Al Mayadeen English: Former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin warned that South Lebanon is on the...

Former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin warned that South Lebanon is on the verge of sliding into depopulation amid continued Israeli attacks, mass "evacuation orders", and repeated Israeli ceasefire violations.

In a statement on X, de Villepin said the situation in South Lebanon has entered "a new stage," stressing that "Lebanon cannot become a forgotten front."

He argued that "Israel’s security cannot be built on the progressive disappearance of southern Lebanon" or "on emptied villages, displaced families, forbidden landscapes, destroyed homes, cut-off roads, and land rendered uninhabitable."

Warning that the Israeli war on Lebanon is also an assault on identity, he wrote that "a war does not only destroy lives. It also destroys memories. It erases cemeteries, churches, mosques, schools, olive trees, hills, and homes where several generations had learned to live together."

"When villages are emptied, when infrastructure is destroyed, when fear takes hold, when borders become open scars, this is no longer merely a military operation: it is dispossession," he affirmed.

Based on the aforementioned, the former prime minister insisted that "the ceasefire is not a tactical pause before the next offensive. It is an obligation. A responsibility. A line that must be upheld."

Villepin concluded by urging France, the European Union, the United Nations, and regional actors to take action to prevent southern Lebanon from becoming "a dead zone, an area emptied of its inhabitants and its memory."

"Lebanon must live," he asserted, stressing, "Peace can only begin where people still have the right to inhabit their land."