Experts suggest Israel may pursue buffer zone following border destruction in Lebanon

Israel appears to be trying to create a buffer zone in south Lebanon to remove the threat from Hezbollah but its effectiveness in preventing cross-border attacks remains to be seen, observers say.

Israel began heavily bombarding south Lebanon in September, escalating its months-long battle against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group and later sending in ground troops.

An official in south Lebanon said more than a dozen border villages have been two-thirds destroyed, while data analysis also points to broad destruction in the frontier area.

Peter Harling, founder of Beirut-based research centre Synaps, said Israel appeared to be "creating an uninhabitable no man's land all along the border".

Soldiers have dynamited buildings in some villages, Lebanon's National News Agency has reported and troops' videos have showed, and Lebanese authorities have accused Israel of burning wooded and agricultural areas.

Israel is aiming to have "some guarantees that Hezbollah is no longer close to the border and cannot initiate any attacks on the northern part of Israel," Orna Mizrahi from the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies told AFP's Jerusalem bureau.

But "I don't think that it's going to be a kind of buffer zone... We want people to live on the other side, but we don't want Hezbollah there", she added.

Part of the destruction is also due to months of Israeli bombardment that began in response to cross-border strikes which Hezbollah initiated in support of Hamas after the Palestinian militant group's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Hashem Haidar, head of Lebanon's official Southern Council which is tasked with assessing the destruction, said 18 villages near the 120-kilometre (75-mile) long Israel-Lebanon border had each been "70 percent destroyed", with an estimated 45,000 homes lost.

  Schools, mosques, cemeteries  

Military expert Hassan Jouni said that by destroying the villages and burning surrounding areas, Israel sought a clear a line of sight for its observation points.

"This buffer zone will be exposed to Israeli controls and surveillance," preventing Hezbollah from "repeating" Hamas's attack from the Lebanese border, said Jouni, a retired Lebanese army general.

By November 7 this year, more than half the buildings in 10 Lebanese border villages and towns had been destroyed, according to an AFP count using data from Microsoft Maps and satellite analysis by US researchers Corey Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek.

In one of those villages, Mais al-Jabal, more than 1,000 buildings have been hit.

The Israeli army has "destroyed the schools, the mosques and the infrastructure -- even the cemeteries have not been spared", said Abdel Moneim Shukair, mayor of Mais al-Jabal, which counted some 30,000 residents before the conflict.

In the nearby village of Mhaibib, more than 84 percent of structures had been razed as of November 7, according to AFP's count.

Just a few buildings were still standing, mostly on the edges of the village.

Further south in Yarun, three-quarters of the some 500 buildings in the centre of the village are gone, while in Aita al-Shaab, more than 60 percent of the village has been razed, with entire neighbourhoods in ruins.

 'Testing Hezbollah' 
 Israel could also be "testing Hezbollah's defences in preparation for more ambitious ground operations", Harling said, and extending "the doctrine of mass reprisals" through the "wholesale destruction of habitat, as applied to Gaza".

But "these actions so far have shown no effect on Hezbollah's willingness and ability to fire missiles and fly suicide drones into Israel", he added.

Israel accuses Hezbollah's elite Radwan Force, many of whose commanders it has killed in recent months, of wanting to penetrate Israeli territory.

Last month, Israel's military said its soldiers located "a large network of underground infrastructure and tunnel shafts" beneath homes in a south Lebanon town that "was intended to aid Radwan Forces" in an invasion of northern Israel.

Calev Ben-Dor, a former Israeli foreign ministry analyst, told AFP's Jerusalem bureau that Hezbollah poses "two main threats".

"One is the long-range rockets... the other one is the Radwan elite forces that were near the border and that we know were planning an October 7-type invasion," Ben-Dor said.

"A security zone would do little against the rockets but could theoretically prevent Radwan Forces returning south," he added.

In 2000, Israel withdrew from south Lebanon after 22 years of occupation and a war of attrition with Hezbollah.

Israel and the Iran-backed group went to war six years later, and Hezbollah has never respected a United Nations resolution that ended the 2006 conflict.

That resolution called for only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers to be deployed in south Lebanon, where Hezbollah enjoys strong support.

That resolution forms the basis of current truce negotiations, spearheaded by the United States and France.

Military expert Jouni said the idea of a buffer zone at the border was doomed to fail as residents "will return and rebuild their houses in case of a political agreement" to end the war.