They call him the prince of torment. The phone vibrates at three in the morning and his face appears on X. He delivers a message: Leave or die.
The messenger is Avichay Adraee, the Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesman. In Arabic that is frighteningly good for non-native speakers, he shouts into his phone camera, telling the Lebanese to evacuate certain areas “for their safety” ahead of strikes on what Israel says is Hezbollah’s infrastructure.
On Wednesday, shortly after 8 a.m., Adraee issued a new evacuation order. Residents of a large section of Tyre, the second most populous city in southern Lebanon, have been ordered to leave, joining residents of more than 70 villages that have been under Israeli evacuation orders – which Israel says are aimed at minimizing human casualties – since November 23. November. September. In total, the Israeli offensive displaced more than 1.2 million people.
Amnesty International criticized Israel’s evacuation orders, saying they were insufficient, and that they raised questions about whether they were intended to spark mass displacement. In some cases, Israel issued evacuation orders in the middle of the night via social media, giving residents less than 30 minutes to evacuate before strikes began.
Three hours after Adraee was posted on X, the airstrikes began. At least a dozen buildings were damaged or destroyed around Abu Deeb Roundabout, a major residential area where families can be found sitting in cafes enjoying ice cream most nights.
On Thursday, no families remained in the evacuated area. Rubble and fallen power lines filled the streets. What were once 12-story buildings were transformed into tangled piles of concrete filled with residents’ possessions — clothes, school books, toys. After being reassured by the presence of the Civil Defense, Elias Mabhour, a resident of the Christian neighborhood in the city of Tyre, came on his blue electric bicycle to inspect the house of his friend Ibrahim, who lives abroad.
“O Abraham, look! “This is your grandfather’s house. It’s all gone now!” he exclaimed, dazzled as he filmed a video of his friend, waving the phone back and forth to fit the destroyed building into the frame. Resident Hassan Shor returned to retrieve his songbirds, at least a dozen of which were chirping in their cages on the threshold of a building that had lost half its outer wall.
There was a loud bang – a warning shot from an Israeli drone watching overhead – and residents were sent running. Shor hastily placed the bird cages on the back of his bike while Civil Defense shouted for people to leave the evacuated area, aware of the Israeli airstrikes that followed their warning shots. If the Adraee X site wouldn’t keep them out of their homes, Israeli bombs would have.
“There is something mind-controlled about what they are doing now,” said Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative and a former Lebanon researcher for Human Rights Watch during the 2006 war. “They are displacing residents by simply giving orders. It is war by other means.”
Over the past year, Tire has been a refuge for thousands of people displaced by fighting between Israel and Hezbollah along the border. During the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, it played a similar role, hosting internally displaced people, humanitarian workers and journalists who relied on it as a safe zone.
Now, photos are no longer safe. The day after Israel issued the evacuation order, the city was almost completely empty.
Burning cars that were turned upside down due to the force of the explosion spread on both sides of the main road in the city. Distant voices announced Israeli air strikes, and Hezbollah responded by firing dozens of Katyusha rockets from time to time, the rockets crackling and igniting before accelerating and disappearing into the sky. Usually, beachgoers would lie on the beach, with journalists and rows of cameras trained on the winding Lebanese coast, where plumes of smoke could be seen where Israeli bombs fell under the clear blue sky of Tyre.
Israel has said the evacuation orders are intended to minimize harm to civilians, and claims to be one of the only militaries in the world to issue them before strikes. However, in many of the deadliest Israeli attacks on Lebanon, no warnings were issued, raising questions about the purpose of evacuation orders if not reducing civilian deaths.
The Israeli raid took place in front of Rafik Hariri University Hospital in Beirut, which killed 18 people and injured 60 on Monday, without any warning. No evacuation orders were issued for the 45 residents of Ain al-Delb, near Sidon, who were killed in an Israeli raid on September 28.
Houry said: “The evacuation orders are supposed to be for legitimate goals, but it is not clear now whether they are legitimate goals… Israel has taken the principles of international law and turned them upside down.”
Despite evacuation orders and ongoing airstrikes, some Tire residents decided to stay. The head of the Union of Tire Municipalities, Hassan Dabouq, is still in his office supervising the distribution of humanitarian aid to those remaining in the city.
Dabouq received two phone calls from Israeli officers urging him to evacuate. One call took 20 minutes. “I told him: Why are you targeting civilians? We have already lost four municipal employees. He simply said: ‘That is why I am calling on you to leave.’ “Everyone has received calls, and now we have stopped answering,” Dabuk said.
Dabouq narrated a parable of the Valley of the Ants found in the Qur’an and the Torah. In the legend, King Solomon leads an army into a valley full of ants. Hearing the ground shaking in front of the advancing soldiers, the ants urge each other to flee so as not to be crushed underfoot.
“Suleiman heard the ants and laughed. He asked his army to stop, so that the ants had time to reach their homes. Why doesn’t Israel do the same?” Dbouq asked.
“Internet practitioner. Social media maven. Certified zombieaholic. Lifelong communicator.”