CHEBAA, Lebanon — With ceasefire talks hesitant in gaza and there is no clear way out of the conflict on the border between Lebanon and Israel, the daily exchanges of attacks between Hezbollah and Israeli forces have set fires that are destroying forests and farmlands on both sides of the front line.
The fires, exacerbated by supply shortages and security concerns, have consumed thousands of hectares of land in southern Lebanon and northern Israel, becoming one of the most visible signs of the escalating conflict.
There is an increasingly real possibility of a full-scale war, one that would have catastrophic consequences for people on both sides of the border. Some fear that fires sparked by a larger conflict will also cause irreversible damage to the land.
In Israel, images of fires set by Hezbollah rockets have sparked public outrage and prompted Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, to declare last month that it is “time for the entire “Lebanon burns.”
Much of it was already burning.
The fires in Lebanon began in late April, before the usual fire season, and have devastated largely rural areas along the border.
The Sunni town of Chebaa, hidden in the mountains of Lebanon’s far southeast, has little Hezbollah presence and has not been attacked as frequently as other border villages. But the sounds of shelling still echo regularly, and in the mountains above, ridges once fringed with oak trees are charred and bare.
In a cherry orchard on the outskirts of the city, clusters of fruit hang among golden leaves after a fire caused by an Israeli attack devastated it. Firefighters and locals, some using their T-shirts to put out the flames, prevented the fire from reaching homes and the nearby U.N. peacekeepers center.
“The grass will come back next year, but the trees are gone,” said Moussa Saab, whose family owns the orchard. “We will have to get young trees and plant them, and it takes five or seven years before we can start harvesting.”
Saab refuses to leave with his wife and 8-year-old daughter. They cannot afford to live anywhere else and fear they will not be able to return, as happened to their parents when they left the disputed Chebaa Farms area, captured from Syria by Israel in 1967 and claimed by Lebanon.
The slopes of Mount Meron, Israel’s second-highest mountain and home to an air base, were long covered by native oaks, a dense grove that provided shelter for wild pigs, gazelles, and rare species of flowers and fauna.
Now the green slopes are punctuated by three new burn scars (the largest a few hundred square meters), remains of a Hezbollah explosive drone shot down a few weeks ago. Park rangers fear the devastation has only just begun.
“This year’s damage is ten times worse than this year’s,” said Shai Koren of the northern district of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.
Looking at the slopes of Meron, Koren said he doesn’t expect this forest to survive the summer: “You can take a before and after photo.”
Since the war began, the Israeli military has tracked 5,450 launches into northern Israel. According to the Israeli think tank Alma Research and Education Center, most of the first launches were short-range anti-tank missiles, but Hezbollah’s use of drones has increased.
In Lebanon, officials and human rights groups accuse Israel of shooting white phosphorus incendiary projectiles in residential areas, in addition to regular artillery bombardments and air strikes.
The Israeli army says it uses white phosphorus only as a smokescreen, not to attack populated areas. But even in open areas, projectiles can start fires that spread quickly.
The border clashes began on October 8, a day after the Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and sparked war in Gaza. There, more than 37,000 people have died, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Hezbollah began launching rockets into northern Israel to open what it calls a “support front” for Hamas, to remove Israeli forces from Gaza.
Israel responded and the attacks spread across the border region. In northern Israel, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have died. In Lebanon, more than 450 people have been killed, mostly combatants, but also more than 80 civilians and non-combatants.
The exchanges have intensified since early May, when Israel launched its incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah. That coincided with the start of the hot, dry wildfire season.
Since May, Hezbollah attacks have caused the burning of 8,700 hectares (about 21,500 acres) in northern Israel, according to the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.
Eli Mor of Israel Fire and Rescue said the drones, which are much more precise than rockets, often “come one after the other, the first with a camera and the second shoots.”
“Every launch is a real threat,” Mor added.
In southern Lebanon, about 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) have burned due to Israeli attacks, said George Mitri of the Lands and Natural Resources program at Balamand University. In the previous two years, he said, the total area burned annually in Lebanon was 500 to 600 hectares (1,200 to 1,500 acres).
Safety concerns hamper the response to the crucial first hours of a fire. Firefighting planes are largely grounded for fear of being shot down. In the field, firefighters often cannot move without army escorts.
“If we lose half an hour or an hour, it could take us another day or two to control the fire,” said Mohammad Saadeh, head of the Chebaa civil defense station. The station responded to 27 fires in three weeks last month, almost as many as in a normal year.
Across the border, Moran Arinovsky was a chef and is now deputy commander of the emergency team at Kibbutz Manara. With about 10 other people, he has fought more than 20 fires in the last two months.
Mor, of the Israel Fire and Rescue Corps, said firefighters often have to perform triage.
“Sometimes we have to give up open areas that do not endanger people or cities,” Mor said.
The border areas are largely unpopulated. Israel’s government evacuated a 4-kilometer strip at the start of the war, leaving only soldiers and emergency personnel. There is no formal evacuation order in Lebanon, but large areas have become virtually uninhabitable.
Some 95,000 people in Lebanon and 60,000 people in Israel have been displaced for nine months.
Kibbutz Sde Nehemia did not evacuate, and Efrat Eldan Schechter said some days he watches helplessly as plumes of smoke approach his home.
“There is a psychological impact, the knowledge and feeling that we are alone,” he said, because firefighters cannot access certain areas.
Israel’s cowboys, who graze cattle in the Golan Heights, often band together to fight fires when firefighters cannot arrive quickly.
Schechter noted that news images of flames raging across hillsides have focused more attention on the conflict in his backyard, rather than solely on the war in Gaza. “Only when the fires started will we be in the headlines in Israel,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that as the fighting in Gaza subsides, Israel will send more troops to its northern border. That could open a new front and increase the risk of more destructive fires.
Koren says natural forest fires are a normal part of the forest life cycle and can promote ecodiversity, but conflict fires cannot. “When fires happen over and over again, that’s what creates the damage,” he said.
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Lidman reported from northern Israel.
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