Israeli evacuation orders: Terror tactics to justify civilian bombings, erase urban fabric

Haytham Nouri , Wednesday 30 Oct 2024

The Israeli army's evacuation orders in Lebanon signal a calculated strategy to manipulate public perception, legitimize attacks on civilians, and erase the country's intricate urban landscape, experts said.

A general view of Lebanon's capital Beirut
A general view of Lebanon's capital Beirut. AFP

 

In the late evening hours, the Israeli army issued “evacuation orders” warning the civilians in the Lebanese capital Beirut to evacuate. 

These orders are supposed to work as warnings; they are issued in Arabic on the X social media platform, delineating a building or more and some urban blocks where one or several impending strikes are planned.

The orders instruct residents to immediately evacuate the premises within a 500m radius of the targeted cluster of buildings.

Israeli orders are accompanied by a text listing the names of the neighbourhoods targeted and justifying the forthcoming attacks concerning their proximity to “facilities related to Hezbollah.”  

According to Beirut Urabn Lab, the evacuation orders are “part of Israel’s strategy to manufacture consent for the incoming strikes, legitimizing the bombings by claiming the presence of a so-called “terrorist threat.”

 

 

Moreover, they serve as an integral component of Israel’s strategy to mount the Lebanese people against Hezbollah, discounting the socio-political and urban realities of a society that has come to rely on this party for all of its social needs, the lab said.

For residents, the evacuation orders constitute an integral element of the “terror apparatus deployed by the Israeli army, a key ingredient of the psychological warfare waged against them,” the lab added.

Between 27 September and 24 October, no less than 325 buildings have been destroyed south of the Lebanese capital, where the devastation radius extends over 11.87km or more than half of the capital’s immediate urbanization perimeter.

At least 99 announced strikes extending over 152 buildings were counted in one month, constituting less than half the number of destroyed buildings in southern Dahiya of Beirut.

Geographically, the scale and intensity of Israeli violence throughout south Beirut took to the campus of the Lebanese University in Hadath, the borders of Lebanon’s International Airport’s runway, and the industrial areas of Choueifat, according to the maps issued by Beirut Urban Lab.

Beirut Urban Lab focuses on mapping south Beirut, where the municipal districts of Ghobeyri, Haret Hreik, Burj Al-Brajneh, Mrayjeh-Tahweeta-Laylaki, and Hadath have borne the brunt of the airstrikes during the past month.

Each district has been subjected to over 60 evacuation orders and struck several folds more.

These districts are within the area popularly referred to as Dahiya, where Israel’s multiple and repeated aggression since 27 September has displaced hundreds of thousands of inhabitants and destroyed multi-story residential and commercial buildings, Beirut Urban Lab noted.

Israel claims that Dahiya is a “stronghold for Hezbollah,” which is a political party with ministers in Lebanon’s government and parliamentary representation in the country’s assembly in addition to its strong military power.

This means “Israel and much of the Western media conflate political support, allegiance, and armed force—hence declaring it legitimate to target civilians because of assumed political preferences,” Beirut Urban Lab said.

Those Israeli airstrikes not only target “Hezballah facilities,” but their damage extends to an entire civilian infrastructure, according to the lab.

Israel denies the reality of multiple and diverse districts, composed of dozens of neighbourhoods rich with an urban, social, economic, and political history that precedes Hezballah by decades.

“The bombing is akin to an urbicide that is erasing an entire urban fabric, the palimpsest of socio-spatial practices and the embodiment of collective memory," it stated.

Beirut Urban Lab added that the “stronghold” qualifier occults the historical conditions where the use of armed resistance was endorsed as a mode of struggle against the Israeli armed forces that invaded south Lebanon repeatedly, occupied its territories, violated its airspace daily, and inflicted immense damage on its populations.

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