Mohammed Bzeeh spent the first hours of cease fire cleaning. After an accord between Hezbollah and Israel ended 13 months of fighting last Wednesday, Bzee and his family arrived in their village of Zibkin in southern Lebanon to find their home destroyed by an Israeli airstrike.
Bzeeh immediately got to work, with the wiry 18-year-old moving piles of concrete and metal debris from his driveway using a rusty shovel. His family watched him work, overlooking the street they had left two months ago, now lined with the charred husks of their neighbors’ homes.
“I feel overwhelmed. We are back in our land, in our homeland, and there is so much damage here. But we will resist and stay here and fix our homes,” Bzee said.
He was not alone. His neighbors were already digging through the remains of their properties, hoping to find some relics among the rubble. In the days that would follow, hundreds of thousands of residents of the South Lebanon would join them, and a steady stream of cars moved behind the freeway for days.
Most arrived to find similar scenes of destruction. There was no water, electricity or cell phone service south of the Litani River two months later Israel began its intensified air campaign and ground invasion of southern Lebanon in late September. By the end of the Israeli campaign, nearly 4,000 people had been killed in Lebanon, more than a million displaced, and dozens of villages rendered uninhabitable.
Despite the extensive damage to their homes and the number of casualties among their communities, many in southern Lebanon saw their very presence as a victory and a form of resistance.
“Obviously we’re happy because we’re back here and we’ve won the war. If you destroy all our houses, we will stay here and resist because we are [owners] on the ground,” Bzeeh said.
However many residents returned home – with Israel still banning those living directly on the border from returning – the future of southern Lebanon and the country was deeply uncertain. Hezbollah has declared victory in its battle with Israel, declaring that Israel has failed to achieve any of its objectives in Lebanon, including the occupation of the south and the destruction of the organization.
However, she agreed to the demands, which before the offensive two months ago, she said, had not started. It has not forced Israel to cease fire in Gaza and has agreed to withdraw its fighters north of the Litani River, about 20 miles from the border.
The fighting has left the organization, which for years dominated Lebanon’s domestic politics and served as a regional nightmare for Israel and its allies, greatly diminished. Its domestic opponents have called on the organization to hand over its weapons to the state, insisting that it has passed its glory days.
On Saturday, the Christian Lebanese Forces, the largest anti-Hezbollah bloc in the Lebanese parliament, held a meeting to discuss the reality in Lebanon after the ceasefire. Lebanese Forces leader Samir Gegea said Hezbollah’s weapons became illegal after the ceasefire agreement was approved and should be handed over to the army “just like the Lebanese Forces once did when they handed over their weapons”.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, the group’s fighters in the south will be replaced by 10,000 Lebanese troops. The Lebanese army, chronically underequipped and outgunned by Hezbollah, will be tasked with restoring state authority in southern Lebanon and ensuring that the militia does not rearm in the south.
As it stands now, the Lebanese army is tasked with internal security, not defending the country against foreign forces. The soldiers act as a national police guard, not a national fighting force.
The ceasefire, however, stipulates that the army will be able to both ensure that Hezbollah abides by the terms of the deal and defend Lebanon against any Israeli encroachments on its sovereignty.
The force has been crippled by Lebanon’s five-year economic crisis, with soldiers earning just a few hundred dollars a month and lacking basic supplies. There is also a question of political will. Lebanon’s delicate sectarian balance could be threatened if there is a confrontation between the army and Hezbollah.
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Military experts said the army needed to be completely transformed and needed an infusion of international support if it hoped to protect Lebanese sovereignty. “If Israel attacks Lebanon, the Lebanese army will not be able to face the Israeli tanks and rockets. The US wants the Lebanese army to be a police force to maintain security,” said Munir Shehadeh, a retired general who led the Lebanese government’s coordination with UN peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon.
Shehadeh explained that the army will need real commitment from the international community to become a real, competent army. As part of this, it should be allowed to purchase advanced weapons from Western countries, particularly the US.
In the first four days of the ceasefire, Israel has carried out multiple airstrikes in Lebanon against what it says are Hezbollah members who are violating the terms of the ceasefire. At least one of those airstrikes was in Lebanon’s Saida district, far north of where the ceasefire requires Hezbollah to withdraw. Hezbollah, despite promising to respond to ceasefire violations, has so far not retaliated. The Lebanese army, for its part, said it would raise the matter with international mediators.
Despite questions about Hezbollah’s grip on power in the country and its alleged replacement as the country’s protector by the Lebanese military, the group and its supporters welcomed the end of the battle as cause for celebration.
On Saturday, thousands of people gathered at the site of the Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah of three decades, holding Hezbollah flags and holding candles. The ceremony was meant to mark Nasrallah’s death and chart a way forward after a year filled with immeasurable loss.
In Zibqin Bzeeh was also uncertain about his future. The 18-year-old boy, now that the war was over, had to contend with the more mundane but equally serious aspects of his life. He will return to his studies as a first-year student studying finance.
“The circumstances here in the country are very confusing. I will work in banking, but not in Lebanon,” Bzee said.
