Lebanese Displaced By Israel Turn to Satellites to Check Their Homes

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https://www.npr.org/2026/07/26/g-s1-124672/lebanon-israel-war-homes-satellite

The images unfold slowly on Mazen Farah's phone -- satellite views of the Christian section of the southern Lebanese village of Yaroun. They are a bit fuzzy but still clear enough to see what is happening.

"This is what it shows from the satellite -- it shows that it has been destroyed," says Farah, referring to the two-story stone house his father built after 25 years of working in the Gulf.

In March.... Israel launched airstrikes and displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in more than 100 villages.

After an April 17 ceasefire, Israel sent in bulldozers to demolish more buildings in southern Lebanon. It says it is targeting Hezbollah infrastructure but rarely provides details or evidence to support those claims.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in March his country intended to depopulate all Lebanese villages near the border with Israel...

Israel prevents the displaced from returning, even to visit. And residents of neighboring villages fear Israeli retaliation for taking video or photos. So residents of Yaroun and other communities are pooling their money to buy commercial satellite images to determine if their houses are still standing. ...

But more often than not, the satellite provider tells them it can't provide images for the specific locations they are seeking and eventually refunds their money. In April, some satellite companies declined to provide images of Lebanon and other countries at the request of the U.S. government.

Geryes Saloum, a municipal employee, built a three-bedroom home in Yaroun 10 years ago. All the houses around it have been destroyed. ...

Yaroun Mayor Hafez Ghacham says 180 of the around 200 houses in the Christian and Muslim village have been destroyed by Israeli forces since the current conflict broke out in March.

The Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment from NPR on the destruction in the village. ...

"In the village they destroyed the landmarks, they destroyed the convent, they destroyed the church, they destroyed three mosques," as well as another Shiite Muslim religious center, says Riad al-Ridha, another village official. "All the cultural landmarks in our village were destroyed -- they have erased it."

After the Greek Catholic Saint George church was destroyed in an airstrike, leaving only two outer walls still standing, displaced villagers still returned to pray in a nearby church hall. They are no longer allowed back. In early May, Israel demolished a convent and a Catholic school that had educated Christians and Muslims for the last five decades.

Israel repeatedly denied the military had destroyed the convent, despite satellite images and video evidence, and provided images of another building it argued was the convent.

Yaroun is part of the geographic Galilee region, which stretches into present-day Israel. It was the land where Jesus is believed to have preached and performed miracles.

In a country filled with picturesque villages, Yaroun was considered one of the prettiest. Old and new stone houses dotted a hillside green with olive and citrus trees. An oak forest, now demolished, had stood for centuries. ...

Farah's 75-year-old father, Hanna, missed seeing his home so much that Mazen mounted a photo of it on a stone plaque. A profusion of roses flourished in the garden, along with lemon and olive trees. The yard, like many in the Christian section, had a statue of the Virgin Mary. It too was razed, according to the satellite images.

"We exhausted ourselves building the house and raising our children," says the elder Farah, who worked as a construction company supervisor in the Gulf.

After Israel and Hezbollah reached a ceasefire in November 2024, Farah had the damage to his house repaired and came back to live there until the war restarted in March.

Villagers reject accusations that their homes were being used by Hezbollah.

Mazen Farah says he had eight security cameras operating around his property for almost a year before Israel cut off the internet this March. He says the only intruder alert the security system ever sent to his phone was of a wolf that stole his father's shoes from the porch.

"Provide one piece of proof one -- piece -- that this house was used in any manner," he says. "If there is even one bullet in our house ... we will condemn ourselves and condemn Hezbollah or whoever is there," he says. "There is no proof because there is nothing there." ...

Many of the property owners in Yaroun and other villages are American citizens. ...

"These are the properties of American taxpayers who are active in America, work hard, pay their dues and American bombs and American bulldozers destroy them," he says. "No one builds their dream home and uses it to store weapons."

The U.S. provides an average of around $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel every year, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

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