White phosphorus use in Lebanon’s Zawtar al-Sharqiyah exposes systemic militarisation of civilian zones under occupation’s ‘deterrence’ doctrine
Original framing: “Israeli army drops white phosphorous over Lebanon’s Zawtar al-Sharqiyah, report says” — Middle East Eye
White phosphorus has been used systematically in Lebanon since the 2006 war, when Israel targeted civilian infrastructure in Beirut and southern Lebanon, leaving behind a legacy of unexploded ordnance and contaminated land. The 2008-2009 Gaza war saw similar tactics, with Amnesty International documenting Israel’s use of white phosphorus in densely populated areas, a violation of the Geneva Conventions. These precedents reveal a deliberate military strategy to normalise the weaponisation of civilian zones, a tactic that has roots in early 20th-century colonial warfare, where chemical weapons were first deployed against non-combatants.
The use of white phosphorus in Zawtar al-Sharqiyah is not an isolated act of war but a deliberate strategy embedded in Israel’s military doctrine, which treats civilian zones as legitimate targets under the guise of ‘deterrence.
’ This tactic, rooted in historical precedents from Gaza to Lebanon’s 2006 war, reflects a broader pattern of weaponising chemical agents to displace populations and erode resistance, a dynamic that aligns with colonial and post-colonial conflicts where civilian suffering is deprioritised. The absence of global condemnation underscores the complicity of Western powers—particularly the U.S. and EU—in supplying these munitions, while the erasure of Indigenous and local knowledge systems further marginalises the voices of those directly impacted. To address this systemic issue, solutions must centre accountability through international tribunals, integrate marginalised expertise into rehabilitation efforts, and challenge the geopolitical calculus that enables such violations. The trickster-like inversion of white phosphorus—as both a weapon and a tool of psychological terror—reveals the absurdity of framing civilian suffering as inevitable, demanding instead a reckoning with the structures that perpetuate it.