Israel-Lebanon: How Israeli rockets emptied villages on Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast

“Why, why us?” Milad Eid cries, his anguish palpable over the fading phone line.

An hour earlier, he had been trying to put out a fire in a house that had been hit by an Israeli missile while a bomb had fallen on another house.

His village, Alma al-Shaab, is in southern Lebanon, just one kilometre from the Israeli border.

Since October last year, it has been embroiled in cross-border fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia based in southern Lebanon.

Officials say at least 800 residents were evacuated and only about 100 remain.

“Nobody knows why they are attacking our homes,” Ade said. “This is not our war.”

Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast is dotted with pretty towns and villages where winding roads are draped with bougainvillea.

According to its residents, Alma Al Shaab is the most picturesque place.

The only Christian village in the Shiite Muslim-majority south, Alma al-Shaab’s hilltop location offers magnificent views across the surrounding countryside to the distant sea.

It is clearly visible from northern Israel.

Due to its proximity to the border, the area has come under heavy Israeli military attack over the past nine months.

The day after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Hezbollah and its allies fired a flurry of rockets from Lebanon into the disputed area along the border in a show of support for the militant group.

Israel retaliated with drone strikes, and both countries have since significantly escalated the scale and intensity of their attacks across the Israeli-Lebanese border.

By the end of May, Alma al-Shaab had been attacked 188 times by Israeli forces, according to the Beirut Urban Lab, a research center that uses data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled).

The Israeli army said it targeted Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure and was retaliating for attacks on Israeli military bases in northern Israel.

But some Lebanese government officials accuse the Syrian government of waging a scorched earth campaign to make entire areas uninhabitable.

Villagers the BBC spoke to were reluctant to say whether Hezbollah or other militant groups were using Alma al-Shaab to attack Israel, but one villager suggested that locals had tried unsuccessfully to stop fighters from using the land.

No one was killed in Alma al-Shaab.

But Deputy Mayor William Haddad said Israeli bombing has so far completely destroyed 10 homes, damaged 120 others and damaged the town’s main water tank.

About 12 square kilometers (3,000 acres) of farmland and forestland have been burned, he added.

Normally, Alma al-Shaab is home to 900 people, but during the summer when migrants return to their ancestral villages, the number of people there rises to around 1,500.

Haddad said only about 100 people remain, none of them children, and the memories of past conflicts weigh heavily on them.

“90% of Alma al-Shaab’s residents could have left directly in one day. [after 8 October] Because they don’t want to go through what they went through in 2006,” Haddad said.

Maria Shaya, 31, describes a childhood marked by constant fear of violence, attacks and explosions near her home before she left at 18 to study in Beirut.

“I don’t remember a time when there wasn’t conflict.”

She can recall the sounds of bombs, drones and fighter jets in detail, but during recent visits, she said, “my brain chooses not to hear them.”

Since fighting flared up last year, she has not visited her father, who refuses to leave the village.

It’s a painful reality that contradicts her pride in this place.

“I love Alma,” she says. “The air smells different there. It’s so green and you can walk around and pick food off the trees.”

The times I spent with my grandparents and cousins ​​under the lemon trees are now a distant memory.

She, like hundreds of others, doesn’t know when she’ll be able to return.

“We don’t want to be involved in the war,” she said. “We just want to go home.”

Haddad says the current conflict is very different from previous ones.

“What happened in 2006 was over in 30 or 33 days,” Haddad said. “Now it’s about seven months. [still going] On. Who knows what the limit is.”

According to the Beirut Urban Lab, Israel has carried out more than 5,300 attacks in Lebanon since October 7. Hezbollah and allied groups report attacking Israel about 1,200 times.

The Israel Defense Forces said on June 6 that some 4,850 missiles had been fired from Lebanese territory towards Israel. In early April, the Israeli military said it had struck more than 4,300 “Hezbollah targets” in Lebanon.

Although both sides claim they are only targeting military targets, civilians in Lebanon and Israel have suffered greatly from the fighting.

At least 88 civilians have been killed in Lebanon and more than 93,000 have been displaced, according to UN figures at the end of May. Across the border, Israeli media reported that 10 civilians had been killed and some 60,000 displaced.

The violence has taken a psychological, physical and economic toll on Alma al-Shaab’s residents, most of whom have fled to cities such as Beirut and Sidon.

The deputy mayor said those who can stay in holiday homes or with relatives are the lucky ones, while others are forced to rent accommodation, often sharing with two or three other families.

Many say they have lost their income and their children can no longer go to school.

Some residents insist they will stay, no matter what.

Milad Eid is one of them. “You never know when a cloud is going to come over you or when something is going to hit you,” he said.

But he fears that if he leaves the country, “he will face the same problems as when the Palestinians leave the country.”

On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence and war began the following day, forcing up to 750,000 Palestinians living there to flee or be driven from their homes.

Neither they nor their descendants have been allowed to return from Israel.

“They became refugees and 70, 75 years later they are still yearning for their country, their villages, their homes,” he said.

Regarding the Lebanese-Israeli border today, most international observers refrain from calling the situation an all-out war.

But to the people who live there, it’s nothing else.