SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
lebanon
Lebanese Cities Face ‘Direct Threat of Israeli Occupation’ as IDF Orders 200,000 People to Evacuate
"Our villages have been systematically razed over these past months, and now the cities themselves are in the crosshairs," said one Lebanese journalist.
May 27, 2026
The Israel Defense Forces' intensified its bombardment of the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on Wednesday just two hours after ordering the evacuation of 200,000 area residents, further violating a US-brokered ceasefire and stoking fears of Israeli occupation and even colonization.
The IDF ordered the entire city of Tyre and surrounding areas, including Palestinian refugee camps, to immediately flee north of the Zahrani River. Israeli bombing of Tyre has caused considerable damage to the UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities.
"Our villages have been systematically razed over these past months, and now the cities themselves are in the crosshairs," Lebanese journalist Ali Hashem said on X.
IDF Arabic language spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on X Wednesday that "in light of the terrorist Hezbollah party's violation of the ceasefire agreement and targeting of Israeli territory, the Israel Defense Forces are compelled to act forcefully against it."
While Hezbollah has launched drones, rockets, and attacks against Israeli troops, the militant resistance group says they are responses to Israeli violations of the April 16 ceasefire. IDF attacks have killed more than 700 Lebanese, including many women and children, since the truce took effect, despite US President Donald Trump telling Israel that such strikes are "PROHIBITED."
"The Israel Defense Forces do not intend to harm you," Adraee's message continued. "Your presence near Hezbollah elements, their facilities, or their combat means puts your lives at risk. Any building used by Hezbollah for military purposes may be subject to targeting."
"To ensure your safety, evacuate your homes immediately and move north beyond the Zahrani River," the order warns. "Be advised—any movement south of the Zahrani River may put your lives at risk."
Adraee's warning came as Lebanese communities reeled under intensified airstrikes that have killed or wounded scores of people across southern Lebanon since Tuesday.
Since Israel renewed its attacks on Lebanon in March at the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, more than 3,200 Lebanese have been killed—including hundreds of women and children—nearly 10,000 more have been wounded, and over 1 million people have been forcibly displaced, according to officials. As in Gaza, Israeli forces have been accused of deliberately targeting Lebanon's healthcare infrastructure, including first responders, as well as journalists.
Israeli forces also killed and wounded more than 20,000 Lebanese during 2023-25 attacks carried out during the war on Gaza after Hezbollah launched rockets and drones at Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance.
Israel has been accused of ethnic cleansing as its forces raze entire villages in southern Lebanon, drawing comparisons to Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, which has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, and around 2 million people forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in March that Lebanese people displaced north of the Litani River would not be allowed to return to their homes—many of which have been looted by IDF troops—until people living in northern Israel are secure from Hezbollah rocket and drone threats.
The IDF has also extended its so-called "Yellow Line" in Lebanon, which it designated largely along the Litani River, in an effort to counter Hezbollah drone attacks that have killed or wounded at least scores of Israeli invaders.
Some observers fear another prolonged Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, as happened for 18 years late last century. IDF troops briefly occupied the capital city of Beirut in 1982 and did not withdraw from southern Lebanon until 2000.
Others fear even worse, including the possible Israeli colonization of parts of Lebanon in pursuit of realizing a “Greater Israel” stretching from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq, land many religious Jews believe was promised to them by their deity figure.
Earlier this month, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir revealed the existence of a "settlement plan" for southern Lebanon. This, after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich asserted that "the Litani must be our new border."
Such Israeli expansion would likely include the permanent ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, similar to the 1947-49 forced expulsion of Palestinians during the Nakba, or "catastrophe," a period of terrorist attacks, massacres, and death marches perpetrated by Jewish militias during the establishment of the modern state of Israel.
The International Criminal Court is believed to be seeking the arrest of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich in connection with the ethnic cleansing and settler colonization of the illegally occupied West Bank. The Hague-based tribunal has already issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
While negotiators from the United States, Iran, and mediating nations seek to achieve a lasting halt to hostilities in the Middle East, Israeli leaders have been actively working against peace. Addressing the prospect of a peace agreement, Ben-Gvir vowed during a Tuesday press briefing that "we will not allow this to happen."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Ben-Gvir Says Israel ‘Will Not Allow’ Trump to Make a Peace Deal With Iran as IDF Kills Dozens in Lebanon
An ex-Israeli diplomat said Israel was "moving to bury not only the supposed ceasefire in Lebanon but also talks on Iran" because its policy "is an endless and wide regional war."
May 27, 2026
As Israel launched a new bombardment of Lebanon on Tuesday, its far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, suggested that it was trying to derail ongoing peace negotiations between US President Donald Trump and Iran.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, the influential settler politician railed against the possibility of a deal to end the war as it neared the three-month mark and said the whole Israeli Cabinet was in agreement.
"I know that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and all of us members of the Cabinet... as the government of Israel, cannot allow this to happen," Ben-Gvir said in Hebrew. "This is an agreement that can harm the state of Israel, and we will not allow this to happen."
Ben-Gvir's remarks came as Trump engaged in what he has suggested was another promising round of ceasefire talks with the Iranians—talks that did not include Israel.
Despite its foreign ministry condemning recent US attacks as signs of "bad faith" and "definitive violations" of the ceasefire on Tuesday, Iran has not yet pulled away from the table.
Citing Iranian state TV, Reuters reported on Wednesday that Tehran has received an unofficial framework from the US that would restore commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to pre-war levels for a month in exchange for the US withdrawing troops from Iran's vicinity and lifting its naval blockade. The US has disputed this account.
Trump has previously attempted to force Iran to accept major concessions on its nuclear program upfront, but nuclear-related talks appear to have been shifted to future negotiations.
While it has not been at the center of the latest round of negotiations, Iran still considers ending Israel’s assault on Lebanon to be an essential part of a durable peace.
As it has during previous peace negotiations between Iran and the US, Israel launched another major bombardment against Lebanon on Tuesday, violating the 45-day ceasefire that went into effect last month.
Israeli forces conducted more than 120 airstrikes across southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley against what they said were Hezbollah targets, according to The Guardian, as Netanyahu said Israel would "intensify" its military campaign.
According to Lebanon's health ministry, 31 people were killed, and 40 were wounded. In the southern town of Burj al-Shamali, 14 people were killed, including two children and three women, the ministry said.
Since Israel's offensive began in early March, more than 3,200 people have been killed and over 9,700 wounded, according to the ministry. More than 600 people have been killed since the April truce began.
Sources also told Reuters that Israel had expanded its occupation of southern Lebanon, past its so-called "security zone." Israeli forces ordered the residents of dozens of Lebanese villages not to return to their homes in the occupation zone, which Israel is trying to expand to between 5 and 10 kilometers inside Lebanon.
In what Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has described as a renewal of its "Gaza model," Israel had demolished or damaged more than 40,000 homes in southern Lebanon before last month's truce went into effect, though destruction has continued since then. More than 1 million people in Lebanon have been displaced as a result of forced evacuation orders and bombardments by Israel.
Hezbollah has responded on Tuesday with drone attacks on Israel, which it had already been launching for weeks in response to what it said were persistent ceasefire violations.
Another far-right Israeli Cabinet member, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, said Israel should respond to each drone by destroying 10 buildings in Beirut. If there are no buildings left in Beirut, he said, Israel should expand the demolitions to other areas such as Tyre, Sidon, and the Bekaa Valley.
Ben-Gvir, meanwhile, said on Tuesday that Israel should "cut off the electricity in Lebanon," "occupy" the area up to the Zahrani River, and "return to a massive war."
The timing of Israel's renewed assault on Lebanon has been met with accusations that it is attempting to sabotage ceasefire talks between the US and Iran.
Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, a former diplomat with the Israeli Foreign Ministry who has since become a prominent critic of the country, said that by moving deeper into Lebanon, Israel was "moving to bury not only the supposed ceasefire in Lebanon but also talks on Iran" because its policy "is an endless and wide regional war."
Responding to Ben-Gvir's remarks, he said, "Israel forced the US into war and won’t let us end it."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Israel Denounced for 'Killing Spree' of Rescue Workers in Lebanon
"Israel’s wanton killing of rescue workers and targeting of medical infrastructure in Lebanon has been one of this war’s most brazen features," Drop Site News noted.
May 22, 2026
Israeli attacks killed at least seven rescue workers in southern Lebanon on Thursday and Friday in violation of a US-brokered ceasefire, part of what critics say is a pattern of deliberate targeted murders of first responders that mirror the genocidal massacres committed in Gaza.
On Friday, paramedics from the al-Risala Association rushed to the site of an Israeli strike in Deir Qanun al-Nah, Tyre district, that reportedly killed a young girl and the village barber, identified by L'Orient Today as Ali Allameh. As they arrived on the scene, the paramedics were hit by a so-called "double-tap" strike—a follow-up bombing meant to eliminate survivors and first responders—that killed would-be rescuers Ali Abboud, Hussein Kassir, and Ahmad Hariri.
Hariri was also a well-known photojournalist who earlier this week documented an Israeli massacre of 14 people—including four children and 11 members of one family—in Deir Qanun al-Nah.
L'Orient Today reported that Israeli forces bombed two Islamic Health Committee centers in Hanouiyeh overnight Thursday, killing four rescue workers and wounding two others. Earlier on Thursday, an Israeli airstrike near the Tebnine Hospital reportedly killed two people and injured another while damaging all three floors of the facility.
Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health said more than 3,100 people have been killed by Israeli attacks since March 2, in addition to the more than 4,000 people, including nearly 800 women and over 300 children, slain in Israel’s 2023-25 attacks on its northern neighbor, where the militant resistance group Hezbollah is based. The dead from the current round of Israeli attacks include nearly 300 women, more than 210 children, and 123 medical and healthcare workers.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says 15 media professionals have also been killed in Lebanon since October 2023. One of them, Al-Akhbar correspondent Amal Khalil, was wounded last month by an Israeli strike while reporting on a previous bombing. Khalil was trapped under rubble, and as Red Cross workers attempted to extricate her, Israeli forces dropped a stun grenade on them as a warning to disperse. They were unable to rescue Khalil, who later died.
As in Gaza—where Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 250,000 Palestinians since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023—attacks by Israel have devastated Lebanon's healthcare infrastructure.
Israel's continued slaughter of Lebanese first responders comes as World Health Organization (WHO) member states gathered this week in Geneva, where they overwhelmingly backed a declaration of alarm over “the impact of the ongoing war on the Lebanese health systems, including attacks on health facilities and health workers, and the closure of dozens of primary healthcare centers and hospitals."
The measure, which also called on the WHO to "scale up" support for Lebanon's health system, passed by a vote of 95-2—with Israel and Honduras against—and 18 abstentions.
"Israeli military action has had unacceptable impacts on civilians and medical care," the United Kingdom said in an explanation of its vote in favor of the declaration. "The conflict has led to the displacement of over 1 million people and the closure of several hospitals and health facilities. The WHO has reported over 150 verified attacks against healthcare, with over 100 healthcare workers killed."
As Drop Site News reported Friday:
Israel’s wanton killing of rescue workers and targeting of medical infrastructure in Lebanon has been one of this war’s most brazen features. For the past five weeks, the relentless Israeli aerial and ground assault has continued despite a nominal ceasefire being announced by President Donald Trump on April 16. Last week, Israel and Lebanon agreed to a 45-day extension of the “ceasefire” after holding their third round of direct talks in Washington, of which Hezbollah is not a part. The declaration of a ceasefire has not stopped the Israeli military from continuing its bombardment of Lebanon, mostly in the south and the eastern Bekka Valley.
Rescue teams describe a pattern of repeated Israeli attacks directly targeting their members, often in double—or triple-tap strikes—where after a site is struck, it is struck a second or even third time as emergency crews arrive on the scene.
“We try to be careful and take safety precautions before interventions, like waiting 10 minutes to avoid the double taps,” Abdullah Halal, who leads a Civil Defense rescue team in Nabatiyeh, told Drop Site News.
"But," the outlet noted, "even those precautions have not always been enough. Last week, Halal lost two of his two colleagues in a double-tap strike."
Ali Saad, who is with the Lebanese Red Cross, told UN News on Wednesday that his colleagues share coordinates with Israeli forces and other belligerents, but rescue workers are still being targeted.
“This is why the Red Cross volunteers hug each other and say goodbye before every mission,” he said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular