Israeli ground invasion reopens old wounds in battered south Lebanon

Abu Rami has always loved October, which heralds the start of the olive harvest at his family orchard in southern Lebanon.

That affection came to an abrupt end a year ago with the onset of almost continuous cross-border clashes between Israel and Hizbollah that forced his family to flee their village of Yarine in an effort to escape the fighting.

“Leaving my land was like a knife in the heart,” said the 45-year old, who initially stayed behind with his brothers until Israeli air strikes made this impossible.

Like dozens of villages in southern Lebanon, Yarine has been empty for most of the past year, a time when Israel has laid waste to broad swaths of the border area, ever since Hizbollah first fired rockets at the Jewish state “in solidarity” with its ally Hamas, a day after its deadly October 7 assault on southern Israel.

Up until two weeks ago, most of the destruction had taken place within a 5km corridor north of the Blue Line, the UN-drawn informal border that separates northern Israel from southern Lebanon, according to a Financial Times data analysis.

But Israel has in recent weeks dramatically intensified its campaign against Hizbollah, mounting a relentless barrage of air strikes across the country and a ground offensive in southern Lebanon, where the Iran-backed militant group has a controlling presence but that is also home to hundreds of thousands of people.

Israel has also issued short-notice evacuation orders that have emptied out sections of southern Lebanon, as well as parts of the capital.

The south Lebanon Christian village of Ain Ebel was one of those where residents had to flee last week after receiving messages from Israel. Imad Lallous, its mayor, said he took a phone call from someone who identified himself as an Israeli army officer.

“Forty-five minutes! To evacuate 1,000 people. I told him: ‘You must be joking’,” Lallous said. “I said: ‘Why do we have to evacuate? We live in peace, we’ve no Hizbollah.’ But he insisted.”

More than 1.2mn people have been displaced across Lebanon and in excess of 2,000 people have been killed, most of them during the past two weeks, according to Lebanese authorities.

Displacement is a common feature of Lebanon’s recent history, one rife with conflict and occupation.

The country emerged from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, a small Mediterranean country with 18 formally recognised religions.

The fledgling state was governed by a confessional power-sharing system, brokered by Christian and Sunni Muslim elites, who weaponised state resources to fuel sectarian patronage networks. Shia Muslims, who lived predominantly in the south, were largely excluded from that power system and experienced disproportionate poverty.

By the late 1960s, Lebanon was home to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, leading to Israel twice invading its neighbour in attempts to rout them. 

During the first, in 1978, Israeli forces launched a weeklong offensive that killed hundreds and displaced thousands more. It ended in a UN resolution and the creation of the Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) peacekeeping mission.

Israeli troops invaded Lebanon again in 1982, this time extending from the border areas to the capital Beirut. Israel’s military withdrew from most of Lebanon in 1985, but continued to occupy about a tenth of the country’s territory, aided by its Lebanese Christian militia allies. 

Hizbollah was born out of that occupation, becoming the leading guerrilla force in southern Lebanon and one of the world’s most powerful non-state military forces.

When Lebanon’s bloody 15-year civil war ended in 1990, Hizbollah was allowed to keep its weapons to fight Israel, which was driven out of Lebanon a decade later, leaving the militant group to extend its control over the south. 

The two last fought a full-scale war in 2006, when Israel inflicted broad- scale destruction in southern Lebanon, razing entire villages and destroying much of the area’s civil infrastructure such as the airport, grain silos, roads and bridges.

The UN again brokered a ceasefire, although the terms of that resolution have never been fully implemented by either side. 

October 7 was the spark for the latest hostilities, as Israel deployed aerial bombardments, artillery shelling and white phosphorous to make much of the corridor north of the Blue Line uninhabitable.

Israel insisted it was targeting sites linked to the Shia Islamist Hizbollah, even though some of the border villages, such as Ain Ebel, are Christian, or Suni, such as Yarine.

That 5km corridor is now a de facto military zone, patrolled by Hizbollah fighters, Lebanese armed forces and the UNIFIL peacekeepers. Israeli ground troops have recently joined the fray, fighting the militants on their home turf.

UNIFIL does its best to maintain order amid rough terrain and rocky hills along a line that still features more than a dozen points of dispute between Lebanon, Israel and Syria. Despite occasional flare-ups, it has largely learned to coexist with the paramilitary force it has little influence over. 

Only a handful of civilians remain. Most buildings — including municipal buildings, schools and houses — are empty, damaged or destroyed. Sporadic visits by the FT, as well as videos and images from the area sent by local residents over recent months, show piles of debris where rows of homes once stood, singed trees and abandoned farms.

One of Israel’s aims is to drive Hizbollah back, yet withdrawing from southern Lebanon would be anathema to the group’s existence.

It is deeply embedded in the fabric of the area’s society, its ranks filled with local young men, its wide social welfare network built up over decades to serve the community and build up loyalty and dependence. 

With Israel extending its campaign deeper into Lebanon, with more than 110 areas in the south now subject to evacuation orders, fears are growing among residents, officials and diplomats that Israel will soon come to occupy the south and prevent residents from ever returning. 

“It hurts my heart to know that the south is empty,” Abu Rami said, adding that without people to defend the land, “Israel will devour it”.

“Our blood and our tears are deep in the soil, and from them grow our trees, our olives,” he said. “We cannot be separated.”

Additional reporting by Charles Clover in Beirut. Cartography by Steven Bernard in London