Key findings are damning. They include:<\/p>\n
5,000 hectares of forest destroyed
\nMassive agricultural losses ($118m direct infrastructure damage; much larger indirect losses)
\nSoil contamination (including high phosphorus levels)
\nAir pollution from repeated strike cycles
\nDestruction of orchards and irrigation systems<\/p>\n
Minister el Zein characterizes this as \u201cintentional ecological destruction\u201d affecting food systems, public health, and long-term viability of southern Lebanon\u2019s rural economy.<\/p>\n
International reporting on the same dossier highlights an estimated total damage burden of over $25 billion when recovery costs and economic losses are included. The figure is a combined total from the assessments by the Lebanese report and the World Bank Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA) 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n This framing aligns with a growing legal discourse around \u201cecocide\u201d as a potential international crime, particularly where environmental damage is widespread, long-term, and strategically embedded in military operations.<\/p>\n It is also aligned with UN reporting on the broader Israel\u2013Lebanon escalation confirming extensive infrastructure destruction, civilian displacement, and strikes affecting residential areas.<\/p>\n As the ecocide of Gaza has gone effectively unpunished by the international community, the Netanyahu government is extending the environmental devastation into Lebanon and the proximate region.<\/p>\n Obliteration doctrine in Gaza<\/p>\n In The Obliteration Doctrine (2025)<\/a>, related commentaries<\/a> and excerpts<\/a>, I define this doctrine as the lethal mix of scorched earth policy, collective punishment and civilian victimization, coupled with massive indiscriminate bombardment and systematic use of artificial intelligence (AI).<\/p>\n The concept is vital because it connects the dots between military strategies, aerial bombardment, lethal deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) and international law, particularly the Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention. As Professor William Schabas, a leading scholar of genocide, notes, \u201cthe Obliteration Doctrine\u201d \u201cadds a new term to the lexicon on genocide, notably in the application of international law and its judicial mechanisms.\u201d<\/p>\n Modern warfare in Gaza is no longer just counterinsurgency but systems-level destruction of the environmental and infrastructural substrate of life\u2014water, soil, agriculture, energy, and urban continuity.<\/p>\n This interpretation overlaps with empirical reporting on Gaza\u2019s environmental collapse:<\/p>\n Satellite analysis shows 38\u201348% of tree cover and farmland destroyed These patterns are described in independent investigations as producing conditions of near-uninhabitability in many parts of Gaza.<\/p>\n Warfare is no longer bounded by battlefield geography. It becomes the restructuring\u2014or \u201cobliteration\u201d\u2014of ecological systems that sustain civilian life.<\/p>\n Ecocide here is not merely destruction of nature, but destruction of life-support systems as purposeful strategy. It is another word for cultural genocide.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lebanon and the Gaza template <\/p>\n The Lebanese report and international commentary suggest strong structural parallels between Gaza and southern Lebanon operations:<\/p>\n Destruction of orchards, especially olive groves (long-lived economic ecosystems) International media reports that Israel is applying a \u201cGaza playbook\u201d in Lebanon<\/a>: expulsion orders, infrastructure targeting, and village-level destruction patterns.<\/p>\n Lebanon is now an adjacent theatre where similar operational logics are extended across a different ecological terrain:<\/p>\n Gaza: dense urban-agricultural mosaic under blockade conditions In both cases, ecological assets are not collateral but structurally embedded in livelihood and resistance capacity \u2013 and that makes them strategic targets under the high-intensity obliteration doctrine.<\/p>\n Consequences beyond Lebanon (and for Israel)<\/p>\n The environmental consequences of such conflict patterns are not geographically contained. Three spillover trajectories are particularly important.<\/p>\n First of all, regional ecological degradation. Soil contamination, wildfire damage, and agricultural collapse are not confined to strike zones. Windborne particulates, water contamination, and long-term soil chemistry changes affect broader cross-border ecosystems.<\/p>\n Second, economic fragility and food-system insecurity. Both Lebanon and Israel depend on regional agricultural stability and water systems. Repeated infrastructure destruction increases food import dependence, rural depopulation and long-term land degradation in border zones.<\/p>\n Third, internal Israeli environmental vulnerability. A less discussed but critical dimension is the simple reality that prolonged warfare conditions can feed back into Israel\u2019s own ecological systems<\/a> vis-\u00e0-vis air quality deterioration from sustained military operations, water system strain under security infrastructure expansion, fire ecology disruption in northern regions. long-term land-use militarization effects.<\/p>\n In this sense, \u201cobliteration\u201d generates mutual ecological degradation across interconnected landscapes. It is an ecological version of MAD \u2013 mutually assured destruction.<\/p>\n Diffusion of doctrine <\/p>\n The key concern is not just localized destruction but doctrinal diffusion. Methods of high-intensity ecological disruption normalize across theaters. And let\u2019s keep in mind that the first test of the obliteration doctrine occurred in Dahiya<\/a>, the predominantly Shia enclave of Beirut<\/a>.<\/p>\n US military legacy in Iraq and Syria already includes extensive infrastructure and ecosystem disruption under counterinsurgency and airpower doctrines. These feature water system destruction in Iraq, oil field fires and atmospheric contamination, and urban siege warfare effects in Raqqa and Mosul via coalition partners.<\/p>\n Such precedents create a shared operational vocabulary where environmental damage is treated as secondary to strategic objectives.<\/p>\n In a potential Israel\u2013Iran escalation scenario, ecological infrastructure becomes strategically central through water scarcity systems in Iran\u2019s arid regions, oil and petrochemical infrastructure vulnerability, and agricultural basins dependent on irrigation networks.<\/p>\n Under the obliteration logic, these become dual-use environments\u2014civilian life-support systems that also acquire military significance.<\/p>\n Finally, there is the regional systemic risk. This implies a shift from territorial warfare to ecosystem-targeted coercion, where water, soil, energy, and agriculture become primary pressure points. Meanwhile, environmental degradation is exploited as a form of strategic leverage and recovery cycles extend beyond political timelines into generational horizons.<\/p>\n From battlefield to biosphere as target<\/p>\n The Lebanese charges, Gaza environmental destruction data, and the doctrine of obliteration converge on a structural transformation in modern conflict.<\/p>\n The object of war is increasingly not just territory or armed forces, but the ecological infrastructure that makes civilian life possible. In this way, destruction of that infrastructure is a prelude to ethnic cleansing and displacement.<\/p>\n For military doctrines, this may be framed as incidental or operational necessity. But for Lebanon and environmental analysts, this constitutes potential ecocide under international law. In view of the obliteration doctrine, it represents a systemic shift in the practice of warfare itself \u2013 from the battlefield to biosphere as target.<\/p>\n What happens in Gaza won\u2019t stay in Gaza. What happens in Lebanon won\u2019t stay in Lebanon. The stage is being set for obliteration ecocides wherever they are seen as effective necessities.<\/p>\n Ecological systems are now central to both the conduct and consequences of war.<\/p>\n Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized strategist of the multipolar world and the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China and America Institute (USA), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https:\/\/www.differencegroup.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lebanon accuses Israel of committing ecocide in country since 2023. It is an extension of Israel\u2019s destruction of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[703,3108,37,1685,93,9042],"class_list":{"0":"post-90539","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lebanon","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-featured","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-israel-palestine","12":"tag-lebanon","13":"tag-pollution"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116492312421955028","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSevere contamination of soil and groundwater
\nLarge-scale destruction of greenhouses and irrigation systems
\nAir pollution from sustained bombardment and debris burning<\/p>\n
\nTargeting of water infrastructure and rural supply systems
\nRepeated airstrikes generating soil and atmospheric contamination
\nDisplacement of civilian populations from ecological productive zones, which can be seen as a form of ethnic cleansing<\/p>\n
\nSouthern Lebanon: dispersed agro-ecological rural system with forested and orchard economies<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ecocide-in-Gaza-and-Lebanon1.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/michael-starkie-UnF992yroQo-unsplash1.jpg\")
Photo by Michael Starkie<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n