Lubnan Baalbaki, the conductor of the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra, posted on his Facebook page a photo of his family’s house in the border town of Odaisseh. Alongside the photo, he shared a video distributed by the Israeli army, showing the massive explosion that destroyed every home in Odaisseh, including the Baalbaki family’s home. Lubnan wrote, “Here was the house we grew up in, built by our parents with their dreams and great love… and here we buried our parents… No, it was not a home sacrificed for anyone but this dream of a homeland… Yes, we know who is responsible and know their crimes.”

Prior to Lubnan’s post, his friend Nada Mohammed shared how the same explosion destroyed her grandmother’s grave, a place she would always visit first upon arriving in Odaisseh from Britain. This, of course, was in addition to her parents’ home, which was likely obliterated by the 400 tons of explosives the occupation army admitted planting in Odaisseh.

As we reflect on homes facing this same fate, we realize that generations of houses are ending as piles of rubble. Our memories hold more than just the homes passed down from our parents. In the last 20 years, thousands of southerners have built homes, driven by the momentum following the Israeli withdrawal in 2000 and the post-2006 war period. These two dates, along with those of earlier conflicts, served as intervals between wars and waves of rebuilding. But it seems the 2024 war won’t be another of those intervals; the scale of tragedy this time demands a different kind of imagination to prepare for what awaits us after the war.

We, the people of the “frontline villages,” mourn thousands of homes lost — homes that hold not only memories and dreams but also our stories and ties to our villages. These homes embody our connections to those who left between wars, between different times, and across generations. The late educator Jaafar Al-Amin’s house in Shaqra is not only his son Akram’s inheritance; it is a house filled with Mr. Jaafar’s stories with generations of students from the 1950s and 1960s, when he led educational missions from Nabatiyeh to Shaqra. Just days ago, Akram posted a photo of this home, now destroyed.

The objective, then, is not merely to “uproot Hezbollah”; Hezbollah can withdraw north of the Litani River and later reestablish its presence southward. What’s being uprooted today is the soul of the place, the time during which these villages took shape, and the lives of people who built their homes, mosques, schools, and entire lives here.

The surviving houses are not wholly intact, and the war is not yet over. These houses reside in our hearts, as homes do.

The five kilometers that the occupation claims it plans to turn into an uninhabitable, lifeless zone are much more than mere houses to be destroyed. They are something far greater and are not just emotional memories that can be reduced to mere recollections. The genocidal decision to erase these villages and turn them into an empty buffer zone, if the occupation is allowed to execute it, reflects an unprecedented level of madness and intentions not previously tested in reality. The claim that the neighboring Galilee villages were depopulated during the initial “transfer” of 1948 does not make the erasure of Lebanon’s frontline villages realistic. In the Galilee, settlers replaced the uprooted, while Netanyahu’s project for the “frontline villages” in Lebanon envisions a buffer zone devoid of life.

Israel wields immense destructive power, but it lacks realism. Destruction serves no purpose other than destruction itself, functioning as pure revenge — a continuous cycle of generating grievances.

Once the mission is complete, the lack of realism becomes apparent.

This is not optimism about the inevitable failure of the mission; the destruction and death it has caused will cast a dark shadow, despite being populated by our stories of homes destroyed by the occupation. Israel has been tested in these villages for decades. The border town of Hanin was wiped from the map in 1978, but its people returned in 2000, and now it faces a second annihilation. Houla, Odaisseh’s neighbor and counterpart in destruction, began its story with the massacre of 1948, now continued with dozens of casualties and hundreds of destroyed homes. In Shaqra, my hometown, dozens of houses destroyed by Israeli commandos in the 1980s were rebuilt, only to face an uncertain fate today — and some are confirmed to have been destroyed again.

Meanwhile, we continue tracing the uncertain fate of targeted homes through Google Maps, which provides an imprecise idea of houses not completely destroyed, as the satellite images don’t reveal wall damage. The surviving houses are not wholly intact, and the war is not yet over. These houses reside in our hearts, as homes do.