Eviction in Wartime: A Reading of Old Rent Eviction Verdicts

On 10 March 2026, amid an ongoing war and a severe housing crisis, courts in Beirut and Zahle issued eviction orders against old rent tenants, citing the expiry of the nine-year extension period, while refusing to acknowledge the tenant’s right to extend the lease for an additional 3 years as potential beneficiaries of the Tenants’ Support Fund. This article examines these verdicts and their legal contradictions, placing them in their broader humanitarian context: how they represent a selective application of an inapplicable law, fast-tracking a legally preventable eviction in the process, and how they disregard the consequences of their verdicts when applied in a country currently living through a war and a shelter crisis that cannot absorb further displacement.