Nabatieh: A Situational Analysis

This report presents a situational analysis of the city of Nabatieh in South Lebanon; it has been in production since spring 2025 as part of a broader effort to document the 2024 war and provide data that could inform the reconstruction of Nabatieh and its agglomeration. A first installment of this effort was published in April 2026 as a data platform titled the Nabatieh Built and Natural Environment Database. The report targets the policy audience in Lebanon: government agencies, municipalities, civil society organizations, donors, and professional associations engaged in or contemplating intervention in Nabatieh and the wider South. The aim is to provide a sufficiently grounded baseline from which future programmatic and policy work can proceed.

The report examines the multiple forces that have shaped Nabatieh over the past decades: the long history of violence and displacement, the city’s urban form and planning trajectory, the actors who govern it, the impact of the 2024 Israeli war, and the reconstruction initiatives that were underway until the beginning of the 2026 war. The findings draw on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Nabatieh in 2025, including interviews with municipal officials, faith-based organization leaders, civil society actors, and residents, alongside site observation, mapping, and review of municipal planning materials, NGO reports, and academic literature on the South.