Israel withdraws but keeps five positions in south Lebanon

KFAR KILA: Israeli troops withdrew from all but five points in south Lebanon on Tuesday, allowing displaced residents to return to border villages largely destroyed in more than a year of hostilities.

Lebanon said any Israeli presence on its soil constituted “occupation”, warning it would ask the UN Security Council to push Israel to leave and that its armed forces were ready to assume duties on the border.

In the south, many returned to destroyed or heavily damaged homes, farmland and businesses, after more than a year of clashes that included two months of all-out war and ended with a November 27 ceasefire.

“The entire village has been reduced to rubble. It’s a disaster zone,” said Alaa al-Zein, back in Kfar Kila after the delayed withdrawal deadline expired under an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal.

Unable to reach Kfar Kila by car because of the destruction and army restrictions, residents parked at the entrance of the village and returned on foot.

Israel had announced just before the pullout deadline that it would keep troops in “five strategic points” near the border, and on Tuesday its foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said they would withdraw “once Lebanon implements its side of the deal”.

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Israel’s army had said it would remain on the five hilltops, which overlook swathes of both sides of the border, “temporarily” to “make sure there’s no immediate threat”.

Lebanon’s army announced it had deployed starting Monday in 11 southern border villages and other areas from which Israeli troops have pulled out.

‘Embrace the land’

The official National News Agency said two people had been found alive in Kfar Kila, three months after contact with them had been lost. One is a Hezbollah fighter thought to have been killed in fighting.

It also said that “enemy forces” set off a powerful explosion outside the village of Kfarshuba.

In a joint statement, UN envoy Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert and the UNIFIL peacekeeping force said that at “the end of the period set” for Israel’s withdrawal and the Lebanese army’s deployment, any further “delay in this process is not what we hoped would happen” and a violation of a 2006 Security Council resolution that ended a past Israel-Hezbollah war.

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In Lebanon, the cost of reconstruction is expected to reach more than $10 billion, while more than 100,000 people remain displaced, according to the United Nations.

But despite the devastation, Zein said villagers were adamant on returning.

“The whole village is returning, we will set up tents and sit on the ground” if needed, he said, striking a defiant tone.

Others were going south to look for the bodies of their relatives under the rubble.

Among them was Samira Jumaa, who arrived in the early hours of the morning to look for her brother, a Hezbollah fighter killed in Kfar Kila with others five months ago.

“We have not heard of them until now. We are certain they were martyred,” she said.

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“I’ve come to see my brother and embrace the land where my brother and his comrades fought,” she added.

Hezbollah disarmed?

Hezbollah strongholds in south and east Lebanon as well as Beirut suffered heavy destruction during the hostilities, initiated by Hezbollah in support of ally Hamas during the Gaza war.

Under the ceasefire, brokered by Washington and Paris, Lebanon’s military was to deploy alongside United Nations peacekeepers as the Israeli army withdrew over a 60-day period that was extended to February 18.

Hezbollah was to pull back north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border, and dismantle remaining military infrastructure there.

Since the cross-border hostilities began in October 2023, more than 4,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the health ministry.

On the Israeli side of the border, 78 people including soldiers have been killed, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, with an additional 56 troops dead in southern Lebanon during the ground offensive.

Around 60 people have reportedly been killed since the truce began, two dozen of them on January 26 as residents tried to return to border towns on the initial withdrawal deadline.