"They decide who enters."
Elias said it flatly amid the mostly empty shelves of his neighbourhood shop in besieged Debel, one of the handful of towns allowed to remain populated in Israeli-occupied south Lebanon. The fruit and vegetable stand is bare. The soft drink fridge is empty. Enough stock gets through to keep villagers going, he added, but not much more.
"We're an occupied village," he said with resignation. "We have no entrance or exit except through them."
The ‘them’ he spoke of referred to the Israeli forces occupying the outskirts of Debel. Between two cigarettes, Elias peeked through shattered windows at the hill leading to Rchaf, a village where the Israeli army is stationed. “Do not take pictures,” he urged.
Like other residents interviewed by The National, Elias's name has been changed to protect him from potential reprisals.
The National was granted rare media access to Debel, joining a civilian convoy facilitated by the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), made up of 35 cars and lorries carrying families and supplies. Inside the enclave, it witnessed the acute conditions facing people living under Israeli control.
Residents in Debel and the neighbouring towns of Rmeish and Ain Ebel – which together comprise a Christian enclave under Israeli siege – avoid naming the force surrounding them. They refer to Israeli troops as “they” or “the ones over there”.
Only a handful of mostly Christian and Sunni villages were allowed to remain populated inside Israel’s occupation zone, on the condition they didn’t harbour any displaced residents from the predominantly Shiite neighbouring villages.
But Israel’s control over their movement means virtually every journey in or out of their besieged villages must be approved by the Israeli army, with the UN peacekeeping force acting as an intermediary. All aid, trade and even the residents themselves must seek approval from Israel, through Unifil, before entering or leaving the villages.
The bare shelves of Elias's shop hint at the dilemma facing villagers.
With Unifil's mandate set to expire in three months and nothing set to replace it, residents are left to wonder how essential supplies will reach them, and who will accompany them through Israeli military zones.
“We’ll be living at God’s mercy,” Elias said.
Unifil's head of mission and force commander, Maj Gen Diodato Abagnara, shares those fears. “Of course we are concerned that those communities, after Unifil draws down and moves its troops, won't be able to get food and supplies,” he told The National at a recent event.
'You're not prepared'
The journey into Debel began at the last Lebanese army checkpoint, on the edge of Al Mansouri village, where state control ends. As the convoy prepared to depart, Tony, 20, a medical student, killed time with his friends under a shaded pavilion.
“I haven't seen my family in three months,” he told The National. “I was studying [for exams]. Then I started med school.”
Many students, like Tony, have cut their visits to once a month or less, fearing they could be stranded in the enclave should Israel postpone one of the weekly convoys – as it has done on occasion. Then there are the long processing times and hours-long journey from Beirut.
“If we get up there by 1.30, that’s an achievement,” one of his friends quipped. “Sometimes it takes 12 hours.”
Unifil has facilitated weekly convoys for the three villages since fighting wound down in June, but each departure needs an Israeli sign-off. Residents must first submit their names to the Lebanese Army Forces at least 48 hours before a convoy is scheduled to leave. The army passes the list to Unifil, and the Israeli military receives and processes it. The convoy is then approved or denied.
Residents find out on the day of departure. If it is denied, no reason is given and they must wait for the next scheduled convoy.
“The Israeli army has never given us any justification for why it denies civilian convoys,” a Lebanese security source told The National.
Passengers on the convoy included merchants hauling lorries of supplies, as well as children and elderly people returning from medical treatment. They spoke of enduring long hours under the sun on previous occasions, as they waited for the convoy to receive final approval to leave the Lebanese-controlled area, only for Israel to revoke permission to cross at the last minute.
An Israeli military official told The National the convoys are organised in a control room that liaises with local points of contact in the villages as well as international organisations.
As the convoy began to move, another of Tony's friends left The National with a solemn warning: “You’re not prepared for what you’re going to see. Further ahead, you won’t find a single house standing.”
Between waiting for clearance and the 20kph drive past the ruins of what were once villages, it took The National four hours to travel from the Lebanese checkpoint into Debel. The trip offered a glimpse of what residents must endure to access health care or education, or to bring supplies into their villages.
Cars must pass three checkpoints – one Lebanese and two Israeli – before the road opens onto the barren wasteland of destruction within Israel's so-called security zone. The convoy into the populated Christian enclave passed the vestiges of Naqoura, Dhayra, Yarine, Marwahin, Ramyeh and Ayta Al Shaab, among other villages wiped off the map by Israeli air strikes and demolitions.
Several Lebanese hotels, buildings and homes on the road to the enclave have been converted into Israeli military outposts. They sit amid the surrounding devastation, wrapped in anti-drone nets and topped by Israeli flags.
On Debel's outskirts, Israeli troops have similarly occupied a string of homes. Residents say they’ve also erected cameras to monitor the population.
'They'll call us collaborators'
Elias's eyes betrayed his exhaustion when he smiled in greeting after months of phone correspondence with The National, revealing two missing teeth. He had pulled them out himself, he said nonchalantly, after a stubborn tooth infection.
There are no dentists in Debel, nor are there hospitals, universities, diesel for generators, or data networks. Supplies in Debel are scarce and enter at the discretion of Israeli troops.
Despite this, Elias hasn’t left the village since March 2, when the war in Lebanon resumed after Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, prompting an Israeli invasion. He worries he wouldn’t be able to return home if the war reignites and doesn’t dare leave his family behind.
“Imagine I go down to Beirut, the war starts again and I end up there alone,” he said. “I’d die 100 times every day.”
Without a UN force to facilitate movement, and no alternate force, south Lebanon's remaining population could become stranded inside the zone of Israeli control, with few options remaining.
Some, like Elias, fear being accused of treachery for being forced to communicate with Israel when Unifil is gone. “Don’t be surprised if one day a [Lebanese] political official comes out and calls us collaborators,” he said. “We won’t be surprised.”
Israeli officials have already raised prospects for the area, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claiming to Fox News in July that the Christian towns had requested annexation – which officials in the town immediately denied. And, on several occasions, Israeli troops have facilitated the entry of aid from Israel through Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical Christian organisation based in the US. Together, the incidents have raised concerns that Israel could be laying the groundwork for administering the enclave.
Behind the scenes, a flurry of diplomacy has sought to establish an alternative to Unifil. One western diplomat described it as an "urgent matter." The obstacle is finding a replacement that Israel will accept. It has long criticised Unifil.
Several alternatives have been floated, including a French-Italian proposal to create a multinational force potentially operating under a UN Security Council resolution. But nothing has been rubber-stamped.
Implementing a US-brokered framework in June between Israel and Lebanon, which aims for a new military co-ordination and verification mechanism in southern Lebanon, has “been difficult, to say the least,” the diplomat said.
The Israeli military official said the goal is to "find ourselves with one point of contact" once Unifil's mandate expires, and that the army "does not want to talk to a big variety of organisations."
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and president of the US / Middle East Project, said Israel would prefer a weaker, more compliant alternative to Unifil and is likely to oppose any independent international presence that could “bear witness”.
“Anything UN is the least desirable for Israel,” he said. “Anything which has a mandate that can't be exclusively determined by Israel and the US.”
Asked what Israel might ultimately accept, he answered bluntly: “Whatever they can get away with.”
'Entry is forbidden'
In Debel, the shape of Israeli control is already visible on the ground.
For two months during the war, Israeli troops occupied around half of the village, according to a local official, effectively compressing the population into its centre and displacing 400 residents from their homes.
When the troops pulled back to the outskirts shortly before the June ceasefire, they’d carved the Star of David into trees, scrawled graffiti across homes and damaged the town’s only petrol station. On one house, a message remained: “The Nation of Israel lives.”
After their withdrawal, Debel’s municipality erected a makeshift sign on a tree marking the town’s new limits: “Entry is forbidden. Dangerous area.” Metres away, Israeli soldiers can be seen operating.
“They’ll periodically send us a map with a new ‘yellow line’ marking where we can and can’t go,” the local official said. “Sometimes they make the accessible areas smaller and sometimes larger.”
While troops are no longer physically deployed inside Debel, they remain on the outskirts and have rendered most of the town’s agricultural land inaccessible. Residents were unable to harvest their tobacco during the summer months, nor could they bring in the wheat. Now, the olive harvest looms.
Back in his shop, Elias gazed at the occupied hills outside his window, where olive trees more than two centuries old are out of reach. “We’ve submitted a request for permission to access our olive trees outside the yellow line,” he said. “If they allow us.”
He pondered for a moment, then added: “This is still our village. These are the outskirts of our village.”
