During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Christian village of Debel has spent an undue amount of time in the spotlight. In the lead-up to the ceasefire, an image emerged of an Israeli soldier smashing a statue of Jesus in the village with a sledgehammer, sparking international outcry and leading to Israel jailing a pair of soldiers for the incident.
This weekend, Debel was a topic of discussion again, as Israeli military bulldozers were seen in the video destroying solar panels that provided the village’s electricity and supported its water supply. Homes and olive trees and Debel were similarly destroyed by the IDF.
The IDF, for its part, reported that they are investigating the videos, and the destruction being committed by the soldiers in the video does not align with the “values of the IDF and the conduct expected of its soldiers.”
IDF military vehicles seen smashing solar panels in Debel, Lebanon | Image from X
While Israel has been pretty open about systematically destroying municipalities in Lebanon’s far south, nominally for national security reasons, the wanton destruction within Debel, which is in the south but not immediately along the border, is a recurring headache for the IDF as it tries to paint its forcible population transfers and destruction of entire towns as limited and in some way not a violation of international law.
Debel is a uniquely bad fit for Israel’s narrative of fighting Hezbollah, as not only is it a known Christian village but the things the IDF is seen destroying, like statues of Jesus or solar panels, are plainly not military targets and do not speak to Israeli troops behaving responsibly in occupied territory.
This is compounded by the report from Haaretz late last week that Israeli troops have been engaged in ‘routine’ looting of Lebanese homes with relative impunity, undercutting IDF claims to be holding violators of codes of conduct to strict account in a war and occupation that is seeing more and more ugly visuals.
