"You Either Leave Right Now or You Die" -- Israel's Ethnic Cleansing of a Village in Lebanon
Israeli soldiers went door to door in the border village of Ain Arab, forcing residents from their homes at gunpoint as part of a systematic campaign to empty large swathes of southern Lebanon.
When Lebanon and Israel announced a ceasefire agreement on April 16, Nasreen Abd Elaal and her husband and four children packed their few belongings and departed the public school in Marj al-Zuhoor where they had taken shelter -- for the last time, they hoped. They returned the next day to their home in Ain Arab, a small village nestled in the plains near the southern border, where they run a small butcher shop and corner store. That same day, Israeli forces entered the village and established a curfew, warning local residents not to leave their homes after dark, before setting up a checkpoint on the exit road leading south.
Twelve days later, Abd Elaal was working behind the counter at the store when she saw a large armored bulldozer lumbering down the road, followed by a swarm of army vehicles carrying, by her estimation, more than one hundred Israeli soldiers. The troops spread through the village, pointed their guns at residents and told them that the area was located within Israel's new "yellow line" -- a line demarcating an Israeli zone of control along the southern border inside Lebanese territory that was unilaterally declared by Israel using the same terminology as in Gaza. The soldiers told Abd Elaal and the other village residents that they had two hours to evacuate north.
"They didn't even give us that," Abd Elaal recalled. She rushed home and put her children in their pickup truck, then went back into the house with her husband to pack what they could. They were interrupted by the sound of a car horn and ran back outside to find that an Israeli soldier had opened the door of their vehicle and begun honking the horn while their children were sitting inside. "He told us they had orders to empty the village. He said, 'You either leave right now or you die.'" Residents were expelled from the village so rapidly, many weren't even able to lock their front doors behind them, Abd Elaal said.
The forced expulsion of Ain Arab -- where Israeli soldiers went door to door, forcing residents from their homes at gunpoint -- was a striking example of the Israeli military's campaign to ethnically cleanse villages across southern Lebanon. Human rights advocates and locals told Drop Site they hadn't heard of a similar incident occurring in this latest phase of the war -- the Israeli military typically bombs and shells areas to forcibly displace residents. Over 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon since March 2, and many have no idea if or when they will be able to return to their homes.
Abd Elaal returned with her family to the same school-turned-shelter in the village of Marj al-Zuhoor in the Bekaa Valley where she said four families share one room and water access is intermittent. After studying a map that the Israeli military published on April 19, they found that their village was actually located outside of Israel's "yellow line," prompting a group of men from the village, including Abd Elaal's husband and a local official, to visit an army office in the village of Marjayoun on May 21 to ask if the state could work with UNFIL -- the United Nations peacekeeping force stationed in the South -- to return them to their lands. When the residents followed up a week later, army officials said they had not been able to secure them safe passage back home....
The story of Ain Arab underscores the brutal and sweeping nature of Israel's ongoing military campaign in southern Lebanon, where a flurry of displacement orders are issued daily and lines of advance are drawn and redrawn without regard for civilian land or life. Israel did not adhere to the ceasefire announced in mid-April, and has steadily escalated its air and ground offensive, prompting Hezbollah to wage a campaign of resistance attacks....
On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to de-escalate the fighting after he spoke with Netanyahu and Hezbollah through mediators....
A day after Trump's announcement, Israeli forces carried out multiple air strikes on the southern city of Nabatieh and reiterated a warning to all residents in the area to evacuate ahead of more planned attacks. At least eight people were killed, including two children, in Israeli strikes on Tuesday, while Hezbollah also continued launching dozens of projectiles and drones toward Israeli soldiers....
Since March 2, the Israeli military assault on Lebanon has killed 3,468 people and wounded more than 10,500 others. Over 600 of those deaths have occurred since the so-called ceasefire was declared in mid-April. During the last week of May, an average of 11 children were killed or wounded in Israeli attacks every 24 hours, according to UNICEF....
Mohanad Hage Ali, a research director at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, told Drop Site that vast destruction of civilian property is one of Israel's primary military objectives in southern Lebanon.
"If you look at the Gaza model, it's not really about controlling Hamas; it's about re-structuring the geographic surroundings of the state of Israel in ways that would change reality for good," Ali said, adding that so far the Israelis had destroyed approximately 60 villages near the southern border.
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