The destruction unfolding in southern Lebanon should be understood in the wider context of a region where civilian infrastructure has repeatedly become a casualty of war. Gaza has witnessed the devastation of neighbourhoods alongside the destruction of water, healthcare, education, housing and agricultural systems. In the occupied West Bank, demolitions and settler violence have continued to place pressure on Palestinian communities and contribute to displacement.
The danger is that such destruction gradually becomes normalised. A home destroyed here, a water network damaged there, a bridge rendered unusable, farmland cleared or contaminated — each incident can be presented as an isolated military necessity. But when these actions occur across an entire region, their cumulative effect is fundamentally different. They can destroy the infrastructure that allows communities to survive and rebuild.
That is why the international community cannot wait until the fighting ends before asking difficult questions. By then, the physical landscape may already have been transformed and thousands of civilians may have lost the practical possibility of returning to their homes.
Southern Lebanon must not become another case in which the world debates proportionality only after entire communities have been devastated. International law is intended to place limits on warfare precisely because civilian suffering cannot be treated as an unavoidable afterthought.
Security matters. But so do civilian lives, homes, livelihoods and the right of displaced people to return. Protecting one population cannot mean rendering another population’s civilian existence impossible.
Shafaqna Pakistan
pakistan.shafaqna.com
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