Thousands people fleas in Middle East Conflict

A year of conflict in Middle East has sparked a new wave of regional displacement. Israel’s ongoing attacks have forced nearly two million Palestinians to flee their homes in Gaza over the past year.

Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas resistance against Israel and subsequent Israeli bombing of Gaza, Israel has expanded its operations on multiple fronts, including the West Bank, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon.
As fighting continues unabated and the possibility of a direct confrontation between Iran and Israel increases, the region is now entering a new phase of internal and cross-border displacement, with millions already forced from their homes.
As migration researchers, we are concerned that the consequences of this displacement may affect the region for years to come, further impacting the ability of the region’s people to live safe lives.
Displaced and trapped in Gaza
Sustained Israeli attacks have forced nearly 2 million Palestinians to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip over the past year, equivalent to nine in every 10 residents in densely populated areas in Middle East.
What is unique about the scale of displacement in the Gaza Strip is that almost all of the internally displaced are trapped and unable to leave the area due to Israel’s ongoing border closures and shelling.
This has further exacerbated cascading humanitarian crises, including hunger and the spread of disease, creating countless hardships that make normal life nearly impossible for Middle East.
For many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, years of shelling have meant repeated displacement as Israeli attacks have shifted from area to area, narrowing the space for humanitarian assistance Middle East.
And while there are complex historical and geopolitical reasons for the border closure, international law experts argue that Egypt and Israel have violated international refugee law by refusing to allow Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to cross the Rafah border to seek asylum. The situation in Gaza is structurally different from previous refugee crises in the region, even in war-torn Syria, where cross-border aid efforts were constantly on the brink of collapse. That’s because Israel continues to restrict and block aid flows to the area, leaving humanitarian workers struggling to provide basic food, shelter and medical care while the bombardment has barely halted in Middle East.
Beyond Gaza, into Lebanon
The evolution of the war between Israel and Hezbollah has also led to large-scale displacement in Lebanon. Even before the conflict escalated on the Lebanon-Israel border in September, Israeli shelling had forced nearly 100,000 Lebanese to flee their homes in the south of the country. Meanwhile, Hezbollah rocket attacks have caused around 63,000 Israelis to flee the north of the country.
Since late September 2024, Israeli attacks on Hezbollah and Palestinian targets in Beirut and across Lebanon have killed hundreds of civilians and caused a sharp rise in internal and cross-border displacement. More than one million Lebanese have been forced to flee their homes in just a few days following Israeli aggression and bombardment of the country. In addition, Syrian refugees and large numbers of Lebanese migrant workers were displaced, many of whom slept on the streets or in makeshift tents, unable to access buildings intended as emergency shelters for Middle East.
In another dramatic example of reverse migration, some 230,000 Lebanese and Syrians fled across the border into Syria.
Layers of regional displacement
For decades, the Middle East has seen numerous large-scale displacements across borders for a variety of reasons. The initial forced displacement of Palestinians after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent conflicts have led to the longest refugee situation in the world, with around six million Palestinians living in the Levant. The first Gulf War, Iraqi sanctions in the 1990s, and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 caused millions of refugees and had long-term political consequences for the region.
More recently, the 2011 Arab uprisings and subsequent wars in Syria, Yemen, and Libya have caused millions of refugees and internally displaced people. Nearly six million Syrians still live in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, and another six million remain displaced within Syria. As most Syrians have not returned home, international organizations have become a semi-permanent safety net providing basic services to refugees and host communities. New forms of displacement in Lebanon (nationals, refugees, migrant workers) and cross-border migration to Syria will further strain an underfunded humanitarian response system.
Furthermore, the current war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon is not the first war to have caused large-scale displacement between the country and its northern neighbor. In order to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982. The 1982 Israeli invasion led to the Sabra and Shatila massacres, which killed between 1,500 and 3,000 Palestinian civilians. The massacres were carried out by Israel’s Christian allies in Lebanon and demonstrate the devastating impact that military operations that do not distinguish between combatants and civilians can have on displaced people in Middle East.
During the entire civil war from 1975 to 1990, between 600,000 and 900,000 Lebanese fled the country. Twenty years later, in 2006, Israel again invaded Lebanon to eliminate Hezbollah. As a result, some 900,000 Lebanese fled the south, both within the country and across the border into Syria.
The speed and scale of displacement in Lebanon in 2006 was unprecedented at the time, but the number of people displaced in late September and early October 2024 quickly surpassed that record.
The region is therefore well aware of the impacts of mass displacement. But a year into the current conflict, it is clear that the Middle East is entering a new era of displacement, both in scale and type in Middle East.