Israeli forces descended on Mohammad El Hage and his colleague as they funnelled diesel into the generator that powers the water supply to their village, Kfarshouba – one of the few remaining populated villages in south Lebanon.
The two men, who work for the Kfarshouba municipality, were handcuffed and made to stand against a wall at gunpoint as Israeli soldiers snatched their phones and searched their pickup truck. It was June, and Mr El Hage had made the same trip countless times over the previous two months, ever since Israeli forces destroyed the electricity pole carrying power lines to Kfarshouba’s water pump.
“They asked, ‘What are you doing here?’” Mr El Hage recalled. “We told them: ‘We're pumping water for the village.’ Then one of them replied: ‘Don't you know you're forbidden from coming here?’”
They did not, in fact, know that. As they had every time a visit to the generator was warranted, the municipality had taken care to co-ordinate the trip in advance with the UN peacekeeping force, Unifil, which had in turn secured approval from the Israeli army.
“It was routine,” Mr El Hage said.
The two municipal employees were blindfolded, taken to a military base that – by Mr El Hage’s estimate – was probably in the Israel-occupied Golan Heights, and interrogated for hours before they were eventually released and forced to walk back to their village at night.
The generator incident was one episode in a longer saga that has disrupted the water supply to Kfarshouba. For months, Israeli forces have blocked the municipality from repairing the electricity infrastructure that powers the village's water pump, leaving the village reliant on a diesel-powered generator that burns through $500 worth of fuel a day to keep the water running – and forcing municipal employees to make the same perilous trip that led to Mr El Hage’s brief abduction.
“Every day we have to take diesel to the generator to pump water. Every single day,” Mr El Hage said.
When Mr El Hage spoke to The National a month after his abduction, the municipality had that morning received permission from the Israeli army to erect a new electricity pole to power the village's water pump – eliminating the need for daily diesel deliveries.
“They [Unifil] told us permission had finally been granted. We hired a truck. Loaded the electricity pole. Prepared all the materials. Then they came back and said the approval was withdrawn,” he said.
“It keeps happening. Exactly the same story every time.”
Navigating unwritten rules
The threat of detention for venturing beyond invisible boundaries is only one grievance for Kfarshouba's residents, a population permitted to remain in their village by the same foreign army that invaded, then occupied, their country during the four-month war with Hezbollah.
Staying came at a high cost. Like a handful of other Sunni Muslim, Druze and Christian villages in the south, Kfarshouba was spared the depopulation and destruction that befell neighbouring villages – but only on the condition that its residents shelter no members of Hezbollah or its affiliates, and, by extension, no displaced people from nearby Shiite Muslim villages.
Residents now live under the shadow of four Israeli military positions on the Jabal Al Sheikh mountain range overlooking their village – three long-standing and the fourth a recently erected point base in Rabaa Al Teben, in the Kfarshouba foothills.
And, they say, they no longer know where its boundaries lie.
Access to their orchards and farms on the outskirts of the village is restricted; the line between what remains accessible and what Israel has deemed off-limits is blurred.
“Not a single resident dares enter their own land. Not because we've officially been told it's forbidden, but because nobody knows where the danger begins,” said Mr El Hage.
The population must navigate the unwritten rules of Israeli occupation, which residents describe as arbitrary, enforced not through direct communication, but through gunfire, arrests and occasional raids.
That fear was reinforced in May, when three day-labourers from the Kfarshouba suburb of Halta were abducted by Israeli forces while harvesting the land. They have not been seen or heard from since.
'No outsiders'
The sound of Israeli soldiers banging on his door in the middle of the night, waking his terrified family, has haunted Imad Saadeldin, an elected village official. It happened in late March, but the incident remains so etched in his mind that he and his family have not returned to live in their home on the edge of the village.
“I thought they were there to kill us,” he told The National in his money transfer office. After the raid, he moved his family to a relative’s house deeper inside the village and relocated his office away from the area.
The soldiers entered the house, handcuffed Mr Saadeldin and his son, and made them kneel at gunpoint, he said. His wife had one request: that their adult son, who has special needs, be spared from violence. A soldier struck their son in the head immediately after she pleaded for his protection, Mr Saadeldin claimed.
“It's a psychological occupation. Even months later, if I go to my own house to collect something, I feel as though they're standing behind the wall watching me,” he clarified. “You may not physically see soldiers all the time, but they're always there.”
Several other homes were raided that night. The operation lasted about two hours before the soldiers left, taking one of Mr Saadeldin's cousins into custody. He was released four hours later.
“They told us: 'You can stay. But don't let anyone come here. Otherwise we'll have to destroy the village and empty it.'”
The order is consistent with statements from Kfarshouba mayor Al Qassem Al Qadri and the mayors of other towns in the south with predominantly Sunni Muslim, Druze, or Christian residents. When the war erupted in early March, The National spoke with mayors and elected officials who received phone calls from Israeli phone numbers, each instructing them to prevent anyone who might have Hezbollah affiliation from living among them, including displaced people.
Meanwhile, Israel has destroyed, partially or completely, at least 60 villages within a belt of occupied land along the border 7km deep, displacing hundreds of thousands from the predominantly Shiite south.
Rights groups and legal experts have warned that Israel's actions, by preventing the population from returning home, may amount to the war crime of unlawful transfer.
Israel describes its presence in southern Lebanon as a “security zone” – a term that has no legal status under international humanitarian law. Acknowledging an occupation would trigger Israel's obligations under the Geneva Conventions, which include protecting civilians, safeguarding public and private property, and administering the occupied territory while maintaining, as far as possible, the existing legal and administrative order, according to Aaron Kerney, an international human rights lawyer at Legal Action Worldwide.
“Obviously, military necessity cannot justify transferring people or preventing them from returning because of their religion,” Mr Kerney said. Israel's threats to subject still-populated villages to the same fate as emptied Shiite villages, he added, could amount to collective punishment or prohibited measures of intimidation.
Constant surveillance
In Kfarshouba, people do not leave their homes after 7pm, according to Walid Nasser, a retired General Security officer in his 50s.
Raids and detentions have become less frequent since Lebanon and Israel signed a framework to end hostilities. But residents say the occupation has settled into a quieter rhythm: Israeli troops still patrol the outskirts, surveilling villagers, bulldozing through farmland, and routinely firing into the air.
“They’re still scared,” Mr Nasser said wearily. “Every day Israelis carry out patrols. Every day there's shooting. Morning. Night. Sometimes it feels like they're simply sweeping the area with gunfire. Perhaps it's to intimidate people.”
He welcomed The National into his family’s home on the edge of Kfarshouba, overlooking the village's outskirts. Shrapnel from Israeli shelling nearby had struck the house just two days earlier. Three months before that, his home was raided by Israeli troops while he was away.
It is the least of his problems: although it is visible from the terrace of his home, he can no longer reach a 15-dunum (1.5 hectare) stretch of land on the lush outskirts, where he built a small house surrounded by walnut, almond, cherry and apple trees. Another 12 dunums of olive groves in the foothills are also beyond his reach. He is visibly pained at the mention of harvest.
“These are ancestral lands inherited from our parents and grandparents,” he explained as he gazed into the distance at a bulldozed trail where Israeli forces conduct troop movements on his land. “I can't reach any of it now. This house where we're standing now is all that's left for me here.”
The Israeli strategy in the populated villages of south Lebanon is reminiscent of other Israeli occupations in Syria and the Palestinian territories. In neighbouring Syria, where Israel's army occupied additional territory in the Quneitra and Deraa provinces after the fall of the regime of Bashar Al Assad, residents are prevented from accessing farmland, living in fear of Israeli raids and patrols. Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, does not have a military presence in any of those areas.
Israeli military activity
Israel appears to be entrenching its occupation in south Lebanon rather than preparing to withdraw, demolishing, in whole or part, villages within its so-called security zone.
In Kfarshouba, residents say Israeli military operations never stopped despite the framework agreement that came into effect in June, which provides for a phased Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah.
Israeli forces turned Rabaa Al Teben, on a foothill overlooking a resort area where residents of Kfarshouba and visitors would enjoy summers, into a fourth military point that looms over the town. And last week, bulldozers razed a path on the opposite hill, raising suspicions among residents of further troop entrenchment or a new military post.
“Every day we hear the sound of military vehicles. Gunfire. Shelling,” Mr Nasser told The National. “They move around the outskirts constantly. Four or five times a day sometimes.”
As he spoke, loud explosions filled the air, sometimes coming from neighbouring Shiite villages such as Khiam and Arnoun, where Israel continues carrying out demolitions.
Mr Nasser excused himself for a minute, then returned carrying a pair of binoculars. The destruction of Khiam, in the distance, was visible despite the clouds of dust and debris from Israeli bulldozers hanging heavy over the village.
Three days after The National visited Kfarshouba, permission was once again granted, through Unifil, to repair the electricity pole. This time, a municipal team managed to erect the pole under a Unifil escort.
“They fired over our heads after a few hours had passed, but we were able to get the pole set up,” Mr El Hage said.
The work, however, remains incomplete. Electricity lines still have to be laid to the pole, requiring another round of approval from the Israeli side.
The following day, Mr El Hage said Israeli troops and tanks again entered the village outskirts from two directions, bulldozing new tracks through farmland, burning large tracts of olive groves on the mountainside, and sweeping the agricultural valley below with machinegun fire. He filmed the blaze as it consumed the olive trees, some more than a century old.
“They've been here since early morning,” Mr El Hage told The National by phone. He sent photographs showing smoke rising above the village. “One of the fires is in the valley below the municipal building and the mosque [both destroyed during the 2024 Israel-Hezbollah war] and the tanks are still moving above us in the hills.”
One of the areas bulldozed and burnt, he said, is close to the newly erected electricity pole, leaving him doubtful that the village's water infrastructure will ever be fixed. Until the main power supply is restored, Mr El Hage will remain tied to the daily ritual of carrying diesel to the backup generator.
“We have to keep the water flowing,” he said. “So people can continue living in Kfarshouba.”
