Cattle, crops and ancient olive groves: Lebanon’s farmers ‘lose everything’ to Israeli bombs

Thousands of hectares of fertile land, including olive trees that have survived for millennia, have been destroyed in the country’s agricultural heartland

The house is gone but the land is still at the forefront of his mind. “We were supposed to harvest the ashta now. They’re hanging on the trees just waiting for us,” says Munif Zein, sitting on the terrace of a relative’s house in Hammana, in the Lebanese mountains. The ashta, or custard apples, he is talking about – light green with creamy flesh – grow in his fields in Mansouri, a village on Lebanon’s southern coast.

His family had to leave Mansouri abruptly when the Israeli army started intense bombing on 23 September.

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