Israel wages war on Lebanon using its tactics from Gaza

Beirut, Lebanon – “Lebanon, as we know it, will not exist. ”

That is what Yoav Kisch, Israel’s education minister, told a local news programme in early July.

His threat came in response to ministers of far-right in Israel’s call for the Hezbollah to be destroyed.

After the Palestinian group’s armed wing launched an attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 that resulted in 1,139 fatalities and about 250 taken hostages, Israeli ministers backed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ostensible war effort to “eradicate” Hamas in Gaza a year ago.

In Gaza, under that pretext, Israel has nearly 42,000 Palestinians killed and nearly wiped out the entire population. 3 million people were killed, destroying all infrastructure for the common people, and creating widespread famine.

Since stepping up its war against Lebanon in late September, ostensibly to defeat Hezbollah, Israel is now deploying similar tactics in south Lebanon, according to civilians, analysts and rights groups.

“We can’t compare the severity of [south Lebanon] with Gaza, because what Gaza is going through is historically unprecedented and it is a genocide,” said Amal Saad, an expert on Hezbollah who is originally from south Lebanon.

However, she told Al Jazeera, “It appears that Israel is adapting the tactics it used in Gaza.” “[The campaign] is still less than Gaza because what’s happening in [Lebanon] is not ethnic cleansing, yet. It’s not genocidal, yet.

“But it could head there. ”

In response to ongoing cross-border fighting between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters, smoke billows on the Israeli bombing of Khiam, in southern Lebanon, on August 23, 2024. Hezbollah claimed that five of its fighters were among the eight people killed in separate south-focused Israeli raids, according to Lebanon’s health ministry on August 24. A child was also killed in the attack. (Photo by Rabih DAHER / AFP) (AFP)

Kill zones

Israeli military chief Daniel Hagari urged the south-lebanese people to leave the “buildings and areas used by Hezbollah for military purposes, such as those used to store weapons,” on September 23.

According to Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher in Lebanon for Human Rights Watch, the warning did not specify which villages needed to be evacuated and which areas, if any, would be safe.

In addition, he added, the warnings suggest that Israel is using anyone who doesn’t or is unable to leave their villages as a military target, just as it did in Gaza, where Palestinians were told to evacuate as “kill zones.”

In these areas, anyone who persists is frequently shot or bombed.

“Just because you give a warning doesn’t give you free reign to treat everyone as a combatant,” Kaiss said.

Four south-lebanese residents spoke with Al Jazeera and claimed that Sidon, a city that is located 44 kilometers (27 miles) south of Beirut, is almost entirely empty.

However, Israel has killed nearly 2,000 people before they left their homes since September 23 – including more than 100 children, as well as dozens of medics and rescue workers.

Despite the danger, Ahmed, a young man from a small village near Nabatiya in south Lebanon, said he did not evacuate in order to look after his grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s.

While speaking to Al Jazeera, he said, an Israeli bomb hit an area close to his home.

“There is a 50-50 chance that somebody [still here] will stay alive,” he said in a voice note.

“[The Israelis] don’t care if you are a civilian,” he added. There are many houses [destroyed by Israel] around me, and I am aware that there are no weapons there. They just assume you are a fighter.

I was aware of every person who owned the homes. ”

Lebanon — On October 1, 2024, a man examines the destruction that occurred overnight at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs. (Photo by AFP) (AFP)

Domicide

According to the most recent data released by the United Nations Satellite Center (UNOSAT), Israel has damaged or destroyed roughly 66 percent of Gaza’s structures.

This extensive damage suggests that Israel purposefully confused legitimate military targets with civilian-scale structures like hospitals and medical facilities.

Civilians and analysts told Al Jazeera that this appears to be a playbook that Israel is occasionally following in Lebanon.

A senior resident of a southern Lebanoni village where the majority of Christians lived reported that Israel bombed both his home and the home of his neighbor on September 30.

His wife and two children, including a one-week-old baby, were killed in the latter attack.

The man said he fled to Beirut, but did not specify when he arrived. He just stressed that Israel is targeting everything, and sometimes giving civilians delayed warnings.

“They didn’t give us a warning before they started firing with air attacks on our village,” he told Al Jazeera. “This is not correct. Following that, they issued a warning. ”

Yaroun, a predominately Shia village, has been destroyed by Israeli bombings in a recent video that has been circulated on social media.

The images, which are indistinguishable from those taken in Gaza, raise concerns that countless more civilians will die, according to Kaiss from HRW.

According to what we are seeing on the ground, there is a significant chance that the country’s civilians will experience atrocities or risk going to suffer them,” he told Al Jazeera.

Protracted displacement

People fear how long they might be displaced as Israel carpet bombs large portions of Lebanon, much like Gaza, where Israel has largely cleared the north and is still ordering those who are still there to flee south.

No one in Gaza is aware of their future or of when they will be able to start rebuilding their lives there.

Jad Dilati, whose family emigrated from Nabatieh to Beirut after Israel’s war against Lebanon erupted two weeks ago, worries about the possibility of a protracted, even permanent, displacement.

He claimed that the neighborhood vegetable market and barber shop, as well as other structures that he knew and loved from his early years, are now buried in rubble.

He is concerned that his house might be the place of the future.

“They may target our house just because they feel like it,” Dilati, 23, told Al Jazeera. I feel like I’ll be returning to a lost town. ”

Due to the lingering nature of the conflict or the possibility that Israel might once more attempt to occupy some of the south, as it did from 1982 to 2000, Dilati considered whether he might not go back to Nabatieh for some time.

On October 8, a video that circulated on social media showed Israeli soldiers waving their flags on Lebanon’s soil.

Israel flag — In the village of Maroun al-Ras, Israeli soldiers raise their flag on Lebanon’s territory. [Screenshot/Al Jazeera]

“This is the price we are paying living next to an expansionist ethno-state,” Dilati told Al Jazeera.

Dilati still believes he will go back to Nabatieh to help his community rebuild its homes and livelihoods, which were torn apart by Israeli aggression once more despite Israel’s invasion and widespread destruction of south Lebanon.

“We will rebuild [Nabatieh] to make it even better than it was before. My parents work in Nabatieh. My sister goes to school in Nabatieh. Everything I know, I learned in Nabatieh,” he said.

I have no way of thinking about going back. I know Palestinians went through it and I know it might be a possibility, but I can’t imagine it.