Israel deliberately starting wildfires in southern Lebanon, firefighters say

Firefighters and residents of south Lebanon have accused the Israeli military of lighting wildfires in the region, as forested areas burned down in blazes sparked by Israeli bombing.Environmental groups said the fires in recent weeks were part of a longstanding Israeli practice of targeting Lebanon’s natural environment.On Tuesday, the Israeli military dropped flares in a wooded area outside Khiam, in south Lebanon, sparking blazes. When firefighters attempted to extinguish the flames, a drone struck close by, forcing them to withdraw, the head of the civil defence in the Nabatieh region, Hussein Fakih, said.“Most of our missions are now related to fires. There are enormous areas of woodland that have burned, I don’t have the exact figures, but in the areas close to the [frontline], around 30-40% of the land has been affected by fires,” he said.The Israeli military has caused fires across south Lebanon, in particular in olive groves and agricultural land, in the nearly two-months since the 17 June ceasefire that mostly ended fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, according to videos and testimony from first responders.The military was asked for comment on each of the wildfire incidents, but did not respond.“They started doing this right after the ceasefire, and there have been incendiary bombs every day,” said Fakih. “Small drones come out and drop incendiary materials, [white] phosphorus shells are fired at the woodlands, in addition to illumination flares that they drop during the daytime so the vegetation catches fire.”Firefighters and residents of other areas in south Lebanon describe similar blazes being started by Israeli munitions and drones in dry scrub and woodlands. On Friday, Israeli munitions created large wildfires in two heavily forested areas: in Kfarchouba, close to the border, and between Jezzine and the western Bekaa valley.The civil defence station chief in the area, Samir Hardan, said a fire was started near Kfarchouba on Friday afternoon after a drone dropped a munition in woodlands. After battling blazes overnight and extinguishing them on Saturday, a second drone started another fire on Sunday, Hardan said.Firefighters, who are required to coordinate their movements with the Lebanese army, which relays their request to a “deconfliction” group that includes the Israeli military, were given permission to fight the fires at only two spots, and not other areas where fires were raging.According to environmental groups, the fires are part of a pattern of Israeli attacks against Lebanon’s environment, which threaten the country’s woodlands and the biodiversity they support, experts said.“These are long-established woodlands, dominated by productive stone pine alongside oak. They perform critical functions. The wider area is also an important passage and resting ground for migratory birds,” said Hisham Younes, the founder of the Lebanese conservation organisation Green Southerners.Israeli tanks make their way through the village of Zawtar al-Sharqiyah in southern Lebanon on 2 August. Photograph: Ammar Ammar/AFP/Getty ImagesYounes called the Israeli attacks an “ecocide”, saying they were part of the military’s pattern of assaults on south Lebanon’s environment to degrade its ecosystem with munitions, fire and chemicals.Younes said: “It is not about any single fire or attack, but a pattern of destruction that progressively erodes the ability of ecosystems to function, regenerate and sustain life. When those cascading effects also undermine livelihoods and people’s ability to return to and remain on their land, environmental destruction becomes inseparable from the wider transformation of the territory itself.”Since fighting started on 8 October 2023, when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in solidarity with the Hamas-led attack a day earlier, Israel has repeatedly targeted Lebanon’s woodlands.The Israeli military has said in the past that Hezbollah used these forested areas as cover for its fighters and its tunnels.Ecologists and rights groups have said that fires and other forms of widespread environmental destruction would have wider effects on civilian populations.Israeli troops used trebuchets – medieval catapults – to fling flaming debris over its border wall with Lebanon in the summer of 2024, while the Lebanese army published photos of Israeli drones that carried hoses used to douse forests in flammable materials.Health and environmental experts raised the alarm in February when Israeli planes dropped herbicides linked to cancer on farms in south Lebanon.Besides the environmental and health consequences of these fires, residents of south Lebanon have mourned the loss of the green spaces in the villages where they grew up.On 1 August, displaced residents of the border village of Yaroun found their olive and fruit groves, as well as their homes, had been set ablaze by occupying Israeli troops. People living in the nearby Christian towns of Rmeich and Aïn Ebel, among the few villages near the border not emptied out by the Israeli military, sent pictures of the fires.“They had already bulldozed the whole village. Then they set fire to the trees. What remained in this particular area were the olive trees – large groves, with very old olive trees. They started there, then the fire spread along the outskirts of the village,” said Hafez Ghasham, the mayor of Yaroun.People in Yaroun had already watched in previous months as all but 20 of the 900 houses in the village were bulldozed by the Israeli military, pooling resources to buy expensive satellite imagery of the village during their displacement.“Many of these trees, most of them, in fact, were inherited from our grandparents and parents. They have enormous sentimental value. The trees were also an important source of income for the people of the village,” Ghasham said. “They are trying to make the land uninhabitable. They are erasing our entire history, our entire culture, all our memories. Maybe the idea is that after some time, it will look as though nobody had ever lived here.”