A Fragile Calm In Lebanon As U.S.-Brokered Truce Holds And Families Head Home
BEIRUT (AP) — A fragile calm settled over parts of Lebanon on Friday. 10 day ceasefire Holding on between Israel and Hezbollah, brokered by the United States, Israel has encouraged thousands of displaced families to make the journey home, even as uncertainty, devastation and Israeli warnings to return to parts of southern Lebanon cloud their return.
By early morning, cars were backed up for miles on the southbound route towards the damaged Qasmiyeh bridge over the Litani River, a key crossing connecting the southern coastal city of Tire to the north. Vehicles filled with mattresses, suitcases and salvaged belongings moved along the single reopened lane, which had been hastily repaired following an Israeli airstrike just a day earlier.
Motorists returning to their villages from coastal highways cheered each other, made victory signs and prayed.
Latest Israel-Hezbollah war It displaced more than a million people. Despite warnings from Lebanese officials not to return home immediately, many people began moving towards southern Lebanon in the hours after the ceasefire was declared. The ceasefire appeared likely to continue largely overnight.
In southern villages like Jibsheet, many residents have returned to flattened apartment blocks and streets littered with chunks of concrete, twisted aluminum shutters and dangling electrical cables.
“I feel free to go back,” said Zainab Fahas, 23. “But look, they destroyed everything: the square, the houses, the shops, everything.”
Many did not believe their ordeal was truly over.
“Israel does not want peace,” said Ali Wahdan, a 27-year-old doctor who walked with crutches over the rubble of the emergency center in Jibsheet. He was seriously injured in an Israeli airstrike that hit the building without warning in the first week of the war.
“I wish it were different,” he said. “But this war will continue.”
In the Haret Hreik district in the southern suburb of Beirut, all buildings were reduced to rubble after weeks of intense Israeli attacks. Ahmed Lahham, 48, waved a yellow Hezbollah flag over the mountain of rubble that used to be his apartment building, which also houses a branch of Hezbollah’s financial arm Al-Qard Al-Hassan.
Lahham swore allegiance to the group and said, “We are in the service of the warriors.”
He praised Iran and condemned Lebanon’s direct talks with Israel, saying pressure on its negotiations with the United States led to a ceasefire.
Describing Lebanon’s leaders as “shameful leaders”, he said: “Only the Iranians stood on our side, no one else.”
A local government official in Haret Hreik said Israel had hit the neighborhood 62 times in the past six weeks.
“We managed to clear the rubble of partially damaged buildings, but we will need special equipment for the destroyed ones,” Sadek Slim, the neighborhood’s deputy mayor, said at a press conference.
The area was clogged with traffic; people were returning to check their homes, and Hezbollah supporters were using their scooters to wave the group’s flag.
Meanwhile, officials at Al-Najda al Shaabiya Hospital in the southern Lebanon city of Nabatiyeh said Thursday was one of the heaviest days of Israeli attacks since the start of the Israel-Hezbollah war.
Hospital Director Mona Abou Zeid said casualties continued to arrive from nearby Israeli attacks until about an hour after the ceasefire technically took effect at midnight.
Among those injured in Thursday’s bombardment in Nabatieh, 33-year-old Mahmoud Sahmarani said he went out of his house to buy coal for his hookah, killing his father and cousin while they were peeling potatoes for lunch when Israel hit the five-storey building. All that remains of his apartment is a pile of rubble, leaving him and the rest of his family homeless.
“Israel should have withdrawn from Lebanon,” he said in his hospital bed, his left eye swollen and his head wrapped in bandages. “If we don’t get them out, they’ll keep killing us.”
