Adding to concerns that Israel has designs on an open-ended military occupation of southern Lebanon, there are new reports from the Lebanese media that the Israeli Army is building a new network of roads around the south, linking up a growing number of their military outposts in the country.
The roads are mostly described as in the far south of Lebanon, around Israeli military positions within Naqoura and Maroun El-Ras. The exact details aren’t easy to discern because access to those parts of Lebanon are severely limited, and many of the villages in the area have been outright destroyed over the course of the war.
Israeli officials have referred to the occupied part of Lebanon as a “permanent security zone,” and the refusal to set any sort of timetable for withdrawing from Lebanese soil in negotiations also points to the very real fear of locals, that the Israelis just don’t intend to leave at all.
Demolished houses are seen in the town of Al-Mansouri in the Tyre district of southern Lebanon, on September 19, 2026. The structures were demolished by the Israeli army following a ceasefire and framework agreement. (Photo by Fadel Itani/NurPhoto)
Artillery shelling against southern Lebanon continued throughout the weekend, with strikes reported in Mayfadoun and Kfar Chouba, and troops reportedly burned homes in Qantara and carried out “controlled detonations” in Cheeba.
Systematic destruction of municipalities appears to be a primary focus of the IDF in recent weeks, with the construction of roads connecting their own outposts a relatively new feature. Reports of an Israeli strikes against Kfar Tebnit were quickly rejected by the IDF, who insisted instead that the military was simply blowing up “infrastructure” within the village.
Notably, the IDF didn’t clarify what sort of “infrastructure” was detonated, but since they have frequently framed everything from civilian homes to farmlands as “Hezbollah infrastructure” in past statements, that may be a distinction without a difference, from the perspective of Israel’s policy of destroying anything and everything in those towns.
