In Lebanon, the family’s memories exploded along with the village.

ARAMUN, Lebanon (AP) — Ayman Jaber’s memories are rooted in every corner of Mkhaibib, a village in southern Lebanon that he calls his “habibti,” Arabic for “beloved.” The root of the village’s name means “lover” or “beloved”.

Reminiscing about his childhood sweetheart, the 45-year-old avionics technician recounts how the young couple met in the yard near his uncle’s house.

“I used to wait there to see her,” Jaber recalls with a smile. “Half the village knew about us.”

The fond memories stand in stark contrast to recent photographs of his hometown.

Mkhaibib, located on a hill near the Israeli border, was leveled in a series of explosions on October 16. The Israeli army released a video showing explosions ripping through a village in Marjayoun province, leveling dozens of houses.

The scene was repeated in villages in southern Lebanon since Israel launched an invasion a month ago with the stated goal of pushing Hezbollah militants back from the border. On October 26, powerful explosions in and around Odaisa raised earthquake alarms in northern Israel.

Israel says it wants to destroy huge network Hezbollah tunnels in the border zone. But for people who have been displaced, the attacks also destroy a lifetime of memories.

Mkhaibib has been subject to sporadic attacks since Hezbollah and Israeli forces began exchanging fire on October 8 last year.

Before the war, Jaber lived in Aramoun, south of Beirut, and the rest of his family were evacuated from Mkhaibib after the war. Border skirmishes began. Some of them left their property and took refuge in Syria. Jaber’s father and two sisters, Zainab and Fatima, moved in with him.

In the living room of their temporary home, the siblings drink Arabic coffee while their father chain-smokes.

“My father breaks my heart. He is 70 years old, weak and has been waiting for more than a year to return to Mkhaibib,” Zeinab said. “He left his five cows there. He goes on to ask, “Do you think they’re still alive?”

Mkhaibib was a tight-knit rural village with around 70 historic stone houses dotting its narrow streets. Families grew tobacco, wheat, mulukhia (jute mallow) and olives, planting them every spring and waking before dawn in the summer to harvest.

The village was also famous for an ancient temple dedicated to Benjamin, son of Jacob, an important figure in Judaism. In Islam, he is known as Prophet Benjamin bin Yaqub, who is considered the 12th son of Prophet Yaqub and the brother of Prophet Yusef.

The temple was damaged during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah and later repaired. The photographs show the shrine, encased in a golden cage adorned with intricate Arabic inscriptions, next to an old stone mosque topped by a minaret that towers over the village. There is no mosque or temple now.

Hisham Younes, who heads the environmental group Southern Greens, says generations of southerners admired Mkhaibib for his one- and two-story stone houses, some of which were built by Jaber’s grandfather and his friends.

“Blowing up an entire village is a form of collective punishment and a war crime. What will they gain from the destruction of shrines, churches and old houses? – Younes asks.

Abdelmoem Choukair, mayor of nearby Mays al-Jabal, told The Associated Press that the last few dozen families living in Mkhaibib fled before destruction of Israel began, as did the residents of the surrounding villages.

Jaber’s sisters attended school in Mays al-Jabal. This school was also destroyed by a series of powerful explosions.

After finishing her studies in Beirut, Zeinab worked in a pharmacy in the nearby village of Blida. This pharmacy also disappeared after the Israeli military blew up part of this village. Israeli forces even bulldozed their village cemetery, where several generations of family members are buried.

“I don’t belong to any political group,” says Zeinab. “Why was my home, my life taken from me?”

She says she can’t bring herself to watch the video of her village being destroyed. “When my brother was playing it, I ran out of the room.”

To realize what is happening, Fatima says she closes her eyes and returns to Mkhaibib. She sees the setting sun brightening the sky above their family gatherings on the upstairs patio, framed by their mother’s flowers.

The family painstakingly expanded their home over the course of ten years.

“It took us 10 years to add just one room,” Fatima said. “First my dad laid the floor, then the walls, roof and glass windows. My mother sold a year’s supply of home canning to furnish it.” She paused. “And it disappeared in an instant.”

At the height of the war, Zeinab quietly got married. She is now six months pregnant. She hoped to return to Mkhaibib in time for the birth.

Her brother was born while Mkhaibib and other villages in southern Lebanon were under Israeli occupation. Jaber remembers driving from Beirut to Mkhaibib, passing through Israeli checkpoints and the final crossing before entering the village.

“There were checks and interrogations. This process used to take a full day or half a day,” he says. And inside the village they always felt “under surveillance.”

His family also fled the village during the war with Israel in 2006, and when they returned they found their houses destroyed but still standing. An uncle and grandmother were among those killed in the 34-day conflict, but the medlar tree that the matriarch planted near their home survived.

This time there is nowhere to go back, and there is not even a medlar tree.

Jaber is concerned that Israel will again establish a permanent presence in southern Lebanon and that he will not be able to rebuild the house he has built over the past six years for himself, his wife and two sons.

“When this war is over, we will return,” Ayman says quietly. “If necessary, we will put up tents and stay until we rebuild our homes.”