In 1895, Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary that the penniless population of Palestine must be “spirited across the border,” discreetly and circumspectly. In 1948, that vision became policy. With the Nakba, approximately 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced, their land absorbed by the newly declared state of Israel. In 1967 came the Naksa. In 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996, 2006, it happened to southern Lebanon. Each time the world called it a “crisis”; each time it was Israeli strategy.

Since Israel’s latest assault on Lebanon began this March 2, more than 1.3 million people — nearly one in four of the entire Lebanese population — have been displaced. More than three hundred thousand of them are children. In the first weeks of the assault alone, UNICEF recorded at least nineteen thousand girls and boys forced from their homes every single day. More than 3,400 Lebanese have been killed and over ten thousand wounded, a toll that surged dramatically when Israel launched Operation Eternal Darkness — over a hundred strikes across the country in a single ten-minute window, killing at least 357 people and wounding over 1,200, with many more believed buried beneath the rubble. At least nine bridges over the Litani River have been struck, seven destroyed, fifty-five primary health care centers and hospitals have been forced to shut down, fuel depots, water stations and schools have been targeted, a systematic severing of the south from the rest of the country, cutting tens of thousands of people off from humanitarian aid.

Israel’s own Defense Minister Israel Katz explicitly described this as the “Beit Hanoun and Rafah model,” invoking the ongoing destruction of Gaza. This is not collateral damage but the same playbook; Israel is not even hiding it. And still it continues: on June 1, Israeli forces struck Tyre — the ancient Mediterranean port city and UNESCO World Heritage Site — triggering a fresh wave of mass displacement as families fled north. A ceasefire, extended for forty-five days and currently being renegotiated in Washington, has stopped nothing.