During a year of escalating conflict, Lubnan Baalbaki was caught up in fighting between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group, and saw his ancestral village come under repeated shelling.
Baalbaki, conductor of the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra and the son of a prominent Lebanese artist, had hoped his family’s museum, an unusual cultural center in the rolling hills of southern Lebanon, would be saved.
But his hopes were dashed last week by a video showing controlled destruction by Israeli forces in Odaise.
Watching from the relative safety of Beirut, he saw the house his father painstakingly built over 25 years and where his parents are buried reduced to rubble.
“It was devastating for all of us,” Baalbaki said, referring to the impact on her six siblings, including her sister Soumaya, a singer, and her brother Usama, a well-known artist. “I’m 43 years old, so I feel like I lost 43 years of my life to this destruction.”
Satellite images analyzed by the Financial Times show the building was destroyed by Israel between October 21 and 23. Video footage showed the building collapsing in a series of simultaneous explosions.
Odaise is one of at least 30 ancient towns and villages that Israel has located on its border since early October, many over large areas, according to an FT analysis of satellite images and video. At least 12 buildings were destroyed in controlled explosions by the Israel Defense Forces.
The destruction of a series of villages suggests that Israel is clearing a roughly three-kilometre strip of land along the two countries’ unofficial border, a strip of land that has the characteristics of a buffer zone.
Footage shared on social media last month showed multiple controlled explosions, many involving multiple buildings, that destroyed large swathes of residential neighborhoods.
Moments captured on video include a series of buildings exploding in Aytaloun and the destruction of a mosque in the village of Yaroun.
The border area is dotted with villages where Christians, Sunnis, and Druze Muslims are the majority, but Israel primarily targets Shia Muslims, a group from which Hezbollah exercises control and gathers support. It is a community where people live together.
In Maibib, buildings on a hill were blown up. In Deira, a remote explosion destroyed at least one of the town’s three mosques and several surrounding buildings. At Odaise, five explosions occurred simultaneously, each with multiple explosions.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told the FT that the three-kilometre strip, which he called the “first belt,” was “progressing in terms of clearing Hezbollah’s attack infrastructure.” He added that his army’s ground offensive into Lebanon would continue “as long as necessary.”
Earlier this year, the FT documented how Israeli airstrikes had already rendered these areas almost uninhabitable.
But in September, Israel intensified its campaign to weaken Hezbollah, killing its leaders and launching thousands of airstrikes across the country and ground incursions into southern Lebanon, changing its objectives.
Israel now wants southern Lebanon to be liberated from Hezbollah and has warned that it will use force if necessary to maintain a ceasefire. The extremist group began firing projectiles at Israel “in solidarity” with Gaza the day after Hamas’s deadly attack on October 7 last year, displacing 60,000 Israelis. .
In a year of near-daily barrages, Hezbollah rockets destroyed homes and set fires that spread across large swaths of Israel’s northern region.
Some content could not be loaded. Please check your internet connection or browser settings.
The destruction caused in Lebanon in October is spreading along the border.
Over the past four weeks, more than 12 percent of buildings on the Lebanese side said to have been damaged or destroyed. Oregon State University.
Villages in the south have been on the front lines of cross-border firefights between Israel and Hezbollah over the past year. This intensified after October 1 of this year, when the invading Israeli forces began ground operations.
The Israeli military has not responded to requests for comment but says it targets only Hezbollah militants and infrastructure, accusing the group of infiltrating civilian areas.
An Israeli military official on the northern front told the FT: “Recent operations on the front line in Shiite villages across the border were against very selective Hezbollah assets.” .
The official said Israel had a “very clear objective” to target Hezbollah’s elite forces to eliminate the “threat of a future ground attack.”
The group’s military infrastructure, including what the Israel Defense Forces says is a network of tunnels, was mostly inside civilian areas above and below the village, the official added. “Essentially, we are dealing with so-called militarized villages,” the official said.
Over the past month, many of these villages have suffered heavy damage as a result of Israel’s more aggressive strategy.
Some content could not be loaded. Please check your internet connection or browser settings.
Israeli officials have repeatedly said the war is against Hezbollah, not the Lebanese people, but experts question Israel’s systematic attempts to clear the area.
Alonso Grumendi-Dunkelberg, an international law expert at the London School of Economics, disputes Israel’s belief that these villages are legitimate military targets, arguing that Hezbollah infrastructure is located in civilian areas. He said that even its existence is not enough to justify Hezbollah’s controlled destruction. The assets could be used against Israel in the future.
“I don’t think it’s proportionate,” Gourmendi-Dunkelberg said. “Many other countries, including Israel’s allies, have encountered counterinsurgency operations, like the U.S. did in Iraq and Afghanistan, but without blowing up entire towns. What’s different about this? Is it?”
Grumendi Dunkelberg said that in order to comply with the proportionality principle of international law, the military advantage Israel would gain by destroying entire villages “would be enormous.”
Some content could not be loaded. Please check your internet connection or browser settings.
Israel’s actions are viewed with cynicism in Lebanon. More than 1 million people, or one in five people, have been forced to flee due to fighting or Israeli evacuation orders.
“Israel has adopted this explosive strategy for two reasons,” said Akram Kamal Slaoui, a retired Lebanese army general. The first is to ensure visibility against a potential invasion deep into Lebanon, an area where Hezbollah maintains the upper hand and inflicts heavy losses on Israel.
“The second is that Israel is employing a scorched-earth strategy to wage psychological warfare on the people at Hezbollah bases and weaken support for Hezbollah by televising these explosions, but that will never work. “Deaf,” he added.
Slaoui said an explosion would be the quickest way to destroy the tunnel, but other methods were available, including pouring concrete. “If you’re trying to destroy them that quickly, it’s because your troops are having a hard time fighting in the south,” he added.
In Deira, a picturesque rural town less than 1km from the border, recent controlled demolition has destroyed much of the town center, including at least one of the three mosques.
In the video, as the mosque collapses, an Israeli soldier says, “What a turn of events,” before members of the group begin to sing religious songs.
From Beirut, Baalbaki has already begun thinking about returning to Odaise and rebuilding it.
His father, the late artist Abdelhamid Baalbaki, known for his figurative paintings, made it his life’s work to transform Odaise’s house into a cultural center and exhibition space, using his art teacher’s salary to pay for the construction. I was raising a child. 7 children. It contained his collection of art and ceramics, as well as 2,000 books and manuscripts.
Some content could not be loaded. Please check your internet connection or browser settings.
The family now fears that another building where their parents are buried may have also been destroyed.
“It was a very emotional project for him, and for all of us, because we grew… with this dream,” Baalbaki said. His first name, Lubnan, means Lebanon in Arabic. “I think we believe now more than ever in the importance of rebuilding this museum.”
Additional reporting by Jana Tauschinski
