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A fresh expose published in Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Sunday has revealed that the Israeli military has continued the systematic demolition of civilian buildings across southern Lebanon, even after a 10-day ceasefire agreement halted formal open hostilities last Thursday. The ceasefire, which brought a temporary end to months of deadly large-scale conflict, has not put a stop to state-backed destruction of residential and public infrastructure in border-area villages, according to senior Israeli army commanders who spoke to the outlet on condition of anonymity.

Per the sources, the demolition operation is being carried out by paid Israeli civilian contractors deployed with heavy civilian engineering equipment, including dozens of excavators. Contractors are compensated either through a fixed daily wage or via performance-based payments tied to the number of structures destroyed and the total scope of the work. Multiple sources confirm that some of these contractors have prior experience carrying out similar demolition work in the Gaza Strip, with one witness noting that roughly 20 excavators were operating simultaneously in a single southern Lebanese village alone.

The operation targets schools, residential homes and other civilian sites as part of an official Israeli policy framed as “cleaning up the area,” a tactic directly modeled after widespread destruction campaigns Israel carried out in Gaza starting in October 2023. All destruction is occurring south of the so-called “yellow line” — a boundary unilaterally drawn by Israel roughly 20 kilometers south of the Litani River — which Israeli forces are barred from crossing under the terms of the current ceasefire agreement.

Haaretz’s sources confirmed that one of the core strategic goals of the demolition campaign is to prevent displaced Lebanese residents from returning to their homes in border communities adjacent to Israel. The Israeli military is even using advanced digital tracking tools, including specialized statistical systems, to monitor and quantify the number of buildings destroyed across different operational sectors to measure progress on the campaign.

The policy of widespread demolition was explicitly announced by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz last month, who confirmed that “All houses in villages near the border in Lebanon will be demolished in accordance with the Rafah and Beit Hanoun models in Gaza.” At the time, Katz also stated that after the conclusion of Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, the Israeli military would retain full security control over the entire territory extending north to the Litani River.

The current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted after US-Israeli airstrikes targeting Iran killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in early March, prompting a retaliatory cross-border rocket barrage from the Iran-backed militant group. Since that escalation, the Lebanese Ministry of Health reports that Israeli attacks have killed at least 2,294 people across Lebanon — including 100 rescue workers and healthcare employees — and wounded more than 7,500 others. The violence has also displaced roughly 1.2 million Lebanese people nationwide, destroying all bridges crossing the Litani River, including the critical Qasmiyeh bridge that formed the last major transport link between southern Lebanon and the rest of the country. In the immediate aftermath of the new ceasefire taking effect, workers hastily constructed a makeshift crossing to accommodate tens of thousands of displaced residents seeking to return to their homes.

Even before the current ceasefire, there have been repeated violations of prior truce agreements. A United Nations assessment found that Israel violated the 2024 ceasefire brokered by the Biden administration more than 10,000 times over the course of one year, and has maintained five permanent military outposts inside Lebanese territory since that agreement was reached. Last week, Haaretz also reported that the Israeli military has been constructing additional new outposts inside southern Lebanon despite the terms of the current truce. Just hours before the latest ceasefire went into effect, an Israeli airstrike on a residential complex in the southern Lebanese city of Sour killed 11 people and wounded 35 more.

### Decades of Conflict: Israel’s New Occupation of South Lebanon and Lebanon’s Push for Sovereignty

Nearly 80 years of overlapping invasions, broken ceasefires, and unfulfilled peace agreements have culminated in a fresh crisis along the Israel-Lebanon border, where Israeli forces have established a new 10-kilometer deep security buffer inside Lebanese territory and rejected calls to withdraw. The latest escalation has reignited long-simmering tensions over Israeli occupation, with Lebanon’s new leadership reaffirming its commitment to reclaiming full sovereignty over its southern lands.

In a public address last week, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun declared he was ready to take any steps necessary to end Israel’s ongoing occupation of south Lebanon. He emphasized that the Lebanese government has, for the first time in almost 50 years, reclaimed full control over the country and its independent decision-making. Aoun’s comments came just one day after former U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to potentially host Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House to solidify a 10-day ceasefire Trump brokered between the two parties. This truce paused six weeks of open fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, and coincided with the first direct bilateral talks between Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors in Washington since 1993.

The current crisis traces its origins to a large-scale Israeli air campaign launched on March 2, 2026, followed rapidly by a full ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Official casualty figures document more than 2,290 people killed, over 7,500 wounded, and 1.2 million Lebanese displaced – a full 20 percent of the country’s total population. Upon launching the ground incursion, Israeli officials announced plans to hold large swathes of southern Lebanon and barred displaced Lebanese residents from returning to their homes. For weeks, Israeli forces have systematically demolished entire border villages, using bulldozers to clear structures and rigging remaining homes with explosives for large-scale controlled detonations. Even after the ceasefire officially took effect, Israeli troops continued offensive operations, carrying out additional demolitions, artillery strikes, and land-clearing work in multiple border areas in direct violation of the truce terms.

Over the weekend following the ceasefire, the Israeli military announced it had established a new “Yellow Line” roughly 10 kilometers inside Lebanese territory, a separation barrier modeled after the buffer zone Israel created in Gaza between Israeli-held areas and Hamas-controlled territory. In public remarks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that Israeli forces would remain permanently in the reinforced security buffer, stating: “This is a security strip ten kilometers deep, which is much stronger, more intense, more continuous and more solid than what we had previously. That is where we are and we are not leaving.”

To contextualize the current standoff, independent outlet Middle East Eye has traced the long history of Israeli incursions into Lebanon dating back to the founding of the Israeli state in 1948. One day after Israel declared independence in historic Palestine on May 14, 1948, Lebanon joined a coalition of Arab states including Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq in military intervention, responding to the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people by Zionist paramilitary groups. Approximately 750,000 Palestinians were displaced in the period surrounding Israel’s founding, and around 100,000 of those refugees resettled in Lebanon.

Lebanese forces played only a limited role in the 1948 war, but by the end of October that year, Israeli troops had crossed into Lebanon and occupied 15 southern villages. In the village of Hula, Israeli forces carried out a documented massacre, gathering between 34 and 58 civilians in a single building before detonating explosives that killed everyone inside. Israel later withdrew from these 1948 occupied villages under a UN-brokered armistice agreement signed with Lebanon in March 1949, which marked the end of the first Arab-Israeli War and the defeat of the Arab coalition.

Unlike 1948, Lebanon did not participate in the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel seized East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and Syria’s Golan Heights from a coalition of Arab states. In the wake of its 1967 victory, Israel withdrew from the 1949 armistice agreements it had signed with Lebanon and other Arab states, and proceeded to occupy the strategic Chebaa Farms area of southern Lebanon, a territory it continues to hold to this day. The 1967 defeat of Arab states also catalyzed the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a coalition of Palestinian factions dedicated to armed struggle to reclaim Palestinian territory. By 1971, Lebanon had become the PLO’s main base of operations, with Palestinian fighters launching intermittent strikes against Israel from south Lebanon. The PLO’s growing influence also made it a key actor in the Lebanese Civil War that broke out in 1975.

In March 1978, Israel launched its first large-scale invasion of southern Lebanon aimed at pushing PLO fighters north of the Litani River. The offensive killed roughly 1,000 Lebanese and Palestinian people, most of them civilians, along with 18 Israeli soldiers. Under international pressure following the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 425, Israel withdrew from most of southern Lebanon by June 1978. The resolution established the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), tasked with verifying Israeli withdrawal and helping the Lebanese government reassert its authority in the south. Despite this, Israel transferred control of occupied territories to a pro-Israel proxy militia rather than returning full control to the Lebanese army, and the PLO retained positions south of the Litani River.

Israel launched a second, far larger invasion in June 1982, codenamed “Operation Peace for Galilee,” which advanced all the way to the Lebanese capital Beirut and occupied the city by September. The invasion killed an estimated 19,000 Lebanese and Palestinian people, most of them civilians, and forced the entire PLO leadership and thousands of fighters to evacuate Lebanon. Israel’s rapid military reshaping of Lebanese politics brought its ally Bachir Gemayel to the presidency, but Gemayel was assassinated just weeks after taking office. His brother Amin succeeded him, and his new government entered U.S.-brokered negotiations with Israel that concluded with a 1983 agreement aimed at securing Israeli withdrawal. The agreement ended the formal state of belligerency between the two states but stopped short of being a full peace treaty, and faced fierce opposition from major Lebanese factions including the Shia Amal Movement and Progressive Socialist Party, which were backed by Syria – a power that had maintained troops in Lebanon since 1976 and viewed the agreement as a threat to its regional influence. Opponents argued the deal undermined Lebanese sovereignty by granting Israel extraordinary security arrangements in the south. Backed by Damascus, the opposition factions launched an armed uprising that seized control of West Beirut in 1984, forcing Gemayel to scrap the agreement and align his government more closely with Syria.

While Israel withdrew from Beirut and the Chouf Mountains, it retained control of all of southern Lebanon. A new round of bilateral withdrawal talks held in Naqoura between 1984 and 1985 failed to reach a compromise. Amid ongoing guerrilla attacks and mounting casualties, Israel approved a unilateral partial withdrawal in 1985, pulling out of major population centers including Saida, Nabatieh, and Sour but retaining control of a narrow border strip that it labeled a “security zone.”

After the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1990, Syria emerged as the dominant power in Lebanese politics, and Beirut aligned its negotiation position with Damascus under what became known as the “unity of tracks” framework. Under this approach, Lebanon refused any separate peace deal and called for a comprehensive agreement that would require Israel to withdraw simultaneously from southern Lebanon and Syria’s Golan Heights, which Israel had occupied since 1967. Lebanon and Syria joined the U.S.- and Soviet-sponsored Madrid Peace Conference in 1991, and bilateral talks between Lebanon and Israel resumed in Washington in 1993 – the first such talks in decades – but produced no meaningful progress.

Throughout the 1990s, Hezbollah, the Shia resistance group formed in 1982 in response to the Israeli invasion, ramped up its guerrilla campaign against Israeli occupation positions and the pro-Israel South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia. By 1999, the SLA had withdrawn from dozens of villages in the Jezzine region, and in May 2000, the Israeli army completed a full withdrawal from southern Lebanon, ending 18 years of continuous occupation. Under UN supervision, Lebanon and Israel agreed to a withdrawal boundary called the Blue Line, though the formal international border between the two countries has never been fully demarcated. Israel retained control of the Chebaa Farms and Kfar Shouba Hills, and Hezbollah continued periodic strikes against Israeli positions in those contested areas. The 2000 withdrawal also broke the “unity of tracks” framework with Syria, as Israel continued to hold the Golan Heights after failed peace talks between the two countries brokered by U.S. President Bill Clinton earlier that year.

The next major escalation came in 2006, when Hezbollah carried out a cross-border raid that abducted two Israeli soldiers, intending to exchange them for Samir al-Qontar, a Lebanese prisoner held by Israel since 1979. Israel responded with a 33-day large-scale war that included another ground invasion of southern Lebanon. The conflict killed roughly 1,200 Lebanese, most of them civilians, and 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers. Israel failed to achieve its stated goals of releasing the two soldiers and dismantling Hezbollah, and the war ended under UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ordered a cessation of hostilities, expanded UNIFIL’s mandate to monitor the truce, and called for the disarmament of all non-state armed groups in Lebanon. Israel withdrew from most of the territory it occupied during the 2006 war, retaining only control of part of the village of Ghajar in addition to its ongoing hold on Chebaa Farms and Kfar Chouba Hills. Hezbollah retained its arsenal but moved most of its operations underground, and in 2008, Israel released Qontar in exchange for the remains of the two abducted soldiers.

The current round of conflict began in October 2023, when Hezbollah opened fire on northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel. For nearly a year, the two sides exchanged intermittent cross-border fire, before Israel launched a full-scale ground invasion and air campaign targeting Hezbollah in October 2024. A ceasefire brokered by France and the United States went into effect that November, which required Israel to withdraw from all occupied Lebanese territory within two months and required the Lebanese government to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure south of the Litani River. While Lebanon completed the first phase of its obligations, Israel retained control of five military positions inside Lebanon and continued carrying out strikes across the country.

Today, as Israeli forces dig in to maintain their new 10-kilometer buffer zone, Lebanon’s leadership remains firm in its demand for a full end to occupation, marking a new chapter in one of the Middle East’s longest-running unresolved conflicts.

Nearly two months of open conflict stemming from the Iran war have sent deep, systemic shocks across the Gulf region, upending two core assumptions that have anchored regional stability for close to a century. For decades, the Gulf’s economic model flourished under a framework built on perceived geopolitical stability, reinforced by competitive policy incentives including zero-tax regimes, flexible regulatory frameworks, and a rapidly growing, diversified startup ecosystem. Parallel to this economic structure, the region’s security order rested on the decades-old oil-for-security pact with the United States, backed by a dense network of U.S. military installations and advanced defense hardware across the region.

Today, both foundational pillars have suffered tangible erosion after weeks of cross-region missile and drone strikes that have hit all Gulf states. This new reality has forced Gulf capitals into a painful period of strategic re-evaluation, particularly over Washington’s reliability as a long-term security guarantor. As a result, the region is turning its gaze eastward with a new urgency that did not exist before the outbreak of war.

In this post-conflict landscape, economic diversification is no longer just an ambitious long-term goal—it is a growing necessity for long-term survival. Among potential partners, China stands out as the most logical option for deepening cooperation, given its already massive and expanding economic footprint across the Gulf built on decades of growing trade, cross-border investment, and large-scale infrastructure partnerships.

While the Sino-Gulf relationship is not without its inherent constraints, the sheer scale of Chinese economic engagement in the region has created a gravitational pull that can no longer be ignored. The bilateral partnership evolved into a formal comprehensive strategic alignment after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s landmark 2022 visit to Riyadh for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Summit. By 2025, annual multilateral trade between China and the GCC hit approximately $300 billion, cementing China’s position as the GCC’s largest single trading partner. Where Chinese investment was historically concentrated almost exclusively in the energy sector and large-scale port developments, the post-war shift is pushing both sides to explore far deeper economic integration across new sectors.

The future of this expanding partnership is set to be shaped by three key sectors where China’s industrial leadership and Gulf capital create natural synergies. The first is green energy transition, a field where China already holds undisputed global dominance, controlling more than 80% of the world’s total solar panel manufacturing capacity. Chinese exports of wind turbine generators grew by roughly 50% in 2025, and the country accounts for 70% of global electric vehicle (EV) production—an alignment that perfectly matches Gulf nations’ long-term goals to diversify their economies away from overreliance on hydrocarbon exports. For Gulf states, partnering with Chinese firms is a pathway to access the cutting-edge technology needed to transform their domestic power grids and transportation sectors, with major Chinese brands including BYD, Geely, and Changan already positioned to lead this transition.

The second area of growing cooperation is being enabled by the expansion of the BRICS+ framework, which provides a formal platform for cross-regional financial integration that can act as a hedge against overreliance on the Western-dominated global financial system. While a full shift to a yuan-denominated oil trade system remains distant due to the entrenched dominance of the petrodollar, both sides have already begun testing new alternative mechanisms. For example, the mBridge project, a joint initiative between the central banks of China and the United Arab Emirates, is currently piloting a central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform that allows cross-border trade settlements to bypass Western intermediary banks entirely. These trials allow Gulf states to diversify their financial risk exposure while preserving their long-standing traditional economic and political ties with Western powers.

The third key area of collaboration centers on China’s flagship Belt and Road connectivity project, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). With a total cumulative investment of roughly $62 billion, CPEC offers a strategic solution to China’s long-standing “Malacca Dilemma” — the geopolitical vulnerability that sees roughly 80% of China’s total oil imports pass through the narrow Strait of Malacca, a chokepoint vulnerable to external disruption. By expanding investment in CPEC and the deep-water Gwadar Port, Gulf nations can integrate their existing maritime trade routes with overland corridors leading directly into Central Asia. This positioning allows Gulf states to reemerge as central nodes in a new multipolar global trade map, a particularly valuable strategic shift given that 42% of China’s total 2025 crude oil imports came from the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia accounting for 14% and the UAE contributing 7% of that total.

That said, it is critical to acknowledge clear boundaries to the growing Sino-Gulf closeness, most notably the vast structural gap in military commitments between China and the U.S. in the region. While the post-war security shock has acted as a major wake-up call for Gulf leadership, it should not be misinterpreted as a desire to fully replace the United States with China as the region’s primary security partner.

Gulf leadership has long been deeply pragmatic, with no interest in exchanging one form of single-partner dependency for another. The security domain remains the single most significant barrier to a full strategic shift away from the U.S. Currently, the U.S. maintains a formidable military presence of between 40,000 and 50,000 personnel across roughly 10 regional countries, with Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base alone hosting more than 10,000 U.S. troops. In stark contrast, China’s only military footprint in the broader region is a single logistical support base in Djibouti, consistent with Beijing’s long-standing foreign policy principle of non-interference in other nations’ internal affairs. Even in defense procurement, the gap between the two powers remains substantial and cannot be closed quickly. While China has grown into a more prominent global arms exporter, it still lags far behind the U.S. in regional market share.

Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) underscores this gap: between 2021 and 2025, the U.S. accounted for 54% of all arms imports to the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia — the largest global recipient of U.S. arms exports — importing 12% of total U.S. defense exports over that period. By comparison, Chinese arms exports to the entire Middle East between 2016 and 2025 totaled just 732 million in Trend-Indicator Value (TIV), SIPRI’s standardized metric for tracking defense trade trends. That is a tiny fraction of the $19.5 billion TIV in U.S. arms exports to the region over the same 10-year period. While Chinese unarmed drones have grown in popularity for their lack of attached political conditions, they cannot yet match the fully integrated air and missile defense systems that the U.S. military provides to regional allies.

In the end, the post-war regional shift is not a radical, binary pivot from Washington to Beijing. Instead, it is a deliberate push by Gulf middle powers to gain greater strategic autonomy. Gulf states do not see China as a replacement for the U.S., but rather as a necessary strategic hedge. By diversifying both their security and economic partnerships, they are building a multipolar “insurance policy” that carries far less long-term risk than continuing to rely entirely on a single, increasingly fraying security umbrella.

This logic of seeking alternatives to Western-dominated frameworks is not about replacement; it is about building a more resilient multipolar foundation for the region that delivers lower long-term costs and greater economic benefits for Gulf states’ long-term survival. This shift eastward is a calculated, pragmatic response to a changing global order where the old certainties of the decades-old oil-for-security pact no longer hold.

In a landmark move for global industrial design collaboration, the World Industrial Design Association (WIDA) officially launched its operations in Shanghai, marking a new chapter for cross-border innovation and industry-academia partnership in the global design sector.

Approved by China’s State Council, the new global body is co-founded by a diverse coalition of stakeholders, including the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, the China Industrial Design Association, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, alongside a wide range of design organizations, private enterprises, academic institutions, and industry experts from across the globe. The association’s permanent secretariat will be hosted at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology.

The inaugural general assembly of WIDA was convened at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology on Friday, one day ahead of the official launch. During the founding meeting, members confirmed that Zhu Xinyuan, president of the host university, would serve as the first chairman of the global association.

As of its launch, WIDA has attracted 168 founding members – both institutional and individual – hailing from 23 countries and regions worldwide, with existing collaborative networks extending to more than 60 nations across every inhabited continent. This broad international base underscores the global demand for a unified platform to advance industrial design development.

Outlining the organization’s core mission, Chairman Zhu emphasized that WIDA’s overarching vision is to leverage industrial design as a connecting link to drive the shared development and prosperity of global industrial civilization. Beyond fostering professional growth, the association is structured to act as a critical bridging force across geographic boundaries, academic disciplines, industry sectors, and cultural backgrounds.

Its core stated objectives include advancing deeper integration between global industrial design practice and industry-academia-research collaboration, lifting the overall development standards of industrial design worldwide, and cultivating an open, collaborative, and high-efficiency global innovation ecosystem. The association will also prioritize facilitating open dialogue, joint innovation projects, and collective progress among members of the global industrial design community, creating new opportunities for knowledge sharing and co-creation that benefit both developed and emerging economies.

A powerful 7.7-magnitude undersea earthquake has shaken waters off Japan’s northeastern coast, prompting immediate evacuation orders and triggering warnings of potential 3-meter tsunami waves that have put the nation on high alert for aftershocks and major seismic activity in the coming week.

The temblor, registered at a depth of 10 kilometers, struck at 16:52 local time (08:52 BST) approximately 530 kilometers north of Tokyo off the coast of Iwate Prefecture. Shaking from the quake was felt as far south as the capital, prompting thousands of coastal residents across Honshu’s northeast and Hokkaido to immediately move to higher ground in line with official emergency protocols.

While initial monitoring showed the largest tsunami waves reached only 80 centimeters — far below the projected maximum — Japan’s Meteorological Agency (JMA) quickly issued an unprecedented warning: the risk of a catastrophic magnitude 8.0 or larger earthquake occurring within the next seven days remains “relatively higher than during normal periods.” Officials added that future quakes could generate far more destructive shaking and larger, more dangerous tsunami surges.

The 7.7 magnitude quake triggered a level two tsunami warning, the second-highest tier in Japan’s three-tier alert system, which was later downgraded to a lower-level advisory. Two hours after the quake, active tsunami alerts remained in place across parts of Hokkaido. Local authorities used street loudspeakers to circulate emergency updates, urging residents to stay vigilant, and many employers allowed office workers to dismiss early to allow staff to reach safe locations.

Chaw Su Thwe, a Myanmar national residing in Hokkaido, told reporters that the community moved swiftly once the earthquake alert was issued. “As soon as we heard the earthquake alert, everyone ran downstairs,” she said. “However, this time the shaking was relatively mild. Right now, local authorities are using loudspeakers in the neighbourhood to warn people about a possible tsunami and to stay alert.”

As of Monday evening, Japanese government officials confirmed there were no immediate reports of fatalities, major structural damage, or severe injuries. A total of 100 residential properties were left without power, and multiple high-speed bullet train services were temporarily suspended to conduct infrastructure safety inspections.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi echoed the JMA’s emergency guidance, urging at-risk residents to prioritize safety and move to elevated, secure locations immediately. “Tsunami waves are expected to hit repeatedly. Do not leave safe ground until the warning is lifted,” the JMA emphasized in its official post-quake briefing.

Japan’s location along the Pacific Ring of Fire leaves it uniquely vulnerable to seismic activity: the nation records roughly 1,500 earthquakes annually, and accounts for 10 percent of all global magnitude 6.0 or larger tremors. The new earthquake and warning come amid lingering national trauma from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, a 9.0-magnitude undersea quake that struck south of Iwate Prefecture, triggering a massive tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people and caused a catastrophic nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant — one of the worst nuclear disasters in recorded history. Since 2011, Japan has overhauled its emergency early warning and evacuation protocols to reduce casualties from future seismic and tsunami events.