An entire street is leveled. Houses and shops are flattened, including a popular cafe. This is what is left of the town of Bint Jbeil, just a couple of miles from the Israeli border, nearly two months after Israel relaunched its ground offensive in southern Lebanon.
The destruction of this town, a Hezbollah stronghold, is repeated again and again across southern Lebanon, a lush region of undulating vistas, where Israel has razed border villages as part of an effort to lay the groundwork for a larger occupation.
The approach, Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said, was modeled on tactics the military used in Gaza, where the Israeli military reduced entire neighborhoods, buildings and streets to rubble.
After the war between Israel and Hezbollah reignited in early March, when Hezbollah attacked Israel in solidarity with Iran, Israel established a several-mile-deep “buffer zone” that it says it will continue to occupy until the threat from Hezbollah is contained.
An analysis of satellite images, along with photos and videos shared online and verified by The New York Times, shows the scope of that campaign. Widespread demolitions have flattened expanses of at least two dozen towns and villages near the border, with damage to government offices as well as civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and mosques.
Villages are now blurred into ash, with the white of rubble marking town after town.
“I feel like I am going to break from anger and sadness,” said Nabil Sunbul, 67, who works in a bakery in the town of Bint Jbeil. He has now fled to Beirut with only a few belongings.
Satellite imagery shows that the area where Mr. Sunbul lives and works has been severely damaged, though it was unclear whether his home was completely destroyed.
Since the war began, Israeli strikes have killed more than 2,600 people in Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, including journalists and medical workers, and destroyed infrastructure such as bridges and gas stations. More than a million people have been displaced. The fighting has continued despite a U.S.-mediated cease-fire, which has now been extended through mid-May.
The Israeli military says it is targeting infrastructure and positions belonging to Hezbollah. The Iran-backed group has launched hundreds of drones, rockets and anti-tank missiles at Israel and has killed at least 17 Israeli soldiers since early March, according to the Israeli military.
Legal experts and human rights activists say targeting civilian infrastructure or destroying it without a valid military justification constitutes a war crime. They also expressed concern over Israeli officials’ statements that they would model the destruction in southern Lebanon on Gaza, given the scale of devastation and loss of life in the strip.
“Deliberately and extensively destroying civilian objects or property, absent any military justification for wanton destruction, is a war crime,” said Ramzi Kaiss, the Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The Israeli military said its troops were operating “in accordance with international law,” and that its directives permit the demolition of structures used for Hezbollah’s military purposes or when deemed operationally necessary.
One video circulating on social media and verified by The Times showed an excavator destroying solar panels near the village of Debl in late April. The solar panels supplied the town with electricity and powered the water station, according to Lebanon’s state news agency.
The Israeli military said in a statement to The Times that such actions did not meet the standards it expected of its soldiers. “Following an inquiry into the incident, command measures were taken against the reserve soldiers involved,” the statement said, without elaborating on what those measures were.
Across southern Lebanon, many towns were already devastated during the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024. More than 10,000 structures, including homes, mosques and parks, were damaged or destroyed in at least 26 municipalities, according to Amnesty International.
The destruction now appears far more extensive, with fresh rubble visible in satellite imagery spanning wide swaths of terrain.
“Our home was the fruit of our lives’ work,” said Fatima Abdallah, 46, a mother of five from the town of Houla near the Israeli border, who is now staying in a tent inside a stadium in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Satellite images show her town was heavily hit, and her home, which she and her husband built two decades ago, appears to have been destroyed.
Videos show Israeli soldiers are using similar methods of destruction to what they employed in Gaza, including the use of controlled demolitions, in which soldiers enter the targeted structures to place explosives.
Soldiers then pull the trigger from a safe distance, said Barbara Marcolini, a visual investigator with Amnesty International who previously worked for The Times. The blasts send plumes of dust and debris skyward. As a result, entire streets are now moonscapes of white rubble and shattered concrete, with little left to mark where homes or businesses once stood.
Israel says its operations are aimed at dismantling Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, which it says is embedded in civilian areas. Hezbollah has long denied placing military assets among civilians.
Other videos and photos, including photos taken from the Israeli side of the border, show demolitions being carried out by bulldozers and excavators in heavily damaged areas.
Experts say this mirrors what Israel did in Gaza, leaving vast areas uninhabitable and preventing those displaced from returning home.
“This is basically the same pattern that we documented back in Gaza, then in southern Lebanon. And now it’s southern Lebanon again,” Ms. Marcolini said. “It is a strategy that they have, and they have been doing this consistently throughout the region.”
There is damage across the south, but the most severe destruction in the south is concentrated in Shiite villages. Shiites, who are from the same sect as Hezbollah, form the majority of the population in southern Lebanon, though some towns in the no-go zone near the border are predominantly Christian or Druse. Israel has told some Christians and Druse they can stay if they expel Shiite Muslims from southern towns.
Satellite imagery shows a stark contrast between these areas. In images taken near the border in April, the majority-Shiite villages of Aita al Shaab and Hanine appear as expanses of gray rubble, while far less damage is visible in the nearby predominantly Christian village of Rmeish.
For the families who fled, there is no clear sense of when they will return. For now, they rely on messages and calls from displaced friends and neighbors, piecing together fragments of news about what remains of their homes and lives.
On a recent afternoon, Ms. Abdallah invoked a Lebanese phrase — “with stones, not with people” — to express that although their home had been reduced to rubble, her family members were at least unharmed.
“Only Allah can compensate us,” she said.
