How Israel’s Gaza script is playing out in Lebanon

Ahmad Chihadeh / Oxfam

Workers remove debris after an Israeli strike targeted a residential apartment in the Aisha Bakkar area of central Beirut, causing casualties and damaging nearby homes and cars, in Beirut, Lebanon, March 11, 2026.

From October 2023, Israeli military officials have been clear about their intentions to use their Gaza blueprint in Lebanon, with sweeping forced displacement orders that have driven over a million people from their homes, dozens of villages razed, disproportionate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, occupation and annexation, destruction of farmland and a blatant disregard for ceasefire agreements and international humanitarian law.

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The violations and atrocities that underpinned Israel’s genocide in Gaza are again on full display in Lebanon as Israeli forces roll out the same military playbook across the country during the latest escalation. From mass forced displacement to the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure, as well as the redrawing of buffer zones and borders, the impunity that Israel was allowed in Gaza has emboldened it to carry out the same tactics as it attacks Lebanon. Showing that it can do what it wants, wherever it wants, without repercussions as it expands its violations in the region.”

The Gaza Playbook

As Israel rolls its Gaza Playbook across Lebanon:

2869 civilians have been killed and a further 8730 injured
1.3 million people have been displaced
Over 100 medics and emergency workers have been killed
40,000 homes were destroyed or damaged
64 hospitals and health clinics have been damaged or destroyed
49,500 hectares of crops have been damaged
At least 50 Lebanese villages have been significantly damaged or demolished

Oxfam staff in the south of Beirut distributing hygiene kits and menstrual health management kits to people who have been displaced by the escalating conflict. Photo: Ghiwa Abihaidar / Oxfam

A female Oxfam colleague in the south of Beirut unloading a box of hygiene kits and menstrual health management kits ready to distribute to displaced people.

The brief compares Israeli military actions in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as rhetoric. It warns that if the international community does not learn lessons from the past and allows Israel to act without repercussions in Lebanon, as it did in Gaza, its inaction will refuel vicious cycles of violence for generations to come.

Read The Gaza Playbook here

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