When Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel on March 2, two days after Israel and the United States launched a conflict on Iran, the ensuing Israeli operation to destroy the group shortly turned a mission to flatten swathes of southern Lebanon.
As Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes throughout the nation, troopers seized extra territory in the south. Ground operations started to tackle the looks of these seen in Gaza: bulldozers tearing down buildings and demolitions razing entire villages to the bottom.
Even after final week’s ceasefire settlement between Israel and Hezbollah, these floor operations have continued.
A NCS assessment of satellite imagery reveals the size of the destruction.
Hundreds of buildings – most of which look like houses – have been both fully flattened or rendered uninhabitable.
Satellite imagery and movies from after the April 16 ceasefire announcement present demolitions persevering with apace, with excavators and armored autos clearly seen.
Rights teams have sounded the alarm, warning that Israel’s army offensive is mirroring tactics used in Gaza – from heavy strikes on vital infrastructure and healthcare amenities, to the concentrating on of journalists and psychological warfare.
Israeli officers have outlined plans for a long-term “security zone” contained in the border – although the popular terminology now’s a “forward defense line area” – with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying his forces will broaden their positions 10 kilometers (6 miles) deep inside Lebanon.
Israel is exporting its Gaza playbook of destruction to southern Lebanon
Senior Israeli authorities figures have been clear about what meaning.
Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed to destroy all houses in villages close to the border, in line with what he known as “the Rafah and Beit Hanoun model.”
Rafah and Beit Hanoun are cities at, respectively, the southern and northern ends of Gaza, which have been laid to waste by Israeli forces over the past two and a half years.
After the ceasefire was introduced final week, Katz doubled down, saying the “destruction of houses in the Lebanese contact-line villages” will proceed, describing them as “terrorist outposts.”
The Israeli army says it’s concentrating on Hezbollah infrastructure throughout the nation in response to the launch of 1000’s of rockets, drones and anti-tank missiles in the direction of Israel since 2023.
It says Hezbollah embeds and shops weapons in civilian houses, releasing images of arms and ammunition it says its troopers have uncovered throughout searches, in addition to what it stated was an underground command heart hidden underneath a garments store.
Senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers say Israel will impose what it calls a “yellow line” in Lebanon, barring residents from returning to areas occupied by the Israeli army.
It is a tactic lifted straight from Israel’s renewed occupation of Gaza’s territory.
There, it began out as a short lived yellow line on a map – demarcating an space occupied by the Israeli army following the Trump-brokered ceasefire final October.
But after a number of weeks, concrete blocks painted yellow began showing on the bottom, lending it a way of permanence, which has solely deepened. Crossing the road stays forbidden to residents, a whole bunch of whom have been shot lifeless for coming too shut, Palestinian officers say.
Israel’s new yellow line in southern Lebanon seems equally divisive, separating 55 cities and villages from the remainder of the nation.
The IDF has advised residents to not return, firing on individuals it stated had been approaching the yellow line on a number of events, and including that it’s “authorized to continue destroying terrorist infrastructures even during the ceasefire.”
Much of Lebanon’s south – a largely Shiite-Muslim space with a robust Hezbollah presence – had already been left broken and depopulated after greater than two years of conflict with Israel. But the destruction intensified after the newest offensive started on March 2.
NCS analyzed satellite imagery supplied by Airbus to evaluate the rising scale of the harm as hostilities resumed.
In the primary 10 days of Israel’s March offensive, NCS counted 523 buildings destroyed throughout 22 communities. As nicely as houses, NCS’s evaluation signifies Israeli forces have destroyed mosques, pharmacies, cafes and auto restore outlets.
Videos filmed by residents present managed demolitions being carried out, whereas satellite imagery reveals a sample of Israeli bulldozers and excavators working in already closely broken areas, indicating floor forces transferring into areas beforehand struck from the air.
For residents of southern Lebanon, this newest conflict represents one other chapter of displacement.
Nearly 1.3 million Lebanese have been displaced, in keeping with the International Rescue Committee. Most are from Shiite communities, a lot of whom who had already been compelled from their houses in 2024.
Hassan Rammal is a kind of individuals.
His village of Adaisseh is positioned proper on the Israel-Lebanon border. Many of its residents, like Rammal himself, help Hezbollah.
The 62-year-old businessman fled along with his spouse and three sons to Beirut originally of 2024, hoping he can be again as soon as the conflict calmed down.
“Displacement has a sense of tragedy. To leave your memories, your home, to leave everything you have planted; everything you have built and grown with your own hands,” he advised NCS.
Shortly after the household fled, Rammal stated he bought phrase that their house had been destroyed, possible by an airstrike.
“I felt like someone stripped my soul and life of my memories,” he stated.
Rammal additionally owned a multi-story industrial and residential constructing close by that was partially broken by the strike. There had been outlets on the underside ground, and 4 residences on the highest ground. After Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a cessation of hostilities in November 2024, he returned to Adaisseh to rebuild the complicated, hoping to stay in one of many residences along with his household.
Construction started in February this 12 months, solely to be halted a number of weeks later when conflict returned. Along along with his household, Rammal left Adaisseh once more.
A short time later, he obtained a video filmed from a drone, exhibiting apocalyptic images of his village. Almost each constructing was lowered to rubble, together with the one he was looking for to renovate.
A satellite picture captured days earlier, on March 18, confirmed two excavators simply meters away from his property, at that time nonetheless standing, indicating it was possible demolished by way of Israeli bulldozing.
It’s an identical story elsewhere. In Khiam, about 5 kilometers north of the border, swathes of inexperienced have turned brown after Israeli earthwork. Satellite imagery from April 22 exhibits bulldozers and diggers at work in the world.
Twenty-year-old Ali Al-Abbani has solely ever identified Khiam and is just too younger to have lived by way of Lebanon’s earlier wars with Israel. “This is the first war I’ve experienced, and I can’t begin to describe how terrifying it is,” he advised NCS from Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, the place he finds himself displaced, alongside along with his dad and mom and brother.
Whenever an Israeli drone or fighter jet flies overhead, he advised NCS, his physique goes into shock, and he usually runs for his mom’s embrace. When he noticed a satellite picture of his house village, despatched on a WhatsApp group earlier this month, it confirmed his house razed to the bottom.
“My mother spent the entire evening crying. I started crying…all my memories are in that house, every corner,” he stated.
The present ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is the second since conflict broke out in October 2023. After the primary, in November 2024, Israel maintained a army presence in southern Lebanon, working 5 Forward Operating Bases, confirmed by the IDF. What look like an additional 4 Israeli positions had been additionally established between October 2025 and January 2026, in keeping with NCS’s assessment of satellite imagery, although the Israeli army has not publicly confirmed these bases.
Jeremy Binnie, Middle East protection specialist at Janes, a London-based protection intelligence agency, advised NCS the IDF was possible increasing its presence in order “to provide better visibility of Lebanese territory than existing Israeli positions on the border.”
He stated this lined up with Israeli plans to occupy the brand new safety zone for the long run, however warned that constructing extra positions deeper contained in the nation may depart Israeli troopers “manning isolated positions exposed to inevitable insurgent attacks.”
For its half, Hezbollah says it won’t acknowledge the ceasefire except Israel withdraws, vowing to “resist the occupation and expel it from our land.”
The future for 600,000 Lebanese in the south stays unsure – each whether or not they may return house, and whether or not any houses will nonetheless be there to return to.
Rammal, the 62-year-old businessman, says Lebanon has “never had a day of peace” with its southern neighbor.
And he scoffs at Israel’s plans to occupy components of Lebanon’s south.
“It says it wants to keep its country safe, while making other countries unsafe. It can say whatever it wants – there will be no buffer zone,” he says.
“Even if we only build a tent, I will return… this is my village, until my final breath.”