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Although the city of Tyre has been almost completely severed from the north of Lebanon, Ossama and Mustafa decided to stay. They know the decision could cost them their lives but, as Ossama put it, “I’d be dying in my own land.”
The young men are only two of Tyre’s residents who still walk the streets, frequent the few open cafes, shop in the remaining markets, and watch the sun set over the sea of their historic city.
Much of Tyre is a ghost town after the Israeli army ordered the residents to leave on Tuesday. The sound of fighter jets flying overhead, or the booms of missiles, is nearly constant.
“I’m still here in case – I hope it doesn’t happen – but in case I have to defend my city from the Israelis,” Ossama told The National. “Self-defence. I’m not doing anything wrong by existing on my own land. I’m loyal to my city.”
The young men, in their 30s, identified themselves as civilians, not fighters or members of Hezbollah.
“We are people who drink beer, sit together, barbecue, and live our lives. It is not about Hezbollah. But when Israel attacks, then of course we stand together,” Mustafa added.
In the days following Israel’s forced displacement order, Israel has waged a sustained air campaign to isolate the south from the rest of the country with the stated aim of eradicating Hezbollah and establishing a buffer zone south of the Litani river. Israel has severed key crossings between the north and south, accusing Hezbollah of using them to smuggle weapons.
Israel has attacked bridges, destroyed electricity and water providers, and razed civilian homes and villages – hindering residents from remaining in towns across south Lebanon.
Despite this, some 32,000 people have chosen to stay in Tyre and its surrounding villages, according to Mortada Mhanna, the head of Tyre's Disaster Management Union. He is among those making a last stand.
“If there’s only one person left in Tyre, it will be me,” he told The National.
Yellow line doctrine
Both Israel and Hezbollah consider this war a battle for existence. The Lebanese may have been dragged into the war unwillingly, but the fight is no longer on their doorstep, it’s in their home.
As Israel advances into south Lebanon amid a fierce defence from Hezbollah, those caught in the conflict are facing a prospect many are afraid to say out loud. If they leave their villages and cities now – if Israel establishes a buffer zone inside Lebanese territory – they may never be able to return.
Israel’s efforts to isolate Tyre suggest it could soon fall within the buffer zone. On Thursday, Israel twice bombed the Qasimiyeh bridge, one of the two main crossings linking coastal Tyre to the north. At a nearby military checkpoint, a soldier urged The National to leave via the other crossing still standing – “fast”, he said, because it could be bombed any time.
Experts say Israel’s campaign in Lebanon is another example of its “yellow line” doctrine, when Israel razed villages on the outer edge of Gaza to create a buffer zone during the war there. In doing so, Israel occupied more than half of the Gaza Strip, pushing nearly all Palestinians inside the line. The strategy has also been partially applied in Syria, where Israel invaded swathes of land following the fall of the Assad regime in 2024.
“They're not just emptying the land, they're going in and they're demolishing everything that allows life in those areas – from ecocide to intentional demolitions,” said Nadim Houry, the head of the Arab Reform Initiative, a regional think tank.
It is unclear how far Israel’s buffer zone in southern Lebanon might extend. But the army is pushing deeper into the south every day. It has issued forced displacement orders for more than 14 per cent of Lebanese territory – dispersing more than a million Lebanese in the process. Inside the buffer zone “there will be only bare land, drones and various forms of control”, Mr Houry said.
‘No one wants to leave’
Mr Mhanna, of the Disaster Management Unit, spends his days organising help for people displaced from villages south of Tyre, particularly in the schools-turned-displacement shelters opened by Lebanese authorities. Some residents of Tyre itself, fearful of Israeli strikes on civilian homes and infrastructure, live within the city’s shelters. They include Mr Mhanna's family.
The red displacement zone marked out on Israeli maps designates most of Tyre as a target. But rather than leaving the city altogether, many residents sought shelters in the Christian Mina neighbourhood, outside Israel’s red zone, where churches and streets filled with families.
The day after, they returned to their homes.
The Israeli army called Mr Mhanna personally pressing him to enforce its red zone, which includes shelters. “We recommended that people in the shelters should leave and go north,” he told The National. “I sent co-ordinators to the schools to convey the message. Most people refused.”
Mr Mhanna played voice notes left on his phone by his team.
“I walked all over the school. I don’t know what to tell you,” one colleague said. “No one wants to leave.”
Death or occupation over displacement
The village of Blida, less than 1km from the border with Israel, has been effectively erased. Its residents were unable to return or rebuild during a 2024 so-called ceasefire. Although Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel stopped, Israel continued to attack south Lebanon daily and refused to withdraw its military from at least five points of Lebanese territory.
Fatima Ali Youssef, from Blida, has been sheltering in Tyre’s Al Shawkin Institute, unable to return since she fled the fighting in 2023.
“My house was a heaven,” she said. “The Israelis know the south is beautiful. It’s why they want it.”
She and others from Blida serve as a harsh warning to other villagers that if they leave the south, there may never be a return.
There are two newly dug mass graves in Tyre, where bodies are temporarily buried away from south Lebanese villages that are now too dangerous to access. The graves are a physical reminder of how Israel’s tanks have uprooted the lives of southerners, preventing them from burying their dead in the land they belong to.
Exhausted by waves of displacement, Mustafa Sayed seemed resigned to live through yet another occupation. The 56-year-old farmer from Beit Lief lived through the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon from 1978 to 2000.
His house was destroyed. He rebuilt during the ceasefire only for Israel to destroy his home – again – when war returned earlier this month. He finds himself in the same Tyre school he lived in before. But it stops there. He won’t go north of the Litani river, he said, and risk never returning to south Lebanon. He told The National he would rather stay, even if it means life under Israeli occupation.
“I’m used to that reality,” he told The National.
Mr Sayed said his only wish was to rebuild in Beit Lief and give his family a good life – regardless of whether the south is in Lebanese or Israeli hands.
“In the end, we are ordinary people. We do not like war,” he said.
