With the war’s front lines shifting, Israel’s evacuation warnings to parts of Lebanon have become a parallel battleground over timing, clarity, and whether civilians can truly move to safety. The Associated Press described warnings arriving in different forms—including automated phone calls, texts, hard-to-read maps posted online, and social-media posts shared by an Israeli military spokesperson—sometimes with short notice and sometimes with no warning before strikes.
AP reported that the warnings have reshaped everyday life for families in southern Lebanon and in neighborhoods where Hezbollah has a strong presence, as relatives rushed to gather children and older relatives and tried to find their way toward the “edges” of red-shaded maps. Some villages emptied, and AP said more than a million people fled at the height of the fighting. AP also reported that, unlike Israel, Lebanon does not have air raid sirens or missile defenses and has no designated bomb shelters, leaving families to rely on the availability of escape routes and improvised places to shelter.
Israel says the alerts are intended to protect civilians and that Hezbollah uses civilian areas in southern Lebanon from which it has launched drones and missiles into northern Israel without warning. The AP account said that Hezbollah launched a surprise barrage of missiles into northern Israel on March 2, after Israel and Hezbollah had held fire since a 2024 truce, and after the United States and Israel attacked Iran. In response to AP’s reporting on the evacuation notices, Israel posted 132 online alerts since then, including seven covering more than 50 towns in southern Lebanon after the ceasefire began on April 17.
International law experts cited by AP said the scale and structure of the warnings are sometimes inconsistent and overly broad. Hussein Badreddine, a Lebanese expert in international law at the University of Sydney, told AP: “A legal tool is being used to achieve forced displacement,” and said open-ended evacuation orders raise questions about legality. Rights groups also described the practical limits of “feasible” precautions when warnings do not reach everyone or arrive too late for effective movement; Kristine Beckerle of Amnesty International said: “When warnings are issued in the middle of the night, on platforms that not everyone uses, you can’t expect everyone to get up and leave immediately,” adding that elderly people can be trapped on roads for long periods.
AP’s reporting described residents experiencing both sudden alerts and strikes that still occurred without warning. The AP account said there was no warning on April 8, when Israel struck about 100 targets in rapid succession and killed more than 350 people, including in downtown Beirut—one of the deadliest attacks in Lebanon’s troubled history. AP also reported cases where Israel warned of planned attacks, but the strike did not follow, including an earlier warning that the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria would be attacked; the border crossing then remained open for several days.
The AP story also pointed to the role of Israel’s Arabic-speaking military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, including posts urging residents to relocate north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, and in some cases even farther. Residents described how the warning method could amplify confusion, such as texts or calls that arrived moments before shrapnel, and map-based instructions that differed in detail—from broad areas to specific buildings. AP also said residents’ experience did not always match the idea of an orderly, protected evacuation, with some attacks striking while people were still moving or seeking shelter.
Late-night warnings and the breakdown of predictable departures were central in multiple accounts AP provided. AP described Hussein Farran and his wife, Rola Nahleh, and their 4-year-old daughter, Amal, who left Kfar Hatta—some 17 kilometers (10 miles) outside one of Adraee’s red zones—after an urgent warning posted at 11:29 p.m. on April 4. AP said a pair of Israeli missiles hit their apartment at around 3 a.m., killing Nahleh, her mother and father, siblings, and Amal. Farran later asked, according to AP, “Even if they gave us a warning, how does it justify killing a civilian family?” and said: “They weren’t given a real chance.”
AP also reported warnings that residents questioned before acting, including one caller who identified himself as an Israeli officer using a number with a Germany country code. Analysts told AP that the Israeli military often uses randomly generated international numbers since phone calls are not permitted between the two countries, technically at war for decades, and Roland Abi Najem, a Lebanese cybersecurity expert, said: “There is no way to know if a call is real or fake.” The AP account added that the shelter families reached after fleeing could still be hit, and described a case in which a mosque used by displaced people for showers was struck without warning.
Despite the nominal ceasefire, AP reported that the ceasefire did not eliminate displacement anxiety. AP described Mohammad Shahadat waiting a week into the ceasefire before returning to Shaqra after hearing from neighbors that the situation was calm, only to end up back in a tent in Beirut after another Israeli warning. AP also said that some people had returned to parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs, but large numbers remained displaced across Lebanon, including over 115,000 in collective shelters, according to UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.