The sky over southern Lebanon no longer carries the promise of rain. It carries the low mechanical hum of drones and the crack of air strikes that arrive without warning. In villages such as al-Ain and Aitou, families wake to rubble where bedrooms once stood. Recent Israeli strikes in eastern Lebanon killed at least 10 people, deepening fears that the ceasefire is collapsing.

According to the World Health Organisation, more than 4,000 people in Lebanon have been killed and 17,000 injured since the escalation in October 2023, with trauma services now overwhelmed by what it calls ‘soaring needs’ for rehabilitation and care. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that more than 600,000 people – roughly one in ten Lebanese – have been displaced during the fighting. Even after the November 2024 ceasefire, some 80,000 remain unable to return home.

This is not a frozen conflict. It is a slow-burning emergency unfolding beneath diplomatic language. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and independent experts have warned that Israeli strikes have continued ‘almost daily’ despite the ceasefire, with at least 108 civilians reportedly killed after the truce took effect. Amnesty International has documented air strikes in late 2024 that killed at least 49 civilians in four separate incidents, raising concerns of war crimes and failures to respect the principles of distinction and proportionality under international humanitarian law.

Lebanon’s tragedy is not occurring in a vacuum. It is a country already hollowed out by economic collapse. Lebanon’s economic collapse ranks among the world’s worst since the 19th century, with GDP shrinking nearly 40 per cent since 2019. UNDP estimates that more than 80 per cent of the population now lives in multidimensional poverty following the financial meltdown that began in 2019. The Lebanese pound has lost over 95 per cent of its value. Public services have withered. Electricity is rationed to hours a day.

READ: Death toll from Israeli strike on eastern Lebanon rises to 10, over 30 injured

Three-quarters of the skilled workforce is estimated to have emigrated, draining hospitals, universities and businesses of talent precisely when reconstruction demands it most. Into this fragility has come renewed war.

Israel regards Hezbollah as an existential threat on its northern border, pointing to an arsenal of rockets and precision-guided munitions amassed since 2006. Reuters has reported Israeli officials describing an uncompromising objective: degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities before they can be used against Israeli cities. Carnegie Endowment analysts warn that miscalculation could tip the current ‘managed escalation’ into full-scale war.

Hezbollah, for its part, frames its actions as resistance, embedding itself within Lebanon’s political and social fabric while maintaining an armed wing more powerful than the Lebanese state itself. Brookings has described the group as a ‘state within a state’, simultaneously a political actor and militia.

Lebanon’s tragedy is not occurring in a vacuum. It is a country already hollowed out by economic collapse. Lebanon’s economic collapse ranks among the world’s worst since the 19th century, with GDP shrinking nearly 40 per cent since 2019.

Between these hardened narratives lie civilians who are neither combatants nor strategists. International humanitarian law is not ambiguous. The principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution are designed precisely for asymmetrical conflicts where armed groups operate in civilian areas. The Geneva Conventions do not dissolve because the battlefield is complex. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have argued that attacks on homes, medical facilities and civilian infrastructure demand an independent investigation.

The UN has called for accountability for violations by all parties. Yet no robust international inquiry specific to Lebanon has materialised.

The International Criminal Court remains absent. The message absorbed across the region is that enforcement of the law depends less on the gravity of harm than on the geopolitics of the perpetrator. The erosion of trust is profound. In Bosnia, it took genocide at Srebrenica before decisive intervention and tribunals followed. In Yemen, Human Rights Watch has documented violations by all sides with little accountability. In Gaza, debates over proportionality have become ritualised while destruction repeats. Lebanon risks becoming another chapter in this anthology of selective outrage.

The humanitarian picture is stark. The Tahrir Institute reports that more than 16,000 buildings in southern Lebanon have been damaged or destroyed. The World Bank has estimated 11 billion dollars in infrastructure losses. UNICEF’s 2025 ‘Shattered Childhoods’ assessment found that 72 per cent of caregivers reported children experiencing anxiety, and 62 per cent reported symptoms of depression. Schools double as shelters. Clinics operate without adequate supplies. Environmental monitors from CEOBS have warned of extensive ecological damage, including burned forests and contaminated farmland, compounding long-term food insecurity.

Such figures are not merely statistics. They represent a generational wound. Trauma on this scale reshapes politics and identity. Children who grow up under drones internalise a worldview in which law feels abstract and survival immediate. In a country where memories of civil war remain vivid, the repetition of collective fear corrodes already fragile social cohesion.

For global policymakers, Lebanon is not a distant crisis. It is a moral audit. What remains of the rules-based order when its rules are invoked forcefully in some wars and whispered in others?

The United Nations Secretary-General has said, time and again, that international humanitarian law is not optional — that even wars have limits, that civilians must never be targets, that accountability is not a political preference but a legal obligation. Those words now echo over a landscape where homes have been reduced to dust and ceasefires exist more on paper than in lived reality.

The credibility of the international system is not destroyed in a dramatic collapse. It erodes quietly — in delayed investigations, in carefully balanced statements, in the reluctance to confront powerful actors. Each unexamined air strike, each civilian death absorbed into diplomatic routine, weakens the promise made after the catastrophes of the twentieth century: never again would the law bend according to convenience.

READ: Lebanese parliament speaker calls for pressure on Israel to halt ceasefire violations

Lebanon tests that promise. If international law applies unevenly, it ceases to be universal. If accountability depends on alliances, it ceases to deter. And if the protection of civilians becomes negotiable, the moral foundation of global order begins to fracture. Across Europe, leaders speak of defending human rights as a pillar of peace. Across Africa, Latin America and Asia, governments call for a fairer, more balanced multilateralism. These aspirations converge on a simple truth: the legitimacy of the system depends on consistency. Not perfection — but consistency.

A credible path forward demands courage, not choreography: an independent international investigation into violations by all parties so that truth is preserved and impunity does not harden into precedent; a sustained humanitarian surge that treats trauma care, education, and the rebuilding of shattered clinics and homes as strategic imperatives rather than charitable afterthoughts for the 600,000 displaced; and serious diplomatic resolve to stabilise the Israel–Lebanon frontier in line with UN resolutions, transforming ceasefire language from fragile ink on paper into lived reality on the ground.

Without accountability, healing, and enforceable de-escalation, the violence will not simply pause — it will wait.

Finally, Lebanon’s internal reform cannot be postponed indefinitely. Economic restructuring, anti-corruption measures and reinforcement of state institutions are essential if sovereignty is to mean more than rhetoric. External actors can assist, but the impetus must be Lebanese.

Between these hardened narratives lie civilians who are neither combatants nor strategists. International humanitarian law is not ambiguous. The principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution are designed precisely for asymmetrical conflicts where armed groups operate in civilian areas.

The Middle East is already navigating climate stress, youth unemployment and strategic rivalry. A permanently destabilised Lebanon would add another fault line to a region strained to breaking point. Refugee flows towards Europe would intensify. Markets would jitter at every cross-border exchange. Extremist narratives would find fertile ground in despair.

The sky over Lebanon does not have to keep falling. But gravity will not reverse itself. It requires political will to treat civilian life as inviolable rather than incidental. Lebanon’s suffering is a warning. When international law erodes in one corner of the world, its credibility diminishes everywhere. The choice confronting the global community is not simply about one border conflict. It is about whether the promise embedded in decades of treaties and conventions retains meaning.

If the world looks away again, the silence will echo far beyond Lebanon’s hills. If it responds with principle and persistence, a wounded country may yet find space to breathe – and the rules meant to protect the vulnerable might regain their force.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

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