“The Israeli army announced that it will destroy homes and built structures in all Lebanese border villages.”

Is there documentation for this news? Was such an announcement actually made? I do not know. The annihilatory nature of this decision is evident. Or rather, it reveals an intent toward “transfer” that Israel has never previously acknowledged. It carried it out during the “War of Independence” without admitting to it. It also practiced it in the West Bank and in Jerusalem, yet never gave it a clear definition as it has now done in Lebanon.

Israel’s official public broadcaster reported this, stating that the political leadership had taken the decision. This announcement takes us back to the Israeli debates that accompanied the first transfer. At the time, David Ben-Gurion was careful to obscure the decision to uproot people from the Galilee, framing it through narratives of “population collaboration,” and supporting the discussions with justifications for what the Haganah had done. It was only later that historians, led by Benny Morris, dug into army archives, documenting the transfer and publishing decisions and orders from Ben-Gurion himself calling for the expulsion of the population. They proposed what they called a “moral reckoning,” whereby Israel would acknowledge that it had committed a “transfer.” This proposal was never accepted.

Today, however, Benjamin Netanyahu does not feel the need to conceal the decision. He has declared it clearly: no villages along the border with Lebanon, an uninhabited buffer zone.

Accounts of the expulsion of residents and the destruction of villages in the Galilee resonate with our own villages in “Bilad Bishara.” At the forefront of the Lebanese villages that shared in the Galilee’s suffering is Houla, the Lebanese village now included in the Israeli decision for destruction.

At that time, Haganah militias executed more than forty men from Houla by firing squad. About a month ago, the newspaper Haaretz published the testimony of a soldier who participated in carrying out the massacre.

Today, Houla has returned to its earliest chapter. Farouk told me that the Israeli army occupied his town, Houla, without its soldiers ever entering it. They positioned themselves on the surrounding heights and deployed drones over the town’s neighborhoods, monitoring any movement. Drones have become an integral component of the Israeli army’s formations and, according to Farouk, they spare it from exposing soldiers to the risk of ambushes.

Farouk also said: “Hezbollah has placed us in the mouth of the beast. It handed Netanyahu the opportunity to devour us.” Many residents of the border villages feel they have lost their towns for an indefinite period. Everyone has begun measuring the distance separating them from the border to determine whether their villages fall within the proposed buffer zone.

Houla has experienced every form of occupation, until it has now reached what can be described as a virtual occupation. The town, whose neighborhoods did not survive the 66-day war except for the western ones facing the town of Shaqra, is now at risk of being incorporated into the “buffer zone.” This is due to its overlap with hills along the Blue Line and the strategic Abbad hill overlooking it, where the Israelis have established a radar surveillance station. What is new today is the explicit and unambiguous declaration of a decision to destroy.

Most of Houla’s eastern and central neighborhoods were already destroyed during the 66-day war. If the new Israeli decision is implemented, what remains of the town will be razed to the ground. This is a fate the town has never faced despite its many ordeals. It is an act of eradication, not only of homes, but of the town’s entire story, dating back to before the first massacre. And if every border town has a story, Houla’s story begins with that massacre.

The new Israeli decision coincides with the publication of a Haaretz investigation that revealed testimony from Israeli officer Shmuel Lahis, who ordered his soldiers to open fire on unarmed men from the town, adding another dimension to Houla’s tragedy today.

According to the Haaretz investigation:
“Lahis was a company commander in the Carmeli Brigade and personally killed dozens of residents of the village of Houla, adjacent to Kibbutz Manara on the Lebanese side of the border. He was the only soldier tried for killing Arabs during the 1948 war, following insistence from the deputy battalion commander Dov Yirmiya that he be held accountable.

Lahis said he acted on orders from his superiors. He was sentenced to one year in prison, but in practice was not incarcerated. Instead, he spent a short period at a military base before being quickly pardoned. He was later appointed Director General of the Jewish Agency.”

Here is another testimony, one that reads almost as a direct reflection from a soldier about the Houla massacre. It comes from soldier Ephraim Huberman, who said:

“First Lieutenant Shmuel Lahis ordered me to kill fifteen men from the Arab residents. He personally selected the young men. He told me to take them to an isolated house in the village. The company commander was carrying a pistol and a Sten submachine gun, while I had a rifle.

When we arrived, I informed them of his order to face the wall. They turned toward it. Lahis then told me to ask them where the weapons were. They said they had none. At that point, he began firing at them with the Sten, unleashing successive bursts. They were screaming and begging, then fell to the ground. The screams and pleas did not affect anyone.”

In his own testimony, Lahis stated that battalion commander Avraham Peled had decided that the company “would go out to avenge its comrades.” Lahis himself turned to the soldier Ephraim Huberman and said: “If you want revenge, there are still Arabs alive. Take them and avenge.”

Throughout the years that have passed since the Houla massacre, the town has built a collective memory with the massacre at its core. Today, Houla faces the possibility of annihilation. And when this possibility reaches the ears of its people, the grandchildren of the first massacre’s victims, it raises questions that go far beyond the fate of their ancestors.