While the count of civilian and environmental damage from the offensive of recent years is not yet complete, Israel has resumed bombing Lebanon.

There are currently three fronts on which Israel is conducting a military offensive. The first is Iran, where on 28 February bombing began alongside US ally forces, leading to the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and hundreds of others. The second is the Gaza Strip, where despite the ceasefire of last October the Israeli army continues to carry out strikes. Finally, there is Lebanon, where Israel in recent days has resumed an intense bombing campaign against the organisation Hezbollah, also backed by ground forces.

An Israeli offensive in Lebanon had already been under way for several months between 2023 and 2024, with a toll of around 4,000 deaths. The Tel Aviv army had been accused of using incendiary weapons such as white phosphorus munitions and of carrying out, even after the ceasefire was reached at the end of 2024, further chemical attacks with severe environmental and civilian consequences. Today, communities in the south of the country — who live predominantly from agriculture — have been stripped of their livelihoods, while the environment around them has been profoundly altered by fires, pollution and the destruction of infrastructure.

Following the start of the Israeli-US bombing of Iran and the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Lebanese organisation Hezbollah — itself an ally of Iran — launched several rockets into Israeli territory. The Lebanese government condemned the operation, but this was not enough. Tel Aviv's response was swift, and to the Iranian and Palestinian fronts in the Gaza Strip was added the Lebanese front.

During the night of 1 to 2 March, heavy bombardments struck the southern city of Tyre, rural areas of the South, the capital Beirut, and the Bekaa Valley, which runs eastward along the border with Syria. The attacks focused on what Israel described as Hezbollah strongholds or sensitive targets — particularly senior figures within the militia and weapons depots. At the same time, evacuation orders were issued for the civilian population. Massive traffic jams formed on Lebanese motorways, with endless queues of cars heading north, away from the Israeli raids. Non-governmental organisations set up emergency shelters, and many people also crossed the border, seeking refuge in Syria.

On 2 March, after the first 24 hours of bombing, the death toll had already exceeded 50. The Israeli offensive did not stop there: while on 3 March some Israeli Defence Forces military contingents entered Lebanese territory to "gain positions," as Defence Minister Israel Katz put it — a prelude to a possible imminent ground operation — 4 March opened with fresh raids on Beirut that also struck a hotel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that "Hezbollah is bringing Lebanon into war."

The new Israeli military operation against Lebanon comes nearly a year and a half after the ceasefire signed with Hezbollah in November 2024. With the start of the offensive in the Gaza Strip in October 2023, Israel had also opened a front in Lebanon with the stated aim of "eliminating Hezbollah," one of the principal allies of the Palestinian organisation Hamas.

Israel launched more air strikes across Lebanon, hitting areas near Beirut's presidential palace, Baalbek and southern towns. A strike on Baalbek killed three paramedics and wounded six. Over 60 people have been killed and 335 injured since Monday. pic.twitter.com/gCglm5YLzn

After more than a year of attacks on Lebanon — both by air and on the ground through incursions by Israeli Defence Forces contingents — the toll reached 4,000 deaths and over one million displaced people. The ceasefire did not, however, halt hostilities, and the Israeli army has continued, from time to time, to carry out military strikes and strategic operations in Lebanon. At the end of last January, Israeli military aircraft were reported to have sprayed a whitish substance — likely glyphosate — to clear vegetation in the border area. The country's Prime Minister, Joseph Aoun, described it as "an environmental and health crime" on the part of Tel Aviv. This shone a spotlight on a dimension of Israel's offensive in recent years that has received little coverage: environmental destruction as a weapon of war.

The landscape of southern Lebanon has been profoundly scarred by Israeli attacks carried out since 2023. The Israeli Defence Forces dropped on the country a quantity of bombs that, according to the UN, reached one of the highest levels globally since the Second World War.

The offensive also involved controversial weapons — in particular white phosphorus munitions, as denounced by Human Rights Watch and other international non-governmental organisations in connection with attacks on 17 municipalities in southern Lebanon. These are incendiary devices containing a chemical compound that burns rapidly on contact with air, generating intense heat and persistent flames. Their use in populated areas is prohibited under international law and, under Protocol III of the Convention on Conventional Weapons, is only permitted as a means of flushing out enemy forces or illuminating the battlefield during a conflict. Israel is also alleged to have used cluster bombs, likewise banned under international law. These detonate at different times over a wider radius, extending the scope of damage.

As Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, has noted, this type of Israeli attack drove many people to abandon their homes and agricultural livelihoods. Those who returned to their properties — especially after the fragile ceasefire — found themselves facing a completely transformed environment. Where southern Lebanon once had olive groves, avocado plants, various orchards and beehives, as well as woods and forests, there are now often fields stripped bare by fire, contaminated groundwater and unexploded ordnance that continues to pose a danger to people and the environment alike. Added to this is the economic damage: estimated losses in the agricultural sector — in a country where agriculture contributed 8 per cent of GDP (and 80 per cent in the south) — amount to one billion dollars.

According to data from FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Israeli attacks on Lebanon between 2023 and 2024 killed 340,000 farm animals, 47,000 olive trees and nearly 2,000 acres of agricultural land. A separate report by UNDP, the United Nations Development Programme, estimated the loss of 48 acres of citrus crops, 44 acres of bananas and 15 acres of other fruit trees. A study by UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, found that the barrier Israel erected on Lebanese territory during the offensive excluded the local population from an agricultural area of over 4,000 square metres. The UN stresses that the greatest infrastructure damage affected irrigation networks, with the destruction of dozens of water collection basins and transport channels, as well as the contamination of groundwater.

In the south of Lebanon, 14 million olive trees stand resilient, enduring the constant threat of Israeli occupation and the relentless ecocide it continues to afflict upon this land. The Israeli army has burnt down more than 50,000 trees since October 2023. Images: Joseph Eid pic.twitter.com/MH8jxvLgde

In the first six months of bombing alone — that is, up to the summer of 2024 — Israeli attacks on Lebanon caused 115 forest fires. Among the areas affected was Harj al-Raheb, or the Forest of the Monks, just a few kilometres from the Israeli border. This area was home to numerous endangered species, including the Syrian jackal, the striped hyena, the red fox, the Eurasian badger and the short-toed snake eagle. Today, on the hillside largely stripped bare by fire, the wildlife has vanished.

If these figures reflect the outcome of the Israeli offensive carried out in Lebanon between 2023 and 2024, the ceasefire changed nothing — and many have denounced an ongoing "ecocide." Bombing continued, and operations such as those at the end of January, involving the spraying of chemicals to eliminate vegetation in border areas, compounded the environmental destruction that has transformed the face of southern Lebanon. The new Israeli offensive of recent days — which, beyond Beirut, is focusing precisely on these areas and has already caused dozens of deaths — will make both the return to normality for local farming communities and the ecological and environmental recovery even longer in coming.