October typically marks the peak of the olive harvest season in Lebanon, a time when families across the south come together to harvest, mill, press, and refine olives into olive oil. Yet, this year, for many residents of South Lebanon, October has become a painful reminder of loss: this year is the second consecutive year of little to no olive oil production, and the first year in a while in which many trees bore no fruit at all.
The reason is clear: Israel’s relentless assault on Lebanon has not only decimated the land, but also disrupted the livelihoods of many of Lebanon’s residents. The attacks have ravaged agriculture, crippled local economies, and caused widespread displacement, leaving many residents without their primary source of income and sustenance.
The Escalation of Violence
Since 8 October 2023, Israel has been engaging in an intense war on Lebanon. As of 27 November 2024, Israel had launched at least 9,891 air raids on Lebanon over the span of a year, killing over 3,823 individuals and wounding over 15,999. As a result of their indiscriminate targeting across South Lebanon, the Bekaa, and Beirut’s suburbs, over 1.2 million people have been displaced, 300,000 of whom are children. While some have found apartments to rent, others have resorted to the six hundred public schools that have been converted into shelters, and over 410,000 people – 107,000 of them Lebanese – have fled across the border to Syria.
Israel’s settler colonial regime has intensified its campaign of terror in Lebanon, carrying out numerous massacres across the country, one of which took place on 29 September when Israel targeted a civilian building in Ain el-Delb, Saida, killing forty-five individuals and injuring seventy more. Furthermore, Israel has been deliberately attacking emergency responders, medical personnel, health centers, and hospitals, killing over one hundred paramedics and healthcare workers in the past year, seventy-two of whom have been targeted since 17 September alone. The ongoing attacks are part of a broader expansionist strategy targeting Lebanon’s natural resources, including Israel’s long-held desire for control over the Litani river.
The Assault on Agriculture
As part of its assault strategy, Israel has heavily targeted the country’s agricultural sector. For example, the olive harvest, a staple for many families, has been devastated. As of January 2024, over 47,000 olive trees (or 24 hectares of olive groves), 22.8 hectares of citrus and banana trees, and 643.4 hectares of oak trees were reported to have been burned by Israel’s attacks according to the National Early Warning System Platform. This number has yet to be updated, as many individuals and organizations have been unable to reach the groves due to incessant shelling.
In its targeting of green areas and agricultural land, Israel has been using various types of weapons, including white phosphorus, incendiary bombs, and artillery shells. White phosphorus has been a particularly destructive element in Israel’s arsenal: when used as a weapon, white phosphorus causes severe and deep burns, penetrating through bone and muscle, and reigniting after initial treatment. According to the American University of Beirut, Israel’s use of white phosphorus bombs caused at least 134 forest fires and injured over one hundred civilians in October 2023 alone. Beyond its physical harm, it causes lasting environmental damage, whose extent is yet to be truly revealed. Israel has also used other incendiary munitions in addition to white phosphorus. These weapons are designed to start fires, thus devastating large areas of crop and vegetation. The use of these weapons on green land and crops is not coincidental. The intent of the settler-colonial project has always been to reignite wars. Speaking to soldiers preparing to enter Gaza in November, Amichai Friedman, a rabbi in the Israeli Army, chanted: “This land is ours, the whole land, including Gaza, including Lebanon.” The incendiaries Israel employs are readily being used to destroy crops, conduct ecocide, and annihilate the livelihoods of those who form the most important layer of protection for resistance against occupation.
South Lebanon plays a huge role in the country’s agricultural output. It grows thirty-eight percent of the country’s olives and twenty-two percent of Lebanon’s citrus and other fruits. Generations upon generations of southern residents have tended to the land, harvesting what it has to offer to feed their families, their communities, and the country. Israel’s airstrikes have not only displaced these farmers and their families, but have also disrupted the agricultural ecosystem in South Lebanon. By forcing farmers to flee their lands, the strikes have led to an acute decline in the production of crops essential to the Lebanese economy.
Targeting People’s Livelihoods
The occupation’s goals in this equation are not only to inflict environmental damage, but also to cripple the Lebanese economy. Agriculture is not just about food production; it ensures a degree of self-sufficiency—however small—for the nation. The presence of unexploded ordnance and the damage from chemical agents could make the land unsafe or unusable for years, compounding the economic toll. This is not the first time southern Lebanon has suffered such destruction. The region is still marked by decades of impact from landmines and unexploded ordnance left behind from Israel’s previous occupation, which only ended in 2000, as well as from the July War of 2006. While the South has made gradual economic and social progress since then, this renewed wave of attacks threatens to unravel recovery efforts. Furthermore, the destruction and contamination of agricultural land means that these areas may not be viable for cultivation in coming seasons. In total, Israeli aggression is said to have resulted in a 2.5 billion US dollar loss for Lebanon’s agriculture sector.
Beyond agriculture, the war’s impact has rippled through other vital sectors of Lebanon’s economy. Small businesses, the backbone of many communities, have been particularly hard hit. Shops, workshops, and family-owned enterprises, which often serve as the main source of income for entire families, have been destroyed in the airstrikes or forced to shut down as a result of widespread displacement. For example, between the second and third weeks of October, Israel struck the Nabatieh souqs, home to dozens of small businesses. Ultimately, the occupation’s actions aim to fulfill a long-sung prophecy: to destabilize and weaken Lebanon’s socio-economic structure from within. This systematic destruction of livelihoods is not just collateral damage. It appears to be a deliberate strategy to disrupt the country’s social, political, and economic sectors, and to control the region’s future.
Local Initiatives: Fighting Back through Community Support
The enormous needs of the displaced population have been met with inadequate preparation by the Lebanese state, which failed to anticipate the scale of destruction and displacement amidst the absence of a president, the crumbling of state institutions, and the limited scope of action vested in the caretaker government. In response, numerous local initiatives have stepped up to fill the gap both inside the shelters and beyond. Community kitchens and solidarity efforts have played a crucial role, adapting to the needs of specific groups, centers, and households. Over time, in prolonged displacement scenarios, the focus rightfully shifts from merely ensuring food quantity to emphasizing quality, nutritional value, and accessibility. This is where these community efforts have proven to dominate.
A standout example is an initiative led by The Agricultural Movement in Lebanon and Socio Economic Action Collective (SEAC), which aims to improve food access for internally displaced people through a holistic, locally-based approach. By partnering with small farmers, the initiative not only cuts costs but also enhances the nutritional value of the food provided. The movement's supply chain starts with local farmers, offering them expertise, heirloom seeds, eco-friendly inputs, and support throughout planting and harvesting, incorporating sustainable water management and ecological farming methods. During the harvest, crops are gathered and distributed to community kitchens that cater to displaced populations. This model not only ensures the availability of fresh, nutritious produce but also empowers people by giving them greater control over their food supply, all while sustaining the livelihoods of local farmers. The movement’s three community kitchens in Beirut are currently providing more than sixteen hundred meals per day. The movement also boasts three other community kitchens in Aley (providing more than 360 meals per day), Tyre (2100 meals per day), Saida (one thousand meals per day), and Tripoli (four hundred meals per day in Tripoli city and eight hundred meals per day in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp).
Other initiatives and individuals have also taken the lead to lend a hand to their displaced brothers and sisters from South Lebanon & Bekaa. One such initiative is Fazaa. Fazaa is a community kitchen located in the Beddawi camp in northern Lebanon. It is one square kilometer and houses hundreds of Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese families otherwise neglected by a number of relief organizations. The term “Fazaa” is associated with the Palestinian struggle, specifically in the Palestinian agricultural community, where solidarity and participatory organizing was employed in order to support the agricultural community against challenges, hardships, and natural disasters. Fazaa refers to the call for cohesion and amongst agricultural communities against any external threat or aggression, whatever it may be. Fazaa was historically called upon against Ottoman administrators and tax collectors and was revived during the Arab revolts of 1936-1939 and the Nakba, where thousands of Palestinians were martyred at the entrances to their villages as they attempted to fend off imminent ethnic cleansing and genocide by settlers. Fazaa was complemented by mutual aid that prioritized a united front, internal cohesion and cooperation efforts that facilitated the distribution of tasks during busy periods, whether of olive harvesting, building houses, or marriages.
The Anti-Racism Movement (ARM) supports migrant workers affected and displaced in Beirut and other regions. Syrian Eyes’ “Grassroots Emergency Response Coalition” supports Syrian and Palestinian communities with food, essential products and temporary housing in Beirut, Tripoli, and Bekaa. Nation Station is a community kitchen providing daily hot meals for the displaced around Beirut.
Another initiative is led by Dr. Ghada Kassir, a dermatologist based in Beirut. She opened the doors of her practice, offering a variety of services: from providing individuals wounded by airstrikes free consultations for reconstructive surgery, to posting important tips for affected individuals for how to care for their wounds, and working on supplying medicine free of charge to displaced people.
The Free Palestine Front, a group of activists and students in Beirut who gathered after 7 October to reject the Israeli occupation’s attacks on our people in Gaza and southern Lebanon, alongside other allied groups, have formed a popular coordination front (Tanseqeye Shaabeye) that gathers together an “informal group of volunteer organizers who practice mutual aid and community assistance based on political awareness, especially for those who do not and will not benefit from institutional assistance and available resources. The Tanseqeye is composed of individuals, the Popular Kitchen Group, the Free Palestine Front, and the General Student Union. They are a civil support front for all those who support the liberation of Palestine and the struggle against Zionism, focusing their work on strengthening the steadfastness of the population affected by the Zionist war on Lebanon. The General Student Union is a student labor union that seeks to defend the rights and interests of students, under the slogan “Students and Workers Against the Occupation.” The Autonomous Book Club (ABC), through Food not Bombs (the Popular Kitchen) is a leftist internationalist group working on creating a community that bypasses the traditional context of the state. The Tanseqeye has compiled an exhaustive list that tracks mutual aid efforts here. Al-Rawiya, a digital platform covering the Levant, has also compiled their own list of community-led initiatives that people can support, catering to different needs such as shelter provision, community kitchen support, and animal sheltering.
We urge all readers to disseminate, donate, and engage with these solidarity networks, create their own, and pressure their unions, workplace, and regimes to delink from the genocidal Zionist war machine and escalate in solidarity with Palestine, Lebanon, and the fight against imperialism.