When she first heard about the evac­u­a­tion warn­ings Is­rael was send­ing to res­i­dents of Lebanon, Aline Nas­er’s thoughts im­me­di­ate­ly turned to Gaza.

For the past year, the 26-year-old Beirut res­i­dent has been fol­low­ing with hor­ror the re­ports about be­sieged Pales­tini­ans in the Gaza Strip or­dered to move from one place to the oth­er, flee­ing to “hu­man­i­tar­i­an zones” on­ly to be bombed and or­dered to leave again.

The Is­raeli calls for Lebanese cit­i­zens to evac­u­ate ahead of a widen­ing air cam­paign, de­liv­ered via mo­bile phone alerts, calls and leaflets this week, seemed chill­ing­ly fa­mil­iar.

“It’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing on the back of my mind, and we don’t re­al­ly know where ex­act­ly is safe,” she said.

Al­most a year af­ter the start of its war in Gaza, Is­rael has turned its fo­cus on Lebanon, sig­nif­i­cant­ly ratch­et­ing up its cam­paign against its arch­en­e­my Hezbol­lah. Among many in Lebanon, there is fear that Is­rael’s mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in Lebanon would fol­low the same Gaza play­book: Evac­u­a­tion or­ders, mass dis­place­ment and over­whelm­ing airstrikes. Is­rael says its strikes tar­get Hezbol­lah weapons sites and mil­i­tants.

There are key dif­fer­ences be­tween Gaza and Lebanon and how Is­rael has so far con­duct­ed its op­er­a­tions, which it says aim to push back Hezbol­lah from the bor­der so that tens of thou­sands of Is­raelis dis­placed by Hezbol­lah’s rock­et at­tacks can re­turn to their homes. Al­though it has said it is prepar­ing for a pos­si­ble ground op­er­a­tion, Is­rael has so far not sent troops in­to Lebanon.

Still, there are fears that Is­rael’s ac­tions in Gaza, in­clud­ing the use of over­whelm­ing and what rights groups and the Unit­ed Na­tions have de­scribed as dis­pro­por­tion­ate force, would be re­peat­ed in Lebanon. Top Is­raeli of­fi­cials have threat­ened to re­peat the de­struc­tion of Gaza in Lebanon if the Hezbol­lah fire con­tin­ues.

On Mon­day, Is­rael struck 1,600 tar­gets across Lebanon, killing 492 peo­ple and wound­ing 1,645, and caus­ing a mas­sive wave of dis­place­ment as thou­sands fled from south Lebanon north. It was a stag­ger­ing one-day toll that shocked a na­tion used to war. It was by far the dead­liest bar­rage since the month­long 2006 Is­rael-Hezbol­lah war, when an es­ti­mat­ed 1,000 peo­ple in Lebanon were killed.

Through­out the day, the Is­raeli mil­i­tary sent warn­ings to res­i­dents to im­me­di­ate­ly evac­u­ate in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the strikes and to stay away from places where Hezbol­lah stores weapons — some­thing most would have no way of know­ing.

“Please get out of harm’s way now,” Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu said in a record­ed mes­sage. “Once our op­er­a­tion is fin­ished, you can come back safe­ly to your homes.”

Is­rael’s evac­u­a­tion or­ders have been a cen­tral part of its mil­i­tary cam­paign in Gaza for the past year. In the first week af­ter launch­ing war, Is­rael or­dered 1.1 mil­lion civil­ians in the Gaza Strip to re­lo­cate from the north to the south, sow­ing con­fu­sion and fear in the over­crowd­ed en­clave.

Emer­gency work­ers ar­rive at the scene of an Is­raeli airstrike in the town of Mais­ara, north of Beirut, Wednes­day, Sept. 25, 2024. (AP Pho­to/Bi­lal Hus­sein)

Since then, the Is­raeli mil­i­tary has is­sued dozens of evac­u­a­tion or­ders call­ing on Pales­tini­ans to evac­u­ate to Is­raeli-des­ig­nat­ed “hu­man­i­tar­i­an zones.” Is­raeli of­fi­cials say they are tar­get­ing Hamas mil­i­tants who have em­bed­ded them­selves among the pop­u­la­tion. Is­rael’s cam­paign in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Pales­tini­ans, ac­cord­ing to health of­fi­cials in Gaza. The Health Min­istry, part of the ter­ri­to­ry’s Hamas gov­ern­ment, does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants, but says that just over half the dead have been women and chil­dren.”

With Gaza’s bor­ders sealed, res­i­dents of the crammed ter­ri­to­ry are trapped with nowhere to go, where­as in Lebanon, those flee­ing Is­raeli strikes have been able to move to safer ar­eas. Thou­sands have fled to neigh­bor­ing Syr­ia, while oth­ers have left through the coun­try’s air­port.

A sec­ond front for Is­rael

Hezbol­lah start­ed fir­ing rock­ets on Is­rael in sup­port of Gaza on Oct. 8, a day af­ter Hamas mil­i­tants launched an un­prece­dent­ed at­tack on Is­rael, killing some 1,200 peo­ple and ab­duct­ing an­oth­er 250. Since then, the two sides have been en­gaged in cross bor­der strikes that have grad­u­al­ly es­ca­lat­ed and dis­placed tens of thou­sands of civil­ians on both sides of the bor­der.

Many Lebanese have been fol­low­ing the grow­ing hos­til­i­ties with a mix­ture of non­cha­lance and dread, hop­ing they would re­main con­tained. Lebanon has been in the throes of an eco­nom­ic melt­down since 2019 and can ill af­ford an­oth­er dev­as­tat­ing war with Is­rael.

Hos­til­i­ties es­ca­lat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly last week when thou­sands of ex­plo­sives hid­den in pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbol­lah det­o­nat­ed, killing dozens of peo­ple and leav­ing thou­sands, in­clud­ing many civil­ians, with se­vere in­juries to the eyes, face and limbs. Is­rael is wide­ly be­lieved to be be­hind the at­tack. Is­rael has al­so killed sev­er­al top Hezbol­lah com­man­ders in Beirut.

Mean­while, in­ten­si­fy­ing Hezbol­lah bar­rages have wound­ed sev­er­al peo­ple in Is­rael.

As the re­gion ap­peared to be tee­ter­ing to­ward an­oth­er all-out war, Jana Bsat, 25, who works for a me­dia analy­sis com­pa­ny in Beirut, said she now has a bag packed, ready for im­me­di­ate evac­u­a­tion. She feels it’s on­ly a mat­ter of time.

“It feels sur­re­al, to be hon­est. We heard about what was hap­pen­ing in Gaza and now we’re ex­pe­ri­enc­ing it for our­selves,” she said.

“I am in dis­gust of all this fear-mon­ger­ing and psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture,” she said, adding: “But then you re­mem­ber, it’s all part of a war­fare strat­e­gy and it’s not go­ing to stop any­time soon.”

Lebanon is not Gaza

While Is­rael’s ac­tions in Lebanon may have echoes of Gaza, the con­flicts are dif­fer­ent. In Gaza, Is­rael’s goal is the com­plete de­struc­tion of Hamas, where­as Is­rael’s stat­ed goal in Lebanon is to push Hezbol­lah away from its bor­der. Where­as Hamas rules Gaza, Hezbol­lah is a pow­er­ful mili­tia with enor­mous in­flu­ence in­side Lebanon, and has rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the coun­try’s par­lia­ment and gov­ern­ment.

In 2006, Is­rael flat­tened en­tire Beirut neigh­bor­hoods and bombed Lebanon’s on­ly in­ter­na­tion­al air­port as well as key in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing bridges and pow­er sta­tions. By con­trast, its cur­rent cam­paign seems to be, for the large part, tar­get­ing Hezbol­lah, al­though many civil­ians have al­so been killed.

Un­like Gaza, Lebanon is al­so a mixed ta­pes­try of po­lit­i­cal and re­li­gious groups, in­clud­ing Chris­t­ian and Sun­ni-ma­jor­i­ty ar­eas where there is sig­nif­i­cant op­po­si­tion to the Iran-backed Shi­ite Hezbol­lah.

Ali Safa, a 30-year-old in­te­ri­or de­sign­er who fled to Beirut from south Lebanon with his fam­i­ly this week, said he isn’t wor­ried about the Gaza sce­nario be­ing re­peat­ed in Lebanon.

“Gaza is an open prison, it is be­sieged. Lebanon is much larg­er, it is not en­cir­cled. And it has Hezbol­lah, which is a much big­ger force, much bet­ter-equipped than Hamas,” he said.

U.N. Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res, speak­ing at the Unit­ed Na­tions Wednes­day, said the world “can­not af­ford Lebanon to be­come an­oth­er Gaza.”

Frayed nerves

Whether the cur­rent hos­til­i­ties will ex­pand in­to an all-out war or whether Is­rael will launch a ground in­va­sion re­mains to be seen. Is­rael’s army chief said Wednes­day that prepa­ra­tions were un­der­way for a pos­si­ble ground op­er­a­tion.

Many in Lebanon say they are haunt­ed by the non­stop churn of hor­ri­fy­ing im­ages from Gaza over the past year, fear­ing the same sce­nario in Lebanon.

For sev­er­al months, low-fly­ing Is­raeli fight­er jets have launched son­ic booms over Lebanon, rat­tling win­dows and ter­ri­fy­ing res­i­dents. More re­cent­ly, the buzzing sound of Is­raeli mil­i­tary drones in Lebanese skies have added to the anx­i­ety.

Some have got­ten used to it. At a fu­ner­al for a Hezbol­lah com­man­der re­cent­ly where a few hun­dred peo­ple gath­ered, hard­ly any­one flinched when low-fly­ing Is­raeli planes caused a thun­der­ing boom that shook the ground.

Bsat said at some point she, too, got used to hear­ing son­ic booms that made the win­dows in her house shake.

“The drones I al­so got used to and now, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the bomb­ing,” she said via What­sapp.

“I’ve come to terms with re­al­i­ty, but my hands still can’t stop shak­ing as I’m writ­ing this,” she said.

“I’m still dread­ing what is go­ing to hap­pen here.”

By  KA­REEM CHEHAYEB and ZEINA KARAM