“There's no shade anymore”: White phosphorus, destruction, and ecologies of displacement and return in south Lebanon

The 2023–2025 escalation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah triggered widespread displacement across South Lebanon while simultaneously generating extensive environmental destruction that continues to undermine prospects for return. This article examines how warfare-induced ecological damage including white phosphorus contamination, bombardment, deforestation, and the destruction of agricultural infrastructure, reshapes displacement trajectories in agrarian borderland communities. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework integrating environmental displacement theory, critical refugee studies, and political ecology, the study analyzes qualitative interviews with displaced agricultural workers whose livelihoods depend on land, water systems, and biodiversity. The findings demonstrate that displacement in South Lebanon cannot be understood solely as a response to immediate violence, but also to warfare-induced environmental transformation. Instead, environmental degradation including burned olive groves, contaminated soil, damaged irrigation networks, livestock loss, and disrupted agricultural cycles, has destabilized the ecological foundations that sustain rural life. Even where residents physically return, recovery remains partial and uncertain as farmers confront declining soil productivity, crop disease, market distrust, and persistent fears of contamination. Environmental destruction therefore converts temporary evacuation into protracted displacement by eroding the environmental systems that sustain local economies and social reproduction. By foregrounding ecological viability as a condition for return, the article argues that conflict-induced displacement in agrarian regions is shaped not only by security dynamics but by the transformation of landscapes themselves. Durable return, therefore, depends as much on environmental restoration as on the cessation of violence.