Israel’s Destruction of Southern Lebanon Intensified After the Cease-Fire: 48/60 villages (mostly Shia) completely destroyed, 16,500 acres of land scorched, and 270,000 people potentially permanently displaced

[u/I_ReallyNeed__Help]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/10/12/world/middleeast/israel-lebanon-destruction.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IFE.GAaq.vm8r0w7EOMPH&smid=url-share

Key Excerpts:

• The ruin that followed the announcement of the cease-fire has followed the same pattern. Of the 48 villages that have been mostly destroyed, almost all are majority Shiite. The seven villages that have not been seriously damaged are home to predominantly Christian, Sunni Muslim or Druse residents.
• Since the April cease-fire, about 16,500 acres across this swath of southern Lebanon were burned, including agricultural land, by wildfires that often coincided with Israeli military operations in the area. The fires, which claimed about 11 percent of the territory under Israeli occupation, spread rapidly, with Lebanese firefighters unable to enter the Israeli-occupied zone to extinguish them.
• The scale of the destruction in southern Lebanon surpasses that caused by the country’s 15-year civil war, several foreign invasions and two previous wars between Israel and Hezbollah, experts say. “The level of violence, the scale and tools of destruction, is unlike anything we’ve seen in the past,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “Every bit of infrastructure is being destroyed, as if to prevent the population from returning anytime soon even if Israel withdraws.”
• Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, has said his country’s approach to southern Lebanon is modeled on tactics used in Gaza, where the Israeli military reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble. “All houses in villages near the Lebanese border will be destroyed, in ​accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza, in order to permanently remove the threats near the border to northern residents,” he said in March.
• Even as Israeli forces have leveled the landscape, they have been constructing infrastructure of their own, suggesting that Israel is planning for a prolonged military occupation of southern Lebanon. At the start of the war in March, Israel already held five hilltop positions inside Lebanon near the Israeli border, which they had occupied during the 2024 conflict. The Times analysis of recent satellite imagery found what appears to be at least three more Israeli outposts completed or under construction since the cease-fire announcement.

[u/neoliberal-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Rule V: Glorifying Violence
Do not advocate or encourage violence either seriously or jokingly. Do not glorify oppressive/autocratic regimes.

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[u/MTFD → u/[deleted]]

Not doing ethnic/religious cleansing which will breed hatred for generations to come seems like a good start

[u/DrunkenAsparagus → u/[deleted]]

Idk dude. We are simply not going to find common ground on this, and it is what it is.

 But flattening these regions, doing ethnic cleansing, and just doing imperialism in slow motion isn't gonna make Israel better off long term. No one outside of their borders likes this, and things will come home to roost at some point, just as Israel's past adventures in southern Lebanon did. It is what it is.

[u/greenskinmarch → u/DrunkenAsparagus]

Well if you look at how Israel got a peace treaty out of Egypt, the story is:

• Egypt attacked Israel
• Israel occupied part of Egypt (Sinai Peninsula)
• Israel negotiated to withdraw in exchange for a peace treaty.

Compared to Lebanon where

• Militias in Lebanon attacked Israel
• Israel occupied part of Lebanon
• Hezb made it too costly to hold so Israel withdrew with no peace treaty
• Still fighting 20 years later

If we could make the 2nd story more like the 1st story it would be better for everyone

[u/greenskinmarch → u/[deleted]]

You're missing the part where Egypt and Lebanon declared war on Israel first and refused to make peace until Israel fought back.

[u/dwarffy → u/[deleted]]

can’t occupy the land (greedy Israel expanding and settling land), can’t rely on the Lebanese government (too weak and won’t risk civil war).

Limit strikes to actual targets instead of seizing territory and empower that very Lebanon government to help it deal with the rogue military in its nation.

Like the article itself points out a very one easy way to do this; allow the Lebanese firefighters to actually go in and defuse the wildfires raging across the territory it occupies.

Israel is deliberately weakening the very government it mocks for being weak.

like Israel is randomly destroying villages doesn’t help anything

That's not the claim, the claim is that Israel is using security as an excuse to pursue a policy of deliberate expansion and expulsion. Combined with the statements of leadership, that reveals the specific intent necessary to qualify it as genocide.

[u/ludovicana → u/[deleted]]

The legal and moral responsibility to not commit war crimes is not conditional on having the ability to win the war without them.

[u/Konet → u/ludovicana]

If only people held Hamas and Hezbollah to that standard.

[u/ludovicana → u/Konet]

If someone told me Hamas had to slaughter civilians because they have no other way of fighting against Israel, I would assume they were a terrorist-supporting antisemite too far gone for me to interact with in any other way than insults and venom. The fact I assume that people saying the same thing about Israel are only Israeli ultranationalists and I am trying to explain why they are wrong to them is actually holding the pro-Israel side to a lower standard.

[u/spacedout → u/Konet]

If we held Israel to the same standards as Hamas and Hezbollah we'd be sanctioning them for attacking civilians.

[u/bashar_al_assad → u/Konet]

If you think it would be better if more people and governments treated Israel like they do Hamas and Hezbollah you might be able to find some common ground with leftists after all.