‘We want to be 100% sure’: war-weary Lebanese greet truce with caution

People check over a destroyed home in Beer al-Salassel, south Lebanon as they return on Monday after the latest ceasefire. Photograph: Mohammed Zaatari/AP View image in fullscreen People check over a destroyed home in Beer al-Salassel, south Lebanon as they return on Monday after the latest ceasefire. Photograph: Mohammed Zaatari/AP ‘We want to be 100% sure’: war-weary Lebanese greet truce with caution While officials welcome ceasefire, many people are uncertain it will last – and return to find homes destroyed H ours after the US-Iran ceasefire was announced, residents of south Lebanon began to race back to their villages. One man filmed as he drove into the entrance of Harees, his arrival interrupted as the car in front of him suddenly veered off the road. An Israeli armoured vehicle was parked in the middle of the road less than 100 metres ahead; he scrambled to turn around. “It was packed with explosives. I guess they still want to blow things up,” said Abdullah al-Ali, a municipal official in Harees. Ali added that the entrance to the town was blocked off after two other explosive-laden vehicles left by the Israelis were discovered in the area. The Lebanese army and civil defence told people not to return to their villages, warning that the war, which had so far claimed almost 3,800 lives in Lebanon , was not yet over. Their point was punctuated by the Israeli shelling that met people attempting to return to their homes south of the city of Nabatieh, still occupied by Israeli soldiers. It was the third ceasefire declared in Lebanon in less than two months; the fourth in two years. This time, war-weary Lebanese did not greet the apparent truce as they had before, with fingers held up in a V for victory sign, but with a question. Would it last? “How many times has this happened before? I have mixed feelings, there’s joy, I’m excited. But there’s a fear in the back of my head that won’t go away,” said Ghia Hajo, a 25-year-old woman who had been displaced from the town of Abbasieh, just outside of the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, during the war. Hajo watched on her phone as videos came in from friends and social media of the long-awaited return to their villages in south Lebanon. She itched to see her own home, which, due to sheer luck, was still standing. But she did not want to return only to be displaced once again – or worse, be met with bombs. “We want to go and not have to leave our bags unpacked. Because we always had our clothes in our bag, ready to evacuate at any moment. We want to be 100% sure,” said Hajo, who was mulling a return once she was assured the situation was safe in Abbasieh. Lebanon’s officials welcomed the ceasefire, which came about on the heels of a greater US-Iran truce they had been informed of via news reports. How it would apply in Lebanon remained unclear. In the hours after the ceasefire was announced, Hezbollah’s attacks entirely stopped; Israeli strikes mostly stopped, with the exception of shelling and two d