Israel\u2019s campaign to<\/span> raze huge swaths of southern Lebanon may destroy not only people\u2019s homes, but also their ability to even show they owned the properties, according to locals and officials from the Lebanese government \u2014 potentially leaving as many as a quarter million Lebanese unable to prove that they have property or homes at all.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s legal existence.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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\u2019s evacuation orders.<\/p>\n That could make reconstruction after the war a nightmare. Bint Jbeil is Lebanon\u2019s most southwestern district and the site of an Israeli campaign to evacuate entire populations before flattening their villages.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Ministry of Interior has not yet been able to obtain the civil registry records for Bint Jbeil district.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Some Lebanese even see it as an intentional tactic, part of Israel\u2019s 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\u2019s rockets.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s notoriously chaotic bureaucracies and lax enforcement of registration rules, which are at times flouted to avoid paying taxes.<\/p>\n At the center of the crisis is Bint Jbeil\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe 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,\u201d a ministry spokesperson told The Intercept.<\/em><\/p>\n In a statement to an Intercept journalist in New York, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces declined to comment on the ICRC request and said the Lebanese group Hezbollah installs military assets in civilian areas.<\/p>\n \u201cIDF directives permit the execution of clearing operations of structures used for military purposes, or when there is an essential operational necessity that justifies the full or partial demolition of a structure, in accordance with international law,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n Destruction of civilian infrastructure in war is permissible by the laws of armed conflict only under narrow conditions, including that there be a military purpose and that the destruction be incidental to that military purpose.<\/p>\n Israel has flattened entire border towns in Lebanon. Experts have said the actions could constitute war crimes<\/a>. Israel\u2019s defense minister has previously said, \u201cAll houses in villages near the Lebanese border will be destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n Lebanese Finance Minister Yassine Jaber has been monitoring the Grand Serail by satellite.<\/p>\n \u201cThe walls are still standing mostly,\u201d he told The Intercept, \u201cbut satellites don\u2019t have keys to doors. We don\u2019t know what happened inside. Were the records destroyed? Were they confiscated? The truth is still behind the front lines.\u201d<\/p>\n For four weeks, Jaber ran what amounted to a crisis operations room: calls to Lebanese army command, coordination with military intelligence, repeated attempts to reach the Mechanism Committee \u2014 the multilateral body, including Israel, that monitors the its mid-April ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah \u2014 and appeals to UNIFIL, a United Nations force in Lebanon.<\/p>\n Their goal was to establish a corridor for a single journey to Bint Jbeil to recover the records.<\/p>\n \u201cWe tried everything,\u201d Jaber said. \u201cBut Bint Jbeil today is a forbidden zone.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe tried everything. But Bint Jbeil today is a forbidden zone.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Even the International Committee of the Red Cross has been unable to reach the records.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ICRC supported the Ministry of Interior in the evacuation of some civil registries in southern Lebanon at the beginning of the escalation,\u201d said Sally Aoun, a spokesperson for ICRC Lebanon. \u201cIt was not possible to support the evacuation in Bint Jbeil because of ongoing hostilities.\u201d<\/p>\n Jaber has had some successes in other areas where recovering records proved a challenge. When fighting reached Marjayoun, in Lebanon\u2019s south, a team of civil servants went in under bombardment to get the civil records. The same thing happened in the Hasbaya distrcit.<\/p>\n Records from the southern city of Tyre are now held further up the coast in Sidon. The ministry also managed to evacuate files from Meiss <\/strong>El Jabal, Tibnine, Jbaa, Jouaya, and Nabatieh to Beirut. The Ministry of Interior in Beirut designated one day each week for each of the district registries to process civil documentation requests from displaced southerners.<\/p>\n Bint Jbeil remains the missing piece.<\/p>\n Lebanon does have<\/span> a partial digital backup. The Finance Ministry holds electronic records for most registered properties in the south \u2014 a safety net for deeds that were formally logged. Thousands of transactions, however, were never registered.<\/p>\n Take the case of Ali Khreizat, known by the honorific Abu Hassan, who was displaced from his home in the village of Aitaroun in Bint Jbeil district. When the village faced Israeli bombardment, Abu Hassan left \u2014 but he left behind, in a drawer in the corner, a worn leather bag holding the bill of sale for the land he had lived on for five years.<\/p>\n Abu Hassan has made peace with the destruction of his house, but his far more profound worry is that he will never be able to prove he ever owned the property.<\/p>\n \u201cWho protects the buyer\u2019s right if the paper contract has disappeared?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cThe house I built stone by stone is dust now,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the paper that says it was mine has gone to God.\u201d<\/p>\n Even five years after moving in, his bill of sale never reached the land registry. Like many in Lebanon, Abu Hassan felt no particular rush to make bureaucratic deadlines \u2014 with the legendary inefficiencies of the Lebanese state offering little encouragement to do so. Now, he has heard from locals still in the area that even the notary\u2019s office was destroyed, leaving diminishing hopes that a copy of his bill of sale exists anywhere.<\/p>\n With little enforcement of registration rules \u2014 whether the failure to do so is born of a lackadaisical ethos around bureaucratic paperwork or another reason, like wanting to dodge taxes \u2014 the problem of unregistered homes could leave people with no way to show they ever bought properties.<\/p>\n \u201cThis will create a major legal problem in proving ownership,\u201d Jaber said. \u201cWho owns what? Who protects the buyer\u2019s right if the paper contract has disappeared?\u201d<\/p>\n When Jaber took office in February 2025, he said, he found a registry system unfit for our modern, online era. He is now overseeing a full overhaul to digitize documents, a project he estimates will take six months to complete.<\/p>\n \u201cA digital vault,\u201d he said, \u201cthat no shell can reach and no fire can erase.\u201d<\/p>\n The damage to<\/span> land records in Bint Jbeil may run deeper than any individual document.<\/p>\n A key concern is the fate of Bint Jbeil\u2019s land survey division. The technical unit holds the measurement records tying property lines to fixed geographic reference points, some dating to the French Mandate. Those points are connected, through a chain of historic surveys, to a reference coordinate in Homs, Syria, which has served as an anchor for Lebanon\u2019s national cadastral map since the 1920s.<\/p>\n If those physical survey markers have been destroyed, said Riyad Al-Asaad, a civil engineer from the south, the question becomes: Who holds the GPS data that defines the boundaries? Lebanon or Israel?<\/p>\n The risk, Al-Asaad said, is that properties could be redrawn using Israeli measurements, a new geographic reality imposed on top of the old one.<\/p>\n Retired Lebanese Gen. Yaarab Sakhir sees this as part of a deliberate pattern \u2014 pointing to the Dahiya Doctrine<\/a>, an Israeli military strategy named for the Beirut suburb<\/a> where it was first implemented. The strategy calls for disproportionate attacks and targeting civilian infrastructure to create a high cost for Israel\u2019s enemies, thereby creating a strong deterrent.<\/p>\n \u201cIsrael, when it applies the Dahiya Doctrine, as it did in Gaza, dividing it into a 55\/45 split between an Israeli corridor and a Palestinian zone \u2014 it is doing the same thing now south of the Litani,\u201d he said. \u201cFirst, displacement and depopulation. Second, repeated strikes. Third, when areas fall militarily \u2014 Bint Jbeil first \u2014 they mine, demolish, bulldoze, and erase every feature to make these areas uninhabitable and prevent residents from returning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The Grand Serail<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n
![\"31](\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26151714124488.jpg?fit=5472%2C3648\")
A Legal Trap<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n
Erasing the Map<\/strong><\/h2>\n