BEIRUT: Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon have left vast stretches of farmland scorched and contaminated, according to Lebanese officials, raising concerns about long-term environmental damage, food security and the ability of displaced residents to return.
The demolition of towns and villages in the south, which began during the 2023 war, has intensified since renewed fighting between Hezbollah and Israel erupted in March.
Even as a fragile ceasefire holds, Israeli forces have pushed deeper into southern Lebanon, displacing residents from what Israel has dubbed the Yellow Line, a new security buffer zone.
The reported use of white phosphorus and spraying of concentrated glyphosate along the border have destroyed crops and degraded soil, with Lebanese officials warning that some land may no longer be viable for agriculture.
Minister of Agriculture Nizar Hani told Arab News that the destruction of land in southern Lebanon had reached “unprecedented levels,” estimating that 22.5 percent of farmland had been affected.
This far exceeds figures reported in Ukraine, where less than 10 percent of agricultural land has been damaged during the war with Russia.
According to the ministry’s third damage assessment, 78 percent of farmers in southern Lebanon have ceased activity due to displacement, while more than 10,000 farms have been damaged.
This photo shows burnt agricultural fields that were hit during Israeli shelling in the southern Lebanese area of Marjayoun, on October 30, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah. (AFP/file)
The impact has been on staple crops like wheat, vegetables, legumes and tobacco, as well as greenhouse production.
The soil in the south is fertile, with greater groundwater reserves and higher rainfall than other regions. The area was known for cultivating tobacco, olives, citrus fruits, grains and vegetables, which provided income, contributed to food self-sufficiency and supported year-round employment.
Hani told Arab News that the agricultural sector was “facing a severe crisis,” with the risk to food security increasing from 17 to 27 percent across the whole population.
A farmer collects livestock killed by Israeli bombardment that hit a farm along the hills of the village of Jezzine in southern Lebanon early on July 8, 2024 amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and the Hezbollah militia. (AFP file photo)
Of the country’s 250,000 hectares of agricultural land, 54,000 hectares had been directly affected by the war, he said.
“This is an unprecedented scale with direct consequences for farmers, livelihoods and the broader economy.”
The conflict has damaged livestock facilities and irrigation networks, seen farmland bulldozed and vital bridges destroyed, such as those over the Litani River, cutting off farmers from their land and isolating produce from markets.
Heavy machinery operates at the site of an Israeli strike on a bridge carried out before a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon went into effect, in Qasmiyeh, Southern Lebanon, April 20, 2026. (REUTERS)
Official figures show a 49 percent decline in the number of beehives and a 39 percent drop in fish production, along with losses among cattle, sheep and poultry.
Israel’s establishment of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon is a military strategy intended to secure its northern border by removing Hezbollah militants and infrastructure from the immediate vicinity.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described this as a “genuine security zone preventing any infiltration toward the Galilee and the northern border,” adding that the military was “expanding this zone to push the threat from anti-tank missiles further away.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz has outlined plans to maintain security control up to the Litani.
He said that once operations had been concluded, the military would govern the territory “while dismantling (Hezbollah) forces that have infiltrated and eliminating all weaponry in the area.”
Women from southern Lebanon till a field, where they work as part of a farming project supported by the United Nations Women's agency, in Tyre, Lebanon, September 23, 2025. (REUTERS)
Before the March offensive, some residents had managed to return briefly after the 2024 ceasefire to tend their plots, planting tobacco in the hope of a spring harvest. But when the war resumed the tobacco burned in the fields.
Tarek Mazraani, an architect from the border village of Houla and chair of a committee representing displaced residents, said the areas now under Israeli military control were among the most agriculturally significant in Lebanon.
Olive groves, citrus orchards, banana plantations and tobacco fields combined account for more than half of the country’s total farm output.
“What has been lost is not marginal land,” Mazraani told Arab News.
What remains of Lebanon’s citrus production lies further north, around Sidon and Sarafand, north of the Litani.
“But even there, agriculture has effectively ground to a halt. Farmers’ homes have become shelters for the displaced. The land sits untended,” Mazraani said.
Hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon has forced many to live in makeshift encampment, many of them the capital city, Beirut. (Reuters)
The Ministry of Agriculture described the escalation in agricultural losses as severe. Its assessment, which does not include losses since March or those within the new Israeli buffer zone, found that more than 22.5 percent of the country’s agricultural land — almost 52,000 hectares — has been damaged.
Almost 2,400 hectares were recorded as being destroyed in a single week.
Hani said that about 1,600 hectares of land used for tobacco cultivation had been destroyed, with significant consequences for families, farmers and the broader economy, given the crop’s importance to local cigarette manufacturing and its high returns.
He also addressed the use of chemical substances, particularly white phosphorus, during the 2023 war in southern Lebanon.
Rights groups accuse Israel of extensively destroying and damaging agricultural land in southern Lebanon. (AFP)
“We collected hundreds of samples under extremely complex field conditions, examined them and found their impact to be significant,” he said.
“We were also investigating whether they sprayed substances containing heavy metals.”
Hani said Israel’s use of glyphosate, a widely used herbicide, had been excessive during the current conflict.
They had “deliberately sprayed this substance at concentrations exceeding those typically used worldwide along a 17 km border strip,” in an attempt to damage Lebanon’s plant ecosystem, he said.
Lebanon's Agriculture Minister Nizar Hani says Israel’s use of glyphosate, a widely used herbicide, had been excessive during the current conflict. (AFP photo)
That approach mirrored practices seen in Gaza, with satellite images showing how treated areas formed a buffer zone as part of another Yellow Line within the enclave, he said.
“They are now adopting this method in Lebanon.”
Hani said that the chemical left behind harmful residues that could have long-term effects on forests, agriculture and vegetation, with contamination likely to persist in the soil.
According to Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research, the south has suffered extensive environmental damage, similar to that seen in Gaza. It said that the impact of the war was evident in the destruction of forests and agricultural land, which once served as hubs of biodiversity and natural carbon sinks, undermining livelihoods and food security.
Former Lebanese Minister of Agriculture Abbas Al-Hajj Hassan said that white phosphorus munitions used by Israeli forces burned about 40,000 mature olive trees in 2023.
The Legal Agenda, a Beirut-based nonprofit research and advocacy organization, has described the spraying of pesticides as a violation of Rule 76 of Customary International Humanitarian Law, which prohibits the use of herbicides as a method of warfare if they cause widespread, long-term damage to the environment.
The use of chemicals to clear vegetation in the border area is part of a broader Israeli security effort to eliminate cover for militants, improve visibility and reduce the risk of ambush. However, the strategy appears to have gone further than merely clearing vegetation.
This photo published by the Beirut-based non-profit group Legal Agenda shows the effects of the fires on civilian homes and orchards in the border area of Al-Dhahira, taken on November 25, 2024, amid fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. (Photo courtesy of Legal Agenda)
The NCSR reported that during the first five weeks of the current war, the Israeli army completely or partially destroyed more than 50,400 homes across Lebanon. In Bint Jbeil alone, 9,540 units were destroyed, along with 9,909 in Tyre, 5,823 in Marjayoun and 9,972 in Nabatieh.
In a report published at the end of April last year, the Ministry of Environment documented damage to the country’s natural resources between 2023 and 2025. It said that Israeli military attacks had “reshaped the physical and environmental landscape” of southern Lebanon.
Minister of Environment Tamara Al-Zein said in the introduction that the scale and nature of the damage inflicted on forests, agricultural land, marine ecosystems, water resources and air quality “must be recognized as an act of ecocide, with repercussions extending beyond direct destruction.”
“The environmental damage we are facing is not merely an environmental issue but is also linked to public health, food security, livelihoods, the social fabric and the country’s resilience,” she said.
She accused Israel of committing “three simultaneous forms of destruction” — domicide, urbicide and ecocide.
She said that domicide was reflected in the large-scale destruction of housing, with more than 220,000 units damaged or destroyed, while urbicide was evident in the systematic targeting of southern border villages, including residential neighborhoods, infrastructure, places of worship and historical and archaeological sites.
Ecocide, she said, had caused widespread damage to forests, agricultural land, soil and water resources, with consequences that extended beyond the immediate destruction to affect public health, food security and livelihoods.
The Ministry of Environment’s findings align with the World Bank’s Lebanon Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment, which estimates the total losses at $14 billion, comprising $6.8 billion in physical damage and $7.2 billion in economic losses.
Key findings on the World Bank's Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment on the impact of Israel's wr with Hezbollah in Lebanon,based on data covering the period October 8, 2023, to December 20, 2024.
Losses in the environmental sector and debris management reached $512 million, equivalent to 7.5 percent of total national losses, while overall recovery needs amounted to about $11 billion.
Al-Zein said that Lebanon’s right to hold Israel accountable for environmental damage was “non-negotiable,” regardless of political considerations or disagreements over the war.
Calling for support for recovery efforts was a national responsibility that required broad solidarity and strong international partnerships to address the high cost of remediation, she said.
Videos circulating on social media show Israeli soldiers harvesting vegetables from gardens in evacuated border villages, preparing meals inside homes and then demolishing them.
“It is painful and deeply humiliating,” Mazraani said, describing how residents had been displaced and prevented from returning.
“Soldiers broke in, ransacked what remained and desecrated land that families here have farmed for centuries,” he said.
Clockwise, from top left: Lebanese first responders evacuating a person injured in Israeli bombings in Qasmiyeh, Southern Lebanon, on April 20, 2026; a woman reacts as she finds her house in in Zrarieh, Lebanon, destroyed by Israeli strikes on April 19, 2026; displaced children they ride on the back of a truck in Qasmiyeh on April 20, 2026; and a displaced family are seen at a makeshift shelter in the village of Khiyam, near the border with Israel, on April 27, 2026. (Reuters photos)
He also pointed to a less visible form of loss, citing the disappearance or destruction of antiquities, documents and manuscripts left behind during the mass displacement.
Items such as books, documents, village archives and land ownership deeds had either been looted or destroyed, he said.
“I and others have thousands of books, old weapons, sculptures and records. This is another form of cultural erasure, following the destruction of villages and the severing of people’s connection to their land,” he said.
“It is an uprooting of history and geography.”
