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Fresh escalation along the Israel-Lebanon border has sent civilians back into displacement, as Israel’s top security official’s threat to expand attacks into the Lebanese capital dashed the fragile normalcy residents of Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahieh had only just begun to rebuild.

On Monday, thousands of residents who had trickled back to their homes following an April ceasefire began packing their belongings to evacuate once again, after Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz issued a blunt warning that no part of Beirut would be spared from violence if Hezbollah’s cross-front hostilities did not stop. Katz explicitly equated Dahieh, a dense, heavily residential district in southern Beirut long associated with Hezbollah, to Israeli communities in northern Israel that have faced frequent cross-border attacks. “If there is no calm in the north [of Israel], there will be no calm in Beirut,” he stated.

Katz’s warning came amid a sharp intensification of Israel’s ground and air offensive across Lebanon over the past week, a campaign that has already pushed far beyond the country’s southern border regions. The latest point of contention centers on the ancient Beaufort Castle, a strategic hilltop fortress in southern Lebanon. While Israeli officials announced Sunday they had seized the site and raised the Israeli flag there, Hezbollah contradicted the claim in a Monday statement, confirming its fighters were continuing a “battle of attrition” against Israeli troops in the area.

Israel frames its expanded military campaign as a necessary operation to push Hezbollah forces away from its northern border communities. Katz added that the Israeli military aims to establish full security control over the entire Litani River basin, turning the region into a weapons-free zone cleared of what Israel terms “terrorist elements.” The Litani, which runs roughly 30 kilometers north of the Israel-Lebanon border, has long been a focal point of Israeli demands for Hezbollah to withdraw its military assets from southern Lebanon.

In recent days, Israeli military operations have pushed even further north past the Litani. Last week, the Israel Defense Forces designated all territory south of the Zahrani River — located 40 kilometers from the border and encompassing the major population centers of Tyre and Nabatieh — as an official combat zone, issuing mandatory evacuation orders for all local residents. On Monday, IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee extended these expulsion orders to additional towns and villages located north of the Litani River.

For residents of Dahieh, the new threats have resurrected trauma many had only just started to process after months of displacement. Thousands of residents had gradually returned to the district following the April ceasefire, repairing damaged homes, reopening shuttered businesses, and working to rebuild a fragile sense of daily normalcy. That progress has now been completely upended.

Thirty-one-year-old Batoul Fawaz, who had spent the duration of the conflict in rented temporary accommodation, had just finalized plans to move back to her Dahieh home and returned the keys to her rental when the Israeli threat was released. Now, she is forced to rent another short-term space just to have a place to sleep. “We are no longer afraid for our lives only. We are afraid for our homes,” Fawaz told Middle East Eye. Her entire family, she added, has been scattered by displacement once again: one of her sisters had just given birth and returned to Dahieh, only to flee again with her newborn just days later.

The new threats against Beirut come after weeks of mounting pressure from Israel’s far-right ruling coalition to escalate operations against Hezbollah, in response to the group’s increasing use of explosive FPV drones targeting Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. A recent report from Israeli public broadcaster Kan found that Hezbollah’s advanced drone capabilities are currently limiting roughly 80 percent of Israeli ground assaults in southern Lebanon.

Senior far-right ministers have publicly pushed for massive retaliation against Lebanese civilian centers. Last week, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the Lebanese capital to be collectively punished for Hezbollah’s drone attacks, arguing that “for every explosive drone, 10 buildings should fall in Beirut.” National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has additionally urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resume full-scale war in Lebanon, calling for Israel to cut the country’s national electricity supply and seize all territory up to the Zahrani River. Netanyahu has aligned with the hardline position, vowing last Friday to push Israeli forces deeper into Lebanese territory and confirming that large swathes of southern Lebanon are now classified as combat zones.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the latest Israeli escalation, labeling it “a vicious and reprehensible Israeli aggression.” The expanding offensive has also disrupted regional diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the wider conflict across the Middle East. Iran’s foreign ministry stated Monday that a full ceasefire in Lebanon remains a non-negotiable prerequisite for any indirect talks with the United States to end the broader regional war. Iranian state news agency Tasnim later confirmed that Iran has paused all indirect negotiations with the U.S. in response to Israel’s ongoing attacks.

For the displaced families of Dahieh, the political and diplomatic standoff translates to a far more immediate crisis: the ceasefire that gave them a chance to return home has already been rendered meaningless, and any hope of resuming normal life has been delayed indefinitely once again.

More than three months have passed since the United States and Israel opened military hostilities against Iran, and for ordinary Iranian citizens across Tehran, every day has been defined by a single, draining reality: a liminal state of neither open war nor lasting peace that has left nearly all facets of daily life frozen. For 38-year-old Tehran resident Afshin, his weariness echoes the sentiment of a large swathe of the population. “We’re exhausted,” he shared in an interview. “It’s either been war since last summer, or the constant shadow of war. I hope they reach a deal so we can finally escape this suspended state… I just want life to go back to normal.”

Against this backdrop of persistent instability, many Iranians hold a fragile, tentative hope that indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington, brokered by regional intermediaries including Pakistan and Qatar, will pull the country out of its current crisis. These talks have continued despite major escalations: recent U.S. airstrikes on southern Iran and Israel’s ongoing ground invasion of southern Lebanon have failed to derail the diplomatic process entirely. Over the past week, circulating reports suggest a potential preliminary deal that would institute a 60-day mutual ceasefire, creating space for negotiators to hammer out a more comprehensive agreement addressing longstanding sticking points, including Iran’s uranium enrichment program and the relief of crippling U.S. economic sanctions.

Yet for all the quiet hope, no guarantee of a breakthrough exists, and the endless uncertainty has become a heavy emotional burden that most Iranians struggle to carry week after week. While 27-year-old Tehran resident Hediyeh suspects a preliminary agreement has already been finalized behind closed doors—telling Middle East Eye that “it appears they’re only still negotiating on how and when to announce it”—she remains deeply skeptical of how long any deal will hold. She notes that public speculation already frames the 60-day ceasefire as merely a delay for tougher negotiations on core issues to come later. “But what if there isn’t a final agreement? Honestly, we’re tired. We are tired of hearing about uranium and the nuclear programme and negotiations and ‘informed sources who asked not to be named,’” she said.

For many Iranians, recent history only fuels deep distrust of the ongoing diplomatic process. Both the 12-day conflict last year and the new war that began in late February broke out while Iranian and U.S. diplomats were already engaged in indirect talks through intermediaries. That pattern has left many convinced another outbreak of hostilities could come at any time, even amid current negotiations. “I don’t trust Trump anymore,” 46-year-old Mohammad, another Tehran resident, told Middle East Eye. “Two times he attacked us while we were negotiating. Why shouldn’t it happen a third time? All this uncertainty drags my mind more towards the possibility of another war.”

Trump’s own erratic public messaging has only amplified this uncertainty: the U.S. president has shifted wildly day to day, sometimes posting respectful messages to Iranian officials on social media and claiming a deal is close, only to turn around days later and tell reporters he is unhappy with proposed terms and issue new threats of military action. This inconsistency has filtered through his own administration, creating whiplash for observers both inside and outside Iran. On May 28, the Associated Press cited multiple senior U.S. officials reporting that the full text of a preliminary agreement had been finalized and was waiting for Trump’s approval. Just hours later, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, an outlet aligned with the country’s Revolutionary Guards, rejected the report entirely. Citing a senior Iranian negotiator, Tasnim confirmed no final text had been agreed, and no such update had been shared with Pakistani mediators. The conflicting reports have only deepened public suspicion across Iran.

For business owners like 58-year-old clothing retailer Hamidreza, this months-long uncertainty has paralyzed economic activity across the country, from large enterprises to ordinary households. “Everything in our lives is hanging in the air. We don’t know what to do. The market is terrible. We can’t plan ahead. We can’t even visualise the future adequately. Customers are in exactly the same situation,” he explained. Asked if he believes a deal will ever be reached, he laughed bitterly. “Trump himself likely doesn’t know, much less me. Anyone who tells you with certainty what’s going to happen is a charlatan. The world is now dealing with a man who goes into one night’s sleep and wakes up the next morning saying something totally different. How can anyone properly and confidently predict anything, when so much of global politics rests on someone this unpredictable?”

This uncertainty has not only strained public mood and business activity—it has upended concrete, long-held personal plans for many Iranians. Thirty-one-year-old lab technician Sima, who had been planning to pursue a master’s degree in Europe, has seen her dream put on indefinite hold. Visa processing for most Iranians has effectively frozen amid the current crisis, she explained. “Many European embassies in Tehran are essentially semi-shut down. You cannot get an appointment in Iran, they won’t permit you to apply through embassies in neighbouring countries either,” she said. After spending months securing admission to a reputable Italian university, the Iranian rial collapsed in value, completely wiping out her carefully calculated budget for study abroad. Even with an acceptance letter in hand, she cannot book a visa appointment—and the new academic year is just months away.

Not all Iranians are pushing for a rapid deal with Washington, either. Some argue that a hasty agreement could become another strategic trap that leaves Iran surrendering key leverage without gaining any meaningful, lasting concessions. Forty-one-year-old civil engineer Mehdi is deeply pessimistic about the current negotiation framework, questioning what Iran will actually gain in exchange for the concessions it is being asked to make. “If they stopped the war and went back to bargaining, it’s from pressure associated with the Strait of Hormuz and increasing oil costs,” he noted. “So now we reopen the strait and in return they return a tiny fraction of our own frozen cash? That sounds absurd to me.”

Mehdi fears that any temporary ceasefire deal will ultimately weaken Iran’s position without preventing a future full-scale conflict. “I’m not saying I like war,” he clarified. “But do you know what’s worse than war? When they can go wherever they want, blow up parts of your country, and nothing really happens in return. That’s how things played out for years in Syria.” He warns that if Iran eases economic pressure on the U.S. and global markets, Washington and Israel will simply return to all-out military action once Iran has given up its leverage.

For now, the majority of ordinary Iranians are trapped between two equally frightening outcomes: the immediate fear of a resumption of full-scale war, and the long-term fear that a flawed, fragile peace will only delay the inevitable conflict, leaving them exhausted and adrift in limbo for months or years to come.

On a Sunday in May 2026, a contingent of at least 199 Israeli ultranationalists carried out a deeply provocative incursion into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, under the direct protection of Israeli police. During the raid, the group raised the Israeli national flag, sang the country’s national anthem, and multiple participants openly conducted Talmudic prayers — actions that directly violate long-standing agreements governing the holy site.

Al-Aqsa Mosque ranks as one of the most sacred sites in Islam, and its governance has been guided for decades by a globally recognized status quo arrangement. This binding international framework, widely accepted by major world powers, explicitly designates the entire mosque complex as an exclusively Islamic place of worship, where only Muslim followers may conduct religious rituals. While non-Muslim visitors are permitted limited access under specific conditions, all administrative, maintenance, and worship oversight falls to the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, which operates under the custodianship of Jordan’s king, with Jordan holding formal protection responsibility for the site.

For years, however, Israel has faced growing international condemnation for systematically eroding this status quo. Successive Israeli governments, and particularly the hard-line administration led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that took office in 2022, have increasingly facilitated near-daily incursions by ultranationalist Jewish groups into the compound, allowing activities that were banned for decades to prevent regional unrest. For generations, Israeli leaders enforced restrictions on displays of the Israeli flag and formal Jewish prayer at Al-Aqsa, out of explicit concern that such actions would ignite widespread violence across Jerusalem and the occupied Palestinian territories. But ultranationalist factions, which openly advocate for the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque to build a Jewish temple in its place, have pushed relentlessly to lift these restrictions, and Netanyahu’s government has largely capitulated to their demands.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency following Sunday’s incursion, Omar Rajoub, media department director for the Jerusalem Governorate, framed the action as part of a deliberate, state-backed campaign to reshape the identity of East Jerusalem. “Raising the Israeli flag inside the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, along with performing provocative rituals, is part of a systematic and deliberate official Israeli policy led by the extremist occupation government,” Rajoub stated. He added that these targeted practices are intended to forcibly impose new realities on occupied East Jerusalem, and fundamentally undermine the site’s centuries-old historical and legal status quo.

Rajoub warned that the repeated incursions by settlers and ultranationalists are a core component of an ongoing colonial project to Judaize Jerusalem and erase the city’s existing Palestinian, Arab, and Islamic religious and historical identity. He emphasized that these incursions, which are enabled and protected by Israeli security forces, amount to a clear violation of international law, and held the Netanyahu government fully accountable for any subsequent escalation of tensions in the region.

On the day of the incursion, Israeli police imposed additional strict restrictions on Palestinian worshippers seeking entry to the mosque, multiple witnesses confirmed. Several worshippers reported that their identity documents were seized by officers at the outer gates of the compound, barring them from accessing the site for worship. The Jerusalem Islamic Waqf added that the Israeli settlers deliberately provoked on-site guards and worshippers by taking photos throughout the mosque courtyards, including in front of the iconic Dome of the Rock, one of the most recognizable and sacred landmarks in the city.

In the wake of the December 2024 lightning rebel offensive that toppled 50 years of Assad family rule in Syria, a quiet crisis over land ownership is unfolding in northern Hama, the historic core of Syria’s once world-leading pistachio industry, threatening to derail fragile efforts to build intercommunal peace.

The conflict traces back more than a decade to the earliest days of Syria’s civil war, when northern Hama’s pistachio-growing hills became a brutal frontline between regime forces and opposition factions. What were once scenic, multi-sectarian villages descended into sectarian bloodshed between majority Sunni communities, which made up most of the anti-Assad rebellion, and Alawis, the Shia offshoot sect to which Bashar al-Assad belonged. By the end of Assad’s rule, thousands of Sunni landowners had been displaced from their properties, while Alawi landholders fled en masse after the regime’s collapse, fearing retaliatory violence from returning rebels.

For Ahmed Ali, a former Syrian civil servant who lost his government job in 2019 for refusing mandatory military service on principle, the collapse of the Assad regime should have cleared the way for him to return to his 15-hectare family pistachio farm, a plot that has been in his family for more than half a century. Instead, Ali has become one of hundreds of landowners trapped in the messy new system of property administration implemented by the new Syrian government, led by former HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Ali’s story is familiar to many displaced landowners. When he returned to his property after Assad’s ouster, he found his former Alawi neighbor Karim al-Khattib occupying his home, after Khattib’s own property was destroyed in the fighting. Ali initially agreed to let Khattib stay in exchange for a share of the annual pistachio harvest, only to discover that the state-owned agricultural investment firm Iktifaa had seized control of his land, branding him an Assad-aligned “shabih” without providing evidence of any crime.

Khattib, who has signed a new contract with Iktifaa to farm Ali’s land for 2026, says he will vacate the property once he earns enough to replant his own destroyed pistachio orchard. Last year, a weak harvest worsened by Syria’s worst drought in decades yielded around $4,000, 60% of which went to Khattib, with the remaining 40% going to Iktifaa. Ali estimates his losses from 2025 alone top $50,000, and he has been blocked from even selling the land he has owned for decades.

Founded in 2021 through a merger of two Idlib-based agricultural firms active in former opposition-held territory, Iktifaa is now the central body managing “absentee lands” across most of Syria, under the oversight of the newly created Illicit Gains Committee. The committee, an extrajudicial body independent of Syria’s court system, is tasked with investigating ties to the former Assad regime and seizing assets from those linked to the old government. It is overseen by Abraham Succarieh, a Lebanese-Australian national who remains under Western sanctions over allegations of terrorism financing, and all revenue from seized assets flows to the Syrian state’s sovereign wealth fund.

During the war, Iktifaa and its predecessor firms managed lands owned by displaced Druze and Christian minorities in HTS-held Idlib. While those properties were returned between 2020 and 2023 as HTS sought to improve its standing with minority communities, many landowners reported they never received compensation for years of use of their property, with all revenue going to the former Syrian Salvation Government, HTS’s pre-2024 governing body. Today, Iktifaa applies the same model to lands abandoned by displaced Alawis who fled after Assad’s fall.

Monzer Khattab, head of Iktifaa’s Hama and Homs branch, defends the firm’s approach, arguing that state oversight was necessary to prevent widespread land grabbing and chaos in the immediate aftermath of the regime’s collapse. He acknowledged that 2025 was a chaotic year, with much of the harvest in Hama and Homs stolen due to the firm’s limited capacity, but confirmed Iktifaa still earned between $1.5 million and $2 million in profits from the region last year, 90% of it from absentee lands. This year, the firm will deploy additional staff across all producing regions to monitor the upcoming June mid-harvest, he said.

But for displaced Alawi landowners who have already been cleared of any ties to the Assad regime, the system still leaves them locked out of their livelihoods. Ammar al-Aassad, an Alawi farmer from the northern Hama village of Maraiwid, received official clearance for his 29 dunam pistachio and olive orchard last month, but has still been unable to access his land. After a Bedouin faction occupied his property and Iktifaa signed a cultivation contract with the group, Aassad lost his entire 2025 harvest, with estimated losses of $40,000. He has yet to receive any compensation, and fears to return to his village even with official clearance: three days after Assad’s ouster, one of his Alawi neighbors who tried to return was killed by unknown assailants, and no other displaced Alawi residents have dared come back since.

“There should be evidence – the previous regime was oppressive, we don’t want oppression again,” Ali says of the current system.

Syrian provincial authorities in Hama acknowledge the growing tensions and say they are working to resolve the crisis. Hama Deputy Governor Hassan al-Hassan says the national presidency has issued formal directives supporting the return of displaced Alawis to their lands, and that new appeal offices linked to the Illicit Gains Committee will open in every province within weeks to allow landowners to challenge seizures. To resolve the immediate housing crisis that has displaced Sunnis and Alawis alike, the provincial council is planning to build temporary caravan housing for displaced Sunni farmers who returned to destroyed homes and now occupy abandoned Alawi properties.

“Our goal is to restore civil peace, and our thinking is that of a state and its institutions, not that of an armed faction. The state’s vision is that people return to their regions,” Hassan said, adding that priority must first go to Sunni farmers who returned after years of displacement to find their homes destroyed and trees uprooted. He gave no clear timeline for when full property returns would be completed.

Local intercommunal reconciliation committees, made up of both Sunni and Alawi community leaders, are already working to resolve disputes at the village level. Alaa Ibrahim, an Alawi landowner from Maan village who serves on one such committee, says his 138 dunam family property remains under Iktifaa control because his brother worked at an army-owned shoe factory, placing him under suspicion. With the 2026 harvest approaching, the Illicit Gains Committee has not issued a ruling on his case, and Ibrahim warns that if Alawi landowners are locked out of another harvest, the economic impact will be catastrophic for already vulnerable families, pushing many to sell their land at rock-bottom prices.

Ibrahim and other committee members are negotiating direct sharecropping contracts between Alawi landowners and their Sunni neighbors, while working to resolve long-running intercommunal violent disputes. If successful, he says, the agreements could pave the way for the safe return of displaced Alawis and ease sectarian tensions. If not, he warns, growing resentment will undermine the entire project of building post-war civil peace in Syria’s once-prosperous pistachio heartland.