and
Artemis, Louvre, found at Kh ed Doueir, just north of Ain Ebel Ain Ebel is a historic village with numerous archaeological sites.
Prehistory Lower Paleolithic implements found in Ain Ebel attest to the region being inhabited in prehistoric times. A
Heavy Neolithic site of the
Qaraoun culture was discovered by
Henri Fleisch west of Ain Ebel in the
Wadi Koura, with tools suggesting use by forest dwellers at the start of the
Neolithic Revolution. A wide range of blades, scrapers, discs, and other tools was unearthed in
Wadi Yaroun, the riverbed southeast of the village, and later preserved at
Saint Joseph University (now the
Museum of Lebanese Prehistory). is rich in flint instruments, and the whole surrounding region as far as
Jish contains megalithic ruins, perhaps pre-Canaanite.
Ancient history In the
Babylonian Talmud, Ain Ebel is referred to as
En Bol, a village northwest of
Safed, in a rabbinic discussion of the practice of baby girls undergoing ritual immersion prior to the immersion of the mother. Historian John T. Durward argues that Ain Ebel, located west of
Kedesh of
Naphtali (an ancient town documented in Judges 4:6, 10), is probably the biblical town of Abel Beth Ma'acah, and was the spiritual retreat of the clergy from Tyre and Acre. On the outskirts of the village is an area called
Chalaboune where
Ernest Renan, a French historian and philosopher who was sent by Emperor
Napoleon III to Lebanon, found ancient graves. According to Renan, Ain-Ebel had beautiful underground passages and large buildings in colossal stones and admirable carved sarcophagi in two remarkable places, Douair and
Chalaboune, which he believed was the Biblical town of Shaalabbin of the
Tribe of Dan. On one of the graves, Renan discovered a
bas-relief of
Apollo and
Artemis. The relief was transported to
France where it remains today at the Louvre. In 2011 and after months of negotiation, the
Musée du Louvre agreed to make an exact replica of the bas-relief, which was delivered to the municipality of Ain Ebel in November.
Early Christianity In antiquity, the goddess
Astarte was venerated by the region’s inhabitants; over time, this cult gradually gave way to that of the Virgin, who is today the village’s patron saint. Local traditions, supported by some historians, suggest that after leaving Capernaum, Jesus Christ may have passed through Ain Ebel on his way to Cana and Tyre. This belief is reinforced by physical traces linked to these oral accounts, including a spring known as “Ain El Massih” (the Spring of Christ).
Middle Ages In his book
Salut Jérusalem: Les mémoires d’un chrétien de Tyr à l’époque des Croisades, the Lebanese historian Bechara Menassa notes that the inhabitants of Ain Ebel maintained contact with the Crusaders in
Toron, modern
Tebnine. Menassa described how a Frankish monk killed a wild animal in Ain Ebel, providing evidence that the village existed at least as early as the 12th century. After the Mamluk
conquest of Acre and the
fall of nearby coastal cities, such as
Tyre and
Sidon, Christian presence in the
Upper Galilee was largely eradicated. Mamluk policy aimed to prevent any future Crusader resurgence, resulting in the systematic destruction of many native Christian villages. Nevertheless, small and isolated Christian communities managed to persist in inland towns; however, since
Toron was a Crusader stronghold, survival of nearby Christian communities was unlikely. Although it is unclear whether Ain Ebel survived the Mamluk conquest, evidence suggests that it has been continuously inhabited since at least the 16th century, when Christian communities from northern Lebanon migrated to the southern lowlands to cultivate feudal lands. The main migration period took place during the reign of
Fakhr al-Din II, who, through alliances with the Maronites, is credited with unifying much of present-day Lebanon for the first time. later used as a template for the 1920 borders of
Greater Lebanon.
Ottoman period Under Ottoman rule in
Jabal Amel, which lasted from 1516 to 1918, life for Christians in places like Ain Ebel, while shaped by their status as protected ‘
dhimmi’ communities, was still harsh, marked by heavy taxation and periodic military repression, though they were less frequently subjected to the punitive campaigns that affected the neighboring
Shia population. Life during this period was marked by extreme poverty, civil unrest, and frequent plundering. As a result, the village was built with houses closely clustered together, since any dwelling set apart would invite pillage. By the mid-nineteenth century, Ain Ebel had become the principal village of Christianity in the Upper Galilee, and in 1861 it was chosen for the first religious retreat organized in the Holy Land where 55 priests from the archdioceses of Tyre and Acre gathered for a reunion. Ain Ebel is mentioned in a Christian anthology, containing contributions from ministers and members of various evangelical denominations published in the United Kingdom in 1866: In 1875
Victor Guérin visited, and noted 800 Maronite and 200 Greek Orthodox villagers. In 1881, the
PEF's
Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Ain Ebel as a well-built, modern village with a Christian chapel, a population of about 1,000 Christians—comprising 800 Maronites and 200 Greek Catholics—with vineyards covering the slopes of the hill on which the village stood and olive trees growing in the valley below, adding that the village enjoyed a good water supply from springs in the valley. P. Engbert writes that the inhabitants of Ain Ebel offered the Jesuits in 1888 a fairly large lot of land after almost all the inhabitants signed the petition which was presented to R. P. Lefebvre. In 1889, the village suffered a poor harvest, and an epidemic swept through the population, lasting all winter and claiming more than fifty lives. By the turn of the 20th century, the village had become a center for education, with Catholic missionaries such as Reverend Armand de Villeneuve S.J. establishing it as a base, serving not only the town but also neighboring Christian villages like
Debel and
Rmaish, as well as
Kafr Bir'im,
Jish, and
Mi'ilya, The first recorded presence of a medical facility in the village dates back to 1909, when Dr. Suleiman Effendi Hajj established Ain Ebel as his base of operations for five years, during which he helped the local population become more receptive to doctors, raised awareness about microbes, promoted health practices, emphasized infection prevention, and provided care for both the elderly and children.
French Mandate World War I in southern Lebanon was marked by severe hardship under the
Ottoman Empire, as
famine, requisitions, and
conscription caused widespread suffering and loss of life. With the end of the war and the collapse of four centuries of Ottoman rule, the people in Ain Ebel, like in other villages in the country, celebrated the arrival of the High Commissioner
Gouraud to Lebanon by flying the
flag of France and playing the
French anthem. During the
French Mandate, the network of paved road expanded, coinciding with the introduction of automobiles in Lebanon. The arrival of the first car in a village became a celebratory event, and this was true in Ain Ebel, where the inhabitants, dressed in their Sunday best, gathered in the church square to welcome the first car to drive through the village. The French planned to build an automobile road to connect the southern villages with those of
Mandatory Palestine. The original plan was to build the road from
Bint Jbeil via
Yaroun and
Rmaich, but the people of Ain Ebel protested, knowing the significance of such a road for the development of their town, and in the end, they were able to convince the French government to change the plan and have the road run through the village.
Massacre of 1920 By 1920, Ain Ebel had a population of 1,500, living in about 300 houses. While delegates from the Shia Conference of El-Hujair were in
Damascus swearing allegiance to
King Faisal, an act the Maronites of
Jabal Amel considered threatening, a Shia gang led by Mahmoud Bazzi, which "proceeded from brigandage to confronting France and its Christian friends in the south", attacked Ain Ebel on 5 May 1920, pillaging and killing more than 50 people. It appears that the gangs responded to a call for
jihad. The people of Ain Ebel defended the town from sunrise to sunset until they ran out of ammunition. A contemporary Franciscan document chronicling the event states that attackers abandoned themselves in the violence, massacring children in the arms of their parents before killing them, raping young women and then killing them, and burning people who were still alive. The survivors fled south to Haifa until French ships took them back to Tyre where General Gouraud promised the Maronite Patriarch to punish those who had caused the massacres and destruction. The town was completely destroyed, and the damage done to the two churches, school and convent, were evidence of sectarian malice. The neighboring villages of
Debel and
Rmaich were also attacked so after 12 days of plundering and massacres, the French arrived and suppressed all activities in
Jabal Amil region. While awaiting to return to their village, it was reported that a soldier, in the service of the English, offered the villagers to sell their properties to the
Zionists because they were not guaranteed a return to Ain Ebel, but they all refused. This was yet another example of how the Christians of the Tyre district were under a lot of pressure to abandon their land and emigrate out of the area. The massacres hardened Maronite opinion in favor of Jabal Amil being part of Greater Lebanon, which borders were cemented at the
San Remo conference in 1920.
World War II During
World War II, the
Vichy French had a line of widely spaced blockhouses that stretched from the coast to the inland heights, reaching Ain Ebel. During the
Syria–Lebanon Campaign to liberate Lebanon and Syria from the Vichy, Australian Captain Douglas George Horley was ordered to clear Ain Ebel. Australian Brigadier J. E. S. Stevens decided that he would seize Aitaroun, Bint Jbel, Ain Ebel, Yaroun, Rmaich,
Ayta ash Shab, Ramié, Jereine,
Aalma ech Chaab and Labouna to cut a road from
Al-Malkiyya to the French frontier road so as to make a second gateway into the coastal zone. The Australian squad, guided by Meir Davidson's squad, finally captured the town of
Bint Jbeil and the villages of
Aitaroun and Ain Ebel. After taking Yaroun and Bint Jbeil, Ain Ebel was found to have been abandoned by the Vichy.
Independence period In October 1948, during the
1948 Arab–Israeli War, Ain Ebel received
Palestinian refugees, especially from the village of
Eilabun via
Meiron, who stayed in the church for three days before being relocated to the
Mieh Mieh refugee camp. By late October and early November, refugees from the Palestinian village of
Al-Mansura also sought refuge in Ain Ebel and Rmaish. In 1958, while carrying out a security mission in
Arsal, First Lieutenant Benoît Barakat of the Lebanese Army, one of the sons of Ain Ebel, was killed after his armored vehicle fell into an ambush set for him and the patrol members by local gangs in that area. An army barracks in the coastal city of Tyre bears his name, as does a street in Beirut’s
Badaro district. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the village was often caught in the skirmishes between the
Palestine Liberation Organization and the
Israel Defense Force. The PLO imposed a food and fuel blockade on Christian villages, such as Ain Ebel and
Qlaiaa, forcing the inhabitants to deal with Israel.
Christian militia arrived in Ain Ebel and neighboring Christian villages in August 1976 to open a new line of confrontation against the PLO strongholds in neighboring villages. Ain-Ebel native, Monsignor
Albert Khreish was abducted from his home on 24 April 1988. A week later on 1 May 1988, Monsignor Albert Khreish, who was head of the Maronite Spiritual Affairs Court, and nephew of Cardinal
Anthony Peter Khoraish, was found dead in the pine forest outside of
Ghazir. Khreish, who was shot 30 times, was an authority on international law and had served on the Maronite religious tribunal and lectured at the Government-run Lebanese University. His death was believed to be politically motivated, but the case was unsolved.
Civil War In the 1960s and 1970s, and especially after the
Cairo Agreement, Palestinian guerrilla groups based in southern Lebanon used the border region as a base for attacks into northern Israel, often provoking Israeli retaliatory strikes that inflicted damage and casualties across Lebanese border communities. Ain Ebel and other boarder towns were directly affected by fighting between the PLO and Israeli forces, being “caught in skirmishes” between them. Inter-sectarian fighting did not spread from Beirut in 1975 and coexistence in southern Lebanon largely persisted, though the military activities of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrillas in border towns created tension. In the summer of 1976, after several Israeli retaliatory raids, residents of Ain Ebel refused to allow guerrilla groups to use the village as a base for cross-border attacks into Israel, leading to clashes that resulted in the deaths of three residents.
Israeli Occupation Ain Ebel, along with the rest of southern Lebanon, came under Israeli occupation following Israel’s March 1978 invasion up to the Litani River.
2006 Hezbollah-Israel war In July 2006, Ain Ebel, like other villages that string Lebanon's southern border, such as
Debel,
Qaouzah,
Rmaich, and
Yaroun, was caught in the
2006 Lebanon War between Lebanon and Israel. The village and its surrounding valleys were attacked by Israël . During the conflict, the village witnessed ferocious battles with missiles destroying many houses and orchards and leaving the townspeople besieged and without bread for three weeks. After allegations that Hezbollah was using humans as shields, the
Human Rights Watch visited Ain Ebel on several occasions, and concluded that "Hezbollah violated the prohibition against unnecessarily endangering civilians when they took over civilian homes in the populated village, fired rockets close to homes, and drove through the village in at least one instance with weapons in their cars". On the other hand,
Human Rights Watch found that Israeli forces have consistently launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military gain but excessive civilian cost.In dozens of attacks, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some cases, the timing and intensity of the attack, the absence of a military target, as well as return strikes on rescuers, suggest that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians. Residents of Ein Abel informed
Human Rights Watch investigators that Hezbollah had declared several fields "off limits" to the locals following the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, later using these areas to construct military installations.
Operation Nahr el-Bared While Ain Ebel lay far from the fighting and was not affected by the Lebanese Army’s
operation at the
Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in the north, it still took a heavy toll on the town. Ain Ebel–born Colonel Ibrahim Salloum, the head of the unit involved, was wounded twice but refused to leave the battlefield, ultimately succumbing to a fatal gunshot.
Death of Elias Hasrouni Elias Hasrouni, a veteran
Lebanese Forces official, was first thought to have died in a car crash on Sunday, 6 August 2023, but an autopsy later revealed that he was killed and many, including
Samir Geagea, believed the murder was politically motivated. Samir Geagea declared Hasrouni's death an assassination, pointing the finger at Hezbollah and its assassination squad,
Unit 121, as the crime occurred deep within areas controlled by them but that accusation was never proven . Politician
Samy Gemayel also hinted that Hezbollah might have been behind the killing. The residents of Ain Ebel, one of the few Christian villages in the predominately Shiite province, one of Hezbollah's main power bases, are mostly supportive of Hezbollah's largest political ennemy, the Lebanese Forces, and the murder of Hasrouni created sectarian tentions. Two months later, Hasrouni's wife, Yvette Sleiman died in a car accident, but it was unclear whether her death was also politically motivated.
2023-2024 Hezbollah-Israel war Ain Ebel, about 7.5 km (4.7 mi) from the border with
Israel, was caught in the crossfire during the
2023-2024 Hezbollah-Israel conflict, and the
2024 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. While the village, like other neighboring Christian villages, was not aligned to
Hezbollah, Israeli attacks led some villagers, especially the women and children, to evacuate to Beirut. Only 40% of the population, mostly adult men, remained in the village. Sister Maya El Beaino, a member of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, chose to remain at the convent in Ain Ebel to support the 9,000 Christians across three villages and the region’s only Catholic school, which served 32 villages, amid ongoing violence that disrupted education. While the village’s schools initially remained open at the onset of the war, they were forced to close after three students were killed in an Israeli strike on November 5 while traveling from Aitaroun to Ain Ebel. On 23 November 2023, several rockets launched by Hezbollah toward Israel hit Ain Ebel. As residents prepared for a subdued Christmas under the shadow of the ongoing conflict,
United Nations peacekeeping handed out toys on Saturday, 23 December to some 250 children whose families had remained in Ain Ebel and in the nearby villages of
Rmaich and
Debel. On 7 September 2024, a drone crashed in the Ain Ebel area, prompting the Lebanese army's engineering team to conduct an inspection. On 1 October 2024, the Israeli army issued a call for the evacuation of residents from 23 villages in southern Lebanon, including Ain Ebel. At least 800 people from Ain Ebel sought refuge in the border town of Rmeish on 2 October 2024, where they stayed until the papal nuncio and the patriarchate coordinated an evacuation to Beirut that was escorted by the
Lebanese army. Three weeks after the ceasefire took effect on 27 November to end the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, villagers from southern Lebanon, including the people of Ain Ebel, started to return to their homes. On April 16, 2024, the Israeli military reported that Ismail Baz, the commander of Hezbollah's coastal sector, was killed in a strike on his vehicle near Ain Ebel.
2026 Hezbollah-Israel war On March 2, 2026, and on the same day that Prime Minister
Nawaf Salam declared Hezbollah’s military and security activities illegal, the town was once again caught in the midst of a regional
war when
Hezbollah, the
Iranian-allied
proxy in
Lebanon, launched strikes on Israel in response to
the killing of Iranian supreme leader
Ali Khamenei. The residents of Ain Ebel, along with those of
Rmaish and
Debel, openly defied widespread Israeli evacuation and displacement orders, leaving these towns among the last remaining populated areas in the province. On March 3, 2026, the Lebanese Army pulled back from seven positions set up in January 2026 in southern Lebanon, relocating troops from forward posts along the Israeli border to other sites, including Aita al-Shaab, Al-Qawzah,
Debel, Ramya, Ain Ebel, and
Rmaish. An Israeli airstrike targeting the village's outskirts on March 12, 2026, killed three men: Chadi Tony Ammar, Elie Atallah, and Georges Pierre Khraish. Reports say the three young men were repairing a rooftop cable to restore internet access. On March 16, the
Apostolic Nuncio to Lebanon, Archbishop
Paolo Borgia, visited Ain Ebel, as well as
Rmaish and
Debel, to deliver humanitarian aid and convey a message of solidarity from
Pope Leo XIV. On March 24, 2006, an Israeli drone strike targeted the residence of local teacher Georges Antonios Khraish, destroying it; however, family members on the ground floor survived unharmed. On March 31, 2026, the remaining personnel of the
Lebanese Armed Forces withdrew from Ain Ebel and
Rmaish. As the Israeli military advanced into southern Lebanon to establish control of territory up to the Litani River, including seizing or damaging key bridges and disrupting major crossing points, travel routes were cut off, leaving villages like Ain Ebel with severely restricted access to the capital and beyond. Fearing shortages and a prolonged conflict, the municipality of Ain Ebel, led by Mayor Ayoub Khreish, stocked sufficient fuel, food, and medicine to sustain the village for two months. Fierce Israeli strikes against Hezbollah positions around Ain Ebel,
Rmaish, and
Debel severely restricted movement in the area, with travel between the villages requiring coordination with the Lebanese Armed Forces or the
United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), although UN and Lebanese officials were often unable to “deconflict” individual civilian movements without an international mechanism involving the United States, France, and Israel. ==Geography==