Human Rights Watch Exhibits Images Claiming Israel Has Unlawfully Used White Phosphorus In Lebanon.

Beirut; March 2026: Vide a Press Release, the New York-based rights group – Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found evidence that Israel have used white phosphorus in residential areas of southern Lebanon earlier this month, in violation of international humanitarian law. HRW while confirming the authenticity of 07 photos showing white phosphorus munitions fired over a residential area in southern Lebanon’s Yohmor, with fires breaking out in at least two homes there on 03rd of March.

It is Ramzi Kaiss, a Lebanon researcher with HRW, said, “The Israeli military’s unlawful use of white phosphorus over residential areas is extremely alarming and will have dire consequences for civilians. The incendiary effects of white phosphorus can cause death or cruel injuries that result in lifelong suffering”.

The use of airburst white phosphorus is unlawfully indiscriminate in populated areas and does not meet the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm. The chemical substance ignites when exposed to oxygen and can set homes, agricultural areas, and other civilian objects on fire.

HRW found that in Yohmor, the munitions were used unlawfully over concentrations of civilians, which resulted in fires breaking out in homes and other civilian property. The organisation has verified and geolocated an image posted online by Lebanese media on the morning of 03rd March. It showed at least 02 artillery-delivered white phosphorus munitions being airburst over residential neighbourhoods.

The shape of the smoke cloud caused by the airbursts was consistent with the “knuckle” made by the expelling and bursting charges of the M825-series 155mm artillery projectile that contains white phosphorus, it said in the report. HRW has also verified the geolocated photographs posted on Facebook by the civil defence team of the Islamic Health Committee in Yohmor that showed workers extinguishing fires on residential rooftops and in a car.

The organisation concluded the fire was likely caused by felt wedges impregnated with white phosphorus, given the proximity of the sites to the area where airburst munitions were observed. “Israel should immediately halt this practice and states providing Israel with weapons, including white phosphorus munitions, should immediately suspend military assistance and arms sales and push Israel to stop firing such munitions in residential areas”, Kaiss said.

The report comes hours after Israel’s military, which has been waging days of fierce attacks in southern Beirut, said it was attacking Hezbollah targets in the Lebanese capital. At least 394 people have been killed and more than 1,000 injured in Lebanon in Israeli attacks. HRW has urged Israel’s key allies, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, to suspend military sales to Israel and impose targeted sanctions on officials credibly implicated in grave crimes. While furnishing further factual evidence that Israel had already used white phosphorus between October 2023 and May 2024 across border villages in southern Lebanon, the organisation said, putting civilians at grave risk.

What is becoming evident that Israel may redraw the demographic map of Lebanon to try and pressure Hezbollah and sever the connection between the group and its support base. While Israeli has repeatedly falsified about claims of Hezbollah attacking Israeli territories, Maverick News 30 has analysed from reliable sources that Hezbollah has only launched an attack on 02nd March, 2026, after a gap of more than a year in retaliation to the assassination of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In that same period, when Hezbollah remained dormant, it was Israel which had purportedly violated the November 2024 ceasefire with Lebanon on a near-daily basis with attacks, purportedly targeting Hezbollah, that killed hundreds of civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure.

Israel being harried out of southern Lebanon by Hezbollah in 2000, after an extensive 18 years of occupation that began with its invasion in 1982, ostensibly to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) presence in the country. That invasion killed around 19,000 Lebanese and Palestinians. Still, analysts believe Israel’s actions in this war are part of its efforts to reshape the region under its hegemony, defanging any real or perceived threat. Those effects would also impact Lebanon’s relationship with Israel and the power and status of Hezbollah.

Today, Israel’s actions in Lebanon are tied to the political conditions they want to impose on Lebanon once this war is over. Analysts said those conditions could include imposing a peace deal, in line with Israel’s Abraham Accords, or an economic zone that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has touted regularly. Israeli intention could be to “demilitarise the area north of the Litani” to the Awali River, near Sidon, similar to what Israel has demanded in Syria, insisting the area south of Damascus be demilitarised. He recalled the 1976 Red Lines Agreement, a secret agreement between Israel and Syria, negotiated by the Americans, that decided Syria would not go south of the Awali.

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Suvro Sanyal – Team Maverick.