My Home of Ruins

This article examines Israel’s ongoing military operations in southern Lebanon as a deliberate and planned effort to obliterate life and reconfigure territory. It argues that ecological violence—understood as the disruption of human and nonhuman interrelations—is both a tactic of war and a strategy of territorial domination. The analysis explores how Israel has weaponized nature and the built environment, employing a scorched-earth policy that serves broader settler colonial goals. It also explores psychological warfare tactics aimed at demoralizing local populations and inducing displacement, alongside broader, slower, and less visible forms of violence that increase the risk of dispossession and permanent uprooting. In this vein, the article focuses on the historical and symbolic significance of the Hula Valley—originally part of Greater Lebanon—and the growing force of invisible violence embedded in nature protection narratives. In conclusion, it reflects on “eco-normalization” as a mechanism that obscures or legitimizes asymmetric power and raises broader concerns about how the politics of postwar recovery and reconstruction may entrench territorial control and displacement in southern Lebanese towns.