Forced Evacuations and the Politics of Return in South Lebanon: Legal and Identity Implications

Abstract

Executive Summary

This article examines the legal and identity implications of forced evacuations in South Lebanon amid the 2023–2025 escalation of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with 80 displaced families from Aita al-Shaab, Khiam, and Odaisseh, it interrogates how prolonged displacement — absent state-led return, restitution, or recognition — transforms internal displacement into a condition of de facto exile. Using the lens of international refugee, human rights, and humanitarian law, including the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and the Pinheiro Principles, the study reveals how Lebanon’s lack of a formal framework for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and its selective reconstruction efforts undermine displaced individuals’ rights and legal belonging. It further explores how displacement intersects with class, political affiliation, and sectarian dynamics, deepening inequalities in access to aid, return, and recognition. The article challenges the assumption that humanitarian assistance can substitute for legal protection, emphasizing that the failure to translate international obligations into domestic enforcement mechanisms leaves IDPs in a state of legal and political limbo. Conceptually, it engages with theories of “displacement in place,” “involuntary immobility,” and “stuckness” to show how legal ambiguity, psychological toll, and administrative erasure reconfigure internal displacement as a state of exclusion and abandonment. Ultimately, the article calls for a rights-based and enforceable approach to internal displacement in Lebanon, arguing that without legal accountability and state action, humanitarianism alone cannot address the structural dimensions of exile.