It is 2 a.m and pitch dark. You are woken by a phone call. A stranger on the phone says you and your family should immediately leave because the area is about to be bombed.
Do you leave everything behind — your home, your heirlooms, your pets? Can you just drive away in your pajamas, not knowing if you'll ever return?
These are the kinds of questions that thousands of people in Lebanon have faced recently, says Aya Majzoub, deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.
According to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, around a quarter of Lebanese territory "is now under Israeli military displacement orders." That is, while fighting the Hezbollah group, the Israeli military has told locals to leave the area because they will be in danger if they don't.
"And most people are not even getting phone calls," Majzoub told DW. "Often the Israeli army's Arabic-language spokesperson will just announce warnings on social media," she explains.
Several days ago, that happened in the middle of the night. "There were evacuation warnings posted on Twitter [now called X] between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m.," Majzoub recounted. These referred to parts of Dahieh in Beirut. "Most people would have completely missed them, had it not been for young men from the neighborhoods, who rushed into the street and started shooting in the air to wake people up."
This is just one of the incidents that has caused groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to criticize how Israel is giving evacuation warnings in Lebanon. Their concerns also include inaccurate or misleading maps, warnings only minutes before an attack, as well as warnings that are too broad.
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