{"id":533826,"date":"2026-04-16T09:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T09:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/533826\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T09:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T09:16:09","slug":"satellite-images-reveal-scale-of-israeli-demolitions-as-lebanese-villages-destroyed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/533826\/","title":{"rendered":"Satellite images reveal scale of Israeli demolitions as Lebanese villages destroyed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The deliberate demolition of structures is not a new Israeli military tactic. It has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/resources\/idt-33fccfbe-abcc-4af1-bdd2-632b2787cf59\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">deployed across swathes of Gaza<\/a> during the war that was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s been clear since October 7 and since Israel and Hezbollah have gone to war that there has been a strategy for Israel to revise the balance of power in the region,&#8221; said Renad Mansour, Deputy Director of Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, a UK-based think tank.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Multiple legal experts told BBC Verify the destruction of property is strictly prohibited by international humanitarian law, unless it is demanded by military necessity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The bar for necessity is higher than military convenience or advantage, according to Prof Janina Dill, a global security and international law expert at Oxford University: &#8220;It certainly does not cover levelling entire villages as a predicate to long-term national security.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It also requires case-by-case analysis when determining which buildings have military significance, said Yuval Shany, a legal expert from the Israel Democracy Institute think tank.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The capacity of some civilian buildings to be used for military activity &#8220;does not justify a sweeping policy of creating buffer zones next to the border inside which all buildings are to be destroyed&#8221;, he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The deliberate demolition of structures is not a new Israeli military tactic. It has been deployed across swathes&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-533826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}