Friday, October 16, 2026
Trump’s Attempt to Deport Ilhan Omar Is Another Leap Toward the Abyss
Trump’s Attempt to Deport Ilhan Omar Is Another Leap Toward the Abyss
“The Trump administration is investigating Ilhan Omar’s citizenship to enable deportation, targeting her ethnicity and politics. Homeland Security seized devices; the case involves her father’s application. This signals provisional status for foreign-born citizens and follows prior deportations.
In his final speech as president, Ronald Reagan emphasized the essential role of immigration in American greatness. “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world,” he said. Reagan cited a letter he’d received about how one can’t simply move to France and become a Frenchman or move to Japan and become Japanese. “But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American,” he said.
Donald Trump, who launched his political career with lies about Barack Obama’s birthplace, is devoted to destroying this ideal. For Trump and his movement, real Americans are defined by race and ancestry. The administration’s war on birthright citizenship stems from that belief. It’s the reason Trump, who accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood” of our country, has limited refugee resettlement almost exclusively to white South Africans. JD Vance channeled the same idea last year when, attacking the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, he said, “I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong.”
And now the Trump administration is attempting to strip Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia, of her citizenship so as to deport her. This is more than just another persecution of one of Trump’s political enemies. Rather, his government is tacitly declaring the citizenship of all foreign-born people provisional, their Americanness something that can be revoked. It’s a frontal attack on the idea of constitutional equality. As Hannah Arendt wrote — a quote that the writer John Ganz reminded me of — “One is almost tempted to measure the degree of totalitarian infection by the extent to which the concerned governments use their sovereign right of denationalization.”
This week, as you might have read by now, around 20 Homeland Security agents raided Omar’s home in Washington, seizing her phone and computers, among other things. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the investigation is aimed at denaturalizing her, a prelude to deporting her. In its attempt to cast out Omar, the administration is looking not just at her own actions, but also at those of her father, who applied for citizenship when she was a teenager. Apparently, the case hinges on whether she was 18 rather than 17 at the time.
I have no idea whether Omar or her father (who died in 2020) did anything wrong, but the details of her immigration paperwork are somewhat beside the point. What matters is that Trump targeted Omar for her politics and, even more, her ethnicity. Just months into her first term, he was calling for her expulsion from America, his rally crowds lustily chanting, “Send her back!” In a cabinet meeting last year, he called Omar “garbage” and attacked Somalis more broadly, saying, “I don’t want them in our country.” As his political fortunes have waned, his rhetoric about Somalis has grown increasingly fascistic. On Truth Social last week, he wrote that the “once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants.” As if trying to incite a pogrom, he urged: “Fight back Minnesota, fight back! If you need, the Federal Government will come to your rescue.”
Under these circumstances, it would be willfully credulous to assume the administration’s good faith in the Omar investigation. Even if the government ultimately fails to take away her citizenship, as it’s failed in most of its other attempts at political vengeance, it’s sending a message to every foreign-born American. Oppose Trump too loudly, and the government will comb through your paperwork — including paperwork filled out by your parents — for errors that could upend your life.
There is an obvious progression here. This regime has already tried to deport green card holders like Mahmoud Khalil for their political speech. It’s turned hundreds of thousands of Haitians — the group Trump demonized as pet-eating savages — into illegal immigrants overnight by ending their temporary protected status. Now it’s escalated to naturalized citizens. Omar probably won’t be the last. Though Trump has been charmed by New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, other Republicans have called for his deportation. Representative Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican, has asked the Justice Department to review Mamdani’s naturalization documents. In the Trumpian schema, some Americans are here by right, and some only on sufferance.
It’s chastening to think back to 2019, when Trump first tweeted that a group of progressive Democratic congresswomen, presumably including Omar, should go back to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” At the time, his bigotry was considered shocking. Four Republicans, as well as the Republican-turned-independent Justin Amash, joined Democrats in passing a House resolution condemning his words. Even Representative Elise Stefanik, who’d go on to become one of Trump’s most slavish lackeys, felt the need to denounce him. “While I strongly disagree with the tactics, policies and rhetoric of the far-left socialist ‘Squad,’ the president’s tweets were inappropriate, denigrating and wrong,” she said.
Now that Trump is acting on his gross rhetoric, the response has been more muted; by mass-producing outrages, the administration has numbed America’s ability to recognize their individual gravity. But it’s worth pausing to recognize that, with Trump’s attempt to banish Omar, we’ve crossed yet another once-unthinkable line.
For now, Trump’s power may be waning as his popularity collapses, but if the Republican Party continues on its current course, the next Republican president is likely to begin where he left off. The logic of this brand of politics moves inexorably toward atrocity.
Here’s Arendt again: “Mass cancellation of naturalizations, such as the one introduced by Nazi Germany in 1933 against all naturalized Germans of Jewish origin, usually preceded denationalization of citizens by birth in similar categories.” If there’s one lesson of the last decade, it’s never believe it can’t happen here.
Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment.“
How Claims of Widespread Noncitizen Voting Fall Apart
How Claims of Widespread Noncitizen Voting Fall Apart
Iowa’s 2,176 suspected noncitizens shrank to 277; one faces active charges. Federal charges since 2025 total 131, with 25 guilty or pleaded guilty. Research shows rare cases; claims of mass voting lack support.
In 2024, Iowa officials said they had found 2,176 suspected noncitizens on their voter rolls.
In 2024, Iowa officials said they had found 2,176 suspected noncitizens on their voter rolls.
Months later, officials revised the claim to 277 people after comparing their list to a federal database.
Since then, 11 people who are not citizens have been charged with illegally registering and voting in a recent election in Iowa.
Just one of them faces active charges for voting in the 2024 general election.
If that person is convicted, he would represent just one noncitizen vote in Iowa in 2024.
One vote in a sea of more than 1.6 million ballots cast.
One suspected
noncitizen voter
in Iowa
Noncitizen voting
cases in Iowa
Case suspended - 1
Guilty - 3
Acquitted - 3
1,000 ballots
While President Trump has claimed that noncitizens voted en masse and even tipped the scales in recent elections, research from partisan and nonpartisan groups alike has shown that instances of noncitizen voting are so rare that they have never been significant enough to change the outcome of an election.
Investigations into noncitizen voting have historically followed a pattern. First, state or federal election officials report that hundreds or thousands of noncitizens may be on their voter lists. After further review, the figures often shrink to dozens. Each inquiry ends with few, if any, prosecutions.
“We keep finding the same story over and over and over again, which is very, very small numbers,” said Christopher Mann, the research director at the Center for Election Innovation and Research in Washington, which tracks reports of ineligible voting.
But just how small are those numbers?
The center tracks public reports of suspected noncitizen registration and voting made by election officials and prosecutors. The New York Times reviewed those reports and examined additional court records dating back to 2020. Nowhere did federal and state charges for noncitizen voting exceed 25 people in a state in a recent election, The Times found.
Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas were among the states with the most charges for noncitizen voting in the 2024 election.
Here’s how many people federal and state officials have charged with illegally voting as noncitizens in the 2024 general election.
So far, 10 people have pleaded guilty or been convicted, and one person in Florida was acquitted.
All together, these votes would represent no more than 0.0002 percent of the ballots cast in each state.
Election officials regularly check their voter lists for ineligible voters and either remove them or refer them to prosecutors. But Trump administration officials have said that the government will find more of these cases if it simply looks harder, and they have launched a robust campaign to root out voter fraud. In recent weeks, federal prosecutors have brought charges against dozens of people.
“We’re just getting started,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in late September.
The Department of Homeland Security has assigned hundreds of agents to hunt for noncitizens on state voting lists, and it has begun investigating nonprofits it says may be recruiting noncitizens to vote. Justice Department leaders have threatened state election officials with criminal charges if noncitizens cast ballots in their states.
Even so, the administration’s claims of large-scale voter fraud have not stood up to scrutiny. Election officials and experts say federal investigators have relied on matching names from voter lists to a massive federal database, when both sources may be incomplete or out of date.
People who recently became naturalized citizens, for example, can be flagged as false positives.
In one instance, D.H.S. officials told Nevada this summer that they had found nearly 16,000 noncitizens registered to vote in the state. When the agency later sent a list of 185 names, state election officials said that all were citizens.
D.H.S. also said it had found more than 2,500 noncitizen voters in Georgia. The state reviewed the list and said that no more than 150 had voted.
Prosecutions under the effort have also been scarce. A review of federal court records shows that, since 2025, the Trump administration has charged 131 people with illegally registering or voting as a noncitizen.
Most of these cases are ongoing, but 25 people have been found guilty or pleaded guilty. Two people have been acquitted, and charges were dropped or cases were dismissed for four other individuals.
Federal criminal charges for noncitizen voting
The chart shows prosecutions in each state since President Trump returned to office.
Note: Data is as of Oct. 15 and does not include administrative arrests or charges by state or local prosecutors.
The federal government has traditionally been more reliant on states to handle voter fraud. During the Biden administration, court records show, federal prosecutors charged 13 people.
Research shows that earlier convictions for noncitizen voter fraud were exceedingly rare. The Heritage Foundation identified 71 criminal convictionsnationwide for noncitizen voting between 2000 and 2025.
It is possible that a larger number of noncitizens may register to vote or cast a ballot and never be prosecuted for voter fraud. State election officials sometimes remove potential noncitizens from voter lists without bringing charges against them. Prosecutors typically have to prove that people knowingly registered or voted to win a conviction.
But noncitizens often appear on voter rolls because of mistakes rather than an intention to commit fraud, researchers and voting rights advocates say.
For example, New Jersey improperly added as many as 6,600 noncitizens to its voter lists in 2023 and 2024 because of a motor vehicle department software error that registered people to vote when they applied for a driver’s license or state identification card.
State officials said that approximately 340 of those people had cast ballots, one of the larger confirmed instances of noncitizen voting, though it represents just a tiny share of the state’s voting public.
It’s also just a fraction of the number of noncitizen voters that the Department of Homeland Security claimed to have found in New Jersey — 35,152.“
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Monday, October 12, 2026
Federal agents search Ilhan Omar’s home as part of criminal investigation
Federal agents search Ilhan Omar’s home as part of criminal investigation
“Federal agents searched Ilhan Omar’s home under a Department of Justice warrant as part of a criminal investigation. Trump and allies have alleged immigration fraud tied to her father’s paperwork; Omar denies the claims.
Trump and key allies have accused Omar of immigration fraud, and have called to expel her from the country
Federal agents searched Representative Ilhan Omar’s home Monday morning as part of a criminal investigation, according to the department of justice andreports in the Associated Press and Fox News.
A video posted by Fox showed what appeared to be law enforcement in HSI jackets at what Fox News said was Omar’s Washington DC residence.
“Today in the Washington DC, area, Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice. This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation,” a DoJ spokesperson told the Guardian.
It was unclear what the nature of the warrant was. Omar’s office did not respond to a request for comment, and the White House and department of homeland security referred comment to DoJ. Citing two unnamed sources “close to the investigation,” Fox News reported that the search was related to a criminal fraud investigation concerning Omar’s immigration paperwork, which her late father filled out when she was a child.
Donald Trump and key allies have accused Omar of fraud related to her family’s immigration history, fantasizing openly about denaturalizing her and expelling her from the country.
The congresswoman has consistently denied the accusations, though Trump has repeatedly made them national news with gratuitous attacks against Omar, who along with Representative Rashida Tlaib became the United States’s first Muslim congresswoman in 2019.
But even amid a presidency known for political and legal retribution against his critics, the search of Omar’s DC home just three weeks before a crucial midterm election day will surely lead to new accusations that Trump was using the government for his own political ends.
Administration officials, and the president himself, have long hinted at a federal investigation into Omar. “Let’s see what happens,” Trump said at a rally on Saturday after attacking Omar by name, adding that Vice-President JD Vance “and our people are looking at it very strongly”.
It was just the latest in months of talk about investigating Omar. Trump in December accused her of having “married her brother” and said she “should be thrown the hell out of our country”, a reference to a years-old but unsubstantiated claim that Omar sought to help her ex-husband – who they allege is really her brother – obtain immigration papers via a sham marriage.
Days later, his “border czar” Tom Homan said: “We’re pulling the records now,” referring to Omar, and said a fraud investigator in Homeland Security Investigations, the ICE division that historically has been tasked with investigative work, would look into the matter.
In March , Vance told rightwing media personality Benny Johnson: “We actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud” and that he had recently spoken to top Trump aide Stephen Miller about “what the remedies are”. Homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin told Johnson last month that there was an ongoing investigation and “something’s going to happen”.
“We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States,” Mullin said. “We know he lives now in London. We feel that there may be more to this, the whole family migration, and possibly some illegal activity for them to come to the United States to begin with. But all of us, we’re investigating.”
Soon after, Homan said he could not “comment on an ongoing criminal investigation.
“We’ll let HSI, Homeland Security Investigations continue to do their investigation,” he added.
Omar has for years denied unsubstantiated rumors from Trump and others about herself and her family, including the accusation that her ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, is in fact her brother, and that the marriage was part of an effort to earn him immigration status. Marriage fraud is a felony, though it has a five-year statute of limitations. Omar and Elmi formally divorced in 2017 after separating in a religious divorce years earlier.
The New York Post last month also quoted an unnamed “top immigration official” who said “the Trump administration could initiate a denaturalization process” against Omar if there is sufficient evidence that she or her father lied on immigration applications. The story noted accusations that Omar was older than her recorded age of 17 when she was naturalized, which could be relevant because she received citizenship via her parents. The report also raised questions about Omar’s father, who reportedly claimed to be an educator, though his obituary later described a military career.
As the most prominent Somali-American in the United States, Omar has faced years of racist attacks from the president and his supporters.
At his rally Saturday, Trump said of Somalia: “All they have is crime and squalor” and suggested that “our” US constitution did not belong to Omar. Two days earlier, he had written that Minnesota “is being taken over by Somali Immigrants”, even though the vast majority of Somali-Americans in the state are US citizens.
“The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing,” Trump wrote, urging supporters in the state to “fight back!”
Somali-Americans, especially, have borne relentless insult from the White House in Trump’s second term. In December, the president referred to them as “garbage” who “come from hell, and they complain, and do nothing but bitch”.
“Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” he added.“
Israel’s Destruction of Southern Lebanon Intensified After the Cease-Fire
Israel’s Destruction of Southern Lebanon Intensified After the Cease-Fire
“Since the April cease-fire, Israel has leveled 48 of 60 villages in occupied southern Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah infrastructure and creating a security zone. Wildfires burned 16,500 acres, and displacement of Shiite residents has altered demographics.
Today, 48 of the roughly 60 villages and towns within Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon are mostly leveled, the Times analysis shows.
The scale of Israel’s systematic demolition has fueled fears among many Lebanese that Israel is seeking to permanently empty the territory of its population.
Israeli officials say they have razed villages both to eliminate Hezbollah military facilities, like tunnels and weapons depots, and to prevent Hezbollah from returning to the border area. The Lebanese territory that the Israeli military has seized and occupied since fighting resumed in March extends as far as eight miles north of the Israeli border.
South of this village, destruction stretches for 6 miles.
Much of the area is now uninhabitable.
At the same time, Israeli forces built new infrastructure, suggesting plans for a prolonged military presence.
Since the April cease-fire, about 16,500 acres across this swath of southern Lebanon were burned, including agricultural land, by wildfires that often coincided with Israeli military operations in the area. The fires, which claimed about 11 percent of the territory under Israeli occupation, spread rapidly, with Lebanese firefighters unable to enter the Israeli-occupied zone to extinguish them.
Note: Shows fires that occurred between April 16 and Sept. 7. Small agricultural and urban fires are not included in the data. Source: European Forest Fire Information System.
The destruction has reshaped not only the physical landscape but also the religious demographics of southern Lebanon.
Nearly all the villages that are no longer inhabitable were predominantly home to Shiite Muslims, the sect from which Hezbollah draws most of its support. Residents of those villages left during the fighting as Israel issued evacuation warnings for much of southern Lebanon and have not been able to return since Israel declared the area a “security zone.”
The minority of villages that escaped the worst of the damage were home predominantly to Christians, Druse and Sunni Muslims. Many of those residents were assured by the Israeli military that their villages would not be targeted during the war and have been able to remain in their homes, even though they are now within the occupied zone.
The distinction is clear in the separate fates of Beit Lif and Debl, only two miles apart. The mostly Shiite town of Beit Lif has been nearly completely flattened since the cease-fire, while the Christian town of Debl is largely still standing.
Source: Satellite image via Airbus, captured on Aug. 26.
The scale of the destruction in southern Lebanon surpasses that caused by the country’s 15-year civil war, several foreign invasions and two previous wars between Israel and Hezbollah, experts say.
“The level of violence, the scale and tools of destruction, is unlike anything we’ve seen in the past,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “Every bit of infrastructure is being destroyed, as if to prevent the population from returning anytime soon even if Israel withdraws.”
Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, has said his country’s approach to southern Lebanon is modeled on tactics used in Gaza, where the Israeli military reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble.
“All houses in villages near the Lebanese border will be destroyed, in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza, in order to permanently remove the threats near the border to northern residents,” he said in March.
The Times analyzed satellite imagery before and after the cease-fire, verified photos and videos from the areas under Israeli occupation, and spoke to Lebanese political and military officials, local leaders, civil defense members, legal experts, rights groups and conflict researchers. The Times classified towns as mostly destroyed if the town center was almost entirely flattened, often along with the surrounding area.
The Israel Defense Forces have said the deliberate destruction was part of an effort to dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure near the Lebanon-Israel border and ensure the safety of communities in northern Israel. Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets, drones and missiles at northern Israel since war first broke out in 2023, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis from the north. Israeli officials have said their forces will continue to occupy what they call a “security zone” in southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed.
In response to questions from the Times, the Israeli military’s media office said there is no directive to “to carry out widespread damage to structures or to demolish villages.”
“The I.D.F. operates in the security zone in southern Lebanon with the aim of removing threats posed by the Hezbollah terrorist organization to the residents of Israel and to I.D.F. troops. It does so in accordance with international law, the directives of the political echelon, and the understandings reached between Israel and Lebanon,” the military’s media office said in a statement.
The war reignited in early March when the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah fired on Israel in solidarity with Tehran soon after the United States and Israel attacked Iran.
The war in Lebanon has since killed more than 4,300 Lebanese, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and Hezbollah militants, and at least 43 Israelis.
Widespread Ruin
Since the cease-fire was announced, Israeli forces have carried out hundreds of controlled demolitions in villages under their control, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a conflict-monitoring organization. Videos and photos show that, in some cases, the Israeli military appears to have used drones to place explosives.
Videos verified by The Times appear to show the Israeli military using drones to place what seem to be explosives on a public school in Mansouri, followed by an explosion in the same place.
The demolitions have transformed a landscape of olive groves, tobacco farms and centuries-old villages into an ashen wasteland of pulverized rubble.
In Beit Yahoun, about a dozen buildings were destroyed before the cease-fire in April. Three months later, almost all the buildings in the town center appeared to be destroyed.
Mustapha Maki, the mayor of Beit Yahoun, visited it in August, escorted by troops from the Lebanese Armed Forces. Entering the village for the first time since he left when the war broke out, he said, he was completely disoriented.
The mosque had disappeared. The water tanks were gone. He tried to place where his neighbor’s house used to be or the football field where schoolchildren used to play in the late afternoons – but could not. The cemetery was a mangled mess of smashed headstones and tree branches.
“I couldn’t even find my relatives’ graves,” Mr. Maki said.
The scale of the destruction has drawn sharp criticism from rights groups, which say the wholesale demolitions could be a violation of international law.
International laws of occupation govern activity by the I.D.F. in the Lebanese villages it controls and impose stricter limits than those governing active combat, according to legal experts. In occupied territory, destroying civilian property is lawful only when it is absolutely unavoidable in achieving a specific and immediate military goal.
Legal experts say it is unlikely that this bar is met by the possibility that Hezbollah could one day use homes in a village, and it would not justify destroying entire villages.
“Much of the destruction we're seeing in southern Lebanon is not with a view to imminent clashes with Hezbollah by I.D.F. forces on the ground,” said Adil Haque, an international law professor at Rutgers Law School.
Israeli tanks and military vehicles in southern Lebanon, on April 25, soon after the cease-fire. Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“Rather, it is about creating a new long-term security situation that will exist after Israeli forces withdraw or for the duration of their occupation,” he said, adding this would not meet the threshold required by international law.
Preventing the return of the roughly 270,000 displaced Lebanese to their homes would also amount to a war crime and a crime against humanity, according to legal experts.
A Region Ablaze
The wildfires that have swept the area occupied by Israel since April are unusual for the time of year and far more numerous than in the past.
More than 200 fires broke out in that area between early April and early September this year, according to a Times analysis of data from the Fire Database of the European Forest Fire Information System. Before fighting between Hezbollah and Israel erupted in 2024, there were just three fires of that size during the same months in 2023, according to the data, and none in 2022 or 2021.
On the Israeli side of the border, there have only been a handful of wildfires in the same period this year.
More fires have burned in occupied southern Lebanon since the cease-fire
Circles are sized by burned area
Source: European Forest Fire Information System. Note: Shows fires of all sizes. Small agricultural and urban fires are not included in the data.
If residents are allowed to return, the fires will likely make it difficult for them to sustain their livelihoods in a region where agriculture is a major source of income. Around a third of the burned land was farmland — mostly grain crops and olive trees that take generations to mature — according to a Times analysis of U.N. land-use data.
“I see the destruction of trees as detrimental as the demolition of houses. It has the same consequences,” said Ahmad Baydoun, an independent conflict researcher.
Lebanese firefighters and local officials who have witnessed the wildfires say that at least some appear to be set off by Israeli drones dropping small explosives. The Israeli military has also used flammable chemical material, including white phosphorus, in the region, according to experts, aid groups and visual evidence collected by The New York Times.
The Israeli military denied responsibility for the fires that have broken out and said their troops had assisted in extinguishing them.
Without farmers to routinely water the fields, vegetation in the occupied zone has also dried out, making it more prone to fire, firefighters say. Lebanese firefighters say they cannot respond to fires within the Israeli-occupied region.
A fire burns in a field, filmed by local farmer Mostapha Sarhan in Majidiyeh on June 19. Civil defense said they were not permitted to put out the fire and that nearby farmers tried to extinguish it but were unable to do so.
Hassan Atta, 52, said he had around 1,000 olive trees in his orchard in the village of Yaroun, planted 50 years ago.
Displaced from his village, he kept checking on his trees over the summer by looking at online images. The last time he checked, he said, his land appeared to have been completely razed by fire.
“These olive trees were a financial resource – they were how my family supported ourselves,” Mr. Atta said.
In addition to the land consumed by fires, dozens of orchards and olive groves have been leveled by bulldozers in recent months, a New York Times analysis of satellite images show. Since the cease-fire, thousands of trees have been razed in the districts of Bint Jbeil and Marjayoun alone. In late August, more than 900 olive trees were bulldozed in this olive grove south of Meiss al-Jabal.
In response to questions from the Times, the Israeli military said it was not aware of the razing of trees near Meiss al-Jabal.
Source: Airbus (satellite images). The New York Times
The Demographic Divide
The swath of southern Lebanon under Israeli occupation was long home to a patchwork of Shiite, Sunni, Christian and Druse communities.
When war broke out in March, Katz, the Israeli defense minister, singled out Shiite residents, saying they “will not return to their homes” until the safety of Israeli northern communities was guaranteed. Other Israeli officials told some Christians and Druse communities they could remain in their southern towns and villages if they expelled Shiite Muslims seeking refuge there.
The ruin that followed the announcement of the cease-fire has followed the same pattern. Of the 48 villages that have been mostly destroyed, almost all are majority Shiite. The seven villages that have not been seriously damaged are home to predominantly Christian, Sunni Muslim or Druse residents.
Almost all villages destroyed are majority Shiite Muslim
Map shows the predominant religious group in each town.
Source: New York Times analysis of satellite imagery.
The result is that the region has been effectively drained of its Shiite Muslim population.
Yet even within the Christian, Druse and Sunni communities there is growing unease about how long they will be able to sustain their daily lives in their villages.
“We are completely isolated, everything around us is destroyed, we can’t move freely,” said Guna Ginwa, 46, a resident of Ain Ebel, a predominantly Christian village within the Israeli-occupied zone.
Ms. Ginwa and others who remained in the village rely on aid convoys for basic goods like grains, vegetables and water. To travel from Ain Ebel to the nearest city outside of the occupied area, they must receive permission to join a convoy of Lebanese military and United Nations peacekeepers, and pass through Israeli army checkpoints.
“I want to stay, but if we can’t travel, if we can’t go to our jobs outside of Ain Ebel, people will be forced to leave,” she said.
New Israeli Outposts
Even as Israeli forces have leveled the landscape, they have been constructing infrastructure of their own, suggesting that Israel is planning for a prolonged military occupation of southern Lebanon.
At the start of the war in March, Israel already held five hilltop positions inside Lebanon near the Israeli border, which they had occupied during the 2024 conflict.
The Times analysis of recent satellite imagery found what appears to be at least three more Israeli outposts completed or under construction since the cease-fire announcement.
Sources: Airbus (satellite images); New York Times analysis of satellite imagery.
At other locations, satellite images and photos analyzed by the Times show Israeli military vehicles stationed near buildings, indicating their possible use as temporary bases. Israel has built fresh roads and bridges connecting these outposts to the Israeli border. The U.N. peacekeeping mission says the Israeli military now has more than two dozen outposts in the buffer zone.
In a statement to the Times, the Israeli military described the construction as “part of preparations for defense” in the buffer zone it has established in Lebanese territory.
As Israeli forces put down roots in southern Lebanon, villagers displaced from the region are growing increasingly resigned that they may never go home. That sentiment is a noticeable shift from the early weeks of the war, when displaced Shiites said they were determined to go back to their lands, as they were after the two previous wars between Israel and Hezbollah.
Photos taken of southern Lebanon from northern Israel show an Israeli flag hanging from a building in Taybeh, as well as a flag on the rooftop of a building in Meiss al-Jabal. Gil Eliyahu/Reuters (first photo); Ariel Schalit/Associated Press (second)
“Even if we wanted to go back, there’s nothing for us to go back to. It’s not liveable anymore,” said Amira Chkeir, 46, from Meiss al-Jabal, a village in the occupied zone that has been destroyed.
Two months ago, Ms. Chkeir drove to another village just outside the Israeli-occupied zone and went to the top of a hill hoping to catch a glimpse of Meiss al-Jabal. The once vibrant green landscape had transformed into a barren stretch of beige and brown. Seeing it, Ms. Chkeir recalled, she burst into tears.
“It looked like a desert, I couldn’t recognize anything,” she said. “All I could tell is when the beige ended and the land was green, that was Israeli territory.”
Methodology
The analysis assessed the most recent damage to 60 villages within the area occupied by Israel in southern Lebanon. The New York Times analyzed hundreds of satellite images from April to September, comparing images from before the April cease-fire with those captured on later dates. The post-cease-fire damage to each town or village was classified on a five-level scale of five levels, ranging from the lowest level, where no significant damage was visible, to the highest level, where the center of town and surrounding area appeared mostly flattened. Damaged areas outside the Israeli-occupied areas, those marked as “security areas” in Israeli military maps, were not included in the analysis.
The villages classified as destroyed in the map at the top of this story are those whose center was mostly destroyed, including those where the surrounding areas were also destroyed. Villages highlighted as having seen significant destruction after the cease-fire are those that reached those levels of damage only after the April cease-fire.
Fire data is sourced from the European Forest Fire Information System. It includes only fires that burned wildland and excludes any fires that burned only within agricultural or urban areas. A comparative analysis of satellite imagery and this data reveals that a small number of fires, mostly smaller than five acres, are excluded from the dataset.“
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