Israel's toxic legacy: Bombing southern Lebanon with white phosphorus

On March 19, Oxfam and Human Rights Watch released a memorandum that cited Israel's use of white phosphorus on Gaza and south Lebanon as one in "a wide range of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law" and called on the Biden administration to "immediately suspend arms transfers to Israel".

But when it comes to Lebanon, "this isn't something new", Mohammad Hussein, the head of South Lebanon's Agricultural Union, told Al Jazeera.

"The Israeli army targeted civilians with white phosphorus in the 1982 invasion and since October 7 there has been a lot of white phosphorus used on forests, plantations, olive and fruit trees.

"Maybe they want to push civilians away by terrorising them."

The use of white phosphorus has been described to Al Jazeera as "environmental terrorism" and "psychological warfare".

Over the last 46 years or more, experts and officials say, a pattern has become clear.

"I would argue that they've been trying to do this since the late 1970s, with this idea of creating a buffer zone on Lebanese territory," Houry said.

Israel's invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982, its occupation from 1985 to 2000, and the wars between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006 and 2023-2024 have eroded the land on the Lebanese side of the border.

For more than a decade, Houry led HRW's Beirut office, where he documented human rights violations by both Lebanese and Israeli parties and wrote the seminal 2007 HRW report, Why They Died, Civilian Casualties in Lebanon During the 2006 War.

Houry said history shows that Israel's military has doctrines to "disproportionately harm not only combatants but the communities" these combatants come from.

"It's been the southern Lebanese who have paid the heaviest price over four decades," Houry said. "The clear example was the use of cluster munitions in 2006, which really sought to render southern Lebanon uninhabitable."

In the final days of the 2006 war, Israel hit wide swathes of southern Lebanon with between 2.6 and 4 million cluster munitions, "particularly during the last three days of the conflict when both sides knew a settlement was imminent", according to Why They Died.

In 2013, after rights groups accused it of war crimes in its 2008-2009 Gaza offensive, the Israeli military said it would start limiting its use of white phosphorus as smokescreen munitions in built-up areas, with unspecified exceptions.

Israel's later use of white phosphorus in Gaza in 2012 "was likely used to harass and terrorise residents to clear neighbourhoods, rather than as a 'smoke screen', as the Israeli military had claimed", Elizabeth Breiner, programme manager at Forensic Architecture, a research group investigating state violence and human rights violations, told Al Jazeera by email.

And that pattern of behaviour continues today, Houry said, with the use of white phosphorus "to create fires along the border" in south Lebanon.

More than a decade later, international rights groups and local monitors are documenting the Israeli military's continued use of white phosphorus. In October 2023, human rights groups like HRW and Amnesty International documented Israel's use of white phosphorus in dense civilian areas in Gaza and farmlands and residential zones in south Lebanon.

"This has been in their playbook for many years," Houry continued. "I think it's become clear over the years. It was crystal clear in 2006 and it's crystal clear today."

"Of course, this is not the result solely of white phosphorus, but it's important to understand that white phosphorus is one of the tools that is being used for that aim," Kallab said.

Data collected by local and international bodies, including Public Works Studio in Beirut and international crisis mapping organisation the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), and mapped by Public Works and AUB's Urban Lab show that Israeli white phosphorus shells have struck at least 32 towns and villages since October - ACLED and the head of the south's agricultural union counted 36 - spanning nearly the entirety of Lebanon's 100km (62-mile) southern border.

Al Jazeera spoke to residents and officials from six different villages along the border by phone. All said they had seen or had direct family who had seen white phosphorus attacks on their towns first-hand.

A researcher from Public Works Studio said that early attacks had primarily targeted farmlands and forests, though residential areas in villages like al-Khiam and Kfar Kila had also been hit.

Among the locations hit, a few have been targeted repeatedly. Villages like Kfar Kila, Meiss el-Jabal and Hula have all been struck on seven or more occasions by white phosphorus munitions. An occasion may include multiple white phosphorus shells.

Diana Salloum, a researcher focused on Lebanon's agricultural sector at the Beirut-based Synaps Network, told Al Jazeera that she was unsure of how systematic and intentional Israel's use of white phosphorus is. "I can tell you that these are agricultural lands, and not small agricultural lands, [which] means a large supply of food.

"You displace people by cutting their access to resources. That's what is happening."

Tannous Mouawad, a security analyst and retired brigadier-general with the Lebanese Army, told Al Jazeera: "Israel is trying to create a buffer zone [that is] nonviable to humans and nature to make this land uninhabitable and impossible to cultivate."