By Zeina Seaifan | Issue 25
Following the enduring struggle for Palestinian self-determination, Israel’s latest siege on Gaza continues to contribute to displacement and destruction in Lebanon. Since 1948, South Lebanon has evolved into a frontline for border clashes between the Lebanese and the Israeli apartheid state. The Lebanese have become intimately familiar with the consequences of these routine military assaults. Israel’s indiscriminate usage of artillery weapons, widespread environmental destruction, and displacement from bordering towns are practices and patterns that constitute Lebanese flows of life. Since October 2023, over 92,000 Lebanese civilians have been displaced from their villages following daily Israeli bombardment. In addition to this human toll, Israel’s apartheid state has weaponised the environment to inflict further damage on both people and ecological life. This article builds on current conversations around forced displacement within Lebanon by examining how environmental violence, particularly due to Israeli aggression, undermines Lebanese livelihoods and identities.
Tracing a legacy of displacement and environmental violence
The 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut marked the first instance of white phosphorus shells used by the Israeli Offensive Forces in Lebanon. White phosphorus is particularly devastating for people and ecologies alike as it burns thermally and chemically until oxygen is completely deprived. The 1982 invasion witnessed significant internal displacement following these illegal incendiary attacks with thousands of civilians from South Lebanon alone pouring into Beirut. These attacks contributed to an emerging environmental legacy of armed conflicts in Lebanon, including an increase in forest fires, destruction of agricultural fields, and degradation of fishing lands. For instance, throughout Israel’s ‘Operation Grapes of Wrath’ in 1996, an exodus of Lebanese civilians once again streamed toward the coast after the bombardment of Lebanese agricultural and residential lands. These civilians left behind cherished homes and livelihoods, carrying instead the weight of grief from losing family members and neighbours, the psychological trauma of witnessing violence and destruction, and the profound physical toll of forced displacement.
During the 2006 July War, Israeli Air Forces dropped more than 4 million cluster bombs across agriculture and residential landscapes in Southern Lebanon, killing around 1,200 Lebanese and displacing one million. On this occasion, however, the Israeli military was resolute in its efforts to devastate the very environmental conditions that sustain life in the South, such as tobacco farming and goat herding. In her anthropological work, Dr Munira Khayyat describes the rural poor, who constitute the majority of the Southern population, and their devotion to life in all of its forms during this war. Villagers left behind their plants and animals only after losing hope for their lives as they were forced to seek cover from the Israeli war machine. These ubiquitous narratives underscore how life in Lebanon, particularly the South, is lived at the volatile intersection of violence and resistance.
Indeed, it is impossible to fully partition life and war in Lebanon, to the extent that forced displacement under the dual threat of Israeli aggression and environmental warfare has evolved into a norm for the Lebanese. While some may view Israel’s routine actions as a necessary measure of self-defence, it is crucial to recognise that these short-term patterns of aggression are part of a broader, long-term colonial expansionist project on Palestinian land. Thus, when Israeli military operations extend to Lebanon under the guise of national security, it is to destabilise Lebanese economies, traumatise Lebanese communities, and project images of Israeli supremacy by advancing discourses of territorial expansion. By employing these geopolitical strategies to position Israel as ‘the sole democracy in the Middle East’, they can legitimise both their occupation and routine military assaults against neighbouring nations. As a result, we continue to see these patterned forms of migration upheld under Israel’s current assaults on Lebanon. But perhaps what distinguishes this latest military assault is the pointed and extensive usage of incendiary chemical attacks on green spaces.
Communities and futurities under siege
Refugee testimonials describe the conditions that sent them fleeing northward from white phosphorus attacks, incendiary bombs, flares and wildfires. After being briefly exposed to phosphorus fumes, one Lebanese man suffered from symptoms including brain fog, intense headaches, and persistent stomach cramps for several days. Another man recalls his work on the olive fields and the sudden white phosphorus attack that put an abrupt end to the harvest season. In November 2023 alone, at least 50,000 olive trees were struck by Israeli shelling, causing over 351 fires. This ongoing catastrophic devastation erased generations of cultivation in a single, brutal sweep while delivering a heartbreaking blow to the sociocultural fabric of the Lebanese community.
Although the destruction of ecological life is not new to Israel's settler colonial project, these extensive attacks mark the long-lasting and systematic erosion of Lebanese livelihoods. This perspective is encapsulated through Rob Nixon’s slow violence, a theoretical framework which describes incremental and invisible forms of violence that slowly degrade communities and ecosystems. The contamination of water streams and soils by chemical bombs in Lebanon depicts these repercussions. These long-term impacts erode community cohesion and economic stability reliant on natural resources. Furthermore, this slow violence enacts the compatibility between Lebanese dependence on international aid and neo-colonial forces eager to bolster these profitable structures of poverty. In other words, these imperialist forces invest in lucrative futurities by fostering internal conflicts. This strategy allows these non-Lebanese forces to gain political influence and control over resources.
The forging of Lebanese identities amidst ecocidal warfare
Lebanese cedars, olive trees, and citrus groves hold significance rooted in antiquity as they continue to be painstakingly cultivated across many generations. Honing in on these ecologies, Lebanese natural landscapes can be regarded as non-sectarian spaces that mobilise diverse Lebanese to foster new collective identities, empowerment and active forms of life-making.
Nevertheless, environmental violence in warfare threatens the development of inclusive communities by damaging the bonds between the Lebanese and the lands they care for. Displacing the Lebanese from the very environments that have provided them with ancestral sustenance serves to strand them from both their historical roots and physical surroundings. To threaten the Lebanese through environmental warfare is to give rise to fatalistic perspectives around environmental protection. To threaten the land is to threaten a wellspring of resistance and identity, thereby undercutting communal solidarity. It is the vitality of nature that fosters these strategic kin connections between nonhumans and the Lebanese, irrespective of the latter’s sectarian backgrounds. Yet, curiously, it is perhaps exactly these relations that are underestimated by military logics.
Within this cycle of border conflict, what is often overlooked is the grim determination with which the Lebanese cling to their home and the swiftness with which they return when warfare is over. As one Lebanese Southerner states, “Who still has life will not die”, illustrating how Lebanese livelihoods and the land are deeply yoked to one another. Nonetheless, in defining defiant life we must also acknowledge that the natural world too can make meaning, tell stories and bear witness to cycles of forced displacement and violence. Understanding how the Lebanese endure these challenges thus requires recognising how closely our lived experiences are intertwined with our ecologies, which continue to undergo military violence. Ultimately, every border conflict is an affirmation that migratory waves within Lebanon stem from shared histories with the environment and cannot be understood without it.
Zeina Seaifan is a PhD student at McGill University studying the intersecting forces of diasporic transnationalism and environmental postcolonialism in Lebanon. Zeina is also a student activist and community organiser focused on climate justice, migration, and advocating for the increased sociopolitical participation and representation of marginalised communities. She can be contacted at Zeina.Seaifan@mail.mcgill.ca or her Linkedin.
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