Joseph Elias Issa, 56, was displaced from Kfar Houneh where he lived with his family in southern Lebanon following the Israeli invasion. A farmer, he took two mules and is now staying in a a shepherd’s hut in Jezzine, about 5 miles away from his home.
Claire Harbage/NPR
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JEZZINE, Lebanon — Joseph Elias Issa worries he might never return to his land.
He’s from a long line of shepherds and farmers in the town of Kfar Houneh, in southern Lebanon. In his 56 years, he has stayed put — in these rocky olive and citrus groves of his ancestors — through nearly every war Israel has fought with its neighbors. But this time feels different, he says.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon — aimed at ousting Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants from these same rocky hills — has triggered one of the biggest and fastest displacements in Lebanon’s history, affecting more than a million people, or about a fifth of the population. Israel has ordered residents to move north of the Zahrani River, below which Israeli airstrikes have destroyed bridges, homes, highways and gas stations. That evacuation zone comprises 15% to 20% of Lebanon’s territory.
A view of southern Lebanon from a hill in Jezzine, which is outside the evacuation zone. Waves of displaced people are arriving and staying or passing through the town as they leave their homes behind.
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Across the country, schools have been converted into shelters. People are also camping out in tents at a soccer stadium in the capital Beirut. Issa has taken refuge in a shepherd’s hut in the forest, near a waterfall. It’s on the outskirts of Jezzine, about 5 miles north of Kfar Houneh. Both are outside the evacuation zone, but their outskirts have still been hit by Israeli airstrikes.
“Airstrikes, warplanes, you hear it, you see it all around you,” Issa recalls of his harrowing drive north, in a truck carrying his mules.
What Israel is doing in southern Lebanon
First aid responders arrive at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Roummane on March 26.
Abbas Fakih/AFP via Getty Images
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Abbas Fakih/AFP via Getty Images
Israeli Defense Minister Israeli Katz says Israel’s military is “accelerating the destruction of Lebanese homes” in accordance with tactics used in Gaza, where residential areas were razed, to prevent militants from returning. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the military is creating a “security zone” designed to push anti-tank missile fire away from Israel’s northern border.
Katz says once hostilities cease, Israel will “maintain security control” over a smaller border area, up to the Litani River, encompassing about half of the larger evacuation zone, or roughly 8% to 15% of Lebanese territory. He said more than 600,000 residents who evacuated northward will be “completely prohibited south of the Litani, until the safety and security of northern Israeli residents are guaranteed.”
Israeli officials have not said how long that might be. Hezbollah retains support among many in southern Lebanon, and is still firing rockets at northern Israel.
“You get displaced, and you leave your house, and maybe you never come back,” Issa says. “We are besieged.”
Human rights groups say forced displacement is a possible war crime
Mustafa Alloush walks between tents at a stadium where thousands of displaced people are sleeping in Beirut after fleeing their homes during the invasion.
Claire Harbage/NPR
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Israel is complying with international law when it warns civilians before bombing their towns. But when those warnings are so broad, covering huge swaths of the country, they “threaten to cause panic,” says Ramzi Kaiss, a Beirut-based researcher with Human Rights Watch. And when they’re open-ended, lasting indefinitely, they may amount to a war crime, he says.
“You cannot tie people’s return to their homes to some vague safety guarantee that you decide,” Kaiss says. “People must be allowed to return to their homes, once the hostilities cease.”
If people think they might never be allowed into their homes, that could influence their decision about whether or not to leave — even if in real danger, he says.
On the main shopping street in 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, through every war.”
Grace Rizk, 65, works at a shop 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’re used to war. Right now, if an airstrike comes, I won’t budge. God will protect us,” Risk says. “In the end, we are steadfast. We will not leave.”
Lebanon has been through this before
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.
Back then, Israel was battling Palestinian militants. Now it’s Hezbollah.
David El Helou, the mayor of Jezzine, stands in his office overlooking the town.
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El Helou says this war feels “more serious” than past ones. Israel has said it wants oust militants from the area south of the Litani once and for all. It’s a task Lebanon’s own army was supposed to do, according to terms of a November 2024 ceasefire after a previous war with Israel. But it has not done so.
“We are in an uncertain situation,” El Helou says. “You can never be sure when it’s going to end, which direction it’s going to take, what’s going to happen. The fear is always there.”
