What you need to know
- Displaced southern Lebanese residents are pooling money to buy commercial satellite imagery of their villages.
- Yaroun's mayor says 180 of about 200 houses have been destroyed since fighting resumed in March.
- Demolitions have continued after the mid-April ceasefire, with Israeli forces using bulldozers.
- The mayor of Bint Jbeil says around 1,500 residential buildings there have been demolished.
- UN-appointed human rights experts say the destruction of housing mirrors Israeli conduct in Gaza.
Residents of southern Lebanese villages who are barred from returning home are pooling their money to buy commercial satellite imagery, using it to work out whether their houses are still standing. In the village of Yaroun, the mayor says 180 of roughly 200 homes have been destroyed since fighting resumed in March.
How are residents using satellite imagery?
Mazen Farah, originally from Yaroun, described watching the images load slowly on his phone. They were fuzzy but clear enough to show that the two-storey stone house his father built, after 25 years working in the Gulf, was gone.
Buying the imagery is a collective effort. Farah said residents either take turns paying or gather funds into a shared account before making a purchase.
The workaround exists because the alternatives are closed. Israel prevents displaced residents from returning even briefly, and people in neighbouring villages are reluctant to film or photograph the damage for fear of retaliation.
What has happened in Yaroun?
Yaroun Mayor Hafez Ghacham said 180 of the roughly 200 houses in the mixed Christian and Muslim village have been destroyed by Israeli forces since the current round of fighting began in March.
Residents say a convent in the village was among the buildings destroyed. Israel has denied striking it and pointed to a different building as evidence. The Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment on the destruction in Yaroun.
Farah said that after the November 2024 ceasefire, the United Nations and aid organisations spent millions of dollars restoring the village water supply and electrical systems, and residents believed the fighting was behind them.
Is the destruction continuing under the ceasefire?
Yes. In March, amid renewed fighting with Hezbollah, Israel launched airstrikes that displaced hundreds of thousands of people across more than 100 villages. After a ceasefire took effect in mid-April, Israeli forces brought in bulldozers and continued demolishing buildings.
The pattern is documented well beyond Yaroun. The mayor of Bint Jbeil, Mohammad Bazzi, told NBC News that around 1,500 residential buildings had been completely demolished along with schools and mosques. Satellite imagery and geolocated video reviewed by news organisations show entire neighbourhoods flattened, and the Washington Post reported the village of Beit Lif almost entirely levelled.
Israel published a map of a forward defence line running five to ten kilometres from the border, taking in dozens of villages.
What does each side say?
Israel says it is dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure and creating a buffer zone to protect towns in northern Israel, though it rarely provides specific evidence for individual demolitions. Defence Minister Israel Katz said in March that the intention was to clear Lebanese villages near the border permanently.
A group of human rights experts appointed by the United Nations has said the blanket evacuation orders and destruction of housing mirror Israeli conduct in Gaza. Destroying civilian infrastructure on this scale is generally considered a violation of international law and a potential war crime.
For residents like Farah, the legal argument is secondary to a more immediate question, which the satellite images answer one village at a time.
Related coverage
Sources for this report
The Redline News Desk
The Redline News desk files and edits world reporting. Every story carries the sources it was built from, and corrections are published on the story itself.
Leave a Reply