A group of young men waved flippantly at a hovering Israeli surveillance drone as they played a lazy game of football in the remnants of Dibbin, southern Lebanon – a village on the edge of Israel’s "yellow line".
“They call it a yellow line on purpose because this is the line of resistance,” joked one of the players, Hussein. He was referring to the yellow flag of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group that was formed in the 1980s as an armed resistance to Israel’s previous occupation of southern Lebanon.
On the other side of the yellow line, where Israeli forces occupy large areas of land, residents are forbidden from returning to 55 of about 70 villages.
Dibbin could have been the 56th if fighters had not repelled Israeli forces from advancing deeper into the south, two days before a fragile US-brokered truce between Israel and Hezbollah.
Now, after the ceasefire halted the heaviest fighting last week, Israel’s advance in the east is paused at the village, about 12km from the border.
Like Hussein, tens of thousands of people rushed to check on their homes in the south after the ceasefire – only to find their villages either uninhabitable above the yellow line, or unreachable below it.
In Dibbin’s town centre, about a dozen young men lingered in the rubble left by Israeli air strikes. They came to try to salvage what they could of their homes. But the town, like many others on the front line, was largely destroyed and uninhabitable. Despite being outside the yellow line, it sits just 1km from the Litani River – the northern edge of Israel’s envisioned buffer zone.
Unable to recover much, but unwilling to leave their village exposed to any Israeli advances, residents said they sleep three and four to a room in whatever homes are still standing. In the town square, they sipped on coffee and snacked on fresh fava beans as they spoke to The National, insisting the fighters who defended the town against the invading Israeli forces were not a formal unit, but simply the “people of the village".
Hussein winked as he spoke in front of a municipal building designed to resemble an ancient fortress – one of few buildings left standing. Two damaged Phoenician warrior statues stood guard. Someone had tied yellow headbands around their helmets.
Most of southern Lebanon was emptied of its mainly Shiite Muslim population during the war, although Israeli forces allowed residents of Christian, Druze and Sunni Muslim villages to remain as they advanced, according to residents of several towns. Elsewhere, the Israeli army issued forced displacement orders and carried out waves of air strikes that drove more than a million southern Lebanese residents north of the Litani.
“They want to clear all the villages of Shiites,” said Ahmed, another resident and volunteer guard in Dibbin. “That’s obvious. They want to eliminate us from the south.”
Nadim Houry, of the Arab Reform Initiative, questioned the logic of a buffer zone that would only drive southern Lebanon’s population north, causing further resentment against Israel.
“The new [Israeli] security doctrine is to create buffer zones that are totally emptied of people,” he told The National. “The problem with the logic of the yellow line is they will then need another yellow line to protect the yellow line.”
Meanwhile, the Lebanese army – underfunded, underequipped and unable to face off against the Israeli army – withdrew from the battleground.
“The army was displaced along with everyone else,” Ahmed joked to The National as he stepped past the rubble of what was once a school.
The withdrawal of the army left many southern Lebanese residents feeling abandoned by the state, left to fend for themselves and pinning their hopes on Hezbollah – the very group that ignited the war with Israel, leading to their displacement.
The powerful militia and political party is largely composed of people from the south who historically felt neglected by the state.
That disillusionment is felt now too.
Hezbollah is seen as more formidable than the Lebanese army and has, on several occasions, unilaterally dragged the country into war.
It is Lebanon’s paradox. The state, weakened by decades of war, corruption and political neglect, and forever caught between competing foreign proxies, cannot afford to face the Israeli army or drag the rest of the country into war. Yet that same stance, meant to protect the broader population, has fuelled resentment among many in the south, who feel abandoned as Israel prevents their return.
“The people of the village fought off the Israelis. They weren’t even necessarily Hezbollah,” Ahmed told The National. “Some people didn’t know how to fight, but they still stayed. If people in the village fought, why won’t the state?”
Full operational freedom
In Tebnin – about 40km west of Dibbin, and north of the yellow line – Hassan Farhat can hear the blasts of Israeli demolitions and see smoke billow from behind the hills.
But he cannot get any closer to his village, Baraachit, just 4km away but below the yellow line.
“It breaks my heart to watch our homes and our land being destroyed before our eyes while we can do nothing,” he said, gazing at the lush valley beyond Tebnin. He tried to visit Baraachit, he said, “but it was too dangerous. And there’s nothing left in the village. No activity, no life left inside".
Mr Farhat said Israeli troops were stationed at the outskirts of the village, firing on residents who tried to return.
Since the ceasefire, Israeli forces have further entrenched their positions while demolishing villages inside the zone, in line with Defence Minister Israel Katz’s pledge to follow the “Rafah and Beit Hanoun model” – Gaza towns that were razed.
Israeli officials avoid describing the area inside the yellow line as an occupation zone. Officially, and in military terms, it is a “forward defence line.” Informally, officials refer to it as the “yellow line", a description that draws a parallel with Gaza and, according to Mr Houry, implies a form of prolonged military occupation.
Under international law, military occupation carries specific obligations: it must be temporary; property must be protected; and civilians cannot be permanently displaced.
“They want full operational freedom but they do not want any of the obligations that come with occupation,” Mr Houry said.
Human rights organisations have denounced Israeli tactics in southern Lebanon, which mirror those seen in Gaza as vast areas are made uninhabitable.
Satellite images reviewed by CNN show the extent of the destruction, with demolitions continuing and diggers and armoured vehicles clearly visible.
The images also show what remains of the centre of Bint Jbeil, the scene of heavy fighting between Hezbollah and Israel. Numerous other villages have been completely razed since the war reignited on March 2.
Much of the south remains uninhabitable, even north of the yellow line. In Dibbin, Israeli strikes have left a playground pulverised, replaced by a massive crater. The school has been reduced to rubble, electricity and water infrastructure destroyed, and the mosque is now unrecognisable, with most homes either destroyed or heavily damaged.
No witnesses left
Photographer Zeinab Faraj, 21, paid a heavy price for reporting in the yellow zone with her colleague, journalist Amal Khalil – a prominent reporter for Lebanese daily Al Akhbar. The two were driving through the nearby border town of At-Tiri when Israel struck a first time: the car in front of them, killing two people.
The journalists jumped out of their car, taking shelter under a nearby garage awning, and waited for the Lebanese Red Cross to save them. An hour and a half later, Zeinab and Amal’s car, parked just two metres away, was also hit, badly injuring Amal.
Zeinab dragged Amal into the garage. Then a third air strike brought the building down around them, killing Amal.
The ambulance, unable to secure permission from the Israeli army to cross into the yellow line, was delayed for hours. When it tried to cross anyway, Israeli forces struck the road leading to the building, then attacked medics who arrived with a drone strike and a sound grenade, a senior Lebanese military source and medics told The National.
Zeinab said she lay in agony near her deceased friend for hours as Israel prevented medics from reaching them, despite the personal efforts of President Joseph Aoun to secure their rescue.
“There was supposed to be a ceasefire,” Ms Faraj told The National as she spoke of the harrowing ordeal from her hospital bed in the Tebnin Government Hospital.
Lebanese leaders were quick to condemn the killing of Amal Khalil. Mr Aoun accused Israel of deliberately attacking journalists, and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam denounced Israel’s obstruction of rescue efforts.
But their words could not conceal the contradiction of a sovereign nation forced to seek permission from an occupying power to access its own land, highlighting Lebanon’s vulnerability.
A day later, the Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the US sat at the same table in Washington to discuss an extension of the ceasefire. Lebanon has little influence. Israel demands the full disarmament of Hezbollah but gives no guarantees that it will stop its attacks or leave south Lebanon in exchange.
Meanwhile, the killing of Ms Khalil, who had received Israeli threats on previous occasions, has further deterred residents from crossing the yellow line.
With no witnesses left, Israel’s destruction of Lebanese villages inside the line is unfolding – out of sight.
