Celebrations and taking stock as cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel takes hold
War is often less seen than heard, and as a cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel came into effect on Wednesday morning, Ibrahim Najdi marveled at the absence of one particular sound: the buzz of Israeli drones that had been a near-constant presence in Beirut over the last few months.
“You can’t hear them, can you? They’re gone,†he said. He gave a small smile, then picked his way through the mounds of rubble separating him from the remains of his two warehouses.
Najdi, a 42-year-old home-supplies merchant, was one of tens of thousands of people Wednesday swarming the Hezbollah-dominated suburbs south of Beirut. He came to take stock of the damage wrought by 70 days of ferocious Israeli bombardment.
For those determined to stay out of the fight between Hezbollah and Israel, the war in Lebanon can feel at a remove.
Though his two warehouses were destroyed in an airstrike two weeks ago, his shop was in a nearby building survived. The blast wave nevertheless tossed all of his stock into a jumble of shower handles and hoses, boxes of masking tape and home repair tools — all covered in fine, metallic-gray dust.
“I don’t know if I can save any of it,†Najdi said.
Similar scenes were playing out across the country, as people began the journey to their towns and villages in Lebanon’s devastated south. Shortly after the start of the cease-fire at 4 a.m., thousands of cars — many stacked on top with mattresses, suitcases and bags of vegetables — deluged the main highway leading out of Beirut in a reverse exodus that echoed their escape from the south only a few months before.
Shelters in the southern city of Saida, a refuge for thousands of displaced, emptied by around 80%, Lebanese authorities say.
“I know my house is bombed, but I don’t care. We’re all going back,†said Haidar, 33, who was picking up shawarma sandwiches for his family at a roadside restaurant.
Haidar, who did not want to give his full name, was from the village of Khirbet Selm, some 9 miles north of the Lebanese-Israeli border. He had already been hours on the road with his wife and two children in his rugged-looking SUV, but was intent on going on — even though he didn’t know where the family would sleep.
“We’ll figure it out. Allah’s earth can fit us all,†he said.
The cease-fire agreement, which came after intense mediation by the U.S. and France, was approved by Lebanon’s government on Wednesday morning. It stipulates that Israeli troops conduct a phased withdrawal from south Lebanon over the next 60 days, while Hezbollah pulls back its fighters to north of the Litani River, a natural boundary that lies some 20 miles north of the border.
According to the plan, around 5,000 Lebanese soldiers will take their place, Lebanese officials say. The Lebanese army said in a statement on Wednesday that it had begun “to reinforce its deployment†south of the Litani and would “extend state authority†in coordination with U.N. peacekeeping forces. (The Lebanese army remained neutral in the fight between Israel and Hezbollah.)
Despite the calm on Wednesday, there were moments that highlighted the fragility of the truce. Israeli troops fired warning shots at people trying to approach their positions in southern villages from which they had yet to withdraw, the Israeli military said. Later, it imposed a nighttime curfew over much of south Lebanon and warned civilians not to return to their homes before being instructed to do so.
Despite those reminders that the war is not fully resolved, many Lebanese were jubilant. Motorists driving through Beirut suburbs honked their horns as they drove in impromptu motorcades, while others waved flags and fired celebratory shots into the air. Many walked the streets, shaking their heads in amazement as they raised their smartphones to film the destruction.
The war between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese armed group began last year after Palestinian militant faction Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people. The next day, Hezbollah began launching rockets into northern Israel, saying it was acting in support of Hamas and Palestinians in Gaza Strip.
Christian villages in southern Lebanon thought their neutrality may spare them from violence in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. Then the evacuation orders came.
Israel and Hezbollah continued trading fire over the last year in an escalating tit-for-tat conflict that saw tens of thousands of people evacuated from both sides of the border. In September, Israel intensified its attacks on Hezbollah. It launched a punishing airstrike campaign on Lebanon’s south, east and parts of the capital where Hezbollah holds sway, and invaded areas of Lebanon’s south in what it said was a bid to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure.
Since last October, more than 3,800 people have been killed in Lebanon, a quarter of them women and children, according to Lebanese health authorities; almost 16,000 have been injured. Israeli authorities say 45 civilians have been killed in Hezbollah attacks, and at least 73 soldiers killed in combat in south Lebanon, the occupied Golan Heights and northern Israel.
Najdi, the merchant, was happy that the cease-fire was holding, but it was also bittersweet as he contemplated the difficult months ahead.
“I was making something, building something. At 45 I thought I would slow down, take it easy,†he said. He added that he had experienced five wars in his lifetime, the first — in 1982 — when he was still in diapers.
“And now this one. I have to start again from nothing.â€
More than a million people displaced in the fighting over the last year share his fate, with the World Bank estimating in November that nearly 100,000 housing units have been partially or completely destroyed, while the total cost of damage amounts to roughly $8.5 billion.
It remains unclear how Lebanon — which before the war was suffering a multiyear financial crisis that had eviscerated the economy and left most of its population under the poverty line — intends to go about the reconstruction.
International aid groups have urged governments to help, said Juan Gabriel Wells, Lebanon country director for the International Rescue Committee aid group.
“It is vital that the international community now also invest in Lebanon’s recovery,†he said in a statement on Wednesday. “These efforts are not only about rebuilding infrastructure; they are also critical to restoring dignity and hope to families who have lost everything.â€
The Lebanese government has yet to formulate concrete plans, officials said.
“You know we were so busy, all of us, with the cease-fire,†said Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib at a conference in Rome on Tuesday, a few hours before the truce. “Did we think very much about the day after? No.â€
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