Since October 2023, the sound of Israeli military drones has been a constant presence in southern Lebanon. Each day brings uncertainty about who or what might be targeted. People live with the persistent fear that they could be the next target or become collateral casualties in attacks on vehicles in traffic or in the center of their villages.
Border villages that were entirely or partially destroyed have become danger zones, as the Israeli army continues to target anyone who approaches, regardless of whether they are returning home or tending their farms, effectively enforcing an illegal buffer zone along the Lebanese side of the border.
Testimonies, local narratives, and expert analysis show how Israeli technological superiority and surveillance have reshaped not only the tactics of war but also the social, emotional, and psychological lives of southern communities. The concept of "technological occupation" draws comparisons between paradigms and methods of control in South Lebanon during the 2000 Israeli occupation and those that have emerged since October 2023.
Technology and Asymmetry in 2023–2025
Since its withdrawal from Lebanese territories, Israel has invested in building a complex and advanced defense line to control the border between Israel and Lebanon. A few years after the 2006 war with Lebanon, when Hezbollah succeeded in capturing two Israeli as leverage for a prisoner exchange deal later on, Israel upgraded its defense line into a concrete wall equipped with advanced surveillance technologies, cameras, and radars, some of which are visible when walking along the border.
In October 2023, following 17 years of a cautious “peace”, exchanges of strikes began between Hezbollah, supported by different factions of resistance groups, and the Israeli military. The clashes continued, and by September 2024, Israeli attacks had escalated into a full-scale war, reaching Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Beqaa displacing or around one million individual from those areas. By the end of November, the Israeli war on Lebanon ‘concluded’ with a fragile ceasefire deal, with Israel maintaining illegal occupation of several outposts inside Lebanese territory.
During the war, Hezbollah remained careful and aware of Israeli security and technological superiority; therefore, the group focused on targeting surveillance infrastructure along the borders and the Israeli bases responsible for operating it. On the internal front, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called for a strategy to “blind” Israel by shifting to less developed communication tools and relying on the group’s private fixed telecommunications network instead of cell phones and the internet.
Despite Hezbollah’s attempts at caution, the group suffered tens of casualties in the early days of the war. A situation of asymmetry became increasingly clear: Israeli air superiority, fueled with advanced drone technologies, AI-assisted programs, and precision-guided munitions, enabled precise attacks against Hezbollah’s leadership and commanders, the most significant of which was the assassination of Hezbollah’s historic leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on September 28, 2024.
The battle of intelligence and technology continued after the ceasefire agreement. Israel did not stop attacking Hezbollah militants and commanders, both near and far from the border. Meanwhile, Israeli drones continued to patrol Lebanese skies, establishing a continuous presence and introducing new forms of dominance and control.
The unexpected outcomes of the war sparked public debates about Israel’s success in infiltrating Hezbollah’s security apparatus. People relied on familiar explanations to make sense of a new reality, relating the intelligence asymmetry to human factors. Therefore, the new reality emerging from this war has brought back memories of the earlier occupation.
Historical Context: The Physical Occupation (1982–2000)
Between 1982 and 2000, South Lebanon was under Israeli military occupation, controlled either directly by Israeli forces or indirectly through its proxies, mainly the South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia. Israel established what became known as the “security belt,” an area comrising more than 10% of Lebanon’s territory. This occupation was entirely physical; checkpoints were established between villages, outposts were built on hilltops, and civilian movement — whether inside the security belt, or in and out of it — required Israeli permits. Under this brutal occupation, the presence of Israeli soldiers in their armored vehicles was a visual symbol of power and domination over South Lebanon.
Life under the occupation was subject to constant supervision. Residents were questioned, searched, and detained at checkpoints. Curfews were often imposed, and homes were frequently raided in response to any suspected activity against the occupying forces. However, the occupation was always accompanied by the human element of the occupier. The occupiers' visibility brought terror but, at the same time, a degree of predictability that allowed people to identify limits, recognize boundaries, and sense when danger was near, while giving them a small margin for negotiation.
Resistance was strong as well, though it had a higher ability and capacity to operate in secrecy. Fighters moved through the valleys of Jabal Amel, laying ambushes and planting explosives targeting Israeli patrols. The resistance cost Israel more than 900 soldiers and resulted in its withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, following 18 years of direct occupation of South Lebanon. The withdrawal was a moment of liberation for Lebanon, yet it also marked a significant shift in strategy and the beginning of a new form of control for Israel.
While the occupation ended in 2000, its methods of control did not simply disappear and instead evolved. The tools changed, but the underlying logic of surveillance and domination remained.
Technological Occupation: A New “Security Belt”
Technologies deployed by Israel on the border after 2006 were initially perceived as defensive, aimed at monitoring movement and preventing any threat against Israeli soldiers. To Israel, this was a move forward in a complex world of surveillance, though it took more than ten years to fully materialize. It was a strategy that allowed Israel to collect and store vast amounts of data from the southern villages, which it then used to train its AI-assisted systems on Hezbollah’s areas of activity.
The accumulated intelligence proved decisive when Israel intensified its aerial attacks on September 23, 2024, with the Israeli military saying it struck more than 1,000 targets in the first week of the full-scale war, including several top Hezbollah commanders and alleged missile warehouses. Yet the same technology that enabled precise targeting also resulted in devastating civilian casualties. The use of AI-assisted systems was proven to cause higher casualties among civilians due to their speed, scale, and the flawed decision-making involved in these technologies. The systems use machine learning to assign scores to individuals based on theirsuspected links to armed groups, relying on the massive amounts of data Israel harvested through its surveillance.
The deployment of such technologies extends beyond physical destruction. It has introduced a state of constant psychological pressure, with Israeli drones constantly hovering at low altitudes, conducting searches, targeting heavy machinery used to remove rubble and rebuild homes, following farmers attempting to access their lands, and using loudspeakers to transmit messages, issue warnings, terrorize locals, or interfere with people's lives to remind them that they are constantly being monitored.
As a result, the border villages that Israel has entirely or partially destroyed have largely remained deserted, in what Israel aims to become a security buffer zone along the Lebanese side of the border. Meanwhile, a “technological security belt” enforced by the drones, targeted strikes, hacking of communication systems, and psychological warfare now extends across the entirety of South Lebanon, and further reinforced by AI systems that allow the processing of this enormous amount of surveillance data.
The new reality is still widely misunderstood by the public, leading to assumptions such as, "It is too late. Israel knows everything about us," or, "I am safe. They know I am not involved in any suspicious activities." Overall, however, this new form of occupation is considered by many to be harsher than the prior physical military occupation that lasted nearly two decades. This reality is characterized by residents living under a system they cannot fully understand or comprehend: an occupation managed by algorithms and data flows rather than power through the physical presence of soldiers and checkpoints. It represents a form of data colonialism, in which communities in South Lebanon are turned into sources of information that are analyzed and weaponized against them.
Comparing Two Occupations: Visibility, Control, and Fear
In an interview with Mohammad M., an activist and researcher residing in South Lebanon, life under direct occupation before 2000 was compared with life under indirect occupation today. Under the direct occupation, according to Mohammad, all data on residents and their daily routines were available to Israeli forces or their militia, the South Lebanon Army. Southerners living outside the belt needed permission to enter their villages. Permits were usually timed, pre-issued, and restricted to urgent visits such as funerals. Moreover, to access the security belt, people had to pass through Israeli checkpoints and undergo inspections. Consequently, people at risk of detention often avoided approaching these checkpoints.
In contrast, the automated occupation, or what Mohammad calls the “technological security belt,” has created a different reality. Israel enforces the same control, but in a more brutal and lethal manner. Any person suspected of posing a threat to Israel is targeted and killed by the Israeli drones constantly present in Lebanese skies — a new reality that has killed more than 300 people since the announcement of the ceasefire over a year ago. As a result, many of the people who fear being suspected or targeted avoid traveling to the South altogether, which has accomplished the primary objective of both forms of occupation, according to Mohammad: enforced displacement.
Not only did the new form of occupation achieve the same objectives as traditional forms of military control, but it also created new, pervasive, and more brutal forms of occupation. These include psychological and cognitive occupation, through which Israel controls Lebanese residents via data and constant psychological pressure.
On the psychological level, automated occupation has created a pervasive sense of constant surveillance and control. Residents living under this technological surveillance expect bombings and warnings at any time. This reality has shifted the position of the people of South Lebanon to that of direct recipients of Israeli threats, similar to life under direct occupation prior to 2000. Cognitively, many people may now behave as though they are under direct occupation; they avoid contact with people potentially linked with Hezbollah, impose self-curfews, avoid driving in non-residential areas, and maintain a safe distance from other cars to avoid the risk of unexpected assassinations. Mohammad believes that many civilians trust that they will not be targeted, but fear being hurt if they are caught in areas where attacks might occur. As a result, many are planning to relocate from southern Lebanon to safer regions.
The Right to Opacity: Living Beyond the Drone’s Eye
More than 25 years after the end of the Israeli occupation, residents of southern Lebanon are under a different form of Israeli control. What was once imposed through tanks, soldiers, and checkpoints is now maintained by drones, cameras, and online evacuation alerts. This occupation is not on the ground, but in the skies, capable of targeting anyone suspected of resistance without being seen or expected. It is an occupation that does not rely on interrogation but instead on extracting information from people’s private communications and devices.
A new reality has emerged where feelings of safety are absent, and perceptions of danger are no longer tied to the physical military presence but to constant awareness of being watched. Southerners have learned to interpret the sounds of drones as a sign of danger, much like earlier generations did with the presence of patrols. For many, the border is no longer a physical line but a digital perimeter defined by machine visibility.
However, this new order is not total. Just as the first occupation produced a culture of resistance, the technological one has prompted new strategies of survival, from moving offline and turning off smartphones to collective efforts to rebuild and stay. In these gestures, small but deliberate, lies a different kind of defiance. If Israel’s technological superiority has automated control, it has also revealed a more profound truth: that the struggle over the South is no longer only territorial but informational. The fight for sovereignty today begins with the right to opacity to live, once again, beyond the reach of the drone’s eye.