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On the outskirtsIDFIDFUNUNUNIFILIDFYour browser does not support the element. of Tyre in southern Lebanon wailing mothers dressed in black gathered the bodies of their sons, which they had been unable to bury for weeks. In a village nearby, one man came home to find his dog had been shot dead; in another, a woman discovered piles of excrement in her bed. Others found that after months of Israeli bombing and ground operations by Israeli troops they no longer had homes to go to. On the other side of the border in Israel, most people’s homes were still standing. But thousands had been damaged by rockets fired by Hizbullah, the Iran-backed Shia militia that had dominated southern Lebanon.Israeli and Lebanese civilians who live near the border between the two countries have begun to return home after a ceasefire on November 27th ended nearly 14 months of war between Israel and Hizbullah. Yet even as those who return survey the devastation, it remains far from clear that they will not have to leave again soon.Since October 8th 2023, when Hizbullah began firing rockets to support the bloody attack a day earlier on Israel by Hamas, more than 4,000 Lebanese and 127 Israelis have been killed in the conflict. (Israel claims three-quarters of the Lebanese victims were members of Hizbullah. Lebanon says the toll includes nearly 800 women and more than 300 children.) Some 70,000 Israelis and around 1.3m Lebanese have been forced to flee their homes. In Lebanon, entire villages have been destroyed in the south. Scores of neighbourhoods have been levelled. Israel says it has targeted its attacks on Hizbullah headquarters and weapons stores hidden beneath civilian buildings.Over the next couple of months, Hizbullah is supposed to withdraw from all its positions in southern Lebanon, as Israeli troops leave Lebanese territory, creating the conditions for repairing some of the damage. Yet the truce is already shaky.Over the past week both sides have committed numerous violations of the accord. On December 2nd Hizbullah fired two rockets at an Israeli position on a long-disputed section of the border. In response, the Israel Defence Forces () carried out air strikes against what it claims were “launchers and terrorist infrastructure”. The has also fired at Lebanese trying to return to their homes in the south, claiming that they were Hizbullah members in breach of the agreement.For now, both parties have an interest in sticking to the deal. Israel has achieved its objectives in Lebanon. It has killed most of Hizbullah’s leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah, its veteran leader, and destroyed most of the group’s guided-missile arsenal, as well as its military infrastructure close to Israel’s northern border. The ceasefire aims to ensure that Hizbullah will be kept well away from the border.Agreeing to the ceasefire was a bid by Hizbullah to hang on to what remains of its military power and political authority in Lebanon. The drubbing it has received in the past few months has not just battered the group but has also eroded the regional standing of Iran, its main sponsor.That, in turn, has weakened Iran’s main client, in neighbouring Syria. Iran’s worry that it is overstretched in the region may have spurred it to press Hizbullah to accept the ceasefire, even though Hizbullah used to maintain that it should depend on Israel stopping its war in Gaza.The deal may still collapse. It is based on resolution 1701, which ended the previous war between Israel and Hizbullah in 2006 and mandated that Hizbullah withdraw its forces to the area north of the Litani river. Both the Lebanese army and the peacekeeping force in south Lebanon known as failed miserably to enforce Hizbullah’s withdrawal at the time. The countries guaranteeing the latest ceasefire are not about to send troops of their own to enforce it, so it is unclear what will stop Hizbullah from re-establishing its presence in the south.European diplomats are scrambling to funnel cash and equipment to the Lebanese army to bolster it for the task. Though they acknowledge that the army chief, General Joseph Aoun, wants to enforce the ceasefire, many remain sceptical that his army is up to the task. Israeli officers suspect they may eventually have to return. They are banking on Hizbullah and its Iranian backers not wanting to provoke another round of fighting.For now, the Shia group may be content to lay low. Though its ability to launch attacks has been diminished, it retains some of its hold over the Lebanese state. In Beirut’s southern suburbs, some of its supporters held a night-time vigil at the site where Mr Nasrallah was assassinated by a barrage of Israeli bunker-buster bombs in late September. At his upcoming public funeral, the movement’s surviving leaders are likely to proclaim victory for evicting the Israelis from Lebanon.However, many Lebanese, while glad to see the back of the , have had enough of suffering the consequences of Hizbullah’s wars, which have inflicted much more damage on Lebanon than on Israel. In Bint Jbeil, a town in the south, some were grievously offended by a Hizbullah lawmaker’s assertion that the 4,000 Lebanese deaths were a price worth paying.Yet some worry that the hit to Hizbullah’s reputation caused by its hammering by Israel may leave the group with a point to prove. Says one Lebanese opposition politician: “What I fear now is that they will do something to reassert their authority—a show of force is what scares me.”
