Israel continues to escalate the attack on Lebanon today, with the first strikes against the country’s north being reported, and additional strikes against the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, which came with new rounds of evacuation orders.
The Israeli military ordered tens of thousands of civilians out of Dahiyeh, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich issued a video talking up the planned strikes against the suburb, vowing to turn Dahiyeh into Khan Younis, a city in the Gaza Strip which the Israeli military has more or less totally destroyed.
The displaced from Dahiyeh are only a fraction of the number of people Israel is chasing out of their homes nationwide, with the current estimate of the displaced being in excess of 300,000 and rising all the time. Just two days ago, the evacuation orders effectively covered the entire south of the country, and with attacks growing in the north, the east, and around the capital city, it’s not clear where in Lebanon would not be subject to an Israeli strike at any given time.
Displaced Palestinians shelter at a tent camp in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, January 14, 2026. REUTERS/Haseeb Alwazeer
Targeting Dahiyeh is seen as symbolic among Israelis because the suburb is historically seen as a “Hezbollah stronghold” and has a substantial Shi’ite population. At the same time, Israel attacked a hotel in a Christian-majority suburb as well, so the escalation is going far beyond a specific focus on just Hezbollah, or even only Lebanon’s Shi’ite population.
Israel launched the new war on Lebanon over the weekend, and the Lebanese Health Ministry reported today that, since Monday morning, Israeli strikes had killed 102 people and wounded some 638 others. The indications from Smotrich are that this is only the beginning.
Of course, “new war” is something of a misnomer, because Israel was attacking Lebanon on a virtually daily basis during the state of ceasefire at any rate, and while this is a substantial further escalation, there is a case to be made that this is the same war, launched in 2024, that never really ended.
With evacuation orders covering more and more of Lebanon, Human Rights Watch issued a statement warning that issuing such orders across broad swathes of the country “raises serious legal and humanitarian red flags” and may amount to a violation of the laws of war.
Just this past summer, Israel was pushing a plan that would forcibly depopulate all of southern Lebanon for the creation of a “Trump economic zone.” Since these new evacuation orders effectively do the same thing, it remains an open question whether the evacuations amount to an attempt to limit civilian casualties or just an attempt to impose their plan by force of arms.
