From Rubble to Return: Reimagining Reconstruction Beyond Concrete

The latest war on Lebanon was not merely a concerted series of Israeli attacks. Rather, it amounted to a deliberate, spatially defined genocide that targeted the population as well as the built and natural environments in which they live. The Zionist settler-colonial project did not confine itself to destroying infrastructure and property; it sought to dismantle the very conditions of life: devastating the land, uprooting agricultural livelihoods in border villages, erasing public spaces and popular markets, and fracturing the social memory embedded in towns and villages.

The scale and character of this destruction surpass earlier violent assaults on the land and its people and present a fundamental reckoning with what is meant by the so-called reconstruction phase.

In this article, we present a summary of the work we led at Public Works Studio to document the Israeli war on Lebanon during 2023-2024, identify the structures that produce this destruction, and deconstruct the evolving patterns of the aggressor. We then elaborate on what reconstruction should entail, sorely needed at this moment, drawing on research conducted at the national level and in three geographic areas where we launched participatory research inquiries: Beirut’s southern suburb (Dahieh), Sour, and the border town of Kfar Kila. From there, we move to a critique of the official state response, asking a crucial question: Can we dare imagine a comprehensive reconstruction and recovery process that does not merely address the consequences of war, but also lays the groundwork for the spatial justice that so many communities desperately needs?

What Has Been Lost and How Destruction Was Produced

Since the outbreak of the war on Lebanon in October 2023, Public Works Studio's research efforts have focused on documenting Israeli attacks across Lebanese territory. This resulted in the production of the “Map of Israeli Attacks,” a living archive that is updated daily and records ongoing Israeli violations of the so-called ceasefire agreement. 

The map is a narrative device and a political choice, forming a basis for analyzing the drivers of destruction and developing a deeper understanding of the brutality of the Zionist settler project and its ramifications on the land. Towards this end, the attacks are categorized to reveal the patterns of aggression and forms of loss experienced. The assaults are categorized by the munitions used (artillery shells, airstrikes, illumination bombs, and phosphorus bombs), which permits an analysis of their destructive impact. The map also categorizes the targeted populations and features of the land (civilians, army personnel, homes, schools, forests), recording the number of martyred civilians, and offers a reading of the temporal evolution of the pace of the aggression.

By December 17, 2025, our documentation showed that 433 Lebanese towns had been targeted. Even though the attacks were concentrated in the border region and villages of the South and Nabatieh governorates, the scope of aggression expanded deep into Lebanese territory, targeting the Bekaa and Baalbek-Hermel governorates, with scattered attacks across Mount Lebanon. The intensity and nature of these attacks escalated during specific phases of the war to serve the occupier’s evolving interests.

During the first three months of the war, forests, woodlands, and farmland, particularly in border villages in the South, were at the top of the target list. They sustained severe damage, including the killing of livestock and poultry, and the burning of green areas. White phosphorus and other heavy metals were used to transform the land in these villages from a livable area into territory unfit for life, undermining the population’s ability for collective steadfastness. Estimates suggest that Israel burned at least 22 million square meters of green land, including 1.45 million square meters of agricultural land, orchards, and olive groves1, directly or indirectly impacting around 70 percent of the agricultural sector in the South. This amounts to agricultural extermination and ecocide by design.

In the following months, the focus shifted. Inhabited areas became the primary targets. Shelling of residential neighborhoods and homes intensified as part of a strategy aimed at breaking civilian support for the resistance. This campaign peaked on September 23, 2024, and continued until the ceasefire came into effect, alongside a widening assault on religious buildings. We documented Israeli attacks on more than 42 religious landmarks in 37 towns. Bearing the brunt were the mosques: 17 mosques were completely destroyed or heavily damaged, alongside several churches and cemeteries.

In parallel, the enemy employed a strategy of systematic demolition and leveling of neighborhoods. In 43 southern towns, we documented the use of widescale demolition through booby-trapping entire villages and neighborhoods with explosives during the post-ceasefire period, resulting in the total destruction of neighborhoods, infrastructure, industrial and commercial facilities, and civilian and religious landmarks. In border areas alone, the number of destroyed buildings reached 13,891 according to the latest estimates2. This form of targeted destruction aims to sever the relationship between people and place, forcing permanent displacement.

Moreover, there is a clear intent to undermine humanitarian and medical services through the systematic targeting of ambulance teams and healthcare facilities, particularly in the border areas. Since the beginning of the war, 222 paramedics have been killed and more than 330 injured, while dozens of hospitals and emergency centers were damaged. We documented 16 direct attacks on paramedics, 41 on emergency centers and clinics, and 14 attacks on hospitals or their surroundings, resulting in severe damage that forced some to completely halt their operations.

What Local Contexts Reveal 

The overwhelming image of loss and destruction revealed by the mapping effort confirms that the damage caused by Israeli aggression extends beyond material destruction to encompass social, environmental, economic, cultural, and religious dimensions. Our documentation revealed diverse forms of destruction, including the demolition of neighborhoods; deliberate destruction of nature; the disruption of local cultural and agricultural livelihoods; and long-term contamination of soil and water. The occupation did not stop at targeting homes and neighborhoods — it also targeted infrastructure. Woodlands, forests, and agricultural lands were subjected to shelling, along with the killing of livestock and poultry, and the burning of beehives.

To understand how this destruction unfolds in everyday life, we examined three sites: Beirut’s southern suburbs, the city of Sour, and the border town of Kfar Kila. Each reveals a different dimension of loss and different obstacles to recovery; diverse and localized research methodologies were adopted in each site.

In Dahieh, a highly precise monitoring and documentation methodology was adopted: the location of each strike was accurately recorded and entered into a detailed database, which served as the basis for a comprehensive map of all targeted sites. This map facilitated analysis of the geographical distribution and density of attacks, allowing for preliminary readings of targeting patterns, such as the repeated bombardment of specific neighborhoods or the concentration of strikes around civilian axes with residential or service-oriented functions.

At the same time, it was essential to seek out narratives of the place and local storytelling. To this end, we collected testimonies from five individuals from each of the following neighborhoods: Chiyah, Haret Hreik, Burj al-Barajneh, Laylaki, and Hadath-Saint Therese. Each narrator recounted the story of their neighborhood, touching on different layers of places and the urban fabric of the area — markets, meeting spaces, boundaries, checkpoints, cemeteries, and shops, among others — in an attempt to understand what had been lost and what must be preserved.

In Sour, a comprehensive participatory documentation and analysis methodology was adopted. The process began with fieldwork and walking tours to document partial and total destruction and explore the histories of affected neighborhoods. This was followed by a workshop and six focused group discussions with activists, engineers, and affected residents. Maps played a central role as tools for documentation and spatial analysis, helping transform individual testimonies into precise local narratives and linking them to the affected places. This process generated collective knowledge that strengthened our understanding of the scale and distribution of the damage.

In Kfar Kila, direct fieldwork was impossible because of Israel's ongoing attacks. Instead, our researchers relied on a participatory workshop and a focus group discussion to tease out expectations of return and recovery in the town. Participants included affected residents and farmers, activists, civil society organizations, and researchers. A series of interviews was also conducted with relevant public authorities, experts, environmental activists, institutions, and associations working in the agricultural and environmental sectors.

Dahieh: Markets, Housing, and the Destruction of Urban Life 

In Dahieh, effectively the epitome of a dense urban context, our figures confirm the immense scale of physical destruction, where approximately 18 percent of the built mass was directly affected. This includes the total demolition of 353 buildings and varying degrees of damage to 6,010 buildings3. While this undoubtedly necessitates large-scale reconstruction, the deeper problem lies in the damage inflicted upon entire population clusters and on both formal and informal markets.

Dahieh contains a large number of diverse markets embedded within neighborhoods, such that nearly every street functions as a commercial hub. These markets constitute the backbone of economic and social life and serve as key destinations for residents from within and beyond the suburbs. They provide essential and non-essential goods at prices that account for disparities in purchasing power, and they function as spaces of daily interaction and social cohesion. 

During the sustained bombardment from September 27 to November 27, 2024, these vital arteries were relentlessly bombarded. Zionist aggressions targeted many markets, destroying shops, forcing others to close, and reducing dense and vibrant commercial districts to open fields of rubble.

In Chiyah alone, three of the area's most important popular markets — Souk al-Jammal, the Chiyah Popular Market, and the Baleh (second-hand clothing) Market — were struck on November 14, 16, and 22, 2024, as shown in a social map we produced for Chiyah.

These markets, which developed over decades as low-cost shopping destinations and spaces of socioeconomic interaction, did not merely suffer material losses. Their destruction broke down networks of daily social contact. Souk al-Jammal is one of Lebanon’s most famous popular markets, bringing together shops selling clothing, jewelry, perfumes, and underwear. The Chiyah Popular Market, the tin-roofed vegetable market, was the cheapest in the area, where everything from vegetables to poultry and fish was sold. The Baleh Market, with over 20 shops selling secondhand clothing and shoes, caters to low-income residents. All of these places abruptly lost their social and commercial vitality.

Souk Maawad, often referred to as the “Verdun of Dahieh” and which includes more than 140 shops stretching over 365 meters, had already been targeted and destroyed multiple times in the past4. In the latest war, it was struck more than five times with varying degrees of severity. In Haret Hreik, the wholesale market, also known as the “Chinese Market”5, was hit more than 16 times, leading to its complete destruction. “Shanghai Library”6 and shops selling Chinese goods vanished. The neighborhood was reduced to rubble and became unrecognizable.

Alongside the markets, large residential complexes and clusters of adjacent buildings were also deliberately targeted. More than 16 residential complexes across Dahieh’s different neighborhoods were struck, resulting in extensive destruction and damage to a large number of apartments and homes. Families lost not only their housing but also social bonds, neighborly relations, and mutual support networks as residents were separated and displaced.

Among these complexes, the al-Salam Complex in Saint Therese was the first to be targeted following a “warning” issued by Israeli forces shortly before its bombing on September 27, 2024. The complex, consisting of four adjacent buildings with commercial shops on their ground floors, was completely destroyed. Nearby buildings were also hit, and one of them continued burning for days before collapsing, igniting a fire in another building that subsequently became uninhabitable.

This one example of the targeting of residential complexes offers but a glimpse into Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Israeli attacks destroyed or damaged large residential buildings and complexes that had housed thousands of families. The targeting of these structures — individual apartments, shared spaces, infrastructure, and social networks — resulted in mass displacement into temporary housing conditions that often fail to meet basic needs. All of this came amid a total absence of clarity regarding the timing or possibility of return to original homes and environments of urban sociality.

In a related context, the data revealed a clear pattern of targeting Dahieh’s vital life-support systems, confirming the enemy’s intent to render the area unlivable. The surroundings of 77 percent of health facilities and 78 percent of educational facilities were subjected to direct or adjacent strikes7. The findings also revealed severe damage to electricity, water, and sewage networks in affected neighborhoods. The deliberate destruction of critical infrastructure foregrounds the challenge of rehabilitating basic services as a top priority for ensuring residents’ sustainable return.

Sour: Residential Clusters and the Logic of Displacement

Sour is one of the most severely affected cities in southern Lebanon: it was subjected to 85 Israeli airstrikes over more than 48 days, following seven so-called “evacuation warnings” issued by Israeli forces. Our fieldwork documented extensive destruction: 79 buildings were fully destroyed, and 166 were partially destroyed. The scale of destruction relative to the number of strikes — particularly when compared to other southern towns — can be explained by Sour’s urban morphology: the population is concentrated within a small and dense urban core, while the remainder of the city consists of archaeological sites, the coastline, and a natural reserve.

This gives rise to the central feature of Israel's aggression: the strikes were concentrated in densely populated residential neighborhoods, camps, and Palestinian gatherings, resulting in damage to entire residential clusters. We documented severe damage and destruction affecting at least 13 residential clusters — defined as a set of adjoining buildings — within the city’s cadastral boundaries. These include clusters in the Old City, the Hoballah neighborhood, the al-Manna‘ neighborhood (the al-Masaken al-Sha’biyya neighborhood), and the neighborhoods of Dabouq, Basma, Cinema al-Hamra, al-Injiliyya, al-Diniyya, Shaheen, al-Zira‘a, Nazlet Abu Deeb, Abu Deeb Neighborhood, and Hayy Sawt al-Farah.

These residential clusters exhibit a marked diversity of urban typology, historical formation, legal status, and social composition. Some are historic, such as the old sandstone houses, no more than two stories high, inhabited by long-term tenants in the Old City cluster. There, a sudden airstrike without prior warning on September 28, 2024, led to the complete destruction of two adjacent buildings and the partial destruction of seven surrounding structures. In contrast, other clusters exhibit an informal character, having emerged on state-owned land, such as the targeted cluster in al-Manna‘ neighborhood, also referred to as the al-Masaken al-Sha’biyya neighborhood. Our field survey documented the complete destruction of six buildings and partial damage to 12 others of limited height. 

Today, the neighborhood has been reduced to rubble, exemplifying how the destruction has engulfed the informal urban fabric in its entirety. A third pattern of urban clustering combines old and newer mid-rise buildings with a mixed population of owners and tenants, such as the one in the Hobballah neighborhood, which witnessed the complete destruction of four buildings and partial damage to five others.        

In addition to these clusters, high-rise buildings — considered urban landmarks and comprising large numbers of residential units that house socially diverse populations — were also targeted. Many of these structures remain standing with debris precariously suspended. Prominent examples include the Brasilia Building, the Tyre Etoile Building, and the Awdeh Tower.

Thus, similarly to patterns of destruction in Dahieh, the aggression in Sour targeted residential clusters that were not merely homes for thousands of families, but vibrant spaces sustaining complex shared infrastructure and social relations. The result is the displacement of residents, their uprooting from local contexts, and their dispersion. 

This reality compels us to consider displacement as a central issue in the trajectory of return in Sour. Reconstruction cannot be thought of as a purely “material outcome” represented by the rebuilding of structures. Rather, it must be understood as a process for securing residents’ rights, and one that must begin today. The specificity of each targeted residential cluster and the disparities among them, be they heritage-based, informal, or mixed, create a reality that necessitates addressing multiple urban, legal, and social complexities. These must form an integral part of the return process, which must precede the act of construction itself.

Reconstruction cannot be thought of as a purely “material outcome” represented by the rebuilding of structures. It must be understood as a process for securing residents’ rights, and one that must begin today.

Moreover, the repercussions of destruction in Sour did not stop at the loss of housing units but also extended to undermining the livelihoods of a wide segment of the population. The affected neighborhoods, such as al-Raml, al-Bal‘outa, al-Zira‘a, and the popular housing projects area, are characterized by a way of life that integrates residence and work. Ground floors are typically allocated to shops, garages, and light industries, making the support of producers in their places of displacement, the restoration of commercial activity, and the continuity of these professions a priority in the rights-based process that must accompany, and even precede, reconstruction.

Kfar Kila: Total Destruction and the Prevention of Return

The town of Kfar Kila was subjected to intense, systematic aggression, having been the first target of airstrikes after the war broke out. Our findings reveal that the town endured 335 days of bombardment until the end of November 2025. This sustained targeting through airstrikes, artillery shelling, phosphorus munitions, bulldozing, and demolitions resulted in unprecedented material destruction. Estimates indicate that 85 percent of buildings were destroyed, leaving only around 290 standing structures out of 1,450 — many of which will require demolition8. Destruction was not limited to residential buildings but also directly affected infrastructure. Israeli bulldozers deliberately tore up main and internal roads, as well as water and electricity networks, undermining all the basic prerequisites for civilian life.

The devastation led to the complete, collective displacement of approximately 500 families9 — an unprecedented occurrence in the town’s history. These residents are now scattered across different towns and regions, severed from their homes and deprived of work, particularly in agriculture, on which most rely. Their savings have been exhausted by steep, unregulated rental costs. As a result, any adequate intervention must extend beyond reconstruction to prioritize social and economic recovery. Such a recovery would require supporting displaced residents and “returning people to their livelihoods, not just to their housing,” as a fundamental condition for sustainable return, while recognizing mental health as an integral component of said recovery.

Crucially, the destruction in Kfar Kila escalated to the level of ecocide and the eradication of life-sustaining infrastructure. The agricultural sector was a central target, with farmers being denied access to their land and ancient olive groves being systematically bulldozed, burned, and uprooted. This resulted in severe losses to crops, agricultural facilities, and livestock, including the destruction of beehives and the slaughter of animals. Kfar Kila ranked second in terms of white phosphorus attacks, which were used for more than 26 days, as per our documentation. Analyses revealed the presence of unreacted phosphorus in the soil, posing a serious long-term hazard lasting over ten years and contributing to deformities and fetal deaths among livestock.

This deliberate, systematic environmental contamination, coupled with the absence of local agricultural guidance on dealing with damaged soil, requires strategic environmental recovery plans alongside any reconstruction effort. Additionally, due to Israeli occupation forces’ bulldozing operations, land parcels have lost their boundaries and defining features to such an extent that residents can no longer identify their official property limits. Boundary re-demarcation is required as part of reconstruction, underscoring the absolute importance of documentation as a tool against the colonizer’s attempts at erasure.

Alongside this totalizing destruction, continuing Zionist military control prevents return and constitutes the most urgent challenge. Large areas of land adjacent to the separation wall bordering occupied Palestine remain under Israeli military control, extending up to 300 meters inward, with access strictly prohibited as the Israeli occupation monitors any attempt at restoring life. 

Following the ceasefire, Israel bombarded gatherings of people and prefabricated housing units that residents had set up as temporary homes, sending a clear message meant to deter any revival of life. This absence of security entrenches the so-called buffer zone reality and prevents return, rendering reconstruction, in its non-material sense, contingent upon the state’s adoption of a clear and resistant political stance as a prerequisite to material reconstruction.

In light of these readings of the Dahieh, Sour, and Kfar Kila research sites — which will be expanded on in upcoming Public Works articles and reports — it becomes evident that the challenge is not merely one of physical rebuilding. The task at hand also entails ensuring security, addressing legal issues around property ownership, responding to urgent housing challenges faced by the displaced, restoring collective memory, achieving environmental recovery, and strengthening the damaged social fabric, among other priorities. This constitutes the essence of comprehensive recovery, or “immaterial reconstruction,” which the Lebanese state has failed to achieve in previous reconstruction efforts.

Between Security Challenges and Institutional Failure: Are We Truly in a Reconstruction Process?

The question of what kind of reconstruction we seek cannot be separated from a realistic assessment of currently existing reconstruction efforts. Our analysis reveals that the damage inflicted by the war extends far beyond physical destruction, encompassing social, economic, cultural, legal, and environmental loss. Yet the reality on the ground today raises a fundamental question: Are we truly in a reconstruction process?

More than a year has passed since the so-called ceasefire on November 27, 2024. During that time, the relevant authorities have failed to act adequately, and reconstruction has not genuinely begun. Instead, official discourse has attempted to justify this shortfall by citing fiscal insolvency and institutional decay, calling for “pragmatism” in addressing overlapping crises. 

The damage inflicted by the war extends far beyond physical destruction, encompassing social, economic, cultural, legal, and environmental loss.

This logic of complacency with state inaction has produced little more than a partial law passed on June 30, 2025, which grants limited exemptions from certain fees and taxes to those affected and includes a single clause addressing the rebuilding of destroyed structures. The law fails to offer a comprehensive framework to reconstruction, generally focusing on rebuilding structures as they were, while falling short in its treatment of diverse land ownership regimes. Its executive decrees have yet to be issued, and some of its stipulated deadlines have already passed, revealing the glaring institutional failure and delay in addressing the aftermath of the war.

Alongside the aforementioned law, a few scattered measures were adopted without overall coordination or overarching vision. The Ministry of Environment issued a guide for sustainable debris management, but it was not effectively implemented due to gaps in coordination, as well as logistical and administrative hurdles. In cooperation with the Directorate General of Urban Planning, the ministry also released a guide for sustainable post-war land use planning — which remains a theoretical proposition disconnected from the reconstruction law. 

Meanwhile, a proposed mechanism for damage assessment and compensation, drafted by the Council of the South and the Higher Relief Committee, remains stalled in government review, neither approved nor funded.

Some in-kind grants from international organizations were approved for infrastructure, and limited loans were allocated for social support. Still, these efforts remain fragmented and insufficient until a crucial development emerged: the announcement of a national recovery and reconstruction strategy developed by a specialized ministerial committee.

This strategy is built around three axes: displacement and housing, through temporary assistance for displaced persons, such as the Ministry of Social Affairs’ “cash-for-rent” program; infrastructure reconstruction, through loans such as LEAP10, limited to inhabited areas; and socio-economic development, through projects overseen by UN agencies and the GATE loan. 

But despite this progress, the strategy remains short-term and unsustainable. Social assistance is temporary, lasting three to six months; environmental damage and the reconstruction of most destroyed housing are excluded altogether; and there is no comprehensive approach to border towns that have not been totally annihilated, where infrastructure loans don’t provide coverage.

Equally troubling is the absence of rights holders and affected communities on the committee, undermining both collective participation and transparency. The most significant challenge lies in the near-total reliance on external funding, with minimal local financing discernible in the 2026 state budget. This dependence places reconstruction at the mercy of donor agendas and political conditions, such as a state monopoly on arms. 

Equally troubling is the absence of rights holders and affected communities on the committee, undermining both collective participation and transparency.

Even this fragile financing is uncertain. Parliamentary approval of the central LEAP loan was repeatedly delayed and passed only at the last possible moment, just before the World Bank’s deadline passed, during the legislative session of December 18, 2025.

In the face of this institutional chaos, people have relied on informal and grassroots efforts to hold steadfast and return home. Housing alternatives, furnishing assistance, and partial repair compensation provided by Hezbollah through al-Qard al-Hassan constituted the most significant support over the past year.  The sustainability of this assistance, however, is now uncertain.

Individual initiatives have also emerged: some removed rubble through private contractors out of pocket, and others repaired damaged homes. Some associations supported limited repairs to buildings and infrastructure in specific areas.

Nevertheless, the main problem is in the total reconstruction required in the case of fully demolished buildings — either because residents cannot afford to do so, because the structures face the threat of demolition by security forces, or because they are located in areas where security has not been restored. Attempts were also made to install prefabricated housing units for services or shelter, but these remain temporary, stopgap solutions.

This complex terrain is further eclipsed by the overarching security challenge.

Reconstruction cannot be disentangled from ongoing Israeli attacks and daily violations, particularly in border regions. The prevailing insecurity, coupled with the absence of a clear state position and meaningful official presence on the ground, creates an environment in which any form of sustainable rebuilding or recovery is impossible. 

So long as areas meant to be brought back to life remain under direct threat, an unavoidable question persists: Can reconstruction occur as war itself continues? 

The reality reinforces affected communities’ conviction that the state’s shortcomings are not limited to vision and funding, but extend to political decision-making that can ensure protection and presence—effectively making the border region into a buffer zone where the restoration of normal life is systematically prohibited.

Reconstruction as a Path Toward the Restoration of Rights

Our analysis demonstrates that the losses inflicted by the recent war extend far beyond the material realm. They target the built environment and extend to cultural, social, natural, and environmental realms. 

Yet current reconstruction efforts are characterized by fragmented interventions and the absence of a coherent national strategy or vision. What does exist is still under construction, provisional and uncertain. It also depends almost entirely on conditional external funding, turning reconstruction into an instrument of political subjugation rather than collective recovery. At the same time, the overwhelming security crisis fuels a pessimistic narrative of inevitability and the idea that reconstruction is simply not feasible. Within this logic, urban development is reduced to a technical prerequisite for return, stripped of its social and political dimensions.

Reconstruction efforts depends almost entirely on conditional external funding, turning reconstruction into an instrument of political subjugation rather than collective recovery. 

What is needed instead is a fundamental shift in framing. Reconstruction must be understood as a project of political sovereignty, steadfastness, and resistance, not merely a matter of rebuilding concrete or securing loans. This requires adopting a model of strategic recovery, or immaterial reconstruction, in which principled political decision precedes construction. Such an approach would aim to restore the socio-cultural fabric, collective memory, and environmental security alongside the built environment. In this framework, urban development is not an end in itself but a continuous process through which a set of rights is realized, including the rights to safety, housing, access to safe environmental resources, and the right to the city itself.