The highway that winds through the South Lebanon hills and plunges towards the dividing line between Lebanese and Israeli territories bears the scars of a long year of war. In the many villages located a few dozen kilometres south of Nabatieh, there’s hardly a single soul left. And for good reason: already massively targeted by the Israeli army since 7 October 2023, with the intensification of the war in September 2024 the area was subjected to a ferocious barrage. Many huge craters in the roads make driving anywhere a hazardous enterprise.
Five kilometres inside the UN’s “blue line”1, Majdel Selm has become, by the force of events, a village at the back of beyond. Before the war, this municipality counted a population of 13,000. After over two months of forced exile - for the luckiest - some villagers are beginning to return. According to Ali Yassine, head of a public committee covering 18 towns in the vicinity, hundreds of people came back as soon as the cease-fire was officially announced on 26 November 2024,”despite the lack of any statement from the Lebanese government concerning the return of displaced persons".
Now the inhabitants are trying to clear the roads while contemplating with dismay the destruction caused by the Israeli army’s massive bombings. Everywhere gutted buildings threaten to collapse. Every car or lorry passing through the village raises a cloud of dust, making the air hard to breathe. Ali Yassine is very adamant: 90% of Majdel Selm has been destroyed or heavily damaged.
“We are all trying with what little means we have to repair what can be repaired, but it’s a huge job. Besides making the buildings inhabitable again one of our main objectives is to open some bakeries which would make people’s return home easier. But we also have to find ways to restore water and electricity, these are vital.”
Attachment to their land
A few days after the ceasefire agreement, the inhabitants are astonished to hear of new restrictions imposed on their village. A public statement by Avichay Adraee, Arabic-speaking spokesperson for the Israeli army, laid down very precise conditions : despite the agreement, Majdel Selm and some sixty other south Lebanese villages are in a “red zone”. In other words, all are exposed to the threat of new air strikes. Ali Yassin explains :
“Clearly, we are running a risk by being here. The hundreds of people who have come back to stay know this, but they are all very attached to their land and to their village.”
Around him, standing beneath a portrait of the former Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, killed at the end of September by powerful Israeli “bunker bombs” in Beirut’s southern suburbs, some 15 men make no secret of their membership in the Shiite political-military formation. Though these young men have no wish to attract attention, they want to get things straight: since the cease-fire agreement, Israeli troops, they claim, have moved their positions forward by several hundred metres. Maps in hand, Ali concurs.
“During the 66 days of war, they reached Markaba, three kilometres to the east of here, and remained stationed there. Now they have gone into the village of Bani Hayyan and are stationed at the exit from Tallouseh which is less than two kilometres away.”
“While the fighting was going on, the Resistance kept them from making any advance. But since then, they’ve taken the liberty of moving forward,” says a man in his thirties who asked not to be named. A piece of information corroborated by the handful of Bani Hayyan villagers to have returned home - to a village where, like dozens of others, the war continues, and where we were able to go only very briefly.
White phosphorous bombings
Away from the town centre of Majdel Selm, Hassan2 gapes in stupefaction at his tiny residential neighbourhood, which is totally destroyed. He greets a neighbour who has also returned. The latter’s features are drawn, his eyes full of sadness. He is busy attaching to his fence a banner displaying portraits of his two sons, both members of Hezbollah. They were killed in action in October 2024.
The two men embrace. “It’s tough”, Hassan breathes. “On top of all that, there’s no electricity, no water and almost no internet in our part of the country. It’s a wasteland and it’ll take time to fix it.” Like many others I met, he says he doesn’t believe the cease-fire will last. He thinks it’s all just a matter of time: “A few days ago, the Israeli army targeted four civilians helping the villagers to evacuate Tallouseh. They were all killed. We don’t trust them at all. The Israelis are the enemies of us ”southerners“. It’s been going on for decades and it will last as long as we live.”
In the only shop still open, Nahed Chamseddine, a farmer, has only a little fruit and a few vegetables for sale. While she says she is relieved to have been able to come back to her village and sleep in the undamaged part of her home, Nahed has suffered enormously from these months of war. Her five-year-old daughter is by her side.
“No child deserves to go through what she has been through. As a mother, my duty is to make sure she is happy and can play and have fun like every other child in the world. The bombings have left her terribly traumatised, as did our having to leave at the end of September. The whole village left, we couldn’t stay on any longer.”
Like other farmers in south Lebanon, there is no doubt in Nahed Chamseddine’s mind: “The land is saturated with white phosphorous from their bombs. The soil and the water are contaminated and so are our livestock as a result.”
Villages still occupied
On leaving the town by the east side, I see a group of men busy repairing whatever they can. Two of them are from villages still occupied by Israel and are desperately waiting for their withdrawal, supposedly - according to the terms of the ceasefire - to be completed by the end of January.
Wissam Alaeddine, 44, lived in Houla, a village high on a nearby hill, clearly visible from Majdel Selm. Several times a day he casts worried glances up the hill to check on the state of the houses in his little town. “Houla became the front line. The Israeli soldiers wouldn’t leave anything untouched, they even uprooted century-old trees with their bulldozers. A barbarism encouraged by the United States, France, Germany and even the countries of the Arab League”, he says indignantly, and takes to wondering:
“We figure Israel agreed to the ceasefire because its army is tired of fighting. We’ve no idea how long it’ll last. Right now, we’re waiting to go home, it’s taking a long time... Maybe the only way to make Israel leave our land is to fight them since they’re not respecting the agreement.”
Standing by his side, Bilal Hammoud is also waiting. Mays al-Jabal, his village, is also occupied by the Israeli army. Each day, he peers down at his family home from a nearby hilltop. For the moment, it is still undamaged.“We who live on the front line have been deprived of our houses for a long time now. I had to leave the village at the start of the war on Gaza, in October 2023, in other words long before the September escalation. I haven’t been back there for one year and two months.”
While he considers himself lucky that Mays al-Jabal has not been “completely destroyed like other towns in south Lebanon and Gaza”, his anger has not abated: “We can still hear bombs falling. This ceasefire hasn’t made any difference for us and nobody’s doing anything about it.”
These two friends in exile are staying with Haitham3, who says exactly the same thing: “In spite of the dangers, we’ve come back to stay. The Lebanese are among the world’s stubbornest peoples, and we are living proof,” he jokes, adding :“We have a fusional relation with our land. To the point where we feel like roots, as if we were part of the soil. Nobody can understand that, it comes from our common history.”
Hezbollah’s enduring hegemony
Since our visit, the red line imposed by Israel has moved a hundred metres. Majdel Selm is now in the “accessible” zone. But the exclusion zone is not very far: now it starts at the town’s eastern entrance. A “new deal” which changes nothing for the daily life of the townspeople. The Israeli soldiers are still two kilometres away, displaced people from neighbouring villages still can’t go home and the drones keep buzzing in the sky above.
According to the cease-fire agreement, supervised by the surveillance committee4, the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon is meant to be completed by 27 January 2025.
For the moment, with the exception of the village of Khiam where the soldiers withdrew on 12 December, the situation has hardly changed and nobody believes in the likelihood of a new status quo. The hope of living in peace in south Lebanon seems to have vanished for a long time. All the people living in Majdel Selm whom I questioned feel that sooner or later the war will catch up with them again.
As for Hezbollah, despite the harsh blows suffered in its Lebanese strongholds and the interruption of its supply lines with the fall of the Syrian regime, it still seems to be immovable. In this region, the suspension of its military activities and the major concessions accepted by its leaders - who agreed to separate the Gaza front from the Lebanese, something which Hassan Nasrallah swore would never happen - do not appear to have affected its popularity overmuch. Nor does this hegemony seem challenged by the ongoing deployment of the Lebanese army. “Our land was defended by the Resistance and that land is our honour and our history. No matter what happens, we will never leave it, even if it means we must die on it. Every forced departure will always be followed by a return,” Hassan promises.
Translated by Noël Burch.
1The dividing line between Israel and Lebanon drawn by the UN in 2000.
2At his request, this is not his real name.
3Ditto
4The Cessation of Hostilities Implementation Mechanism monitoring the ceasefire. The committee is chaired by the US and includes France, Lebanon, Israel and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL.