ARAMOUN, Lebanon — Memories of Ayman Jaber are embedded in every corner of Mhaibib, the southern Lebanese village he refers to as his “habibti,” the Arabic word for “beloved.” The root of the town’s name means “the lover” or “the beloved.”

Recalling his childhood sweetheart, the 45-year-old avionics technician tells how the young couple met in a yard near his uncle’s house.

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

The fond memory contrasts sharply with recent images of his hometown.

Mhaibib, located on a hill near the Israeli border, was devastated by a series of explosions on October 16. The Israeli military released a video showing explosions ripping through the provincial village of Marjayoun, flattening dozens of houses into dust.

The scene has been repeated in villages in southern Lebanon since Israel launched its invasion a month ago with the stated goal of driving Hezbollah militants from the border. On October 26, massive explosions in and around Odaisseh triggered an earthquake warning in northern Israel.

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

Mhaibib had suffered sporadic attacks since Hezbollah and Israeli forces began exchanging fire on October 8 last year.

Jaber lived in Aramoun, just south of Beirut, before the war, and the rest of his family was evacuated from Mhaibib after border skirmishes broke out. Some of them left their possessions behind and sought refuge in Syria. Jaber’s father and his two sisters, Zeinab and Fatima, moved in with him.

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

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

Mhaibib was a close-knit rural village, with around 70 historic stone houses along its narrow streets. Families grew tobacco, wheat, mulukhiyah (jute mallow), and olives, planting them each spring and rising before dawn in the summer to harvest the crops.

The town was also known for an ancient shrine dedicated to Benjamin, the son of Jacob, an important figure in Judaism. In Islam, he is known as Prophet Benjamin Bin Yaacoub, believed to be the twelfth son of Prophet Yaacoub and brother of Prophet Yousef.

The shrine was damaged in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah and was later renovated. Images show the shrine encased in a golden cage adorned with intricate Arabic inscriptions next to an ancient stone mosque topped by a minaret that overlooked the town. The mosque and shrine no longer exist.

Hisham Younes, who heads the environmental organization Green Southerners, says generations of southerners admired Mhaibib for its one- and two-story stone houses, some built by Jaber’s grandfather and his friends.

“Blowing up an entire village is a form of collective punishment and a war crime. What do they gain by destroying shrines, churches and ancient houses? Younes asks.

Abdelmoe’m Shucair, mayor of neighboring Mays el Jabal, told the Associated Press that the last dozen families living in Mhaibib fled before the Israeli destruction began, as did residents of surrounding villages.

Jaber’s sisters attended school in Mays al-Jabal. That school was also destroyed in a series of massive explosions.

After finishing her studies in Beirut, Zeinab worked in a pharmacy in the neighboring town of Blida. That pharmacy also disappeared after the Israeli army detonated part of that village. Israeli forces even demolished his village cemetery, where generations of relatives are buried.

“I don’t belong to any political group,” says Zeinab. “Why did they have to take away my home, my life?”

She says she doesn’t dare watch the video of the destruction of her village. “When my brother played it, I ran out of the room.”

To process what is happening, Fatima says she closes her eyes and returns to Mhaibib. He watches the sunset, vividly painting the sky stretching over his family gatherings on the patio above, framed by his mother’s flowers.

The family painstakingly expanded their home over a decade.

“It took us 10 years to add just one room,” Fatima said. “First my dad put in the floor, then the walls, the ceiling and the glass. “My mother sold a year’s worth of homemade preserves to equip it.” She paused. “And it was gone in an instant.”

In the midst of the war, Zeinab married quietly. She is now six months pregnant. She hoped to return to Mhaibib in time for the delivery.

His brother was born when Mhaibib and other villages in southern Lebanon were under Israeli occupation. Jaber remembers traveling from Beirut to Mhaibib, passing through Israeli checkpoints and one last crossing before entering the town.

“There were security checks and interrogations. The process used to take half a day or a whole day,” he says. And within the town, 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 a loquat tree the matriarch had planted next to her house held out.

This time, there is no home to return to and even the loquat tree has disappeared.

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

“When this war is over, we will return,” Ayman says quietly. “We will set up tents if necessary and stay until we rebuild our houses.”

Aljoud writes for the Associated Press.