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In Southern Lebanon, Israel has been seizing territory since a ceasefire with Iran-backed Hezbollah five months ago and now occupies almost 6% of the country, leveling villages and displacing more than 300,000 people. NPR's Jane Arraf and Jawad Rizkallah recently joined U.N. peacekeepers for a rare look at Israeli-controlled territory.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: We're with a Finnish quick reaction force of U.N. peacekeepers. They're checking for roadside bombs to find safe roads they can use in what is now Israeli-occupied territory. The armored vehicles drive slowly on the twisting, damaged path. We're standing up in the turret of one of them, past the Lebanese checkpoint. The first thing we notice is what is gone.
Israel has destroyed a lot of the villages along the border, it says, to maintain its own security, but it's meant that entire villages have been leveled, that the infrastructure has been destroyed. On this road we're traveling on, we can see destroyed homes, even dead trees. The road itself has been heavily damaged by military traffic. It's still a part of Lebanon, but it would be unrecognizable to a lot of Lebanese.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: This is land where Jesus is believed to have walked. We reach the now-destroyed village of Shamaa, where a shrine was dedicated to St. Peter, revered by Muslims and Christians. We can't see it from here, but the Lebanese government says it has been leveled.
JAWAD RIZKALLAH, BYLINE: Shamaa is right up the road.
ARRAF: We're passing a three-story house that looks like a collapsed wedding cake. The curved edges of the roof looks like they've melted, but they've been hit by the impact of the airstrike, and they're falling down the sides. Almost everything in this town looks destroyed - not just destroyed - some of it is burned and blackened.
Most of the destruction here wasn't the fighting with Hezbollah. It's Israeli demolitions after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in June. While the U.N. says Hezbollah largely held its fire, Israel used the lull to demolish what the Israeli defense minister says were more than 20,000 homes.
VILLE JUNNILAINEN: There were people here, more people. As you can see, it's now sort of a ghost town - not a single soul left in here.
ARRAF: That's Staff Sergeant Ville Junnilainen.
JUNNILAINEN: Some of these you can clearly see that were demolished by a bulldozer or explosives since they're all pushed together.
ARRAF: We see new Israeli flags flying and Hebrew road signs. The only Israeli soldiers we see are inside vehicles. This peacekeeping force, the U.N. Interim Force for Lebanon, or UNIFIL, has been here for 48 years, originally to verify the withdrawal of an earlier Israeli occupation. Due to U.S. and Israeli pressure, UNIFIL's mission will end this year. Lieutenant Vili Riuttanen explains what they're doing here.
VILI RIUTTANEN: Well, everything we see in the patrols - and if we see, like, explosives, destructions, artillery fire, everything like that, we are documenting and monitoring towards the UNIFIL HQ and to the LAF.
ARRAF: The LAF are the Lebanese Armed Forces. They're supposed to enter areas Hezbollah has vacated. But beyond Israel's line of control, there're still Israeli attacks. We pause as smoke rises near a village less than a mile away.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRONE FLYING OVERHEAD)
RIUTTANEN: There is a drone right on top of the Al-Mansouri. You can see it in the right. There has been an explosion...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
RIUTTANEN: ...Yeah, where the drone is. There is a smoke rising from there.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Non-English language spoken).
RIUTTANEN: Now, we are photographing the drone and then surrounding area for our report.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Two drones right there up the road in the vicinity of Al-Mansouri. And we took pictures, and we are ready to go.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Stand by. Copy that.
ARRAF: It's not clear, even later, what the drone hit. Israel says its troops will remain indefinitely here in what it calls a buffer zone, which means they will likely be here after U.N. peacekeepers are gone.
Jane Arraf, NPR News, in Israeli-occupied Southern Lebanon.
(SOUNDBITE OF BADBADNOTGOOD AND GHOSTFACE KILLAH SONG, "STREET KNOWLEDGE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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