TYRE, Lebanon (AP) — A ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that began Wednesday appeared to be holding, as residents in cars heaped with belongings streamed back toward southern Lebanon despite warnings from the Israeli and Lebanese militaries that they stay away from certain areas.
If it holds, the ceasefire would bring an end to nearly 14 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which escalated in mid-September into all-out war and threatened to pull Hezbollah's patron Iran and Israel into a broader conflagration. The deal does not address the war in Gaza.
It could give some reprieve to the 1.2 million Lebanese displaced by the fighting and the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along the border with Lebanon.
“They were a nasty and ugly 60 days,” said Mohammed Kaafarani, 59, who was displaced from the Lebanese village of Bidias. “We reached a point where there was no place to hide."
The U.S.- and France-brokered deal, approved by Israel late Tuesday, calls for an initial two-month halt to fighting and requires Hezbollah to end its armed presence in southern Lebanon, while Israeli troops are to return to their side of the border.
Thousands of additional Lebanese troops and U.N. peacekeepers would deploy in the south, and an international panel headed by the United States would monitor compliance.
Israel says it reserves the right to strike Hezbollah should it violate the terms of the deal.
Israel is still fighting Hamas militants in Gaza in response to the group’s cross-border raid into southern Israel in October 2023. But President Joe Biden on Tuesday said his administration would make another push in the coming days to try to renew efforts for a deal in the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave.
Fighting rages in Gaza as ceasefire takes hold in Lebanon
TEL AVIV, Israel — As a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah appears to hold in Lebanon, fighting raged on in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 33 bodies had been brought to hospitals over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll in the nearly 14-month-long war to 44,282. The Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count but says more than half of the dead are women and children.
The Israeli military said it struck dozens of Hamas sites in hard-hit northern Gaza, including weapons storage facilities and military structures. It said it warned civilians to evacuate the area beforehand. The military has battled for weeks a resurgence of Hamas in the area, which was an early target of Israel’s offensive.
The Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire has no direct bearing on the conflict in Gaza, where international mediators have struggled to secure a truce.
Lebanese are streaming south despite warnings
On the highway linking Beirut with south Lebanon, hours after the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire took hold, thousands of people drove south with their belongings and mattresses tied on top of their cars. Traffic was gridlocked at the northern entrance of the port city of Sidon.
“This is a moment of victory, pride and honor for us, the Shiite sect, and for all of Lebanon,” said Hussein Sweidan, a resident returning to the port city of Tyre. He said he saw the ceasefire as a victory for Hezbollah.
Sporadic celebratory gunfire was heard at a main roundabout in the city, as people returning honked the horns of their cars and residents cheered.
Israel’s Arabic military spokesperson Avichay Adraee warned displaced Lebanese not to return to evacuated villages in southern Lebanon. Israeli troops were still present in parts of southern Lebanon after Israel launched a ground invasion in October. The Israeli military said forces opened fire to push back a number of vehicles that were entering a restricted area in southern Lebanon.
An Israeli security official said Israeli forces remain in their positions hours after the ceasefire began and will only gradually withdraw.
He said the pace of the withdrawal and the scheduled return of Lebanese civilians to their homes would depend on whether the deal is implemented and enforced by all sides. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the deal and its implementation with the media.
The Lebanese military asked displaced returning to southern Lebanon to avoid frontline villages and towns near the border where Israeli troops are still present until they withdraw.
Residents will return to vast destruction wrought by the Israeli military during its campaign, which flattened villages where the military said it found vast weapons caches and infrastructure it says was meant for Hezbollah to launch an Oct. 7-style attack on northern Israel.
More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon the past 13 months, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials.
Hezbollah emerges from the war battered and bloodied, with the reputation it built by fighting Israel to a stalemate in the 2006 war tarnished. Yet its fighters still managed to put up heavy resistance on the ground, slowing Israel’s advance while continuing to fire scores of rockets, missiles and drones across the border each day.
Some Israelis are concerned the deal doesn't go far enough
In Israel, the mood was far more subdued, with displaced Israelis concerned that the deal did not go far enough to rein in Hezbollah and that it did not address Gaza and the hostages still held there.
“I think it is still not safe to return to our homes because Hezbollah is still close to us,” said Eliyahu Maman, an Israeli displaced from the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona, which is not far from the border with Lebanon and was hit hard by the months of fighting.
On Wednesday morning, Kiryat Shmona remained quiet on a cold, rainy day. A handful of people milled about, inspecting damage from earlier rocket attacks, including to the roof of a bus. The town’s shopping mall, which had been hit before, appeared to have new damage, and a rocket was seen stuck in the ground next to an apartment building.
The fighting killed more than 70 people in Israel, more than half civilians, as well as dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Lebanon.
A significant return of the displaced to their communities, many of which have suffered extensive damage from rocket fire, could take months.
But Israel can claim major victories in the war, including the killing of Hezbollah's top leader Hassan Nasrallah and most of its senior commanders, as well as the destruction of extensive militant infrastructure. A complex attack involving exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, widely attributed to Israel, appeared to show a remarkable degree of penetration of the secretive militant group.
___
Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press journalists Alon Bernstein in Haifa, Israel, Leo Correa in Kiryat Shmona, Israel, and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
___
Find more of AP's war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP