Palestinian refugees face new displacement as Israel’s bombs hit Lebanon

Tripoli, Lebanon – In 1948, Manal Matar’s grandparents fled Akka (Acre) in what was then northern Palestine and crossed into Lebanon. They thought they would soon return, but the borders closed, and the family ended up in Rashidieh camp, near Tyre, a coastal city in south Lebanon. They’ve lived there ever since.

But in the early hours of March 2, Israeli forces began heavily attacking near their house, Manal said.

“There was bombing all around us,” she said. Her family packed up and started heading north, with the violent sounds of explosions echoing around them. “The war was terrifying, and we were on the road for more than a day,” she recalled.

Now, they are staying with Manal’s maternal aunt in the Beddawi refugee camp, in Tripoli, north Lebanon.

Manal is one of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon now living out a generational trauma caused by Israeli displacement.

“God protect us that this situation won’t last longer than this,” she said, her voice giving in to exhaustion. Many Palestinians like Manal are aware that displacement is not necessarily temporary. “God willing, it ends,” she said.

‘New Nakba’

Israel intensified its war on Lebanon on March 2, after Hezbollah attacked Israel for the first time in more than a year.

Hezbollah claimed it was responding to the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei just two days earlier in an Israeli strike that marked the beginning of a US-Israeli war on Iran. A ceasefire in Lebanon had ostensibly been in effect since November 27, 2024, despite the United Nations and Lebanese government counting more than 15,000 Israeli ceasefire violations since then, leaving hundreds in Lebanon dead.

Since then, Israel has issued mass evacuation orders for more than 14 percent of the country, including south Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut, the area known as Dahiyeh. On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned that those displaced by the fighting in Lebanon “won’t return home” until northern Israel itself is safe.

The areas in Lebanon that have been impacted include Palestinian refugee camps in the city of Tyre, such as Rashidieh, Burj Shemali, and el-Buss, and the two Beirut refugee camps of Burj al-Barajneh and Shatila.

Lebanon’s camps are home to Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Nakba and the 1967 Naksa, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homeland and their villages destroyed.

Today, there are still around 200,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. They are among the most vulnerable populations in the country due to restrictive employment laws that ensure many jobs remain out of reach.

And in wartime, that vulnerability is amplified. Israel’s attacks and evacuation orders have displaced more than 800,000 people in Lebanon since March 2.

Displaced people are staying with relatives, in hotels, or renting apartments. If they don’t have the economic means or familial support, the Ministry of Education has opened up schools as centres to house them.

But a variety of sources, including aid workers and Palestinians themselves, have said those centres are only receiving Lebanese. The rest of Lebanon’s vulnerable communities, such as Syrian refugees, foreign domestic workers, or Palestinians, must find other accommodation or solutions.

Yasser Abou Hawash has lived near the el-Buss camp in Tyre since his birth in the 1960s. During Israel’s heavy attacks in 2024, he and his family fled to a friend’s apartment in Beirut, where they stayed for the two-month duration of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.

When reached by phone, Yasser was still in Tyre, but was considering coming back to Beirut as the fighting intensified and Israel announced a new ‘ground operation’ in south Lebanon.

“I’m living what my parents lived in 1948,” he told Al Jazeera. “This is a new Nakba, and it repeats every 10 years.”

Generational displacement

Officials in the Beddawi camp said that more than 250 Palestinian families have fled here from Beirut or southern Lebanon.

Dalal Dawali sits on the edge of a couch cushion in her mother’s home in Beddawi. She was born and raised here, but 20 years ago, she married and moved to Dahiyeh with her husband.

When the fighting started, she grabbed her four children and came to her mother’s house. Her husband has stayed behind.

“Every day, we say we want the war to end so we can go home,” she said. Dahiyeh has become her home. She says her family was happy there. She loves her neighbours and repeatedly calls the locals “good people”.

Her family is originally from al-Khalisa in the former Safad governorate, a Palestinian village on the border with Lebanon that was ethnically cleansed. The Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona was built on its ruins.

Her grandparents fled to Lebanon, and her mother was born in Nabatieh camp. But that camp, too, was destroyed by the Israelis in 1974. Dalal’s mother, Em Ayman, said most of her family was killed in that period. She fled to Beddawi camp and has lived here ever since.

“Now, just like what happened with my family, the same is happening with me,” Dalal said, a map of Palestine hanging on the wall behind her.

The generational trauma of displacement is felt widely among Palestinians in Lebanon. Elia Ayoub, a Lebanese-Palestinian academic and researcher based in the United Kingdom, told Al Jazeera that for many Palestinians, the Nakba is not over.

“Palestinian thinkers have been repeating for decades that the Nakba was not merely a single historical event, but an ongoing process,” Ayoub said. “In other words, the Nakba has been a core component of the Israeli state since its inception, which we call the Palestinian question.”

For many Palestinians, that trauma is alive and evolving. Israeli troops are present in southern Lebanese territory once again, following invasions and occupations in 1978, 1982-2000, 2006, 2024, and again in 2026. This time around, some in the south worry they won’t be able to return home.

For others, like Manal, the situation has become untenable.

“We’ve stopped feeling that we live in security or stability,” she said of her family. “Life is terrifying, honestly. Even before the war, there were assassinations every day on the roads.”

“We no longer feel safe sending our kids to their schools or jobs. We honestly don’t know where the strikes will come from. The situation, especially in the south, is a lot.”

She says that this difficult life has made her, for the first time, consider leaving Tyre. And she’s not alone. While many Palestinians told Al Jazeera they want to return to their homes in Lebanon, and still retain the steadfast hope of seeing Palestine one day, others have said the drain of the last couple of years has made them reconsider.

“I was telling my husband, ‘Let’s leave. Let’s find a house somewhere outside the south’,” Manal said.

Some still hope to return home. Dawali hopes she can return to her home in Dahiyeh. Others, hold out hope that they may one day see Palestine. Seated across from Dawali is her 68-year-old mother, Em Ayman.

“Our parents were uprooted from Palestine, but we felt that Lebanon was our homeland,” she said, before pausing and breaking into tears. “All our children live here. But we still need to return to our country, to Palestine.”