Civil Records for Hundreds of Thousands of Lebanese Could Be Wiped Out By Israel's Total War

[Celerity]

With whole towns leveled by Israel, a quarter million Lebanese people may have lost the proof of who they are and what they own.

https://theintercept.com/2026/06/14/lebanon-civil-records-israe/


A general view shows homes and structures destroyed by the Israeli army in the southern Lebanese village of Beit Lif, in the Bint Jbeil district, on April 22, 2026. Photo: Kawnat Haju/AFP via Getty Images

Israel’s campaign to raze huge swaths of southern Lebanon may destroy not only people’s homes, but also their ability to even show they owned the properties, according to locals and officials from the Lebanese government — potentially leaving as many as a quarter million Lebanese unable to prove that they have property or homes at all. Aerial imagery from Bint Jbeil, the seat of a municipality by the same name, shows what residents describe as burn marks at sites where official records were kept: civil registration files, land deeds, the paper infrastructure of a city’s legal existence.

With the notary gone, civil administration buildings bulldozed, and widespread destruction of homes that contained important personal documents, residents of the 36 villages of the Bint Jbeil district fear Israel’s total war has meant the destruction of all their records could permanently untether them from the homes they left behind when they fled under Israel’s evacuation orders. That could make reconstruction after the war a nightmare. Bint Jbeil is Lebanon’s most southwestern district and the site of an Israeli campaign to evacuate entire populations before flattening their villages.

Some Lebanese even see it as an intentional tactic, part of Israel’s plan to empty out southern Lebanon and establish a buffer zone south of the Litani River Israeli leaders hope will put northern Israel out of the reach of Hezbollah’s rockets. A mukhtar, or local official, confirmed to The Intercept that civil registry records had been digitized up to 2020 only, which offers limited reassurance. Much, however, remains unaccounted for. There are the last six years of records along with countless others that were not officially registered thanks to Lebanon’s notoriously chaotic bureaucracies and lax enforcement of registration rules, which are at times flouted to avoid paying taxes.


At the center of the crisis is Bint Jbeil’s Grand Serail, the old administrative building that houses land deeds for thousands of families across more than 20 villages in the district. Since Israeli forces moved in, Lebanese authorities have not been able to reach it, despite making efforts through the International Committee of the Red Cross with requests to the so-called Mechanism Committee that administers the Israeli-Lebanese ceasefire agreement. “The Ministry of Interior has not yet been able to obtain the civil registry records for Bint Jbeil district, because the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) has not received approval from the Mechanism Committee, which includes Israel, to enter the area, despite submitting a request to do so, in order to retrieve the records and transfer them to the Interior Ministry in Beirut,” a ministry spokesperson told The Intercept.

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[Melon]

1. Israel and the US attacked Iran

The Houthis made the choice to attack Israel because they are a terrorist proxy of Iran.

They chose to attack and aren’t happy with the response. The Israelis allowed civilians to evacuate. The point of this type of campaign is to make the harboring of Rebels in the villages not worth the risk of the response.