SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
We are beginning today's show with a look at how the war in Iran has spread across the Middle East and has ignited a second war within a war. President Trump is threatening to obliterate Iran's civilian infrastructure if a deal between the countries isn't reached soon. Pakistan says it's brokered a deal with Iran to allow some vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, but oil prices are still up. And fighting continues across the region. In Lebanon, three United Nations peacekeepers have been killed in the past 24 hours, though it's unclear by whom - Israel or the Hezbollah militants it's been fighting. It is a sign that the fighting is intensifying there. More than 1,200 people have been killed in Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is expanding an invasion of the country's south. NPR's Lauren Frayer reports from just above an evacuation zone there.
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UNDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Non-English language spoken).
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LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Schools like this one in the southern town of Jezzine have been repurposed into shelters - kids playing soccer, adults sitting on the curb, chain-smoking, scanning evacuation orders Israel puts out on social media. At first, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said his troops would accelerate the destruction of homes in southern Lebanon in accordance with a Gaza model...
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ISRAEL KATZ: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: ...And take Lebanese territory up to the Litani River, which runs east-west, varying about 10 to 20 miles north of the current border. A few days later, though, Israel ordered residents to move 10 miles beyond that, north of another river called the Zahrani. Now Netanyahu's threat to widen this invasion without specifics is causing more confusion here. There's fear and exhaustion in everyone's eyes.
COLETTE SLIM: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: "People are fleeing north in waves with every new Israeli threat, every new strike," the school principal, Colette Slim, tells me as warplanes roar overhead.
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SLIM: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: Her school filled up in the first wave, she says, and is now forced to turn people away. This has been one of the biggest and fastest displacements in Lebanon's history, affecting more than a million people - about a fifth of the population. Israel says it's targeting Hezbollah militants who continue to have support among some of these displaced people and continue to fire thousands of rockets southward across the border. Israel is warning civilians, in accordance with international law, before bombing their towns. But Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, says when warnings are so broad, covering huge swaths of the country...
RAMZI KAISS: And they're not tied to a specific attack that's going to happen, they threaten to cause panic amongst the civilian population, for example, in the first day of the escalation to over 50 villages. By the second day it was over a hundred villages and towns.
JOSEPH ELIAS ISSA: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: I meet Joseph Elias Issa in a shepherd's shack in the forest. He's fled the town of Kfar Hounah, just south of here. He huddles around a woodburning stove, his head wrapped in a keffiyeh.
ISSA: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: He says he was raised on that land, makes a living on that land. In his 56 years, he's lived through almost every war with Israel on that land. But now he wonders if he will ever be able to go home. This time, Israel's defense minister says what he calls a buffer zone will remain until the security of Israel's northern residents is guaranteed. Human Rights Watch's Kaiss says that's forced displacement - a possible war crime.
KAISS: You cannot tie people's return to their homes to some vague safety guarantee, that you decide people must be allowed to return to their homes once the hostilities cease.
FRAYER: His forest shack, Issa describes hearing airstrikes as he fled, driving his mules northward in a truck through destruction...
ISSA: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: ...Uphill, through the olive and citrus groves.
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FRAYER: From this hill, I can look down towards the Zahrani River. That's the zone where Israeli forces have ordered people to evacuate north of - and even beyond that, to the Litani, where Israel has said it wants to make a new border, below which it wants to take Lebanese territory.
PAUL KHREISH: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: "We're worried this region will no longer be Lebanese," says Paul Khreish, a municipal official in a village called Ain Ebel, near the Israeli border. NPR reached him by phone. It was too dangerous to visit. He said he doesn't know whether to stay or go. The roads keep getting hit by airstrikes. But if the border is moved, he could end up under Israeli occupation.
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FRAYER: That's happened before.
DAVID EL HELOU: Israel reached the Litani River back in 1978.
FRAYER: David El Helou (ph) is the mayor of Jezzine. He's old enough to recall how Israel occupied southern Lebanon through the '80s and '90s.
EL HELOU: They were at a checkpoint, like, 2 kilometers from here.
FRAYER: Back then, Israel was battling Palestinian militants. Now it's Hezbollah. I ask him if he feels like history is repeating itself, and if he thinks Israel's no-go zone might expand northward into his town.
EL HELOU: Things can go wrong anytime. You can never be sure when it's going to end, which direction it's going to take, what's going to happen. Yeah, the fear is always there.
FRAYER: Does this time feel different than the past?
EL HELOU: I don't know. I have a feeling that this time looks more serious.
FRAYER: He and so many other people in this region tell us they think this time, this war may be different. Lauren Frayer, NPR News in Jezzine, southern Lebanon. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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