seeing the same tactics deployed in Lebanon. Israeli evacuation orders include large swaths of the predominantly Shia population in southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut, roughly 15 percent of Lebanese territory. People have sought refuge with friends and relatives or in government-run shelters, or have simply set up camp along the coastline of Beirut, itself the site of a recent Israeli strike.
The laws of war stipulate that civilians cannot be forced to leave their homes unless imperative military reasons dictate, or the security of the population is at risk. The evacuation must be temporary, and people must be allowed to return once the hostilities end. In short, war is not a licence to expel people from their land.
In Gaza, the Israeli military forcibly displaced nearly all of its two million residents through an evacuation system that put people directly in harm’s way as they were pushed into ever smaller enclaves.
In the occupied West Bank in early 2025, the Israeli military’s Operation Iron Wall led to the ethnic cleansing of 32,000 Palestinians in three refugee camps, the largest displacement in the area since 1967. They remain barred by the Israeli military from re-entering their homes or returning to the locations of their homes that the Israeli authorities have demolished.
In southern Syria, where Israel is occupying some territory, HRW found that Israeli forces have carried out a range of abuses against residents, including forced displacement, seizing and demolishing homes and preventing people from returning.
In both Gaza and the West Bank, Israel said it was targeting Palestinian militants and their infrastructure. But this does not justify wholesale civilian displacement. Israel is obliged to consider alternatives: mass displacement is a measure of last resort, and the authorities failed to show in Gaza and the West Bank that they had explored other ways to accomplish their military objectives and ensure that any displacement is temporary.
In fact, HRW found in both locations that the Israeli authorities, underlined by state policy, intentionally caused the massive, deliberate and long-term forced displacement of Palestinian civilians, amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity. In both cases, senior Israeli officials have declared their aim to expel and keep Palestinians out of parts of Gaza and the West Bank.
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