Over a million Lebanese, one out of five in population have fled their homes in recent weeks, joining 2 million Palestinians in Gaza who have been displaced repeatedly on Israeli evacuation orders. According to Al Jazeera article, experts and human rights groups believe that this is not a mere by-product of war but a planned, repetitive policy that no longer ends at Gaza and the West Bank but extends all the way to Lebanon.
Civilian displacement is only allowed in international law with strict and temporary conditions with the assured right to return. However organizations such as Human Rights Watch , have documented how entire populations have been forced into the shrinking areas where they are subject to relentless bombing and returning has been made virtually impossible. In 2025, Operation Iron Wall forced 32,000 Palestinians out of three West Bank refugee camps, the biggest such displacement since 1967, and almost the entire population of two million people of Gaza has been displaced and many since then denied an opportunity to return.
Investigations and statements turn out to be fruitless year after year.
Even in Lebanon, Israeli evacuation orders have now been issued on about fifteen percent of the country, with a heavy impact on Shia communities in southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut. More than one million have been displaced with some of them taking refuge along a coastline that has been attacked by Israel itself. When Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz publicly declared that the displaced Shia residents would never come back until the northern communities of Israel feel safe, the words ceased to sound like a temporary security measure. Being linked closely to religious and geographical identity, it cast grave doubts on whether what is unfolding is mere tactical necessity or rather something more akin to enduring, politically engineered displacement.
The ICC has started inquiries on the so-called war crimes in Palestine that involve enforced displacement, attacks on civilians, and warfare carried out on the use of starvation as a weapon. But despite this, no senior Israeli officials have been put through any real legal consequences. The court power is on paper, and it is invariably undermined by politics of powerful states that veto arrest warrants and sanctions. It turns out to be an indication of responsibility without providing it.
This is also the case with the UN experts. Its own experts have decried on numerous occasions that the displacement policies of Israel are a war crime and a crime against humanity in general and that some of the mechanisms have specifically targeted the active discouragement of return. The Security Council, paralysed by veto powers of permanent members, has not resolved to a binding resolution. The words are uttered, follow up actions are diluted, even paralyzed and to the millions of displaced Palestinians and Lebanese, the difference between what international law promises them and what international law actually delivers may not be greater.
Some will claim that Israel is responding to actual threats of Hamas, Hezbollah and evacuation orders are a legitimate instrument of security. States have the right to self-defense and it is a fact. Nevertheless, self-defense is no justification to permanently carry out massive deportations of civilians or deprive them of their right to do so in the future. Human Rights Watch has discovered that the evacuation routes that were identified by Israel frequently resulted in civilians walking into bombardment areas, and that alternatives that were not as harmful have never been taken into consideration. This is no longer a security measure at the scale and permanence which we are witnessing. It is corporal punishment.
The same situation is observed in Gaza, Lebanon, and so on. Military force is not the only way that communities are displaced; they are being erased. The ICC and the UN are empowered to act and have the right to do it. Investigations and statements turn out to be fruitless year after year. When that goes on it is difficult to escape the thought that in certain cases there is no real cost to war crimes, and in the case of the civilians remaining behind the international law is but a farce.
The writer is a student at NDU, Islamabad, and can be reached at [email protected]