Heavy environmental toll of war in southern Lebanon

0:00This message comes from Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mint mobile.com. slash switch. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Today on State of the World, the heavy environmental toll of war in southern Lebanon. You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories. Up close where they're happening, I'm Christine Arismath. The war between Israel and Hezbollah has displaced more than a million Lebanese people and killed thousands. Across southern Lebanon, dozens of villages have been devastated and many areas systemically destroyed by Israeli military operations.

0:52But the impact of the war extends beyond the immediate human toll. A quieter form of destruction is taking place beneath the surface. NPR's Ruth Sherlock and Jawad Rizullah report on the environmental damage caused by the war.

1:11In the village of Jajua, with the mayor, Mohamed Makhidli, we see up close the size of the bombs being used. This is one of the houses. It was a building here. Now there's nothing. It was destroyed completely. Israeli army positions are visible from this hilltop town. When we're there, despite a ceasefire, an airstrike hits a village across from us, sending a plume of smoke and debris into the air. Come on, come on and have a look. Forested hills are scarred from where the bombs have landed. We're arriving at an olive orchard where the ground is scorched and burnt to black. And the problem here is that there's the damage we can see and also the contamination that we can't see.

2:01And that's what experts are warning about, the unseen damages here that could poison this land for generations to come. Shadi Abdullah is the Secretary General of Lebanon's National Council for Scientific Research. His team has been testing the soils of South Lebanon through the successive rounds of this war going back to 2023. We went and sampled around 139 samples all over the country, especially in the south area. They found high levels of heavy metals, chromium, lead from the Israeli airstrikes and from the Hezbollah weapons caches in the tunnels being blown up. He says there's also Israel's use of white phosphorus, an incendiary weapon that burns everything it touches.

2:49It has burned big areas of different cultivations, from forests to olives to citrus trees to bananas. Then there's the glyphosate, a herbicide the World Health Organization's cancer agency calls a probable carcinogen. Israel dropped this weed killer in high concentrations on forests and agricultural lands in the terrain it now occupies as a so-called buffer zone between its border and Hezbollah. When they threw these materials, they were flying with airplanes, and they were spreading all over the area. The Israeli military told NPR it used shells containing white phosphorus, quote, to create smoke screens and not for targeting or causing fires, and that this is legal under international law.

3:37It didn't answer our questions about the use of the herbicide glyphosate. Lebanese Member of Parliament and former chemistry professor and environmental researcher Najat Saliba says the chemicals and heavy metals used in this war can be dangerous for soil health, for wildlife and for humans. If the water is contaminated and the people are going to drink this water, the health consequences are humongous. It could be cancer on the long run. We have seen that in some wars it has caused birth defects for generations to come. The war affects biodiversity too. Biologists who work in South Lebanon say the conflict has devastated wild bee populations and other pollinators.

4:25Otters live in the Latani River where there's been heavy fighting. Colonies of rock hyraxes, small furry mammals, have seen their cliffside homes blown up and reptiles and amphibians die where the bombs fall. Nobody should be allowed to make that much damage to the ecosystem.

4:48Back in the orchard and fields around Jarjua in South Lebanon, we go to an olive grove where trees are blown out. There's a tree here. A drone crashed into the tree. And there's a rocket there. Where we're standing. We've come here with Dr Talal Darwish, a soil scientist who's previously mapped soil health across Lebanon. We are going to take samples from the centre and from the surrounding of the attack. With a new clean aluminium spade, he scrapes inside the crater of an airstrike and takes soil samples. This region can feel like the Garden of Eden. It's rich with fig and pomegranate, almond and olive trees.

5:31but Darwish warns of the potential dangers now in the land.

5:40He tells a local farmer, Zainab Shami, that salad and other leafy greens can absorb all the contaminants.

5:53Shami nods.

6:00She and her family have lost their crops through the war. They feared the bombs. And this year, when the mulberries ripened on their trees, they let them fall, afraid to eat the fruit. Ruth Sherlock, NPR News, Jarjua in South Lebanon.

6:20That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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