‘The memories stay behind’: hundreds of thousands flee the Israeli bombs in Beirut | Lebanon

The ringing of half a million phones, a pause and a collective sigh of relief: More than 500,000 people were suddenly declared homeless.

As people began to flee, the streets of Beirut were filled with shots fired, panicked phone calls and honking horns. Thousands of people abandoned their cars and began a slow walk towards the sea, desperate to escape Israeli bombs that they knew would soon fall on their homes, whether they were in them or not.

The Israeli military has issued its largest and most comprehensive displacement order yet, ordering the immediate evacuation of Beirut’s southern suburbs, the size of lower Manhattan. On Friday, the usually bustling area turned into a ghost town; Crowds of people were replaced by rubble and fires from Israeli shelling.

It became another part of Lebanon, which was declared a restricted area by the Israelis. The entire country south of the Litani River, roughly 10% of Lebanon, had already been placed under a displacement order the previous day. Family WhatsApp chats were filled with the infamous blue maps published by the Israeli military spokesman on X, with more towns and neighborhoods painted red by the hour.

The Lebanese government told fleeing residents that all shelters in Beirut were full and instructed them to drive at least two hours north, where beds were available. The circle was narrowing, it was getting harder to find safety.

“A person leaving his home can only take a few clothes and maybe a bed with him. All the good memories stay at home, in the neighbourhood,” said Ali Hamdan, a 31-year-old father from the Haret Hreik neighborhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

War had returned to Lebanon before its inhabitants had time to rebuild the previous one. Israeli airstrikes hit border villages and the southern suburbs of Beirut on Friday, adding to piles of rubble already piled up since 2024.

Pro-Iran group Hezbollah announced Lebanon would return to war by firing a salvo of rockets at Israel around midnight Monday. Israel, which had been preparing for an operation against Hezbollah for months, responded with rapid bombings only an hour later.

Those living in Beirut knew what would happen next. Hamdan didn’t wait for relocation orders: On Monday, he immediately packed his family into the car and found them an apartment in a village north of Beirut. He waited in the last war and was injured in the airstrike that killed Hezbollah’s former leader Hassan Nasrallah. This time he wanted to avoid the bombs.

When the barrage started in the early hours of Friday, the force of the explosions destroyed entire buildings and blew away storefronts. Residents across the capital left their windows open to prevent them from breaking; The windows shook throughout the morning with each of Israel’s 26 attacks.

“The destruction is significant. It looks deliberate. All the buildings are being demolished,” said Ahmad al-Khasneh, mayor of Ghobeiri municipality in Beirut’s southern suburbs. He added that there were some elderly people or those with mobility problems who could not evacuate, and despite all their requests, they could not receive any help from the Lebanese state to save them.

Hearts were hardened except in the Shiite-majority areas of southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut, where support for Hezbollah was widespread but not monolithic. The sympathy that was present in the last war in 2024, when Israeli attacks appeared unprovoked, has disappeared. In the eyes of many Lebanese, this time Hezbollah and its support base had caused this situation themselves.

People were suspicious of the displaced and closed their doors on the grounds that the refugees might be secret members of Hezbollah and invite destruction to their homes.

Some Israeli airstrikes hit homes occupied by displaced persons affiliated with Hezbollah; one analyst said that this strategy was designed to create divisions in Lebanese society and isolate the Shiite community. Tuesday’s strike at a hotel in the Christian district of Hazmieh, southeast of Beirut, proved this to many: hotel staff had received displaced families before the strike.

A landlord in Achrafieh, a predominantly Christian town, described turning away a refugee in his Shiite neighborhood. “He said his name was ‘Bob,’ like I couldn’t tell from his accent where he was from,” the man quipped.

Others took advantage of the situation and increased the rent. An ad for a two-bedroom apartment asked for six months’ rent in advance, $6,000, a figure that was beyond the reach of most of Lebanon’s poor population.

Life continued normally in Beirut and the Christian areas of Lebanon. Nightclubs will also be open on the weekend, but cameras will have stickers on them and events will be by invitation only, with one nightclub marketing the party as a way to “relieve stress”, he said.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah continued fighting in southern Lebanon and announced rocket attacks targeting northern Israel and Israeli military groups. Senior Hezbollah official Mahmoud Qmati declared that Lebanon was in “open war” with Israel, opposing the government’s demand to surrender its weapons and stop the fighting.

To all but Hezbollah’s most ardent supporters, the fight appeared unwinnable. Hezbollah boasted on Friday that it had wounded eight Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon, while Israel destroyed buildings across the country. As Israeli jets flew to and from Tehran, Jerusalem police tweeted a photo of a turtle that was slightly injured by shrapnel from an Iranian missile and is now being treated.

Lebanon’s health ministry said Friday that at least 217 people were killed and 798 injured, with hundreds of thousands more uncounted.

The bombings continued one after another until late Friday night.

“This has turned into a big war, a war of existence. This new war will be harder, more brutal,” Hamdan said.