By Dr Dan Steinbock
Lebanon accuses Israel of committing ecocide in country since 2023. It is an extension of Israel’s destruction of Gaza – and its obliteration doctrine.
Israeli military aggression has “reshaped both the physical and ecological landscape” of southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese report (which does not consider the impacts of Israel’s latest barrage of attacks this spring).
In her foreword, Lebanon’s minister for the environment Tamara el Zein notes: “The scale and intentionality of the damage to forests, agricultural lands, marine ecosystems, water resources, and atmospheric quality constitute what must be recognized as an act of ecocide, with consequences that extend far beyond immediate destruction.”
Obliteration ecocide in Lebanon
Released by the country’s National Council for Scientific Research and presented by the environment ministry, the report accuses Israel of “ecocide” during the 2023–2024 war and subsequent escalations. It frames environmental destruction not as incidental “collateral damage” but as systematic transformation of ecosystems.
Key findings are damning. They include:
- 5,000 hectares of forest destroyed
- Massive agricultural losses ($118m direct infrastructure damage; much larger indirect losses)
- Soil contamination (including high phosphorus levels)
- Air pollution from repeated strike cycles
- Destruction of orchards and irrigation systems
Minister el Zein characterizes this as “intentional ecological destruction” affecting food systems, public health, and long-term viability of southern Lebanon’s rural economy.
International reporting on the same dossier highlights an estimated total damage burden of over $25 billion when recovery costs and economic losses are included. The figure is a combined total from the assessments by the Lebanese report and the World Bank Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA) 2025.
This framing aligns with a growing legal discourse around “ecocide” as a potential international crime, particularly where environmental damage is widespread, long-term, and strategically embedded in military operations.
It is also aligned with UN reporting on the broader Israel–Lebanon escalation confirming extensive infrastructure destruction, civilian displacement, and strikes affecting residential areas.
As the ecocide of Gaza has gone effectively unpunished by the international community, the Netanyahu government is extending the environmental devastation into Lebanon and the proximate region.
Obliteration doctrine in Gaza
In The Obliteration Doctrine (2025), related commentaries and excerpts, I define this doctrine as the lethal mix of scorched earth policy, collective punishment and civilian victimization, coupled with massive indiscriminate bombardment and systematic use of artificial intelligence (AI).
The concept is vital because it connects the dots between military strategies, aerial bombardment, lethal deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) and international law, particularly the Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention. As Professor William Schabas, a leading scholar of genocide, notes, “the Obliteration Doctrine” “adds a new term to the lexicon on genocide, notably in the application of international law and its judicial mechanisms.”
Modern warfare in Gaza is no longer just counterinsurgency but systems-level destruction of the environmental and infrastructural substrate of life—water, soil, agriculture, energy, and urban continuity.
This interpretation overlaps with empirical reporting on Gaza’s environmental collapse:
- Satellite analysis shows 38–48% of tree cover and farmland destroyed
- Severe contamination of soil and groundwater
- Large-scale destruction of greenhouses and irrigation systems
- Air pollution from sustained bombardment and debris burning
These patterns are described in independent investigations as producing conditions of near-uninhabitability in many parts of Gaza.
Warfare is no longer bounded by battlefield geography. It becomes the restructuring—or “obliteration”—of ecological systems that sustain civilian life.
Ecocide here is not merely destruction of nature, but destruction of life-support systems as purposeful strategy. It is another word for cultural genocide.
Lebanon and the Gaza template
The Lebanese report and international commentary suggest strong structural parallels between Gaza and southern Lebanon operations:
- Destruction of orchards, especially olive groves (long-lived economic ecosystems)
- Targeting of water infrastructure and rural supply systems
- Repeated airstrikes generating soil and atmospheric contamination
- Displacement of civilian populations from ecological productive zones, which can be seen as a form of ethnic cleansing
International media reports that Israel is applying a “Gaza playbook” in Lebanon: expulsion orders, infrastructure targeting, and village-level destruction patterns.
Lebanon is now an adjacent theatre where similar operational logics are extended across a different ecological terrain:
- Gaza: dense urban-agricultural mosaic under blockade conditions
- Southern Lebanon: dispersed agro-ecological rural system with forested and orchard economies
In both cases, ecological assets are not collateral but structurally embedded in livelihood and resistance capacity – and that makes them strategic targets under the high-intensity obliteration doctrine.
Consequences beyond Lebanon (and for Israel)
The environmental consequences of such conflict patterns are not geographically contained. Three spillover trajectories are particularly important.
First of all, regional ecological degradation. Soil contamination, wildfire damage, and agricultural collapse are not confined to strike zones. Windborne particulates, water contamination, and long-term soil chemistry changes affect broader cross-border ecosystems.
Second, economic fragility and food-system insecurity. Both Lebanon and Israel depend on regional agricultural stability and water systems. Repeated infrastructure destruction increases food import dependence, rural depopulation and long-term land degradation in border zones.
Third, internal Israeli environmental vulnerability. A less discussed but critical dimension is the simple reality that prolonged warfare conditions can feed back into Israel’s own ecological systems vis-à-vis air quality deterioration from sustained military operations, water system strain under security infrastructure expansion, fire ecology disruption in northern regions. long-term land-use militarization effects.
In this sense, “obliteration” generates mutual ecological degradation across interconnected landscapes. It is an ecological version of MAD – mutually assured destruction.
Diffusion of doctrine
The key concern is not just localized destruction but doctrinal diffusion. Methods of high-intensity ecological disruption normalize across theaters. And let’s keep in mind that the first test of the obliteration doctrine occurred in Dahiya, the predominantly Shia enclave of Beirut.
US military legacy in Iraq and Syria already includes extensive infrastructure and ecosystem disruption under counterinsurgency and airpower doctrines. These feature water system destruction in Iraq, oil field fires and atmospheric contamination, and urban siege warfare effects in Raqqa and Mosul via coalition partners.
Such precedents create a shared operational vocabulary where environmental damage is treated as secondary to strategic objectives.
In a potential Israel–Iran escalation scenario, ecological infrastructure becomes strategically central through water scarcity systems in Iran’s arid regions, oil and petrochemical infrastructure vulnerability, and agricultural basins dependent on irrigation networks.
Under the obliteration logic, these become dual-use environments—civilian life-support systems that also acquire military significance.
Finally, there is the regional systemic risk. This implies a shift from territorial warfare to ecosystem-targeted coercion, where water, soil, energy, and agriculture become primary pressure points. Meanwhile, environmental degradation is exploited as a form of strategic leverage and recovery cycles extend beyond political timelines into generational horizons.
From battlefield to biosphere as target
The Lebanese charges, Gaza environmental destruction data, and the doctrine of obliteration converge on a structural transformation in modern conflict.
The object of war is increasingly not just territory or armed forces, but the ecological infrastructure that makes civilian life possible. In this way, destruction of that infrastructure is a prelude to ethnic cleansing and displacement.
For military doctrines, this may be framed as incidental or operational necessity. But for Lebanon and environmental analysts, this constitutes potential ecocide under international law. In view of the obliteration doctrine, it represents a systemic shift in the practice of warfare itself – from the battlefield to biosphere as target.
What happens in Gaza won’t stay in Gaza. What happens in Lebanon won’t stay in Lebanon. The stage is being set for obliteration ecocides wherever they are seen as effective necessities.
Ecological systems are now central to both the conduct and consequences of war.
This article was originally published on Informed Comment (US) on April 30, 2026
Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized strategist of the multipolar world and the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China and America Institute (USA), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net
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