Tens of thousands of people, displaced by the war between Israel and Hezbollah, made their way back on Wednesday, many to find their towns and villages heavily damaged, after a ceasefire agreement was reached in application in the early morning hours.
The truce ended a conflict that began more than 13 months ago between the Lebanese Shiite movement and the Israeli armed forces and turned into open war in September. Some 900.000 people have been forced from their homes in Lebanon, according to the UN, as have some 60.000 civilians in northern Israel.
Already before dawn, displaced persons from southern Lebanon, from the southern part of Beirut and from the Bekaa Valley, in the eastern part of the country, strongholds of Hezbollah, began to return by the thousands, in cars and minibuses overloaded with people and household goods.
In the ruins of southern Beirut, Hezbollah supporters waved its flag and held portraits of its iconic former leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in late September in a bloody Israeli airstrike.
"This heroic district" finally "won, we are proud," said Nizam Hamade, an engineer.
The Shiite movement, whose leadership was decimated in the Israeli bombardment, nevertheless declared its "victory", assuring that its fighters "will remain fully prepared to face (…) the attacks of the Israeli enemy".
Returning to Nabataia, in southern Lebanon, Ali Mazraani said he felt "shocked" when he saw the "enormous destruction" of his city, which seemed "foreign" to him.
"Despite the extent of the damage and our sadness, we are happy to be back," said Umm Mohammed Bzai, a 44-year-old widow who found her home in ruins in the village of Zemkin. "We feel like we've been reborn."
On October 8, 2023, Hezbollah, a movement close to Iran, opened a front with Israel in order to support Hamas, the day after the Palestinian Islamist movement's unprecedented attack on the southern part of the Israeli territory, which triggered the war in the Strip. Gaza.
After nearly a year of cross-border firefights and after it believed it had weakened Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israel shifted the center of gravity of the war to Lebanese territory, launching a campaign of massive air strikes against Hezbollah strongholds since September 23 and advancing on land attack in southern Lebanon seven days later.
Under the terms of the agreement brokered by the US and France, the Israeli armed forces have 60 days to gradually withdraw from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah is required to deploy north of the Litani River, about thirty kilometers from the border, and dismantle its military infrastructure in southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese army announced yesterday that it had begun, "in coordination" with the UN peacekeeping force, to strengthen its presence in the southern part of the country.
The Israeli armed forces, on the other hand, warned residents not to approach their positions.
"We are controlling positions in southern Lebanon, our aircraft continue to fly in the Lebanese sky (…) Today, we arrested suspects and killed terrorists," said their spokesman Daniel Hagari, adding that in the last hours before the ceasefire agreement came into effect, they were hit " 180 goals'.
According to Lebanese authorities, at least 3.823 people have died in Lebanon since October 2023, the vast majority since the end of September. On the Israeli side, 82 military personnel and 47 civilians were killed in the attacks and clashes with Hezbollah, according to the official count.
According to Joe Biden, the deal will prevent "what remains of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations" from "again threatening Israel's security."
Washington and Paris relied on UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006), which ended the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah and stipulated that only the UN peacekeeping force and the Lebanese armed forces would remain deployed in southern Lebanon.
Israel maintains "full freedom of military action in Lebanon," and "if Hezbollah violates the agreement and attempts to rearm, we will attack," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
The Shiite movement will cooperate with the Lebanese state to deploy the country's army in the south, its MP Hassan Fadlallah assured AFP yesterday. But its members "are children in the villages" of the south, from where "no one" can expel them, he added.
After more than a year of rushing to shelters whenever air defense sirens went off, many residents of northern Israel were enjoying the calm yesterday, but not entirely relaxed.
In Nahariya, a coastal town within range of rockets fired from Lebanese soil, Baha Arafat, 44, said he was relieved. "I feel much better now that I know we have a ceasefire," he confided, "there is no shelter nearby and the last few days have been very tense."
"There is a feeling of greater security, our children can go back to school," said Yuri, 43, displaced from Kibbutz Yron, near the border, in Haifa.
But "we do not feel completely reassured", as "Hezbollah still has forces", he added.
According to Mr. Netanyahu, the ceasefire will allow Israel to "focus on the Iranian threat" and "intensify" pressure on Hamas.
Commentators in Israel have expressed skepticism, however, with some expressing concern that Hezbollah will regroup its forces again, or pointing to the absence of any progress to seal a ceasefire deal in the Gaza Strip, where the war is in its 419th day.
Israel intends to "make all necessary efforts to create the conditions" that would allow "a new exchange of hostages" with Palestinian detainees in detention centers in Israel, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz assured.
With less than two months left in his term, Joe Biden promised to restart efforts to conclude a cease-fire agreement in the Gaza Strip, with the input of "Turkey, Qatar, Egypt and other actors in the region." , according to Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser.
A Hamas official assured AFP yesterday that the Palestinian Islamist movement is "ready" to conclude a cease-fire agreement in the Gaza Strip.
However, the Health Ministry of the Hamas government announced last night the death of nine people in an Israeli bombardment in Gaza City, which hit a shelter for displaced people in a school in the Daraza district. For its part, Israel's military said in a statement that it "eliminated the terrorist Murad Razub," one of "the two perpetrators of a bomb attack that had caused around ten injuries in Beersheba," in southern Israel, "in May 2002." .
The Israeli military also reported shelling in the area of operations encompassing Jabalia and Beit Lahia, also in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave. "During the operation" "air strikes" and "cluster engagements to eliminate terrorists" were conducted, according to the military. The same announcement speaks of "Hamas terrorists (who) fired anti-tank missiles from the Indonesian hospital".
Hamas for its part denounced the "continuation of the criminal operation in the northern Gaza Strip" by the Israeli army.
Civil protection, for its part, reported that only one ambulance is operating in the entire area, due to a lack of diesel.
The war that broke out on October 7, 2023 was triggered by a raid by Hamas's military arm in the southern part of Israeli territory, which claimed the lives of 1.207 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data, the which includes hostages who died in captivity or already were dead when transported to the Palestinian enclave.
Devastating, large-scale Israeli military retaliatory operations in the Gaza Strip have since claimed the lives of at least 44.282 people, most of them civilians, according to figures from Hamas' health ministry, which are deemed reliable by the UN.
Source: protothema.gr