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Lebanon is buckling under a second wave of mass displacement by Israel in two years as authorities struggle to restrain Hizbollah and curb rising domestic tensions.
Heavy Israeli strikes and widespread evacuation orders displaced hundreds of thousands of people this week, in a near-repeat of the humanitarian crisis triggered by Israel’s last offensive against Hizbollah in 2024.
This time, the Lebanese state has taken its most confrontational stance against Hizbollah in years, banning its military activities and vowing to arrest those behind the launch of the rockets that triggered Israel’s offensive. Those moves prompted fierce accusations of betrayal from Hizbollah.
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said on Friday that “a humanitarian disaster is looming”.
“Those who were forced to leave their homes are not and should not be held responsible for the suffering inflicted on them,” he said. “They are victims of the Israeli war on Lebanon, but also of those who offered a pretext for the Israeli aggression,” he added, in reference to Hizbollah.
The under-resourced Lebanese state is trying to shelter those forced to flee their homes while also dealing with rising sectarian tensions between the displaced and host communities.
Israel has issued sweeping evacuation orders for Lebanon’s south that cover about 8 per cent of Lebanese territory, as well as for all of Beirut’s southern suburbs and swaths of the eastern Bekaa valley.
That has left some 100,000 people in shelters, according to the government, with hundreds of thousands more believed to be staying with relatives, in rental units or on the streets.
One shepherd, trailed by his flock of goats and sheep, walked towards the capital from the coastal southern town of Naqoura in a multi-day journey that has been widely shared on social media.
In Beirut, Maria, who asked to be identified only by her first name, spent Thursday night in a white van by a scruffy patch of grass near an underpass in the city’s centre, crammed into the vehicle with her extended family after they fled the southern suburbs.
Across the road, a hotel in an upmarket Christian neighbourhood had six rooms available for $100 a night. But Maria said hotels had told them they would not take displaced people.
Squeezed beside relatives into the front seat of the parked van piled high with blankets on Friday, she explained how she understood the hotels’ reasoning: “They consider this decision [to go to war] as our decision, and that we agreed to this”, suggesting Shia Muslims overall — a group from which Hizbollah draws its support base — were being blamed for the war.
“They don’t embrace us — we’ll take care of ourselves,” she said.
In many parts of Lebanon, such as the Chouf mountains, which are home to a large Druze population, displaced people have been welcomed by local communities. But some fear being targeted by Israel after Israeli forces struck internal refugees in non-Shia villages during the last war. Already this week, Israel has struck a hotel in a majority-Christian suburb of Beirut.
Israeli strikes have so far killed 217 people and wounded 798, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
While Salam’s government urged host communities to accept refugees with open arms, it has also taken a hardline stance against Hizbollah.
Hizbollah’s decision to join the conflict on Iran’s side came after Lebanon’s government over the past year sought to rein in the group. Curbing Hizbollah would help Beirut secure direly needed donor support to rebuild the war-weary nation, which is still suffering from an economic crisis.
Salam’s government has sought to disarm the militant group — which has traditionally rivalled Lebanon’s army in terms of power — in southern Lebanon and weaken its influence to ensure that “the decision of war and peace” lies only with the state.
The disarmament drive was a condition of the US-brokered ceasefire that ended the last war in 2024, though Israel has since continued near-daily strikes on what it said were Hizbollah targets.
Hizbollah has this week been fighting ground battles with Israeli troops in southern villages where the militant group’s forces were meant to have been dismantled by Lebanon’s army.
Salam’s government has expressed anger at being returned to a situation where a reactivated Hizbollah has brought the country into war. The resulting war of words between the government and militant group has raised fears of domestic strife.
Given Hizbollah’s military strength and the risk of civil strife, the government may be powerless to enforce its vows to ban the group and take legal action against those involved in military operations.
With memories of the previous war fresh, many Lebanese feel the situation this time is graver still, while domestic tensions are heightened and generosity towards the displaced has shrunk.
In a shelter in Beirut that accepted hundreds of people during the last war, the displaced were now confined to the bottom floor. Building managers forbade displaced people from sleeping in the remainder of the multi-storey building, placing security guards and fences to keep them out.
Outside, displaced people passed time playing chess. Others discussed how they expected an unrestrained conflict, potentially existential for Hizbollah. “This is the last battle,” one said.