Nearly a year after a truce was meant to bring calm to Lebanon’s border with Israel, tens of thousands of people have not yet returned to ruined towns in the south, kept away by Israeli strikes and slim prospects of rebuilding.
Among them, 50-year-old farmer Zeinab Mehdi, who fled her home in the border town of Naqoura last year when the war between Israel and Hezbollah intensified, joining more than a million people fleeing the south’s hilly villages.
Mehdi, like many of those who left, placed her hopes in a US-brokered ceasefire agreed on November 26, 2024, that ordered hostilities to stop “to enable civilians on both sides of (the border) to return safely to their lands and homes.”
But while rockets are no longer launched from Lebanon, Israel has kept up strikes, according to residents, Lebanese officials, and rights organizations. Israel says its post-truce strikes target Hezbollah’s efforts to re-establish military posts or train new fighters, accusing the group last week of hiding “terrorist activity under civilian disguise in Lebanon.”
Israel said in February that it needed to keep forces in Lebanon “to defend Israeli citizens” before territory is fully handed over to Lebanese troops. The Hezbollah terror organization denies that it is seeking to reconstitute its military force in south Lebanon and claims Israel is striking the area to deliberately keep civilians from ever returning home.
“Whatever house was still standing or land was still in good shape, they razed,” said Mehdi, who now works on a farming project funded by the United Nations Women’s agency in the coastal city of Tyre. “They pulled water pumps out from the ground and destroyed them. All the irrigation I had in the ground is broken. I have nothing.” Mona Yacoubian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, described the pace of strikes as Lebanon’s “new normal.”
Images show post-truce damage
On October 11, Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon hit construction yards approximately 25 miles from the border, destroying more than 300 vehicles, including bulldozers and excavators. The Israeli military explained that it had struck “engineering machinery used to re-establish terrorist infrastructure.” Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun said it hit civilian facilities, according to Al-Jazeera and other Arab media.
Public Works Studio, “a multi-disciplinary design and research studio that engages critically with urban and public issues in Lebanon,” according to its website, said there had been dozens of deadly attacks.
Reuters reviewed satellite imagery of Naqoura provided by Planet Labs showing the town on January 19, approximately two months after the ceasefire came into force, and on September 14. It counted at least two dozen structures in Naqoura in the January image that appeared to have been destroyed by September, when the image showed grayish-white marks where the structures once stood.
Asked about the images, the Israeli military said it conducted precise operations against Hezbollah.
The villages of Naqoura and Houla “contained numerous terrorist infrastructures belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization – located inside civilian buildings, underground, and within dense agricultural terrain,” the IDF said in a statement.
Thousands remain displaced
More than 64,000 people remain displaced in Lebanon, including nearly 1,000 who fled areas this month where Israel carried out strikes, the International Organization for Migration, part of the United Nations system, said.
Mounifa Aidibeh, 47, transformed her catering business into a community kitchen following Israel strikes strikes on September 23, 2024, aiming to break Hezbollah and beginning what the Lebanese call the “66-day war.” The kitchen, in Mhanna, also supported by the UN Women’s agency, uses the harvest from Mehdi’s farming to make 1,350 meals daily for the displaced still sheltering in schools.
“We thought, when the 66-day war is done, we’d of course stop. We didn’t expect people wouldn’t go back to their homes,” Aidibeh said. She pointed to a recent strike in the town of Bint Jbeil that killed five people, including three children, after Israel’s warnings to stay away from southern villages.
Israel said in August that it would be willing to reduce its troop presence in Lebanon if the Lebanese army took steps to disarm Hezbollah.
Reconstruction efforts
Major reconstruction efforts in Lebanon have yet to begin, with some countries conditioning recovery funds on progress to disarm Hezbollah. The World Bank estimates that Lebanon would need $11 billion to rebuild homes and infrastructure destroyed in the war.
Bidaya Sleiman, 41, elected to Houla’s municipal council this year, said she cannot live in the border town since an Israeli strike damaged her home last year. She visits weekly to support the township’s modest efforts to revive public services. “Through meeting up with people and listening to their complaints, I say the war is still ongoing and the pain of war is continuing,” she claimed.
Israeli strikes hit Houla this month, and satellite imagery from Planet Labs dated September 24 showed widespread new damage in the town compared to a February image. With winter approaching, Sleiman said, the need for shelters would grow.
“The first thing people want is security. Because whatever we can offer these people, or whatever the state or authorities offer in compensation – if there’s no security, then there’s something missing,” she said.