Point-blank: Where is Bint Jbeil?

Mohamed Salmawy

Saturday 2 May 2026

No sooner had Israel invaded Southern Lebanon, in a step that falls under the project of Greater Israel, than Google Maps rushed to erase all the names of the southern villages from its maps, as though they had already been annexed to Israel, with only the assignment of new Hebrew names remaining, just as it has done with Palestine.

I searched for a long time for Bint Jbeil and the rest of the villages of the south, but I could not find them. Bint Jbeil was erased: the capital of steadfastness and the icon of the southern struggle, where the scent of thyme blends with that of dignity.

Bint Jbeil, poised like a poem written in the ink of resistance and woven with threads of sunlight, is a fortress that has resisted defeat, transforming its green terrain into natural shields that refuse to submit. Yet, by erasing it from the map, Google has exposed the Israeli plan and revealed its hidden intentions. The history of Bint Jbeil is a rich record of confrontations. Since the dawn of history, this city has been a point of connection and a centre of cultural and commercial influence in Jabal Amel. But its fate has also been to serve as a gateway to victory in every Israeli invasion of Southern Lebanon, from 1978, which witnessed the first Israeli aggression, to the major invasion of 1982 and the bombardment of Beirut, and finally the great epic of July 2006.

It is impossible to mention Bint Jbeil without recalling the battle of Murraba’ Al-Tahrir in that year, when the enemy believed that entering the city would be a mere stroll through its alleys, only to find its old houses transformed into barricades and its squares into graves for invaders. In the battle of Saf Al-Hawa, the people of the south redrew the map of the region and proved that land can fight alongside its inhabitants. Despite the destruction inflicted on the stones of the steadfast town, the pride of its minarets and churches remained witness to the falsity of the Israeli narrative of peace.

The aggression passed, but Bint Jbeil remained, with its Thursday market full of life, its schools producing scholars and writers, and its authentic Lebanese diversity embodying national unity in its finest form. It is a city that shakes off the dust off its shoulders after every aggression, rebuilding its homes with higher roofs and stronger determination. Despite Israel’s expansionist ambitions and Google’s obvious complicity, Bint Jbeil will remain, through its geography and its history of heroism, a beacon for all free and steadfast fortresses that cannot be subdued.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 30 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly