Where destruction governs, life continues to rebuild over and over again. This cycle, rooted in an insistence on life, forms the foundation of resistance in south Lebanon. 

But withstanding war, violence, and occupation is not a simple path. It is not confined to militarized presence—though armed resistance has played a crucial role in reclaiming land. Resistance is “people living ordinary lives, who want to get along, who want to have children, who want to have a home, who want to have schools, who want to tend to their crops and to their animals, and who want to live like everybody else wants to live on this planet,” says Khayyat. In south Lebanon, to live is, in itself, to resist.

Bou Sahel knew this firsthand. After being expelled from his village in south Lebanon in 1978, Bou Sahel returned with his family in 1983. Upon his return, the first thing he did was plant fruit trees in his garden. “I planted myself here and never left again,” he would say. Like many families in south Lebanon, Bou Sahel’s determination to remain on the land was a point of pride—an entitlement to life, by any means necessary, that no war could shake.

Bou Sahel died in 2022, but his family’s journey continued to reflect south Lebanon’s unyielding struggle. They were displaced again in October 2023 after Israeli attacks forced them to relocate to the Dahiyeh suburb in Beirut where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated in September 2024. “It is the same here as it was in Vietnam: the farmer who is planting his rice is also carrying his gun. When he finds it is time to use his gun, he uses it, and when he finds it is time to continue planting, he continues planting,” Sahel, Bou Sahel’s eldest son, says.

The livelihoods of most families, like Bou Sahel and his wife, Im Sahel’s, rely entirely on tobacco farming, olive cropping, goat herding, and other agricultural practices that tend to the land. These ecologies have been maintained and passed on for generations—surviving through periods of intense conflict. They are not merely a means of livelihood, but also acts of resistance that defy what Khayyat describes as a “human-made apocalypse.”

Bou Sahel’s lifetime spanned invasions and wars, from the French Mandate in the 1930s to the current Israeli attacks. Like Bou Sahel, the land he so depended on bore the marks of the wars he survived. This is characteristic of warzones across the Global South where “agricultural cycles and seasons of war are interwoven,” as Khayyat writes in A Landscape of War. “Enmeshed and together they shape the lived world: agriculturally-based livelihoods premised on predictable agricultural seasons and harvests, ‘مواسم زراعية’, are sustained through seasons and harvests of war, ‘مواسم حرب.’” 

During the 2006 July War, no part of south Lebanon was spared from Israeli bombings. That summer, before a ceasefire was announced, Israel dropped 4.6 million cluster bombs, many of which remain unexploded and continue to poison the land. Combined with landmines, even walking across fields became deadly.

As always, local ecologies adapted—and resisted. Goats, with their light bodies and ability to graze on almost anything, became vital to survival during this period. Goatherders quickly learned to rely on their herds to navigate explosive fields, forming a multi-species alliance that protected lives and livelihoods. “Fighting doesn’t necessarily mean military fighting,” says Khayyat. “It means planting our crops. It also means cohabiting with mines in the land. It means letting your goats walk across those explosive fields and not die. These are resistant ecologies.”

Tobacco farming is another key resistant ecology in southern Lebanon. Cheap, adaptable, and requiring minimal infrastructure, tobacco has been a lifeline for many families throughout years of occupation and war. Fatima*, a farmer and weaver of tobacco, watched her village turn to rubble in 2006, yet she refused to abandon her land. “Before, they mainly killed people, but now they target the land, which is far, far worse,” she says. Even so, farmers like Fatima continue tending their gardens, orchards, and fields, creating new possibilities for life in the aftermath of destruction.

“It’s women who work this crop. It’s women who tend to the home. It’s women who tend to the children,” says Khayyat. “These acts of care, within environments of annihilation, are made possible because of them and their collaborations and alliances with humans and more-than-humans in their environment.”  

Today, nearly two decades since 2006, Lebanon is in the midst of yet another cycle of destruction. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has spilled into Lebanon, displacing countless families, including Bou Sahel’s, who have once again been forced to move. They now reside at Khayyat’s family home, unable to return to their village, which was destroyed on October 20, 2024. Israel is barring residents from moving back to their houses, even after the ceasefire. 

When every aspect of life is obliterated, networks of care and innovation between humans and their environment endure. These alliances are essential for survival, especially in catastrophic times, and serve as a reminder of how an unyielding connection to the land can become an act of defiance amid the ruins of war. As Fatima says, “we, the people of south Lebanon, whatever happens, we hold on to the land. We don’t have anything else.”