Beirut, Lebanon â In the past week, the Israeli military has created a mass displacement crisis, killed around 400 people, rained bombs down across Lebanon, including the capital Beirut, and pushed its troops even further into the southern part of the embattled country.
Israel is defining a new reality in Lebanon, analysts told Al Jazeera, with potential long-term consequences that could reshape the country in ways unlike the 2024 war, and the 2006 conflict before that, which also featured forced mass exoduses and displacement, widespread killing, and what experts called the urbicide of Beirutâs southern suburbs.
Israel may âredraw the demographic mapâ of Lebanon to try and pressure Hezbollah and sever the connection between the group and its support base, according to Michael Young, a Lebanese analyst and writer.
Once the war is overâŚ
On February 28, Israel and the United States assassinated Iranâs Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, launching a sustained war on Iran, now in its second week. Two days later, Hezbollah fired attacks at Israeli military sites for the first time in more than a year as retaliation for Khameneiâs killing.
In that same period, Israel had violated the November 2024 ceasefire with Lebanon on a near-daily basis with attacks, purportedly 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, it issued threats to all residents of south Lebanon to move north of the Litani River and all residents of Beirutâs southern suburbs â including the area known as Dahiyeh â to leave as well.
Many in Lebanon said the ceasefire â which Israel violated more than 10,000 times, according to United Nations peacekeepers â was always one-sided. Now, even that is well and truly over, as Hezbollah is attacking Israeli military sites daily and has engaged in battles in the eastern Bekaa Valley and south Lebanon in recent days.
A Lebanese Army source told Al Jazeera that the Israeli military has pushed a few kilometres (miles) into unpopulated 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 may not choose to withdraw this time, though some analysts say they donât think Israel has much to gain by holding onto the land.
âIn the long run, it is not in Israelâs interest, strategically speaking,â Lebanese political analyst Rabih Dandachli told Al Jazeera. âI donât think they stay on the land. The presence of an occupation in this way will create another resistance like Hezbollah.â
Israel has already been harried out of 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 around 19,000 Lebanese and Palestinians.
Still, analysts believe Israelâs actions in this war are part of its efforts to reshape the region under its hegemony, defanging any real or perceived threat. Those effects would also impact Lebanonâs relationship with Israel and the power and status of Hezbollah.
âToday, Israelâs actions in Lebanon are tied to the political conditions they want to impose on Lebanon once this war is over,â Young said.
Analysts said those conditions could include imposing a peace deal, in line with Israelâs Abraham Accords, or an economic zone that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has touted regularly.
Young said the intention could be to âdemilitarise the area north of the Litaniâ to the Awali River, near Sidon, similar to what Israel has demanded in Syria, insisting the area south of Damascus be demilitarised. He recalled the 1976 Red Lines Agreement, a secret agreement between Israel and Syria, negotiated by the Americans, that decided Syria would not go south of the Awali.
Israel âcreating large pockets of internal displacementâ
For years prior to the 2023-2024 war, Hezbollah was the most powerful force in Lebanon. But the group was badly weakened in that conflict. Israel killed the majority of its military leadership, including its longtime Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.
Since then, the Lebanese government has promised to disarm the group and recently declared the groupâs military activities illegal. When asked if the Lebanese Army is arresting Hezbollah members carrying weapons, an army source told Al Jazeera the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) is arresting anyone and everyone carrying non-state-sanctioned arms.
With the group at its weakest point in more than 40 years, Israel is now using mass displacement to reshape how Hezbollah exists in relation to its Shia community support base. On March 5, Israel ordered all residents of south Lebanon to move north of the Litani River. The next day, it ordered all residents of the southern suburbs of Beirut to leave the area as well. Hezbollah draws most of its support from those two regions, plus the eastern Bekaa Valley, where Baalbek has been a longtime stronghold.
âThis is something new â the emptying of the whole of Dahiyeh â itâs a new phenomenon,â Young said. In 2024, Dahiyeh was bombarded heavily on a nightly basis for nearly two months. At the start of that bombing campaign, tens of thousands fled Dahiyeh for the sea front. But this time, Young said, it is an effort to cut the link between Hezbollah and its base among the populace.
Days into the US-Israel war on Iran and Lebanon becoming a fierce front, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatened to turn the southern suburbs of Lebanonâs capital into another Gaza Strip.
In a video shared online on Thursday, Smotrich warned that the Dahiyeh area would soon look âlike Khan Younisâ, a city in southern Gaza that has been decimated in Israelâs genocidal war against Palestinians in the enclave.
âToday it seems a policy decision and part of a broader strategy to break Hezbollahâs link with its own society, with Beirut and with the rest of Lebanese society,â Young said.
Analysts said the threats to evacuate place massive stress on the party, as well as the Lebanese state, as well as impacting the lives of tens of thousands of everyday citizens.
âBy forcing populations out of southern Lebanon, parts of the Bekaa, and the southern suburbs, Israel is effectively reshaping demographic patterns and creating large pockets of internal displacement,â Imad Salamey, a political scientist at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, told Al Jazeera. âThis redistribution strains host communities and state institutions while raising the economic and social costs of the war for Lebanon.â
There are fears among many Lebanese that the Israeli invasion into 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 wanton destruction and economic hardship in the deep south will reverberate heavily into the future.
âA 60-year-old [from the south] has lived through six or seven wars and has had to rebuild three times,â Dandachli said. âAt that age, what can he do now?â
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 liberated and they can go back, much of the infrastructure and local economy is destroyed and will take years to rebuild.
Dandachli said that 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 kids, for example, may decide to keep them in an area where they are already in school.
âAnyone who has a job and a life now outside of their village [in the south] may choose not to go back,â he said.
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