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TYRE: 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 deadly 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 the Lebanese armed group 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.”

TRUCE DID NOT END ISRAELI STRIKES
But while rockets are no longer launched from Lebanon, Israel has kept up strikes and troops occupying hilltops in Lebanon still flatten homes, 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.
Hezbollah denies that it is seeking to reconstitute its military force in south Lebanon and says 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 UN 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.”
IMAGES SHOW POST-TRUCE DESTRUCTION
Mona Yacoubian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, described the pace of strikes as Lebanon’s “new normal.” Observers have worried that it offers a preview of how this month’s fragile ceasefire in Gaza could play out: steady strikes without full-blown war.
On October 11, Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon hit construction yards approximately 40 km (25 miles) from the border, destroying more than 300 vehicles including bulldozers and excavators.
The Israeli military said it had struck “engineering machinery used to re-establish terrorist infrastructure.” Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun said it hit civilian facilities.
Public Works Studio, a Lebanese research organization, said there had been dozens of deadly attacks on people attempting to return home and using excavators to clear the rubble of their homes or filling water tanks on their rooftops.
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.
Reuters 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. Given the buildings were intact in January, this indicated the buildings were destroyed in strikes, rather than in rebuilding efforts.
Asked about the images showing destruction in Naqoura and in another village, Houla, the Israeli military said it conducted precise operations against Hezbollah.
“The two mentioned villages contained numerous terrorist infrastructures belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization — located inside civilian buildings, underground, and within dense agricultural terrain,” the military said in a statement to Reuters.
’STILL LIVING IN A WAR’
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 says.
Some still live in schools in Tyre.
Mounifa Aidibeh, 47, transformed her catering business into a community kitchen when Israel sharply escalated its strikes on September 23, 2024, aiming to break Hezbollah and beginning what Lebanese call the “66-day war.”
Aidibeh’s Mhanna community kitchen, also supported by the UN Women’s agency, uses the harvest from Mehdi’s farming to make 1,350 meals daily for the displaced in the 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 as cooks, also displaced, tended to vats of simmering onions.
Persistent displacement is just one sign hostilities never concluded. Aidibeh pointed to a recent strike in the town of Bint Jbeil that killed children, Israel’s warnings to stay away from southern villages and the daily buzz of Israeli drones overhead.
“The war never ended for it to come back – we’re still living in a war,” she said. “The war will end when Israel leaves Lebanon. When it totally leaves Lebanon. When there’s no drone in the sky, when (Israel) doesn’t hit a house every day.”
Israel said in August that it would be willing to reduce its troop presence in Lebanon if the Lebanese army takes steps to disarm Hezbollah.

STILL NO MAJOR RECONSTRUCTION
The World Bank estimates Lebanon needs $11 billion to rebuild homes and infrastructure destroyed in the war. But major reconstruction efforts have yet to begin, with some countries conditioning recovery funds on progress to disarm Hezbollah.
Bidaya Sleiman, 41, was elected to Houla’s municipal council this year but cannot live in the border town since an Israeli strike destroyed 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 told Reuters.
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 needs for shelter will grow — but first, residents want attacks to stop.
“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.

ABU DHABI: Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the United Arab Emirates president, called on Wednesday for compromise to end the Middle East conflict by providing security for Israel and a viable state for Palestinians.
The Gaza ceasefire that came into force earlier this month presents an important opening but the approach to one of the world’s most complex and intractable conflicts needs to change, Gargash said in an interview at the Reuters NEXT Gulf Summit in Abu Dhabi.
“This is definitely a moment of opportunity. I think the first thing to say, we see opportunity because we have a chance today to change course,” he said.
The UAE, a wealthy Gulf Arab state, is seen as a vital player in efforts to rebuild Gaza after two years of war — following the deadly attack on southern Israel by militant group Hamas — that killed tens of thousands of people and demolished the Palestinian enclave, creating widespread hunger and a humanitarian disaster.
“Some policies are no longer valid and should not be reincarnated, the maximalist views on the Palestinian issue are no longer valid, we have to address the issue that we have two contending nationalisms fighting on one piece of land and that land has to be divided,” Gargash said.
“Are we going to continue with this sort of maximalist views on how to address the Palestinian issue, for example, by the Israeli right, which has to understand that this is not going to go away,” added Gargash, who served as the UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs from 2008 to 2021.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads the most far-right government in Israel’s history, has rejected the idea of a Palestinian state.

UAE’S INFLUENTIAL ROLE IN THE REGION
Abu Dhabi, a major oil producer, punches above its weight diplomatically in the region and beyond and has gained vast influence by strategically investing everywhere from the West to Africa.
The UAE was the most prominent of the Arab states to sign US-brokered normalization deals with Israel in 2020 known as the Abraham Accords.
UAE Minister of State Lana Nusseibeh said during a panel at the Reuters NEXT Gulf Summit that the UAE normalized relations with Israel to foster tolerance and change mindsets in the region.
“We partnered with the Arab region, with the United States and with Israel using the Abraham Accords to help achieve this ceasefire in Gaza that was so desperately needed,” said Nusseibeh.
Gargash reiterated that Israeli annexation in the occupied West Bank would constitute a “red line” for the UAE.
Asked if that red line could lead to the end of the Abraham Accords, which US President Donald Trump wants to expand to include other Arab states to stabilize the Middle East and promote economic growth, Gargash said the focus now should be on making Trump’s plan to end the Gaza war work.
As Gaza faces a shaky ceasefire, highly sensitive questions remain for the next phase of the truce in the US plan, such as widespread calls for Hamas to disarm and for the group not to play any future role in governing the enclave.
The UAE sees Islamist groups such as Hamas as an existential threat, a position that often influences its foreign policy.
“We’ve had 30 years of the trajectory of political Islam, and political Islam was the main combatant here in the two years of war,” Gargash said, adding that political Islam could now be waning.
The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, Hamas’ rival, expects to play a significant role in post-war Gaza even though Trump’s plan sidelines it for now, and it is banking on Arab support to secure its position despite Israeli objections, Palestinian officials say.
Asked about the PA, Gargash noted that it has stated that it is willing to reform, but he added that changes such as financial transparency were needed.