South Lebanon's vital livestock farming disrupted by Israel's relentless bombing

Nine months of constant attacks have wreaked devastation across vital traditional industry

Live updates: Follow the latest on Israel-Gaza

Trapped under rubble for more than 24 hours after an Israeli drone strike, the sheep moaned in pain beyond rescue, pinned down under a block of cement.

Looking over his decimated flock, Youssef Halim, one of the owners of the livestock farm near the town of Jezzine in southern Lebanon, says he cried all night after the attack.

There were two drone strikes. One hit a building where one of the farm owners would usually sleep, next to the animal pen, and the other hit the flock directly, killing about 300 of the 400 animals.

Israel said it was targeting a “military site” of Hezbollah, a powerful Lebanese political party and militia with which it has exchanged cross-border fire for months. But all that is left is a collapsed building and dozens of sheep rotting in the paddock.

I have nothing else but this livestock to feed my five kids. I've also lost my livelihood for the future

Hussein Ammar,
farm owner

The farm's owners – two Lebanese brothers and their Syrian business partner – say the damage to their property and livestock was worth around $100,000.

A baby goat, its long ears flapping in the hillside wind, meanders through what is now a graveyard. One of the few animals to survive, it wanders among the fly-infested corpses of the animals that did not.

A dog, normally entrusted with protecting the flock, rips the bowels out of one of the dead sheep.

“They’re only animals, what did they do?” said Hussein Ammar, one of the brothers.

“I have nothing else but this livestock to feed my five kids. I've also lost my livelihood for the future."

Altogether, the farm supported more than 30 people, he said.

The cross-border violence that has killed more than 500 people in Lebanon so far – mostly fighters but also at least 104 civilians – has also devastated agriculture and farming in the south.

More than 1,700 head of livestock and 390,000 poultry have been killed as of July 17, and 370 beehives destroyed, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The conflict began on October 8, when Hezbollah opened a northern front against Israel in response to the Israeli military's offensive on Gaza.

Direct targeting

Remnants of the bomb that hit the building indicated that it was a US-made GBU-39B, according to a weapons expert contacted by the The National. The guided 250-pound bomb has a blast radius of 8 metres and can penetrate steel-reinforced concrete up to a metre thick.

Targeting livestock or any “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”, in order to "starve them” or to “cause them to move away”, is against the 1949 Geneva convention.

“Civilians and civilian objects should never be the subject of a direct act and are both protected under International humanitarian law,” Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, told The National.

“Civilian objects only become subject to legitimate attacks when they become military objectives – meaning that they are effectively contributing to military action and their destruction or capture would offer a definite and proportional military advantage," he said.

Mr Ammar said there was nothing military about his farm in Jezzine – only “agricultural land, olive trees, and forests".

"The farm is 200 years old and is well-known in the region,” he said.

The Israeli strike on the farm was the first in Jezzine, which is in southern Lebanon but far from the border region where most of the hostilities with Hezbollah have taken place.

It is also not regarded as an area where Hezbollah has a significant presence. The National inspected the farm freely and saw no signs that the group was present there.

Forcing farmers off the land

More than nine months of conflict have displaced about 100,000 people from south Lebanon, where the main occupation is farming.

According to Munira Khayyat, an anthropology professor at NYU Abu Dhabi, Israel's attacks on livestock are a deliberate tactic to force residents off their land, creating a “ghost zone” that can be claimed as a “buffer zone”.

“Attacking livestock is standard in the playbook of colonial logic, according to which destroying indigenous people's livelihoods undermines their ability to claim the land,” she said.

This is a strategy to dissociate people from their land in a region where people are deeply attached to it, she said.

Mohamed Hussein, the head of the syndicate of south Lebanon farmers, said the relationship between the farmers and their villages was “blood-related”.

“If they lose their agriculture – whether plantations or livestock – they lose the majority of their income,” he told The National.

“The farmers are connected to the livestock. Whenever you kill the livestock, whenever you burn the land, they will leave their land,” Mr Hussein said.

“But I can assure you, all the farmers, the second day of the ceasefire they will be up there,” he said.

He pointed to what happened in 2006 when a full-blown war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah, where the roads were highly congested when a ceasefire was agreed as people returned home.

Khaldoune Fanach, a 40-year-old farmer and policeman from Dhayra, a Bedouin village on the Israel-Lebanon border, agrees.

“Returning to my land; that would be the victory,” he said solemnly.

For now he has taken refuge in the city of Tyre, surviving on compensation for the displaced from Hezbollah – a $200 monthly stipend and a rent allowance – as well as his salary from the municipality.

Forced displacement

But hopes for a ceasefire are fading among southerners as the conflict drags on along the border and in Gaza. Among them is Yasser Moussa, a 50-year-old shepherd from Al Bustan, a village that has been bombarded nearly every day since October 8.

In November, Mr Moussa and his wife fled to the coast with 150 goats, leaving behind their olive trees and about 70 goats that were too young to travel the distance.

They had no other choice; Israel's use of toxic white phosphorus shells had suffocated the village multiple times, poisoned crops and killed bee colonies.

The National met Mr Moussa in Bayada, a coastal village close to the border but relatively safer than Al Bustan, where other farmers had also sought refuge. He was not hopeful about the future.

“I could die tomorrow here, who knows,” he said, as the sound of shelling could be heard .

His family has suffered financially, having been forced to sell some of their livestock at half price to raise money urgently, and have received no compensation from the cash-strapped Lebanese state.

The few farmers who remained in Al Bustan, mainly because they could not afford to rent a place somewhere else or abandon their source of livelihood, live with the constant threat of Israeli strikes.

On Tuesday evening, an Israeli strike killed three Syrian boys, all under 12, as they played near their family’s farmhouse in the neighbouring village of Umm Al Tut.

“Israel wants to move us away,” Al Bustan mayor Ahmad Al Adnan, who has moved to Tyre, told The National.

It seems to have worked. “All the families have left the village after the killing of the boys,” he said.

But Ms Khayyat, the anthropology professor at NYU Abu Dhabi, is hopeful that they will return.

“People have always found ways to come back,” she said, pointing to the resilience of southerners who have adapted to instability, conflict with Israel and occupation by opting for cheaper livestock such as goats and cultivating resilient crops such as tobacco.

“I’m really hoping that once the war stops, people will come back to claim their land and find new ways to adjust,” she said.