announcements of ceasefires<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201c[The Yellow Line] is treated as a hard boundary, both in terms of troop presence and the controlled demolition of villages, which continues unabated despite the ceasefire,\u201d Ahmad Baydoun, a Lebanese architect and open-source researcher based in the Netherlands, told Al Jazeera. \u201cIt is as if the ceasefire applies to the rest of Lebanon but not to this territory.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the northern side of the Yellow Line, residents have returned to devastated villages, including a couple of towns included in the \u201cpilot zone\u201d programme.<\/p>\n
One of those towns is Froun, which the Israeli military destroyed via air and drone strikes, but which its troops did not enter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were surprised that it was [included as a] pilot zone,\u201d Hasan Bazzi, the president of Froun\u2019s municipal office, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
Lines of all colours<\/p>\n
The Yellow Line is not the only coloured line used in Lebanon to reference military demarcations. The Blue Line was established in 2000 in the wake of the end of Israel\u2019s years-long occupation of southern Lebanon, with Israeli forces withdrawing behind it.<\/p>\n
And there are now discussions in Israel about creating a \u201cGrey Line\u201d. Reports indicate that this line could extend 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) into Lebanese territory. The area behind the Grey Line would remain uninhabited, effectively serving as a buffer zone for Israel, which would not allow Lebanese civilians to rebuild their homes in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of the Israeli strategy here with the Grey Line, Blue Line, Yellow Line is to sow confusion and to hide or obfuscate the reality of what Israel has done on the ground [which is] to depopulate this vast Lebanese territory and to make it uninhabitable,\u201d Bazzi, the analyst, said. \u201cIn the end, it doesn\u2019t really matter what the definitions of these lines are because they are often shifting. We\u2019ve seen that play out in Gaza, and the bottom line is Israel is illegally occupying and has illegally destroyed and ethnically cleansed a huge part of southern Lebanon, and the world sat silent while that happened for the most part.\u201d<\/p>\n
But even within the area on the Israeli-controlled side of the Yellow Line, some villagers remain, reflecting Israeli attempts to play on Lebanon\u2019s sectarian divides. The majority of the population of southern Lebanon is Shia Muslim, but officials from non-Shia areas have said that they have received warnings not to host displaced people in their towns. Even those allowed to stay do not live in total freedom.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe villages Israel has allowed to remain inhabited inside the Yellow Line are largely Christian and Sunni,\u201d Baydoun explained. \u201cBut being allowed to stay is not the same as being free to live. In Kfarchouba, municipal workers were abducted while pumping the village\u2019s water, and the mayor himself was detained. Even in Deir Mimas, a village outside the Yellow Line, the Lebanese army set up a post so farmers could reach their olive groves, and Israeli tanks came to the entrance of the village to confront it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baydoun described the new reality of southern Lebanon as the \u201cWest Bankification of those who remained\u201d, referring to Israel\u2019s occupation of the West Bank.<\/p>\n
\u201cResidents are permitted to exist on their land but not to use it freely,\u201d he said. \u201cAccess to fields depends on checkpoints, coordination and the mood of a patrol. Municipal officials are detained and questioned at will. It is a model of control that does not need to empty a village to govern it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Permanence of displacement<\/p>\n
Analysts believe the occupation of southern Lebanon could extend into the foreseeable future. The Lebanese government has promised to erect prefabricated homes in some areas, but it may struggle to provide state services like water, electricity and sewage disposal to areas where infrastructure has been widely damaged or destroyed.<\/p>\n
Even if the Israelis were to withdraw, much of the border area lies in complete ruin, collections of dust, rubble and ash lying where homes and agricultural lands once prospered.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some towns where it might be possible to return with significant work, but in the 50 or so frontline towns or villages, I don\u2019t think it will be possible in the short or medium term,\u201d Bazzi said.<\/p>\n
The subject is an open wound for many southerners, forced to continue their lives elsewhere while their homes and lands lie in ruins and under occupation. For them, Israel\u2019s military occupation is reshaping southern Lebanon for the next generation.<\/p>\n
\u201cKhiam is destroyed, there\u2019s nothing, it\u2019s uninhabitable for the next 10, 15, 20 years,\u201d Ali, the displaced man from Khiam, said. \u201cThey returned us to the Stone Age.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beirut, Lebanon \u2013 Ali is from Khiam, a Lebanese village on the southern border with Israel, but for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,48084,88,47,43,6803],"class_list":["post-646043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-attacks-lebanon","tag-lebanon","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-news-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}