Making Southern Lebanon Unlivable

Co-published with

August 21, 2026

Exposing how Israeli forces have systematically destroyed homes, schools, roads, healthcare facilities, farmland and forests in occupied southern Lebanon.

Since the war started on March 2, more than 4300 people in Lebanon and more than 30 Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed, according to local authorities. Israel’s destruction of the south has been immense. Over one million people have been displaced, villages and towns flattened. For those, returning home has become more and more unimaginable.

A visual investigation by Lighthouse Reports and the Financial Times using satellite imagery analysis, open-source data and verified footage found systematic destruction across Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon, including tens of thousands of homes, schools, farmland and forests.

The analysis shows that much of the damage occurred after Israeli forces established control over emptied villages in mid-April. It has rendered large areas uninhabitable, destroying systems needed for civilian life, from water and energy infrastructure to medical care, a tactic rights groups and legal experts say appears designed to prevent residents’ return.

“We see nothing but destruction, the colour of ash,” says Fadia Bazzi, who is from Bint Jbeil, one of the towns bordering the de-facto border between Lebanon and Israel, that has been reduced to rubble and emptied of its 30 thousand residents.

Most of the destruction documented by Lighthouse and the FT came after an initial ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon on April 16.

Since October 7 2023, Israel has seized about 1,000 sq km from neighbouring Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, relocating populations and creating wastelands within these so-called buffer zones.

Lebanese public research institute the National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS) estimates that almost 85,000 housing units have been damaged or destroyed in the south — likely an undercount as at least 20 to 30 per cent of buildings have yet to be assessed amid ongoing Israeli attacks.

“It’s an extensive, long-lasting and organised attack on the people of southern Lebanon,” said Kristine Beckerle, a deputy director at rights group Amnesty International. “If you raze everything to the ground, critical infrastructure and healthcare, if you scorch the earth, you are creating effective wastelands that are unliveable and making it very difficult for people to return to southern Lebanon.”

Destruction of towns and villages

Satellite analysis across Khiam, Taybeh, Bint Jbeil and Haddatha found clearance beyond isolated buildings and town centres, encompassing almost entire municipalities. In some areas, the damage radiated outwards over time.

We found evidence of controlled detonations and demolitions by Israeli forces and civilian contractors in dozens of border communities.

In Lebanon, the wreckage extends beyond combat damage or sites Israel claims are Hizbollah infrastructure to the broad clearance of villages under Israel’s effective control.

On a trip to one stretch of the occupied area in late April, the FT saw entire villages with barely a building left standing: historic markets, squares and winding streets reduced to a sea of concrete. The sound of blasts, apparently from building demolitions, continued through the day.

The Israeli campaign builds on methods used during a previous war with Hizbollah in 2024, when Israeli forces carried out air strikes and controlled demolitions despite a ceasefire that nominally brought the conflict to an end.

Destruction of water infrastructure

According to figures from the local authorities and the CNRS, at least 2,500km of the infrastructure used to collect, store and carry water to homes and businesses, from pipelines to boreholes, has been destroyed.

“Water is the most important element for life to return to south Lebanon,” said Sonia Ben Salem of Action Against Hunger, which has verified damage done to hundreds of sites via satellite. “Without it, we cannot see a massive return to those areas.”

Environmental destruction

The country’s ancient olive groves have been worst affected, Lebanese officials say. They have long sustained both identity and economy in southern Lebanon, which produces about 40 per cent of the nationwide harvest. Tens of thousands of trees need replanting.

Lebanon’s environment ministry and rights groups have documented Israel’s widespread use of white phosphorus — an incendiary chemical that triggers fires and can leave contamination in soil and water — in both populated and agricultural areas. Israel says it uses white phosphorus lawfully to clear brush and create smokescreens, but use over populated areas can violate international law.

The ministry has also accused Israel of spraying herbicides over 2,000 hectares of agricultural land throughout the past three years of conflict, based on soil samples gathered in border areas — acts it says amount to “ecocide”.

Attacks on healthcare facilities and personnel

The destruction has also hollowed out medical care, with dozens of healthcare facilities damaged or destroyed by air strikes. Lebanon’s health ministry says 135 healthcare professionals have been killed on duty, many in so-called double-, triple- and quadruple-tap strikes.

These target the same location minutes or hours after the first attack, often hitting medics and civilians who arrive to help victims. Insecurity Insight, which tracks attacks on healthcare globally, documented more than 30 such incidents.

Lighthouse verified and geolocated footage of 10 of them.

Methods

Remote sensing

To map the destruction of villages across South Lebanon, we analysed Sentinel-2 satellite imagery captured between March and July 2026, covering the occupied area that the Israeli military designated as its “security zone.” We built an automated detection pipeline in Google Earth Engine that tracks the loss of colour in false-colour composites: intact villages, with their mix of vegetation, rooftops and varied surfaces, appear in distinctive magenta, or mixed grey/pink tones, while cleared, demolished or rubbled ground collapses toward uniform grey and white. By compiling the imagery into fortnightly composites and comparing each one against the period before it, we could produce indicators not only where buildings had been destroyed but when (to within roughly two weeks).

We checked these results town by town, stepping through the satellite imagery in chronological order to confirm the pattern and timing of destruction. We then grouped the damaged buildings by when they were first hit, relative to the 16 April 2026 ceasefire, allowing us to compare the scale of destruction before and after the ceasefire event. Trends showed the largest share of destruction came after the ceasefire: 65 per cent of destruction indicators occurred after 16 April, compared with around a third before it.

Cataloguing Strike Patterns

We examined a database from Insecurity Insights of documented incidents where health care workers were targeted. We isolated the ones where it appeared that health care workers were targeted in sequential airstrikes while doing their work.

We tried to collect as much visual evidence and information as possible, the evidence category for the sequential airstrikes that we inspected include: Media reports, posts showing people mourning the killed rescuers, visual evidence of the airstrike captured by locals living nearby or by the rescuers themselves. Whenever possible we geolocated the airstrike and used before and after Sentinel 2 imagery to confirm the damage in the geolocated area.

For the incident that we declared as verified, the criteria for the verification are: