HULA, Lebanon — Israel's war with the militant group Hezbollah officially ended with a ceasefire last November. But Israel has continued since then to demolish hundreds of homes and critical civilian infrastructure in what residents see as an effort to not just prevent their return but erase their history.
In the village of Hula in southern Lebanon, a monument engraved with the names of almost 100 Lebanese killed here in 1948 just after the creation of the state of Israel lies covered in graffiti and smashed to pieces. While Lebanon is made up of a variety of religious groups, the majority in the south is Shia Muslim.
The black spray paint scrawled next to a Star of David bears the message in Hebrew "the only good Shia is a dead Shia."
Retired school teacher Abdul Aziz Chreim doesn't know what the Hebrew writing says, but says he knows the aim.
"The Israelis took over this entire village after the ceasefire and they wanted to make the point that 'we are here,' " he says. "They wanted vengeance."
The Israeli military, in response to an NPR query about the destruction, said it had reviewed the desecration of the monument and reinforced unspecified procedures to prevent similar occurrences in the future.
The graves included civilians killed in what became known as the Hula massacre, with two Israeli army officers tried in Israel for war crimes.
Chreim, 74, finds the names of his grandmother and grandfather among the broken pieces of marble before heading to the ruins of his home.
"This is my past that has been wiped out," he says. "My present has been wiped out. My future is lost."
Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah had been fighting since the militant group launched attacks in northern Israel in support of Hamas in Gaza two years ago. Israeli assassinations and attacks late last year significantly weakened the militant group and the U.S. brokered a ceasefire, which took effect in November 2024.
When Hezbollah withdrew from the border to positions north of the Litani River between the November ceasefire and a February deadline, Israeli soldiers moved into many of the Lebanese border villages. Lebanon's National Council for Scientific Research, which conducts research and advises the government on policy, has documented almost 500 homes destroyed after the ceasefire in just three border villages and hundreds more houses damaged.
Israel invaded and occupied Lebanon for 18 years beginning in 1982. Iran-backed Hezbollah was created to counter the Israeli invasion; eventually prompting Israel to withdraw in 2000.
Despite last year's ceasefire, United Nations peacekeepers say Israel has continued its attacks. In the peacekeeping mission's latest six-month report released in July, it recorded 405 Israeli airstrikes, rocket attacks, shellings and shootings into Lebanon. It recorded one by attack from Lebanon into Israel. A list of reported Israeli attacks in Lebanon compiled by a U.S. think tank includes airstrikes, stun grenades, gunfire, ground incursions and drone strikes among others.
Israel acknowledges most attacks, saying they are aimed at preventing Hezbollah from rebuilding its capability. U.N. peacekeepers, who track violations of the ceasefire, have told NPR that Israeli attacks, including stun grenades, are also aimed at civilians looking to rebuild their homes.
The U.N. human rights office in early October said that at least 103 civilians had been killed in Israeli attacks in Lebanon since the start of the ceasefire last year. No Israeli civilians or military have been reported killed.
Since the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began, set off by the Gaza war in 2023, at least 4,375 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Lebanon, including about 1,200 civilians, according to the Lebanese government. The Israeli military says 80 of its soldiers were killed in attacks by Hezbollah and allied militias, and at least 45 civilians.
Asked by NPR about the destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure and civilian deaths in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said it "does not conduct strikes on civilian targets." It said, however, that Hezbollah maintains military assets in populated civilian areas.
In Hula, Chreim's three-story house is now a pile of stone rubble and twisted iron. Gauzy curtains that have blown into a tree are flapping in the wind. The neck of his daughter's guitar pokes out above chunks of concrete. His was one of 55 houses that village mayor Ali Yassine says Israel destroyed after the ceasefire. Chreim came back after Israel pulled out of border villages in February.
Chreim, 74, says his biggest loss was his library — more than 1,000 items including philosophy, science and history books he collected over 50 years. Some, he says, were irreplaceable.
"You feel that every book that is gone is a piece of you," he says. "Now it's gone. As if it never existed."
His home now has no walls, or ceiling or doors but he still carries the house keys in his pocket. He picks up random pages of what turns out to be an English to French-language dictionary. Nearby is a creased, faded postcard of the Virgin Mary used as a bookmark.
"I don't differentiate between Christian, Muslim or Jew," he says. "God made everyone in his own image." He says, though, the "Zionist" attackers who killed his grandparents and destroyed his house are another matter.
Lebanon's border villages are a mixture of simple concrete houses and multistory stone mansions built for extended families often with money made from years of working abroad. Many Lebanese here emigrated to West Africa to start businesses or worked in Gulf Arab states.
It's a part of the country which has felt even more neglected than most by Lebanon's dysfunctional central government.
Chreim says he used to harvest hundreds of pounds of pomegranates every season and sell the juice. But almost all the trees have been destroyed along with date palms and walnut trees. A lone surviving rosebush pushes up through the rubble. If he plants the trees again, he says he will not live to see them grow.
Like almost everyone in Lebanon's border villages, Chreim is displaced, forced to pay rent in another town. Even if their homes weren't destroyed, it's now too dangerous to come back.
Israel has dropped stun grenades on people trying to rebuild and is still striking what it calls Hezbollah targets. The few municipal trucks clearing rubble are accompanied by Lebanese soldiers and U.N. peacekeepers in armored vehicles to deter Israel from attacking them
Village residents worry about what will happen to their land and whether they will ever be allowed to rebuild.
"We are lost," says Mariam Massraani, who has come with her daughter to see the ruins of her house in Hula. "We need to know what will happen. Will our land be returned to us or will they take it away from us?"
U.S. envoy Tom Barrack has floated creating a Lebanese economic zone, as a buffer with Israel, that would replace these centuries-old villages — it says to help Israel feel secure.
In Maroun al-Ras, an Aramaic name that refers to the town's hill-top position, a tourist attraction that had gardens, cafes and an amusement park lies in ruins. It was called Iran Park, after its main funder. One of its attractions was the ability to look out over Israel.
Hussein Allawiyya, a historian and retired school principal, points out the border — less than half a mile away. Israel has put a watch tower up on Lebanese land. Israeli military vehicles cut through roads on the Lebanese side. Allawiyya says he still has the deed to land his family owned and farmed across the present-day border — like most Palestinian and Lebanese-owned land that the Israeli state appropriated after its creation in 1948.
On the Israeli side, the collective farming community of Avivim, built partly on land of the destroyed Palestinian village of Saliha, is watered and green. On the Lebanese side, brown farmland and olive groves are inaccessible now to their owners.
Near the flattened park, a solar-powered pumping station destroyed by Israel lies in a tangle of broken panels along with a destroyed water reservoir.
Allawiyya says Israeli soldiers occupied his spacious home when they entered after the ceasefire — blowing it up before they withdrew back across the border this February. In the ruins of the home, he says he found boxes with Hebrew labels of socks and underwear along with juice, water, toothpaste and shampoo with Hebrew writing. A broken ceramic wall plaque bore a Hebrew prayer for the home often displayed in entrance ways.
He says he also found boxes of large caliber bullets in his destroyed house along with the tail fin of an explosive. He says the Lebanese army came and removed a tank shell in front of his house.
In August, after his former students erected a small, simple trailer in his yard for him to live in, Israel blew that up too.
But he still comes every day. At 71, neatly dressed and walking more than a mile uphill to avoid risking an Israeli drone strike on his car. Occasionally a friend comes by to sit in plastic chairs near the tangled metal of the trailer and drink tea.
"Our land means more to us than factories and money," he says. This is our heritage. This is the legacy of our fathers and grandfathers. Our families' graves are here."
He and others though no longer know exactly where those graves are. Israeli soldiers bulldozed the cemetery down the road with no headstones visible to indicate who is buried where.
Everything is so close that in the now destroyed village of Mhaibib, both Israel and the edge of the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights are visible.
On the Lebanese side of a gray concrete wall built by Israel to separate the two countries, the Israeli army has scrubbed off portraits of slain Lebanese figures revered as martyrs and images of Jerusalem.
In Mhaibib, a shrine to a son of the biblical prophet Benjamin — revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike — has been destroyed along with the village's water tower and almost all of the houses.
Israel says it destroyed Hezbollah tunnels and other infrastructure it said were positioned in mosques, schools and other civilian buildings in the village.
The shrine's toppled stone tower lies on its side. In the courtyard, faded photos of Hezbollah fighters surrounded by plastic flowers are laid out on the courtyard.
With so many villages unlivable, wild animals have ventured back near the towns. Red foxes dart across the roads while eagles glide above the ruins.
Residents of southern Lebanon describe themselves as self-made. Many are fiercely independent.
On a little-traveled road along the border, rising up from the monochromatic stone and concrete rubble, colorful ribbons tied to a fence and flags from a dozen countries wave in the mountain breeze.
Carpenter Abbas Jumma came back to the ruins of his destroyed home and his olive groves after Israeli forces withdrew earlier this year. To persuade the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon and Israeli forces he was not a threat, he painted the rocks leading up to his land in blue and white and hung banners representing the U.N.
"I don't have a problem with anyone," he says.
He has built a simple carpentry shop with panels open to the sky so that Israeli drones can see he is not a threat. It's the only structure standing amid the rubble of the village homes.
"The drones come by — they see what I am doing and they leave," he says.
He serves coffee and packaged sweets, including energy bars with Hebrew writing left behind by Israeli forces, to peacekeepers who occasionally drop by for a chat. A small generator charges a speaker playing Lebanese pop music.
While his wife remains in a rented house in Nabatiyah, Jumma prefers to remain here — without running water or electricity and the only person around for miles. He is waiting until he will be allowed to rebuild.
"I want to stay in my house on my land," he says. "If you are a native of the south, you can't go and live in Beirut." Even in Nabatiyah, the southern Lebanese city, he says he would not be able to play music whenever he wants.
When we return another day, Jumma is dancing by himself on the roof of his destroyed home to a Lebanese love song, joyfully waving his arms — on his own land.
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