A rare look inside occupied southern Lebanon: Israeli flags and flattened homes
A CNN report provides a rare look into Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon, documenting the destruction of villages and the establishment of a security zone. The piece contrasts the flattened Shia villages with the remaining Christian communities amidst ongoing conflict.
Why it matters
It provides on-the-ground evidence of the humanitarian and physical impact of the ongoing Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
Driving south on a coastal road in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese and Hezbollah flags that line the road suddenly switch to Israeli flags. Soon, an Israeli checkpoint comes into view, where soldiers stand watch from the balconies of homes riddled with shrapnel. And then, the landscape turns flat: Village after village, home after home, reduced to rubble. This is what Israeli-occupied Lebanon looks like. CNN gained rare access by joining a convoy of residents permitted to move through that occupied territory to reach their homes in three predominantly Christian villages. They have been spared the fate of the surrounding Shia Muslim villages that now resemble a wasteland. Israel invaded southern Lebanon in March after Hezbollah, a Shia Lebanese militant group backed by Iran, resumed strikes on Israel to avenge the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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