In the south, war doesn’t end when the shelling stops; a different confrontation begins after it \u2014 a confrontation with scorched land, demolished homes, and the years people need to rebuild their lives again. Amid the border villages that have lost their trees and farms, many try to hold on to what remains of their bond with a land that was always the source of security, livelihood, and identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At a time when many people from the south and Lebanon in general were seeking a chance to emigrate and work abroad to escape the economic collapse, Youssef Abbas, from the border town of Aitaroun, chose a different path; instead of leaving, he decided to hold on to his village and try to build a secure future for himself and his family from within his own land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Out of his passion for the land and his interest in nurseries and gardens, Youssef started his project with modest resources, pouring all his effort into developing a business he believed in. In less than five years, this small project turned into an investment with an estimated market value of about $500,000, in an experience reflecting the determination of a young man in his mid-thirties who chose to think outside the ordinary and to work in a profession he loves, on land he considers an extension of himself and his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Youssef didn’t treat farming as a passing occupation, but as an entire life he built slowly, tree after tree, deal after deal. In the south, where people consider that true wealth lies not in banks but in land, Youssef grew up on the idea that a house and land are a person’s only guarantee; even a poor family, he says, owned a house surrounded by a garden or a small plot of land that gave it a sense of security and a real value no less than tens of thousands of dollars, which is why selling land was never an ordinary choice, but something akin to losing part of one’s identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For him, land was the one form of life that remained fixed amid everything that changed in the south. In his border village, people always used to say that the poor are never truly poor as long as they own a house and a piece of land; the house protects, the land feeds, and the olive tree stays passed down from grandparents to grandchildren even if the money is lost. That’s why land was not sold easily, and selling it was seen as something akin to uprooting a part of the family itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But since the 2019 crisis, everything began to shake; the money people had worked hard to save was locked up in the banks, reassurance vanished suddenly, and it took no more than an illness or a mishap for a person to feel completely exposed. For Youssef, the question was no longer just how to get through the day, but how he could feel secure again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years before the war, Youssef started his agricultural project modestly; he worked in the summer at a small restaurant by a park, then looked for any work to help him through the winter. In late 2018, he began taking more interest in nurseries, roses, and trees. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown, and the economic crisis, he grew even more attached to the land, spending his time among the trees; planting and tending seedlings, taking on people’s land to prune their olive trees and care for them, and little by little the small job turned into a full project he and his friend Ali Mawasi lived off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His work expanded quickly, and he came to tend dozens of agricultural properties; caring for olive trees, planting seedlings, and carrying out maintenance work for gardens and homes belonging to expatriates or people residing outside the south. He had about 60 clients on annual contracts covering plowing, fertilizing, cleaning, pesticide spraying, and maintaining green spaces. Some properties cost their owners between $900 and $1,000, while contracts for large properties \u2014 with pools, fountains, and expansive gardens \u2014 reached about $5,000; he cared for the smallest detail on land that he and his partner Ali considered their own land and livelihood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Some properties cost their owners between $900 and $1,000\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\nHe didn’t sell directly to people; the goal was to establish and sell wholesale to other nurseries, yet he was never able to make use of his own plantings to start again from scratch; he was growing thousands of seedlings of pine, roses, and ornamental trees, so much so that even the garden owners whose land he tended could barely make use of all he planted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over time, the nurseries grew and came to include massive irrigation, watering, and water-pumping equipment, and supplies that cost enormous sums. The project wasn’t just a source of income, but years of toil and a dream being built before his eyes as if it were his child, and it was literally a life plan; Youssef dreamed of reaching the age of thirty-five having secured his future, after living his childhood in mourning, and he finally wanted to feel that his life had become stable. But the war overturned everything all at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Nightmare of War and the Destruction of the Nursery Dream<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
In the first days of the 2023 escalation, Youssef lived through a state of anxiety and anticipation like the rest of the people of the south; nights passed glued to the phone, asking who had left the town and who had stayed, then came the moment of displacement. At first, everyone thought it was temporary; a month or two and they’d return, but the months turned into a year, then more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until October 7th, 12 young men worked with him inside the nurseries and agricultural workshops, but with the start of the war, Youssef was forced to flee quickly with his family and his brother’s family. The displacement journey began from Qlaileh, then Bir Hassan, then Aley, and on to the area east of Sidon, and during that period he moved about ten times between houses trying to find a place that would give his family some stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The nurseries were left without water, the trees burned, the land was bulldozed, and olive trees that had needed years to grow were uprooted; almost nothing survived. Youssef estimates his direct losses in goods and equipment \u2014 accounting for the market value of the goods over the years \u2014 at about $400,000; the pumps alone were worth $130,000, while the actual loss, he says, exceeds a million dollars when the land, the nurseries, the construction, the equipment, and everything accumulated over long years are counted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harder than the financial loss was the feeling that time itself had been wasted; a nursery isn’t built in months, but needs four or five years before it starts real production, and every tree needs time, patience, and daily care. That’s why, when Youssef talks about starting over from scratch, he’s not just talking about money, but about the years, the energy, and the age lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Harder than the financial loss was the feeling that time itself had been wasted\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\nToday, Youssef, like many people from the south, lives between displacement and trying to survive; after the 2024 war ended, people repaired what they could out of their own pockets, without any real compensation. On one of the nights he considers among the hardest, a major alert reached Aitaroun without a clear specification of the targeted areas; people were seized with panic, and families rushed to fetch their children from school. The next day, Youssef decided to go up to his house to save what furniture he could, and at that point the 2026 war had not yet started, but the fear in people’s eyes and his own fear for his family convinced him there was no room, at that time, for a normal return to the village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back to Zero<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
During the first war, Youssef refused to stay idle; he started completely from scratch in the displacement areas, collecting lighters and selling them to mobile coffee carts (the “express” carts), before he came across a company working in the oils sector, olive oil in particular, and joined it so he could cover his family’s expenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for the twelve young men who used to work with him, they scattered completely; two of them emigrated, and the rest spread out among scattered day jobs \u2014 blacksmithing, working for companies, or any opportunity that secured them a living. But his greatest loss was losing his friend Ali Mawasi, who was targeted by an Israeli drone while he was fetching his passport to move to Germany to live with his wife. For Youssef, Ali had been trying, as much as he could, to fix what the first war had ruined while waiting for his visa to arrive, but his journey to the sky came before his journey to the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Youssef talks about his losses, he starts with his lifelong friend, moves through the project, and ends with his family’s land and home; he doesn’t reduce it to numbers alone, even though they are huge; the project he built over the years had direct operating costs of nearly $50,000 to $60,000, but once it reached the production stage its actual market value came close to hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was able, he says, to sell the nursery for about $400,000, or $200,000 if he wanted to get rid of it quickly; on top of that, his work secured him a net profit of no less than $4,000 a month. Today, all of that is gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite everything, Youssef still talks about the land as if it were the one thing he doesn’t want to lose entirely; because for him, losing the land isn’t just losing a project, but losing a memory, an identity, and an entire life built stone by stone, tree after tree. But his greatest pain is tied to the idea of lost time; he knows that rebuilding a nursery isn’t a matter of months, since planting just 10 or 12 thousand seedlings alone takes years of watering, weeding, and daily work before reaching the production stage. That’s why, when he talks about starting all over again, he asks with sorrow: “Who will bring back my companion and partner? And who will give me back five years of my life? And on top of that, three years lost to war and displacement?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Impossible Return<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Youssef doesn’t see the return as near; for him, rebuilding Aitaroun could take five to ten years; the roads aren’t ready, the schools are absent, and returning now would mean living in tents. The scale of destruction is also far greater than Lebanon’s ability to absorb quickly; thousands of housing units need rubble cleared and rebuilding, while the workforce is limited and building materials themselves require long supply chains and importing by sea. He always cites the experience of rebuilding the southern suburbs after the 2006 war, which took seven years despite the availability of funding and major support at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what scares him most isn’t just the financial loss, but the new generation losing its bond with the place; his son today is nearing six, and has spent more than half his life moving between rented houses. Youssef fears that if this reality continues for more years, the child will grow up not really knowing his village, and might one day ask him: “What is Aitaroun?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite all this ruin, Youssef still talks about the land with something resembling both longing and resolve; he knows the return is hard, and that rebuilding everything he lost might be impossible, but at the same time he can’t imagine himself away from farming, because for him it isn’t just a business or a source of income, but the only way of life he knows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Youssef’s view, bringing the villages back to life doesn’t only need compensation or temporary assistance, but real support that allows people to start over; the experience he tried to build from scratch, despite everything he lost along the way, shows that many are still holding on to their land and want to stay there if given a real chance to work. That’s why accessible loans or grants for farmers, nursery owners, and small projects could form an essential step toward reviving agricultural and economic life in the south; thousands of farmers today aren’t waiting for daily handouts so much as a chance to return to their land and work it again, because for them farming isn’t just a profession, but the only way to reclaim their normal lives and sense of stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Youssef, environmental justice is no longer a term used in reports or academic discussions, but has become part of his daily life, one he sees in every burned tree and in every plot of land left without water or owners; for him, the war didn’t just destroy homes and nurseries, but struck at the very relationship between people and their land; trees that took years to grow were uprooted within days, and fields that were the livelihood of entire families turned into barren stretches, while thousands of people found themselves deprived even of their natural right to return to their villages and work their land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the thirty-something young man, the environmental catastrophe isn’t measured only by the scale of destruction, but also by the time the land needs to heal, and by the fear that an entire generation will grow up away from the villages, cut off from farming and from the feeling that this land resembles them and belongs to them. That’s why, when he talks about justice, he doesn’t just mean financial compensation, but people’s right to have their land regain its capacity for life again, and for a person to feel safe once more standing on soil he knows and that knows him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite all that, Youssef tried to resist the easier option: total surrender. After displacement, he didn’t wait for compensation or political promises; he started with very small jobs, collecting lighters and selling them to the express carts, then moved on to work in the oils sector to secure the bare minimum for his family. For him, returning to any work tied to the land or to what it produces was a personal attempt and a living response to reclaiming part of his previous life, as if he were refusing to let the war become the final verdict on his future. Even today, when he talks about rebuilding the nursery, he knows it will take many years, but he still believes the real solution begins with bringing people back to their land \u2014 not just by rebuilding walls, but by restoring the capacity to farm, work, and produce, because villages without their people and their trees turn into places without memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the south, war doesn’t end when the shelling stops; a different confrontation begins after it \u2014 a confrontation with scorched land, demolished homes, and the years people need to rebuild their lives again. Amid the border villages that have lost their trees and farms, many try to hold on to what remains of their bond with a land that was always the source of security, livelihood, and identity. At a time when many people from the south and Lebanon in general were seeking a chance to emigrate and work abroad to escape the economic collapse, Youssef Abbas, from the border town of Aitaroun, chose a different path; instead of leaving, he decided to hold on to his village and try to build a secure future for himself and his family from within his own land. Out of his passion for the land and his interest in nurseries and gardens, Youssef started his project with modest resources, pouring all his effort into developing a business he believed in. In less than five years, this small project turned into an investment with an estimated market value of about $500,000, in an experience reflecting the determination of a young man in his mid-thirties who chose to think outside the ordinary and to work in a profession he loves, on land he considers an extension of himself and his family. Youssef didn’t treat farming as a passing occupation, but as an entire life he built slowly, tree after tree, deal after deal. In the south, where people consider that true wealth lies not in banks but in land, Youssef grew up on the idea that a house and land are a person’s only guarantee; even a poor family, he says, owned a house surrounded by a garden or a small plot of land that gave it a sense of security and a real value no less than tens of thousands of dollars, which is why selling land was never an ordinary choice, but something akin to losing part of one’s identity. For him, land was the one form of life that remained fixed amid everything that changed in the south. In his border village, people always used to say that the poor are never truly poor as long as they own a house and a piece of land; the house protects, the land feeds, and the olive tree stays passed down from grandparents to grandchildren even if the money is lost. That’s why land was not sold easily, and selling it was seen as something akin to uprooting a part of the family itself. But since the 2019 crisis, everything began to shake; the money people had worked hard to save was locked up in the banks, reassurance vanished suddenly, and it took no more than an illness or a mishap for a person to feel completely exposed. For Youssef, the question was no longer just how to get through the day, but how he could feel secure again. Years before the war, Youssef started his agricultural project modestly; he worked in the summer at a small restaurant by a park, then looked for any work to help him through the winter. In late 2018, he began taking more interest in nurseries, roses, and trees. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown, and the economic crisis, he grew even more attached to the land, spending his time among the trees; planting and tending seedlings, taking on people’s land to prune their olive trees and care for them, and little by little the small job turned into a full project he and his friend Ali Mawasi lived off. A Steady Monthly Income His work expanded quickly, and he came to tend dozens of agricultural properties; caring for olive trees, planting seedlings, and carrying out maintenance work for gardens and homes belonging to expatriates or people residing outside the south. He had about 60 clients on annual contracts covering plowing, fertilizing, cleaning, pesticide spraying, and maintaining green spaces. Some properties cost their owners between $900 and $1,000, while contracts for large properties \u2014 with pools, fountains, and expansive gardens \u2014 reached about $5,000; he cared for the smallest detail on land that he and his partner Ali considered their own land and livelihood. “Some properties cost their owners between $900 and $1,000” He didn’t sell directly to people; the goal was to establish and sell wholesale to other nurseries, yet he was never able to make use of his own plantings to start again from scratch; he was growing thousands of seedlings of pine, roses, and ornamental trees, so much so that even the garden owners whose land he tended could barely make use of all he planted. Over time, the nurseries grew and came to include massive irrigation, watering, and water-pumping equipment, and supplies that cost enormous sums. The project wasn’t just a source of income, but years of toil and a dream being built before his eyes as if it were his child, and it was literally a life plan; Youssef dreamed of reaching the age of thirty-five having secured his future, after living his childhood in mourning, and he finally wanted to feel that his life had become stable. But the war overturned everything all at once. The Nightmare of War and the Destruction of the Nursery Dream In the first days of the 2023 escalation, Youssef lived through a state of anxiety and anticipation like the rest of the people of the south; nights passed glued to the phone, asking who had left the town and who had stayed, then came the moment of displacement. At first, everyone thought it was temporary; a month or two and they’d return, but the months turned into a year, then more. Until October 7th, 12 young men worked with him inside the nurseries and agricultural workshops, but with the start of the war, Youssef was forced to flee quickly with his family and his brother’s family. The displacement journey began from Qlaileh, then Bir<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":17112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[379,522],"tags":[676,422],"class_list":["post-17129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environmental-issues","category-the-people-of-the-south-speak","tag-agriculture","tag-silat_wassel-en"],"blocksy_meta":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6-31.jpg",2048,900,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6-31.jpg",2048,900,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6-31.jpg",2048,900,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6-31-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6-31-300x132.jpg",300,132,true],"large":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6-31-1024x450.jpg",1024,450,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6-31-1536x675.jpg",1536,675,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6-31.jpg",2048,900,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"\u0639\u0644\u064a \u0639\u0648\u0627\u0636\u0629","author_link":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/author\/ali-awada\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Environmental Issues<\/a> The People of the South Speak<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"In the south, war doesn’t end when the shelling stops; a different confrontation begins after it \u2014 a confrontation with scorched land, demolished homes, and the years people need to rebuild their lives again. Amid the border villages that have lost their trees and farms, many try to hold on to what remains of their…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}