https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/world/middleeast/lebanon-shiite-israel-evacuation.html

When Israel and Hezbollah last went to war two years ago, Israeli evacuation warnings came a few villages at a time for residents in southern Lebanon.

With the outbreak of a new war last month, the warnings came all at once. As fighting reignited, Israel issued blanket evacuation guidance for a vast stretch of southern Lebanon — extending 25 miles from the Israeli border — publicly urging all civilians to flee to the north.

But behind the scenes, Israeli officials have conveyed a more targeted message.

In private calls to local leaders across southern Lebanon, Israeli military officials have assured several Christian and Druse communities that they could remain in the evacuation zone. They have pressed them, however, to force out any Lebanese from neighboring Shiite Muslim communities who have sought refuge among them as Israeli bombardments flatten Shiite towns, according to local Christian, Druse and Shiite leaders who spoke to The New York Times. The Shiites make up the majority of southern Lebanon.

Local leaders took the messages as a clear signal: Israel is trying to force out one group in the south — Shiites, who are from the same sect as Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group that Israel is trying to vanquish.

“Israel wants to create a new buffer zone, it wants us out, what can we do?” said Ali Naser, 26, a Shiite from one border village, Aitaroun.

Mr. Naser and his relatives fled their farm there when the war broke out and sought refuge in Rmeish, a predominately Christian town within the evacuation area. About two weeks later, municipal leaders informed them they needed to leave at once. First they went to the city of Sidon, on the coast, and then, after being unable to find space in any of the government-run shelters there, a relative’s home in the eastern Bekaa Valley beyond the limits of the evacuation zone.

“The town received and hosted us, we are grateful for that,” Mr. Naser said of Rmeish. But, he said, local leaders told him the pressure from Israel to make them leave was too great. “I’m at a loss,” he said.

The Israeli directives are among the earliest indicators of the plans Israel appears to be laying in southern Lebanon.

Since Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel last month in support of Iran, Lebanon has been engulfed in its second major war in less than two years. Israel has struck many areas in the east, south and the capital, Beirut, killing more than 1,200 people and displacing more than a million others, according to Lebanese government officials. Israeli ground forces have also invaded deeper into southern Lebanon and clashed with Hezbollah militants there.

On Tuesday, Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, laid out in the starkest terms yet that Israel plans to occupy Lebanese territory from the border up to the Litani River — nearly 10 percent of the country.

Mr. Katz said in a statement that Lebanese who had fled their homes in the south “will be completely prohibited” from returning “until the safety and security of northern Israeli residents is ensured.” He previously specified that Shiites would not be allowed to return and likened Israel’s strategy in Lebanon to that in Gaza.

That public messaging, along with the private push on local leaders, suggests that Israel is intent on redrawing not only the geographic map of south Lebanon but also the demographic one.

Over the past two weeks, Israeli military officials have called leaders of at least eight villages and told them to expel Shiites who had sought refuge in their communities, municipal officials and local Christian, Druse and Shiite leaders said in interviews. All complied, fearing that if they did not their towns could be hit next in the Israeli bombardment, they said. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive, private conversations.

The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment on whether they had directed local leaders to expel Shiites.

The warnings targeting Shiites have raised alarm among human rights groups, who say that they could amount to forced displacement.

“The Israeli military cannot claim to be safely evacuating the civilian population for imperative military reasons when, in some areas, its expulsions are based on religion and only Shia civilians are forced to leave,” said Nadia Hardman, senior refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.