Displaced Mansouri Residents Watch Israeli Demolitions From Afar

Displaced residents of Mansouri, a village in southern Lebanon, have fallen into a daily routine of gathering at a vantage point in the neighbouring village of Hanniyeh to watch Israeli drones drop boxes of explosives on their houses.

Men and children stood watching on Friday as plumes of smoke and dust rose over Mansouri. Those gathered debated which neighbour's home had just been destroyed and scanned the ruins for signs of their own. Lebanese state media reported that the Israeli military detonated the village's public school early on Friday.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the demolitions.

Active fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has eased since the two sides entered a truce in June, but Israeli forces now occupy large areas of southern Lebanon and carry out controlled demolitions there regularly.

Many Mansouri residents fled when the latest war began in March and returned after the June truce, only to leave again last month when the Israeli military issued an evacuation call and resumed strikes on the village. Israel said at the time that it was responding to ceasefire violations by Hezbollah, but the reason for the subsequent demolitions is unclear.

Some of those displaced are staying with relatives, while others have taken shelter in schools in the nearby city of Tyre. At the height of the war, about 1.2 million people were displaced in Lebanon. The ceasefire has allowed most to return, but more than 300,000 remain uprooted.

Ali Hussein Ghanem, a tobacco farmer from Mansouri now staying with relatives in Hanniyeh along with his wife and children, questioned why the village had been left to its fate. "This is something that should never happen," he said, watching smoke rise over his village. "Isn't the state supposed to protect our town rather than hand it over to Israel?"

Wissam Khashabi, a beekeeper also from Mansouri, said the losses went beyond housing. "We are seeing our land being destroyed," he said. "We have lost our property, our orchards, and all our livelihoods. The state is not really doing anything."

Some displaced residents direct their anger at the Lebanese government as well as Israel, saying the authorities abandoned the village.

Elsewhere in southern Lebanon, Israeli officials said on Thursday that they had blown up Hezbollah tunnel networks beneath the strategic Ali Taher ridge near the town of Nabatiyeh. The blasts shook the ground in surrounding areas. The Israeli military described the ridge as containing extensive underground military infrastructure built by Hezbollah and said it had been the scene of clashes in recent weeks before Israel announced it had taken "operational control" of the site.

The latest conflict began on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets across the border, two days after Israel and the United States launched a war on Iran. Lebanon and Israel reached a framework agreement in June under which Israel would withdraw from Lebanon as Hezbollah is disarmed, but little progress has been made on carrying it out.

With negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, and between the United States and Iran, stalled, no political settlement is in sight that would let the displaced return. Lebanese and Israeli officials are expected to meet for another round of talks in Rome later this month.