Israel’s push to create a ‘dead zone’ in Lebanon
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Over nearly nine months of simmering conflict with the Hizbollah militant group, Israel’s military has laid waste to swaths of southern Lebanon.
Even as diplomats scramble to prevent a full-scale war that could inflame the region, Israeli attacks have destroyed or badly damaged buildings and infrastructure, farmland and forests, as well as striking Hizbollah military targets. In the scattered villages and towns that dot the frontier, some entire neighbourhoods have been levelled.
Most of the destruction has taken place within a 5km corridor just north of the Blue Line, the UN-drawn border between the two countries, according to analysis of satellite imagery, radar data and government statistics, along with interviews with local and state officials, researchers, civil defence workers and residents.
Data gathered by the Financial Times suggests that as diplomatic negotiations sputter, the Israeli military has used force to create a new reality on the ground. Near-daily aerial bombardment, artillery shelling and the incendiary chemical white phosphorus have made much of the 5km north of the Blue Line uninhabitable.
Structural damage, environmental degradation and economic harm have left a strip of land resembling the “buffer zone” that Israel wants to establish in Lebanon. Just handfuls of civilians remain. Most buildings are empty; many have been destroyed.
Attempts to negotiate a deal that would include Hizbollah pulling back from the border have not succeeded. But the area has become a de facto military zone, patrolled by Hizbollah fighters, Lebanese armed forces and UN peacekeepers.
The FT combined data from commercial satellites with research from the CUNY Graduate Center and Oregon State University. The researchers apply a technique using imagery from “synthetic aperture radar” satellites, which can detect changes to buildings, and is unaffected by cloud cover.
In Aita al Chaab, near the border, it shows clusters of destruction. The town centre has been hard hit since October 8, the day Hizbollah began firing into northern Israel in “solidarity” with Hamas and to draw Israeli military forces away from Gaza. That triggered continuing tit-for-tat hostilities.
In Lebanon, says Mohammad Srour, the mayor of Aita al-Chaab, “it’s systematic destruction”. “They are destroying the infrastructure, to make it impossible for you to return and live here,” he said.
More than 95,000 people have been forcibly displaced in Lebanon’s south, according to the UN. Israeli strikes have killed more than 90 civilians and 300 Hizbollah fighters, according to an FT tally — more militants than died in a brutal month-long war in 2006. Hizbollah’s attacks on northern Israel have killed more than two dozen soldiers and civilians and displaced about 60,000 people, according to Israeli government disclosures and an FT count.
Diplomatic negotiations spearheaded by the US remain gridlocked: Israel is demanding Hizbollah pull its forces — including the elite Radwan unit — back from the border, but the militant group insists it will not agree a deal until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
Hizbollah is still carrying out daily operations against Israeli targets. In practice, pulling its fighters back would be virtually inconceivable, said analysts, diplomats, Lebanese officials and people familiar with Hizbollah’s thinking. Iran-backed Hizbollah is not only Lebanon’s most powerful military and political force, but also controls the south, where it has been deeply embedded in communities for decades.
“Asking us to withdraw from the south is like asking a fish not to swim in the sea,” said a Hizbollah fighter who asked not to be named.
Fears have risen in recent weeks of full-blown war between Hizbollah and Israel, with increasingly bellicose rhetoric from both camps. The militant group last week issued drone footage of sites deep in Israel, while Israel has assassinated high-ranking Hizbollah commanders.
A senior Lebanese official said the question was whether diplomacy and the de facto buffer zone would be enough to stave off a wider war.
“Or will they want to expand the war and attempt their foolish plan of trying to eliminate Hizbollah entirely?” the official said.
Responding to questions, a senior Israeli military official said that “this isn’t a buffer zone”.
“We just want Hizbollah pushed back. We don’t have an issue with [UN peacekeeping troops], [Lebanese Armed Forces] or Lebanese civilians staying there . . . But we have to ‘clean out’ the area of Hizbollah’s presence.
“They pose a direct threat to Israeli homes via sniper fire, anti-tank guided missiles, cross-border attack and other means. This is a tactical need to provide security for Israeli residents.”
In the border village of Naqoura last month, collapsed concrete, mangled corrugated iron and broken furniture were all that remained of two civilian homes. Smoke lingered from overnight Israeli strikes. Several rows of houses have been levelled in recent months.
The hometown burial of two Hizbollah fighters killed in combat gave many residents the opportunity to return briefly and check on their homes, since funerals are seen as a window in which Israel will not launch strikes.
“Our beautiful village is now a ghost town,” said a resident, who did not want to be identified. He silently cried at the sight of his children’s toys in the rubble of his home. “Every village within a 10km radius of here is the same,” he said.
“Every day, the destruction is getting worse,” said Hassan Shayt, mayor of the town of Kfar Kila. After visiting from Beirut, where he has been based since November, he said: “There are neighbourhoods that look like Gaza.”
Across the south, more than 3,000 houses have been completely levelled, with 12,000 more incurring medium-level damage, according to Hashem Haidar, the head of Lebanon’s Southern Council, an official body.
The radar estimates identify outlines of 1,500 badly damaged building structures, with some including multiple homes. Corey Scher, one of the researchers, said that was a “conservative lower-bound estimate for the extent of damage to buildings in southern Lebanon”.
Haidar said the Israeli campaign had left civilian infrastructure in disrepair, including water pumps, reservoirs, electricity networks, solar panels and roads.
“The damage is massive,” Haidar said. “The type of weaponry that’s being used is different from what we saw in 2006. Before, when a house was bombed, the damage would be confined to the house and its immediate surroundings. Now, there are entire neighbourhoods that are being affected by one bombing.”
Israeli strikes began creeping into urban centres earlier this year, said officials and residents. Israel said it exclusively targets Hizbollah positions, including burning down brush near the border from which it says Hizbollah launches operations.
“Every third home in south Lebanon is used by Hizbollah for weapons storage, training, firing positions and meeting points for a possible cross-border attack,” said the senior Israeli military official.
Haidar, along with more than a dozen local officials and residents, said residential homes were worst affected, including many with no militant links.
Eight residents and officials separately told the FT of using brief pauses in fighting to run home to retrieve belongings, only to have their homes hit by Israeli strikes within hours of leaving. This was seen by residents as a threat, effectively warning them to stay away.
Shayt, the mayor of Kfar Kila, said his sister had not visited her home for several weeks, but returned during April’s Eid holiday to retrieve belongings.
“The Israelis didn’t like this so the house was hit and totally destroyed” some two hours after she had left it, Shayt said.
In Naqoura, the FT saw the immediate aftermath of two strikes. Fighters told the FT that Hizbollah members had been sheltering in an abandoned civilian home and storing weapons in another across the street. Both homes were targeted on May 20. Nearby, entire rows of houses had been destroyed.
Beyond the structural damage, Israel’s use of white phosphorus and other incendiaries — including at least one trebuchet, or catapult, apparently used to launch flaming projectiles into Lebanon, according to video footage — has harmed Lebanon’s biosphere.
Israel’s military would not comment on the trebuchet, but other sources confirmed that a reservist unit deployed the device to burn thick brush that it said was used by Hizbollah for cover.
More than 12mn sq metres of agricultural land have been damaged, Haidar said. Olive orchards, banana farms and citrus groves have withered. Livestock has been killed and beehives destroyed.
The chemical white phosphorus — which ignites when exposed to oxygen — has been dispersed in artillery shells, bombs and rockets. In June, Human Rights Watch documented its use by Israeli forces in at least 17 Lebanese municipalities since October, including what it said was unlawful use in five populated areas.
The Israeli military rejected the allegations about its use of white phosphorus, saying that like other western militaries its troops deploy smokescreen shells that sometimes include the chemical. It said these are legal under international law and are not used “for targeting or causing fires, and are not defined under law as incendiary weapons”.
Decontaminating the soil could take years, said Hisham Younis, founder of the Green Southerners, a Lebanese environmental group. “Their aim is to turn the region into a dead zone — to make it uninhabitable,” he argued.
Farmers have lost entire seasons of income. Naima Qoteish has lived all her life in the village of Houla; her father was killed by Israeli forces there in 1978, and her siblings built homes that would later be destroyed three times by war with Israel.
During the relative lull in hostilities since the 2006 war, Qoteish built up her farming business, often growing 2,000kg of wheat each season.
But this year, bombing and white phosphorus destroyed her crops: “They sent us back 20 years.” The autumn olive harvest was disrupted by war. “We don’t dare go harvest our olives — they’ll bomb us,” she said.
The Southern Council’s Haidar said the cost of the damage was more than $1.7bn, adding to Lebanon’s financial woes. Western governments and Gulf Arab states have given little indication they will help fund reconstruction, as in the past.
Like 95,000 others, Qoteish has been forced to leave home; she is staying with her daughters in nearby Shaqra.
She cannot imagine her siblings rebuilding yet again. “It’s just too much,” she said.
After Israeli shells fell metres away as he planted potatoes last November, Sohad Qoteish, a distant relative of Naima, left Houla, joining his extended family in a now-cramped Beirut apartment.
Cash has grown tight. Sohad Qoteish, like many, has been unable to work. His family of five now relies on modest savings, along with cash disbursements and food baskets from Hizbollah. He struggled to buy medicine costing 600,000 LBP ($6.70) for his daughter, he said. “I’ve been seven months without work. Where am I going to get that from?”
Hizbollah has been distributing between $200 and $300 a month per family, up from $100 at the start of hostilities, along with food baskets. The distributions are seen as an essential tool in keeping the militant group’s base content. Hizbollah did not respond to a request for comment.
That support has lessened feelings of neglect. “We haven’t been abandoned,” Sohad Qoteish said. “If my son breaks his arm . . . they’ll help me.”
Hizbollah has lost more than 320 men, including a few dozen mid-to-high-ranking officers, said a person familiar with the group’s operations.
Israel said it has pushed some elite Hizbollah units farther from the border, but group members, Lebanese officials and experts question that.
Experts say Hizbollah’s capabilities have not been significantly degraded. It has begun showing off new weaponry such as drones capable of firing missiles. Kassem Kassir, an analyst who follows Hizbollah, said: “Until now, Hizbollah has used only 10 per cent of its capabilities.”
Among the grassroots, there is some frustration with what they call Hizbollah’s “halfhearted” fight.
Farmer Naima Qoteish can only wonder whether this border war will be the last of its kind. “We are prepared to be sent back 20 years, but let there be a pay-off, let there be a result,” she said. “Let it not have been for nothing.”
Additional reporting by Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv
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