• Mapping One Month of Announced Strikes in South Beirut (September 27 - October 28, 2024)

    Since September 27, Israel’s war on Lebanon has expanded its brutal violence to Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, as well as many regions across the country.1 No less than 325 buildings2 have been destroyed south of the city where the radius of devastation (seen in the outlined gray zones) extends over 11.87km2, or more than half the capital’s immediate urbanization perimeter.3

    The map tracks the “evacuation orders” issued by the Israeli Army warning the civilian populations of South Beirut between September 27 and October 24, 2024. Each order delineates a building or more as well as a number of urban blocks, where one or several impeding strikes are planned. These orders are supposed to act as warnings. They are published in Arabic a few minutes to an hour ahead of the strike(s) on the “X” social media platform (formerly known as Twitter), mostly during the late evening hours. The orders instruct residents to immediately evacuate the premises within a radius of 500m (0.311 miles) from the targeted cluster of buildings (1-4), framed in red on an aerial photo clipped with specific landmarks in the neighborhood. The order is accompanied by a text listing the names of the neighborhoods targeted and justifying the forthcoming attacks in relation to their proximity to “facilities related to Hizballah.”

    No less than 99 announced strikes extending over 152 buildings were counted between September 27 and October 24, 2024, and they constitute less than half the total number of destroyed buildings in this part of the city.4 Indeed, not all strikes are accompanied by an evacuation order. Still, the geography of the red crosses reflects the scale and intensity of the violence throughout South Beirut, all the way to the campus of the Lebanese University in Hadath, the borders of Lebanon’s International Airport’s runway, and the industrial areas of Choueifat. One blue mark indicates the single post-strike announcement made following the assassination of the secretary general of Hizballah, Hassan Nasrallah on September 27.

    We focus on the mapping on South Beirut where the municipal districts of Ghobeyri, Haret Hreik, Burj Al-Brajneh, Mrayjeh-Tahweeta-Laylaki and Hadath have borne the brunt of the airstrikes during the past month. Each of these districts has been subjected to over 60 evacuation orders and struck several folds more. These districts are within the area popularly referred to as Dahiya, where Israel’s multiple and repeated aggression since September 27 has displaced hundreds of thousands of inhabitants and destroyed multi-story residential and commercial buildings.

    By reducing Dahiya to a political stronghold and associating the term “stronghold” to the name of Hizballah, a political party with ministers in Lebanon’s government and parliamentary representation in Lebanon’s Assembly in addition to its strong (non-state) military power, Israel (and much of the Western media) conflates political support, allegiance, and armed force—hence declaring it legitimate to target civilians because of (assumed) political preferences. In doing so, Israel denies the reality of multiple and diverse districts, composed of dozens of neighborhoods rich with an urban, social, economic and political history that precedes Hizballah by decades. The bombing is akin to an urbicide that is erasing an entire urban fabric, the palimpsest of socio-spatial practices and the embodiment of collective memory. Finally, the “stronghold” qualifier occults the historical conditions where the use of armed resistance was endorsed as a mode of struggle against the Israeli armed forces that invaded South Lebanon repeatedly, occupied its territories, violated its airspace daily, and inflicted immense damage on its populations.

    These evacuation orders are far from acting as a genuine call to protect civilians. Instead, we read them as part of Israel’s strategy to manufacture consent for the incoming strikes, legitimizing the bombings by claiming the presence of a so-called “terrorist” threat. These orders further serve as an integral component of Israel’s strategy at mounting the Lebanese people against Hizballah, discounting the socio-political and urban realities of a society that has come to rely on this party for all of its social needs. This strategy finally enables the claim that the air raids only target “Hizballah facilities”, while in practice the damage extends to an entire civilian infrastructure.

    To residents, the so-called evacuation orders constitute an integral element of the terror apparatus deployed by the Israeli army, a key ingredient of the psychological warfare waged against them, in addition to being precursors of announced destruction and killing. They terrorize numerous city households who await the strikes in deep fear, sometimes sleeping in shifts to take turn monitoring social media for possible warnings. These orders work along with the perpetual whirring of surveillance drones, the robot-calls that announce impeding bomb attacks (often erroneously), the targeted drone attacks that extend to every corner of the country, along with the lethally violent daily air and land bombings that have wiped out entire villages in the south and east of the country.

    The Beirut Urban Lab continues to monitor the strikes on Beirut, develop further base maps, and extend our documentation to visualize and denounce the size and intensity of Israel’s aggression. The hope remains that this work will further contribute to hold Israel accountable in front of international courts and, looking ahead, to contribute to a just recovery.

    https://beiruturbanlab.com/en/Details/2009/mapping-one-month-of-strikes-in-south-beirut-(27-september-24-octobe
    #Beyrouth #Liban #Israël #frappes #bombardements #destruction #Ghobeyri #Haret_Hreik #Burj_Al-Brajneh #Mrayjeh-Tahweeta-Laylaki #Hadath
    #cartographie #visualisation #Dahiya #urbicide #évacuation #mémoire_collective #ordres_d'évacuation
    ping @reka @fil

  • Breaking the Silence sur X https://twitter.com/BtSIsrael/status/1722270801238585378

    Everyone’s blood is boiling. We all know someone who was murdered, kidnapped, who is still missing. Many are talking about revenge, about erasing Gaza, referring to its residents as “2.5M terrorists,” discussing forcible transfer. But what’s actually happening on the ground?🧵

    Gaza has been under an unprecedented bombardment for a month now. In the first two weeks alone, the Israeli Air Force dropped more bombs on Gaza than the US dropped on Afghanistan in an entire year . One explanation is Israel’s genuine need to remove threats to ground forces, but this doesn’t fully explain the scope of the bombings or their targets.

    Our work is based on testimonies given by soldiers. Collecting and verifying these testimonies is a long and complex process, and it will be quite some time before we get a full and accurate picture of what’s happening on the ground. Still, statements made by senior Israeli officials and the extent of the destruction already raise suspicions that the army is following the same doctrine it used in previous operations: The #Dahiya_Doctrine.

    The Dahiya Doctrine was formulated around the 2006 Lebanon War. Its main tenet was: disproportionate attacks, including against civilian structures and infrastructure.

    If the doctrine is indeed in play here as it appears to be, then the massive bombings on Gaza in recent weeks are deliberately aimed at damaging infrastructure and property belonging to innocent civilians.

    The heavy bombings in the 2006 Lebanon War did not wipe out Hezbollah or neutralize its military capabilities, nor were they supposed to. They were meant to create deterrence. Since then, Hezbollah has grown stronger and is now firing at civilians in northern Israel daily.

    In Lebanon, too, we wreaked massive destruction on civilians to buy temporary calm and nothing more.

    Israel also used this doctrine during the last ground invasion of Gaza in 2014. Following the war, Gaza residents returned to neighborhoods that were razed to the ground.

    Journalists and soldiers who took part in the operation described the enormous damage. Politicians and members of the security establishment waxed victorious, claiming we’d “seared the Palestinian conscience”, meaning every Palestinian will remember exactly who’s in charge, and won’t dare to resist. The last month has proved, once again, that this approach has brought us zero security.

    […]

    #doctrine_dahiya