Press Releases
(Bethlehem, 4 August 2026)
The BADIL Resource Center for Residency and Refugee Rights has released a new Position Paper titled “The Israeli Regime’s Evacuation Orders in Gaza and Lebanon: A Cover for Forced Displacement and Population Transfer.” The paper examines how the Israeli regime’s so-called “evacuation orders” in Gaza and Lebanon not only violate the legal requirements governing lawful evacuations, but are used as mechanisms of forced displacement, territorial control, and population transfer, while states enable these policies through their inaction and complicity.
The paper demonstrates that these orders are issued alongside sustained bombardment, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, restrictions on humanitarian access, and the absence of safe areas, leaving no meaningful choice but to flee. The orders therefore fail to meet the basic requirements of lawful evacuation: they are not voluntary nor safe, nor temporary. Instead, the Israeli regime’s policies increasingly prevent return through military control, exclusion zones, demographic restructuring, and the systematic destruction of homes and the conditions necessary for life. This same system of forced displacement, territorial control, and the prevention of return has also been actively implemented in the northern West Bank refugee camps, particularly in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams.
The paper also exposes the role of the United States and other third-party states in enabling these policies through political, military, and diplomatic support. At the same time, their failure to impose meaningful consequences reinforces Israeli impunity.
BADIL calls upon states to take immediate and concrete measures to end their complicity in Israeli crimes, including through the imposition of sanctions, arms embargoes, and accountability measures. BADIL further calls for reparative reconstruction and a rights-based decolonization approach that upholds the Palestinian people's rights to return, restitution, compensation, and guarantees of non-repetition.