By Hucen Sleiman
As of March–April 2026, following a sharp escalation in hostilities including large-scale airstrikes and ground operations, hundreds of thousands of people are displaced across Lebanon following repeated Israeli bombardments in the south, Beirut’s southern suburbs, and parts of the Bekaa Valley. These movements are usually described as the direct result of airstrikes and destruction. Yet during the current escalation, many civilians left their homes before any strike occurred, after receiving evacuation warnings circulated online shortly before attacks. Recent large-scale attacks in April 2026 further underline that displacement continues to unfold both before and after bombardment, and not only as its direct consequence.
This pattern raises an important question for refugee and humanitarian law: when warnings force civilians to move without providing safe alternatives, should this still be understood as protection, or does it become a form of displacement in its own right?
A warning before the strike
On the night of 3 October 2024, a satellite image of Haret Hreik in Beirut’s southern suburbs began circulating through WhatsApp groups. A red circle marked several apartment buildings and instructed residents to evacuate immediately. The image had been posted on the Israeli military’s Arabic-language social media account and was quickly shared through neighbourhood networks.
Residents compared maps, called relatives, and tried to determine whether their building fell inside the marked radius. Some left their apartments and moved to nearby basements, others stayed with relatives a few streets away. By morning, the buildings inside the circle were empty. The strike came two days later.
Scenes like this were repeated throughout the 2024–2025 escalation and again during renewed attacks in early 2026. According to the Beirut Urban Lab, more than one hundred announced strikes targeting over 160 buildings were documented during the autumn 2024 escalation alone. Each warning was issued minutes or hours before bombardment and circulated rapidly through social media and messaging applications.
These warnings were presented as precautionary measures intended to protect civilians. But in practice, they also triggered movement long before any physical destruction occurred.
What the law requires
International humanitarian law requires parties to a conflict to take precautions to protect civilians. Article 57 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions states that effective advance warning must be given of attacks that may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit. The purpose of this obligation is clear: civilians should have the opportunity to leave dangerous areas before they are struck.
In principle, advance warnings are therefore understood as a safeguard. If civilians are informed in time, casualties can be reduced. However, the Lebanese case highlights the limits of this assumption.
What counts as an “effective” warning when the message arrives minutes before a strike, circulates on platforms that not everyone can access, and gives no clear indication of where civilians should go? A warning may satisfy the requirement to notify, yet still leave civilians without any realistic way to remain safe.
When warnings become displacement
During the year‑long campaign of attacks in 2025, evacuation warnings often did not lead to large‑scale flight but to repeated, short‑distance movements. In Beirut’s southern suburbs, residents frequently left their apartments and sheltered in nearby buildings or moved to open spaces, while others stayed with relatives a few streets away. In villages in South Lebanon, some families moved only a few hundred metres, relocating to the edge of the village rather than leaving the area entirely.
These movements were often temporary. Families returned home after a strike, only to leave again when a new warning appeared. Many described living with bags packed, car keys ready, and phones constantly checked for new messages. Homes became spaces that might have to be abandoned at any moment.
Such patterns rarely appear in official displacement figures. Humanitarian statistics tend to capture those who enter collective shelters, cross administrative boundaries, or register for assistance. They often miss people who move repeatedly within the same neighbourhood or between relatives’ homes. Yet these short-distance displacements can still disrupt work, schooling, access to land, and social networks for long periods.
Invisibility has consequences for protection. If people are not counted as displaced, they may not qualify for assistance, compensation, or monitoring. Children who move repeatedly within the same village may miss weeks of school without appearing in education statistics. Elderly residents sheltering in basements may not be included in shelter figures. The absence of recognition can translate into the absence of protection.
The limits of legal categories
These warning-driven movements also expose the limits of existing legal categories. Much of refugee and displacement law is built around clear distinctions: refugee or not, internally displaced or not, returnee or not. In practice, however, civilians may move in ways that do not fit these definitions.
A family that repeatedly leaves home after warnings but never crosses a district boundary may not meet the formal criteria for internal displacement, even though their living conditions are unstable. A household that returns after each strike may not be counted as displaced at all, despite months of disruption.
This gap matters because legal status often determines access to rights and assistance. When displacement does not fit recognised categories, protection mechanisms may fail to activate.
The right to remain
The Lebanese case also raises a broader issue: the right to remain in one’s home. International human rights law recognises protection against arbitrary displacement, and civilians are not supposed to be forced to leave their homes unless absolutely necessary for their safety. Yet when warnings are issued repeatedly without safe alternatives, civilians may feel they have no choice but to leave.
In such situations, warnings intended as precautions can effectively produce displacement. Civilians are not expelled by direct force, but they are compelled to move by the expectation of imminent attack. When this happens repeatedly, the distinction between protection and displacement becomes blurred.
This does not mean that warnings should not be issued. Advance notice can save lives. But if warnings are to function as genuine protection, they must be accompanied by realistic possibilities for safety. Otherwise, they risk shifting the burden of protection onto civilians themselves.
Responsibility and civilian protection
The widespread use of evacuation warnings therefore raises difficult questions about responsibility. When a party to a conflict issues a warning, it may argue that it has fulfilled its obligation to take precautions. But if those warnings repeatedly force civilians to move without safe destinations, it is unclear whether the obligation to protect has truly been met.
Protection cannot be reduced to the absence of immediate casualties. It also concerns whether civilians are able to live in safety without being forced into constant movement. When warnings make entire neighbourhoods temporarily uninhabitable, they become part of the mechanism through which displacement occurs.
This suggests that the legal and humanitarian understanding of precaution may need to be reconsidered. Giving advance notice is important, but notice alone may not be enough. Effective protection may also require ensuring that civilians have somewhere safe to go, and that repeated warnings do not leave them in a permanent state of uncertainty.
Conclusion
The recent escalation in Lebanon shows that displacement does not always begin with destruction. It can begin with a message on a phone, a map shared online, or an instruction to leave a building before a strike. These warning-driven movements often remain invisible in official figures, yet they shape the everyday reality of life in conflict zones.
If evacuation warnings repeatedly force civilians to move without safe alternatives, they may cease to function only as precautions and begin to function as instruments of forced displacement. Recognising this possibility is essential for debates on civilian protection, humanitarian response, and the interpretation of the law of armed conflict. When warnings displace as often as bombs, the obligation to give advance notice cannot be separated from the obligation to ensure that civilians have somewhere safe to remain.
Hucen Sleiman is an architect and researcher working at the intersection of architecture, urban studies, and migration research. He is affiliated with ENSA Paris-Malaquais and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. His work focuses on the spatial effects of conflict, displacement, and uncertainty, with particular attention to Lebanon and West Africa.
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