The psychological threat is rising as Lebanese villages are destroyed by the Israeli war Israel attacks Lebanon News

Beirut, Lebanon – In February 2025, Ali stood outside his home in Naqoura, southern Lebanon, pointing to a crack in the foundation and fruit trees that had been pulled by Israeli soldiers.

The Israeli army had just left the town as part of a cease-fire agreement, but they left behind blown-up buildings, a school full of graffiti, and downed power lines. Ali, an old man from the town, said at that time that he would fix everything.

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But just one year later, Israel destroyed Naqoura, one of the towns and villages in southern Lebanon that the Israeli army created. unable to live in it at all. Forced to flee when the Israelis invaded for the second time in March, Ali sold his and his family’s garden by the sea for a rooftop apartment in the heart of Beirut.

Drinking coffee, he complained. “We had a good 20 years,” he said, referring to the period between the end of the 2000 Israeli occupation and the start of the war on October 8, 2023.

For thousands of people like Ali, who come from towns or villages that have been razed to the ground, the future is uncertain. The pain of losing their homes is excruciating, but experts hope that these people will be able to return to their villages.

“When a village is destroyed, and even if the surrounding signs are removed, people lose more than their homes. They lose the markers that tell them where they live, and that’s why we see a lot of depression, including people who have never suffered from their mental health,” Basma Alloush of the International Rescue Committee told Al Jazeera.

“For many, it is losing a childhood image, the tree they grew up near, the street they played on, the house they remembered all their lives, with no way to find or prove it was there,” he added. “That kind of grief is out of reach, because the past feels like it’s been erased along with the place that kept it.”

Villages were destroyed

On March 2, Israel escalated its war in Lebanon for the second time in less than two years. It responded to Hezbollah’s rocket fire – the first such attack against Israel by the group in more than a year – by attacking southern Lebanon and hitting targets across the country.

Since then, Israel has killed 4,257 people in Lebanon and injured more than 12,000. More than 1.2 million people were displaced at the height of the Israeli occupation. Some of those people have gone home, but thousands remain homeless because their villages have been inhabited, or because their houses have been destroyed.

Israel currently owns about 6 percent of Lebanon’s territory and soon agreement the agreement signed between Tel Aviv and Beirut seems to indicate that the Israeli military will not be abandoning their duties anytime soon.

Human rights groups like Amnesty International had previously called Israel’s destruction of southern Lebanon “the biggest” after Israel’s 2024 destruction. But following the disappointment of 2026, the UNDP assessment found that 11,095 houses were completely destroyed. A satellite survey published by the French publication Le Monde also found that as of March 2026, 45 percent of southern Lebanon has been damaged or destroyed.

Among those areas there are towns like Bint JbeilKfar Kila, Meiss el-Jabal, Taybeh, Deir Siryan and Ali’s home town of Nakoura. The level of destruction is so great that it can be difficult for people to know where their houses are in relation to the rest of the town.

Davide Musardo, a psychologist with Doctors Without Borders – known as the French pioneer of MSF, which has been in Gaza, said that the residents of the destroyed area often lose the “counting point” where they live.

Musardo said that many of his patients who tried to return to their homes in Gaza after the end of the war there told him that “they did not know where they were because everything was destroyed” and in the end they lost.

Losing hope

Many in Lebanon are troubled by the recent Israeli war.

But even before Israel’s war in Lebanon, people in the country were suffering from mental illness. A 2022 study by Lebanese researchers found that many people suffer from mental illnesses, including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Lebanese people have suffered a lot in recent years, with the 2019 riots followed by the banking and financial crisis, 2020 port explosionand now almost three years of war. Some of these problems have also increased, as an example of a young man who was injured in a port explosion in 2020 and the house below his mother’s house was affected by Israeli strikes less than six years ago.

Children they have also been emotionally affected by recent conflicts. The young man recently told AJ Plus that his part “he is destroyed” after his house in Tyre, south of Lebanon, was destroyed.

Many of Israel’s methods of destroying cities in Lebanon were also used in Gaza. And now for the Lebanese, the destruction of their homes continues “more than the loss of wealth”, according to Aya Mhanna, a psychologist and psychosocial expert and trauma expert.

“When a village is destroyed, people don’t just lose their homes, but they lose the place that has quietly shaped their identity, relationships, habits, memories, and sense of worth for years, sometimes generations.

“People don’t just mourn for the house, they mourn for what the place represented and what it made possible. The loss is not only about what was there, but also about what will no longer be there,” Mhanna added.

The need to rebuild

Dr Joseph El-Khoury, a psychiatrist and conflict medicine specialist, told Al Jazeera that the building’s significance is symbolic.

“It’s a place where everyone feels safe, especially in the villages, the connections go from generation to generation, so your reputation and reputation is being removed not bricks and mortar,” said El-Khoury.

He added that the loss of an important part of identity can lead to alienation and mistrust. “It is very important that the rebuilding process starts as soon as possible, and that it also tries to fix what was already there.”

Currently, Israel occupies most of the southern Lebanon. The fierce fighting appears to be over, but Israeli officials signal that people like Ali will not be allowed home in the coming weeks.

And even if they are able to return home soon, they will be returning home to devastated areas where essential infrastructure – roads, water systems, electricity grids – have also been destroyed.

“There may be opportunities to rebuild properly with a better environment, but this requires government, urban planning and peace,” El-Khoury said. Without that, he added, the people of the destroyed villages of southern Lebanon “will not be able to heal.”