Just ahead of World Environment Day this year, an Israeli military strike targeted the Orange House – the coastal south Lebanon home of celebrated marine ecologist and conservation advocate Mona Khalil – leaving the 77-year-old activist critically injured. Two weeks later, on June 19, Khalil died from her wounds in a Beirut hospital.
Born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1949, Khalil spent decades living in the Netherlands to escape Lebanon’s brutal civil war, before finally returning to her home country in 1999. It was here that a chance encounter on the shores of her coastal hometown of Mansouri, just south of the port city of Tyre, altered the course of her life forever: while walking the beach, she witnessed a nesting green sea turtle throwing sand into the air as it prepared to lay its eggs. That small, intimate moment sparked a 27-year lifelong mission to protect the endangered sea turtles that nest along Mansouri’s shoreline.
The Orange House, the home Khalil chose to stay in despite repeated Israeli bombing campaigns across southern Lebanon, became the heart of her conservation work. For Ramy Khashab, a long-time environmental consultant, close friend, and one of Khalil’s earliest protégés, the space was inextricably tied to her legacy. “The Orange House was meant to be in every single way because that’s where she discovered the sea turtle that turned her life around,” Khashab, now 32, told Middle East Eye. Khashab first met Khalil by coincidence on Mansouri’s beach as a child, a meeting he calls “the perfect coincidence of my life.” Recognizing his deep love for reptiles, amphibians and wildlife, Khalil gave him his first job while he was still in high school, beginning a decades-long partnership.
Over more than a quarter century, Khalil trained generations of conservation volunteers, passing on her knowledge and passion for coastal protection. She taught teams to safeguard turtle nests from predation by foxes, damage from off-road vehicles driving onto nesting beaches, and even past efforts by United Nations forces who once attempted to hire local fishermen to hunt the protected turtles. Throughout nesting season, she was always the first to arrive on the shoreline to patrol for nests. She and her volunteers also guided vulnerable newly hatched turtles – only 1 in 1,000 of which survive to adulthood – on their journey out to the Mediterranean Sea, and she founded the Orange House Children Turtle Club to pass on conservation values to young people.
Beyond turtle protection, Khalil led a years-long campaign against harmful coastal development, private enclosure of public shoreline, and destructive dynamite fishing – efforts that environmentalists credit with allowing sea turtle populations to thrive across the Mansouri region. In the off-season, when winter storms drove away tourists and waste believed to have drifted from Israeli waters washed up on southern Lebanon’s shores, she organized community cleanups that stretched from the border town of Naqoura north along the coast. For decades, the Orange House also stood as an open, welcoming community hub for people of all backgrounds and identities.
Many who knew Khalil told Middle East Eye they believe the strike was deliberate, targeting her role as a unifying, community-focused leader committed to protecting life and southern Lebanon’s natural heritage. “She kept resisting and taught everyone to love Lebanon as much as she did. It’s because she insisted on staying, because she was symbolising life and resistance there in the south, that’s probably why they murdered her,” Khashab said.
The day after Khalil’s death, hundreds of mourners gathered in Beirut to pay their final respects. The crowd spanned family members, environmental activists, friends, and senior representatives from Lebanon’s culture and environment ministries. Most wore black mourning clothes, but small splashes of color cut through the somber gathering, as some displaced attendees from southern Lebanon could not reach their belongings to retrieve mourning attire.
The most memorable presence at the wake was that of Hawi, Khalil’s Ethiopian assistant, who was with the activist moments before the strike. Despite sustaining second-degree burns in the attack, Hawi ran to a nearby Lebanese army outpost to call for a rescue, an act that prevented Khalil from dying buried under the rubble of her home.
At the center of the wake rested a large portrait of Khalil holding a newly hatched baby turtle, flanked by glass bowls filled with dates and small green and brown turtle charms – a quiet tribute to the thousands of endangered loggerhead and green sea turtles she saved over her career. Amal Ephrem, a university professor and environmental activist who founded Lebanon’s Waste Management Coalition, wore a small green turtle charm on her bracelet to the service. She noted that she attended the wake not just to honor Khalil, but to mourn the more than 4,000 people killed in Israeli attacks across Lebanon since March 2, a toll that includes hundreds of women and children, with more than 12,000 additional people wounded. Large swathes of southern Lebanon remain inaccessible and unsafe due to ongoing Israeli bombardment, she said, making the gathering in Beirut a rare chance to stand in solidarity with displaced communities from the south.
In an Instagram post on her page Lebanese Composters, Ephrem paid tribute to Khalil’s enduring impact: “We will keep walking on the white sands of Mansouri, admiring its purple seashells and diving into its turquoise waters, grateful for all you did to protect this special place. We will keep walking with endless admiration.”
Khalil launched the Orange House conservation project in 2000, 26 years before the strike that claimed her life. But while her life was cut short, her work continues. Much of the sea turtle monitoring and conservation work across Mansouri has persisted throughout the current conflict, even amid intense Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon. Her model of community-centered conservation has already been adopted by groups on other beaches across the region, and her influence continues to shape future conservation efforts.
“Her passion, her persistence, and her stubbornness, even, are what make her so amazing,” Khashab said. “The things we learned from her we use daily, not only in relation to sea turtles and environment, but in our everyday life. Mona’s legacy is immortal. Parts of Mona are in every person, not only myself.”