In practice, this “primarily means physical destruction, which was smoothly transferred from the Palestinian enclave to southern Lebanon. Just as entire residential neighborhoods were purposefully razed to the ground in Gaza, so in Lebanon we are witnessing widespread demolitions of border villages such as Bint Jbeil or Aita al Shaab, with the help of bulldozers and controlled explosions.
This campaign is not limited to residential buildings but systematically targets vital civil infrastructure. Similar to the liquidation of hospitals, schools and water treatment plants in the Gaza Strip, in southern Lebanon the Israeli army destroys waterworks, civilian solar panels – for example in the village of Debl, government buildings and mosques, turning once-functioning communities into a so-called moonland.
The second, equally devastating pillar of this strategy is demographic engineering based on mass displacement. While in Gaza the world watched the multiple forced displacements of millions of residents who were effectively prevented from returning to their homes, this scenario is being repeated in Lebanon with over 1.2 million displaced people.
Israeli forces are issuing widespread evacuation orders that reach deeper and deeper into the interior, even into areas not under direct military occupation. This systematic coercion, combined with the physical elimination of living conditions, ensures that only ruins remain of these people’s homes, making their eventual return absolutely unrealistic in the foreseeable future.
They razed entire neighborhoods to the ground
Analysis of satellite images and verified diary footage shows massive demolition. In the town of Bint Jbeil, only a few kilometers from the border, entire streets and their houses, shops and cafes were transformed into piles of rubble.
According to Barbara Marcolini, a visual investigative reporter at Amnesty International, this is a systematic strategy. Soldiers enter structures, deploy explosives, and detonate entire blocks from a safe distance.
This approach has no military justification in terms of international law, experts say. As Ramzi Kaiss of Human Rights Watch points out, the widespread destruction of civilian objects without valid military justification constitutes a war crime. In this way, Israel permanently makes it impossible for displaced residents to return to their homes.
Black Wednesday
To understand the Israeli campaign, it is necessary to look at the events of April 8. The Israeli army called this operation Eternal Darkness. However, the Lebanese remember it as Black Wednesday.
In just ten minutes, the Israeli Air Force hit approximately 100 targets across Lebanon. The result was 361 dead and over a thousand wounded civilians in a single day. The attacks hit densely populated areas without any prior warning.
In the Hay el Sellom neighborhood of southern Beirut, the attacks leveled residential buildings. Rescue work in the narrow streets was hampered by tons of rubble. In the central commercial district of Corniche al Mazraa, bombs hit a candy warehouse, with the shockwave killing 16 people, including civilians in a nearby fitness center or barbershop.
In the southern city of Sidon, bombs leveled the al-Zahraa religious complex, where young sisters Rahma and Rayan, who had come to pray there after fleeing the border before the war, were reportedly killed.
Although Israel says it targeted 250 Hezbollah operatives and blames the group’s use of civilians as “human shields”, the number of identified casualties – including at least in Hay el Sellom – and the lack of evidence of military targets in the areas cast serious doubt on those claims.
The ideological dimension of the occupation
A fundamental dimension of the Israeli offensive in Lebanon is its character. Satellite images reveal a stark contrast between the destruction of Shiite and Christian villages in the south. While predominantly Shiite villages such as Hanine or Aita al Shaab are now in ruins, neighboring predominantly Christian villages such as Rmeish remain relatively intact.
This state of affairs is not accidental. Israel has explicitly told some Christian and Druze communities that they can stay in their homes on the condition that they expel Shiite Muslims from their communities. This is intended to create intra-Lebanese tensions and definitively single out the community from which Hezbollah draws its support. Hezbollah is a predominantly Shiite movement supported by predominantly Shiite Iran.
The occupation is also reflected in the behavior of the IDF soldiers themselves. Incidents in the Christian village of Debel, where an Israeli soldier took a photo with a statue of the Virgin Mary and put it in her mouth, or another case where a soldier smashed the head of a statue of Jesus Christ with a hammer, caused international outrage.
Although the IDF has officially condemned these incidents and promised an “investigation” or 30-day detentions, in the context of the massive destruction of mosques and churches, similar statements about “respecting freedom of religion” sound cynical at best.
A failure of diplomacy
US-sponsored negotiations at the ambassadorial level are apparently not producing any tangible results on the battlefield.
The leaders of the parties involved have conflicting goals: for Netanyahu, the symbolic image of absolute victory, regardless of the number of casualties, is important. From the point of view of the deputy leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qasim, the direct negotiations are just a “free concession without results” that serves American domestic political interests before the elections, rather than Lebanon itself.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun refuses to meet face-to-face with Netanyahu until Israel fully implements the agreed ceasefire. Meanwhile, the number of dead since March exceeded 2,600. Not only fighters were killed, but mostly civilians, journalists and health workers.
The south of Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut thus remain a space for the implementation of the Israeli “Gaza model”. Several Israeli leaders are making no secret of it. “Very soon, Dahiyeh will resemble Khan Yunis,” claimed Israeli Finance Minister Becalel Smotrič at the beginning of March. Zvi Sukkot, a member of the government from Smotrich’s party, supported him: “We must conquer the territory in southern Lebanon, destroy the villages there and annex this territory to the state of Israel.” Both were referring to the Hezbollah stronghold of Beirut and the city in southern Gaza, which the Israeli army almost completely razed to the ground.
Fatima Abdallah, a mother of five from the city of Houla, whose house was razed to the ground after twenty years of construction by the Israelis and left her family to survive in a tent at the stadium in Beirut, summed up Fatima Abdallah: “Our home was the fruit of our lifetime’s work,” she said. “Only Allah can make it up to us.”
