The Guardian reports:

For hours, Hussein Abdel al-El and his wife, Um Alaa, did not move. They sat in the bathroom in the dark, not daring to touch their phones; the faint glow of the screen might give them away to the Israeli soldiers outside. It was 1am, the Israelis were raiding their neighbours’ house, and the septuagenarian couple did not want their door knocked on next.

In the next house over, Israeli soldiers had forced residents against the wall at gunpoint, zip-tying their hands. They searched the home and interrogated its occupants before putting a black bag over the head of a shepherd, Qassem al-Qadari, taking him to an Israeli military base across the border for further questioning.

The Israeli soldiers were gone by daylight. And so were the elderly couple’s neighbours. All the other houses on the outskirts of Kfarchouba, a mountain-side town on the Lebanon-Israel border, had been abandoned after the raids.

Kfarchouba is one of a handful of non-Shia-majority villages where the Israeli military has allowed people to stay in their homes, despite being within the “yellow line”, a 6-mile-wide strip along the Israel-Lebanon border which the Israeli military has occupied since the 17 April ceasefire agreement with Lebanon.

Israel has forcibly displaced the residents of most of the villages within the “yellow line” and has steadily worked to demolish the now-empty towns with explosives and excavators.

After Israel’s invasion of Lebanon began, a routine developed in Kfarchouba. During the day, people gathered in the town’s centre and looked down over Khiam and the Marjayoun plain, which stretches out below them. They watched as Israeli F-16s swooped overhead and dropped bombs on the towns below, the sounds of explosions growing more distant as Israeli forces steadily pushed back Hezbollah fighters and advanced deeper into Lebanon.

At night, families huddled around heaters in their living rooms; they did not dare to leave their homes. Outside, Israeli soldiers patrolled Kfarchouba’s streets. An unofficial curfew started at nightfall as the Israeli military began their raids. They searched homes for weapons and occasionally kidnapped residents and took them to Israel for questioning.

“Out there, it’s Gaza: they are levelling everything,” said Nazih Yehya, a shop owner in his 70s gesturing towards the Lebanese towns below them, already half-demolished by the Israelis. “Here it is the West Bank: it’s not destroyed, but they want to make sure this area is under their control.” [Continue reading…]