Thousands flee Beirut suburbs after unprecedented Israeli evacuation order
BEIRUT — The Israeli army issued an evacuation order for entire neighborhoods in Beirut’s southern suburbs, sparking unrest as hundreds of thousands of people joined a panicked exodus towards Lebanon’s north.
On Thursday afternoon, the Israeli army’s Arabic-speaking spokesman told residents of Dahieh, the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, to “save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately.”
The evacuation order was on an unprecedented scale, covering a 6-square-mile, densely populated residential area with hundreds of thousands of people. Minutes later, drivers filled the roads with cars, trucks, scooters, motorcycles (anything with wheels), honking and shouting to get onto the highways.
Scores of residents gathered at a media vantage point in the nearby hills, keeping one eye on their phones for signs of an attack on Dahieh and the other for updates on social media.
“Dahieh? There will be no more Dahieh,” a young man said while talking on the phone with a family member.
Another man yelled over the phone, telling a family member to leave and that he would come in and replace him.
“You come here, I will go to your place. If I die, I die,” he said.
The latest round of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict was triggered by the US-Israeli war against Iran, which is in its sixth day. Hezbollah, a predominantly Shiite Islamist group, has launched attacks on Israeli targets in retaliation for attacks on its long-time ally and supporter.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a government hardliner who has long called for the expulsion of Arabs, tweeted on Thursday at X that Dahieh “will be like Khan” [Yunis]A reference to the city of Gaza, which was almost destroyed by the Israeli army’s operations against Hamas.
Smotrich added that the government “is issuing evacuation notices to residents of southern Lebanon and the Dahieh neighborhood” as Israelis return to northern Israeli areas “to thrive and prosper.”
“Hezbollah made a mistake and will pay a heavy price for it,” he wrote. “We are cutting off the head of the octopus in Iran, and in parallel, we are cutting off the arm of Hezbollah.”
