According to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, around a quarter of Lebanese territory “is now under Israeli military displacement orders.”
“There were evacuation warnings posted on Twitter [now called X] between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m.,” Majzoub recounted.
Once again, the evacuation warnings were criticized because four hours are not enough to evacuate an entire city.
A few days before this, the Hezbollah group also issued a series of evacuation warnings in a video on a messaging service.
“But we do see that, every few days, more and more towns and villages are added to this list [of evacuation warnings],” she pointed out.
It is two in the morning. and complete darkness. A phone call awakens you. Because the area is going to be bombed, a stranger on the phone advises you and your family to leave right away.
Do you leave everything behind, including your house, your possessions, and your pets? Is it possible to simply drive off in your pajamas, unsure of whether you’ll ever get back?
The deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, Aya Majzoub, says thousands of people in Lebanon have recently had to deal with these kinds of questions.
About 25% of Lebanese territory “is now under Israeli military displacement orders,” according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. To put it another way, the Israeli military has warned residents to evacuate the area while fighting the Hezbollah group because doing otherwise could put them in danger.
DW was informed by Majzoub that “the majority of people are not even receiving phone calls.”. She says, “The Arabic-speaking spokesperson for the Israeli army will frequently just post warnings on social media.”.
That occurred during the night a few days ago. “Evacuation warnings were posted on Twitter [now known as X] between 1 a.m. A. and 4 a. m. Majzoub recalled. These were locations within Beirut’s Dahieh. “If it weren’t for the young men from the neighborhoods who hurried into the street and began shooting in the air to wake people up, most people would have missed them entirely. “,”.
This is just one instance that has led to criticism of Israel’s evacuation warnings in Lebanon from organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. They are also worried about warnings that are too general, maps that are erroneous or deceptive, and warnings that are issued just minutes before an attack.
More recently, during the war in Lebanon, Israel issued its first citywide warning. Speaking to residents of the eastern city of Baalbek on X early on October 30, an Israeli military spokesperson declared that Israel would “act forcefully against Hezbollah interests in your city and villages.”. “..”.
Residents of Baalbek City, which typically has 80,000–100,000 residents, hurried out. The Israelis launched their airstrikes four hours later. Once more, the warnings for evacuation were criticized because a city cannot be evacuated in four hours. According to a report released this week by the Washington Post, the majority of the strikes that day occurred outside the designated evacuation zone.
The Hezbollah organization also posted a video on a messaging app a few days prior to this, issuing a series of evacuation warnings. It stated that Hezbollah had ordered residents of more than 20 northern Israeli towns to leave because Israeli troops had made them targets. Many observers characterized those warnings as primarily “psychological warfare,” despite the fact that Hezbollah has rockets but lacks an air force, unlike Israel. “,”.
The same worries that Amnesty International has about Israel’s evacuation warnings also apply to Hezbollah’s. Majzoub points out that “these warnings are also overly broad when they come for entire towns and villages and don’t specify particular military targets.”.
What is the state of the law?
The “Lieber Instructions” were drafted during the American Civil War in 1863, which established the military’s duty to alert civilians prior to an attack. Many of the ideas in these were the first attempts to establish guidelines for behavior on the battlefield, and they would later serve as the foundation for modern “international humanitarian law.”.
The “obligation to warn” has more recently been viewed as “customary law”; most armies accept it as such. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC, this duty is included in many contemporary military codes of conduct, including Israel’s.
But whether or not to warn civilians depends on the circumstances and whether it is “feasible.”. A warning, for instance, could eliminate the element of surprise. The attacker makes the determinations regarding viability, and according to the law, they must also take proportionality—that is, the number of civilians who could be killed or injured in the pursuit of an objective—into account.
In a text for the US military academy West Point last October, Michael Schmitt, a professor of public international law at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, stated that “warnings make sense for an attacker from a legal perspective.”. After all, the proportionality rule is less likely to forbid an attack if there are fewer civilians in the target area. “.
Both feasible and efficient.
If a military determines that a warning is “feasible,” it must also be “effective,” according to the rules. “,”.
“In Lebanon, we’re talking about warnings, not evacuation orders,” Emanuela-Chiara Gillard, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, told DW. As she notes, “because we are not in a situation of occupation [in Lebanon], the parties are not in a position to give orders,” it is critical to distinguish between the two. Then, “the question is: Do the warnings allow civilians to move away from danger? Are they effective in the circumstances?”.
However, the context and the person giving the warning can affect what constitutes an “effective” warning. For instance, according to the US military, warnings that could jeopardize a mission don’t have to be specific.
Majzoub, who works for Amnesty International, acknowledges that it is subjective. She argued, “But I think we can all agree that giving people a warning on social media in the middle of the night is not effective,” alluding to the recent Beirut incident.
People are safe, even if they remain.
Other regulations remain in effect after an evacuation warning, Gillard stated. For instance, civilians who choose to remain in the area where the warning was issued are not always deemed combatants. Proportionality must also be taken into account by the participating military.
Civilians must be permitted to return when it is safe to do so after they have left the area of danger. If they are prohibited, this could be interpreted as a war crime—forcible displacement.
Gillard noted, “I’m very uncomfortable with people who say that warning civilians that you’re going to be conducting an operation in a particular area, which encourages them to leave, is akin to forcibly displacing them…”. “There isn’t much merit to that argument. A warning is a preventative action. “.”.
According to Majzoub, when evacuation warnings are issued with the goal of preventing people from returning, they may result in forced relocation. She says it’s difficult to say what’s going on in Lebanon at the moment because the conflict is still in its early phases.
She noted, “However, we do observe that, every few days, more and more towns and villages are added to this list [of evacuation warnings].”. “That raises the question: Are these warnings being issued by the Israeli army genuinely to protect people or to cause mass relocation and displacement?”.
Andreas Illmer served as the editor.
