Beirut: In areas of southern Lebanon that it has occupied since agreeing last week to a ceasefire with Hezbollah, the Israeli army has been destroying homes it says were used as outposts by the Iran-backed militant group.
But the demolitions are happening on such a wide scale that residents, Lebanese officials and U.N. peacekeepers are increasingly worried that large numbers of people displaced by the latest war will have nowhere to return if the fragile truce holds.
From a hill overlooking Beit Lif – about 4 km (2.5 mi) north of Lebanon’s border with Israel – Associated Press journalists could see that the village, once home to a few thousand people, had been almost entirely flattened.
“They were demolishing it gradually until they reached the main square, and now, as you can see, there are no more houses,” said Hassan Sweidan, a resident of a neighbouring village.
Lebanese officials plan to raise the issue of widespread demolitions Thursday when they hold ceasefire talks with their Israeli counterparts in Washington – part of the first direct negotiations between the two countries in decades.
Because of security concerns and limited access, neither UN peacekeepers nor Lebanese officials have been able to conduct a detailed survey of the villages where demolitions are taking place. But observers have described entire residential neighbourhoods in multiple villages being systematically destroyed.
A 10-day ceasefire is shaky
March 2, two days after the US and Israel launched the war with Iran, Hezbollah entered the fray by firing missiles into northern Israel. The group had been under pressure by the Lebanese government to disarm following its previous war with Israel in 2024, but refused to do so.
Israel responded with an intense bombing campaign and ground invasion of Lebanon that prompted hundreds of thousands of people to flee the southern part of the country. The fighting has killed around 2,300 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of women and children.
The fighting was mostly halted by a 10-day ceasefire that began Friday. But both sides have carried out strikes since then. Hezbollah has justified its attacks in part by pointing to the Israeli military’s destruction of houses.
Israeli officials have said they intend to occupy parts of southern Lebanon, and the military has issued maps of a “forward defence line” that extends several miles into Lebanon and encompasses dozens of villages whose residents have not been allowed to return.
Following the announcement of the ceasefire, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said this area had been “cleared of terrorists and weapons and is empty of citizens, and will continue to be cleared of terrorists’ infrastructure, including the destruction of houses in Lebanese villages that border Israel) and have become terrorist outposts in every sense.”
There are no more houses’
After the ceasefire went into effect, Sweidan returned to check on his home in the southern Lebanese village of Yater. It is still intact.
Because Sweidan’s village overlooks neighbouring Beit Lif, he has been able to observe Israeli army operations there. Despite damage from Israeli airstrikes during the war, most of Beit Lif was still standing on the first day of the ceasefire, he said.
But on the second day, Israeli forces arrived with bulldozers, jackhammers and tanks.
“We would come each day to see how much of the village was demolished,” he said.
Tilak Pokharel, a spokesperson for the U.S. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon known as UNIFIL, said that peacekeepers “have observed demolitions taking place in several areas” since the truce.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the target of the demolition work is Hezbollah, not Lebanon or its civilians, and that it “operates in accordance with international law and does not destroy civilian property unless required by imperative military necessity.”
New demolitions come on top of existing destruction
There was already widespread destruction in border areas after the previous Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024. Some homeowners could afford repairs, but there was no large-scale reconstruction.
Demolition also took place during the most recent war. Photographs taken April 12 by AP from the towns of Menara and Misgav Am in northern Israel show excavators and bulldozers destroying homes on the Lebanese side of the border.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Wednesday that Israeli bulldozers were destroying neighbourhoods, roads and infrastructure in the town of Khiam, a battleground in the Israel-Hezbollah fighting, “in a scene that suggests an attempt to completely erase the town’s identity.”
The news agency also reported “systematic bombing operations” Wednesday affecting residential neighbourhoods in the city of Bint Jbeil – another flashpoint in the fighting – and in the villages of Beit Lif, Shamaa, Tair Harfa and Hanine.
Hezbollah said Tuesday it had launched drone and rocket attacks, the first since the ceasefire, in response to Israeli “attacks on civilians and the destruction of their homes and villages in southern Lebanon.”
As Lebanese officials scramble to keep the ceasefire in place, President Joseph Aoun said in a statement that “halting Israel’s demolition operations in southern villages and towns” is something Lebanese ambassadors in the United States will raise with their Israeli counterparts during ceasefire talks Thursday.
The talks were expected to focus on a potential extension of the 10-day truce and establishing a framework for future talks aimed at a lasting peace between the two countries.
