A fragile 10-day truce between Israel and Hezbollah that halted weeks of deadly cross-border fighting has done little to ease tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border, after Israel announced Sunday it had ordered its military to operate with “full force” and demolish structures it claims are used by the militant group. The ceasefire, which went into effect Friday following the first high-level talks between Lebanese and Israeli officials in decades, has split displaced southern Lebanese residents: some have rushed home to retrieve belongings and rebuild, while others remain wary of the truce’s durability and have chosen to stay away.
On the ground, Agence France-Presse correspondents across southern Lebanon have documented disparate scenes of returning life and lingering destruction. In the village of Dibbine, one resident inspected blast damage to his property, with rubble of already destroyed buildings lining nearby streets. In Srifa, returnees unloaded household goods including mattresses and a washing machine from vehicles as they moved back into their homes. In other border communities, however, some residents only returned to collect personal items before heading back to safer areas further north.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz confirmed Sunday that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had issued explicit orders to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to maintain aggressive operations even during the ceasefire. “We have instructed the army to act with full force, both on the ground and from the air, including during the ceasefire, in order to protect our soldiers in Lebanon from any threat,” Katz said. He added that the military had been ordered to destroy any booby-trapped structures or roads, and raze border-area homes that Israel claims function as Hezbollah outposts.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported Sunday that Israeli forces were already carrying out these demolition orders across multiple hard-hit border towns. One day after carrying out initial demolitions in Bint Jbeil, a site of intense pre-ceasefire fighting between Israeli troops and Hezbollah, the NNA said Israel was “still destroying what remains of houses” in the town. Additional demolitions by detonation were reported in Mais al-Jabal and Deir Seryan, while the border town of Kunin came under Israeli artillery shelling Sunday.
Last Saturday, the IDF announced it had established a “Yellow Line” security buffer in southern Lebanon, a framework identical to the barrier separating Israeli-held and Hamas-controlled territory in Gaza. On Sunday, the military released an official map marking this new “forward defence line” and a red-zoned area spanning the entire length of the border, where it says operations will continue to dismantle Hezbollah military infrastructure and eliminate threats to northern Israeli communities. Hours after publishing the map, the IDF confirmed it had killed an armed man it described as a terrorist who crossed the designated buffer line.
The ongoing Israeli operations have drawn sharp international condemnation. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan denounced the actions Sunday as an example of “Israeli expansionism” into Lebanese territory. Since the conflict erupted on March 2, it has killed nearly 2,300 people in Lebanon and displaced more than one million, making the fragile truce a much-watched development for regional stability.
Diplomatic efforts to solidify the ceasefire and support Lebanese territorial integrity are moving forward this week. On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron will host Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in Paris, a meeting the Élysée Palace says is intended to demonstrate France’s commitment to Lebanon’s sovereignty. Macron will also push Lebanese authorities to hold accountable those responsible for a Saturday attack on UNIFIL peacekeepers that killed one French soldier, Florian Montorio, and wounded three others. Both France and UNIFIL have blamed Hezbollah for the attack, which the group has denied. Montorio was honored posthumously with UN and Lebanese Army medals at a memorial service held at Beirut’s international airport, in recognition of his service to peacekeeping in southern Lebanon.
Following his Paris meeting, Salam will travel to Luxembourg on Tuesday to meet with European Union foreign policy chiefs. In a small sign of returning normalcy, Lebanon’s military announced Sunday it had reopened a key road connecting the city of Nabatiyeh to the Khardali region, and partially reopened the Burj Rahal-Tyre bridge in southern Lebanon. Access to much of the south has been severely constrained since the conflict began, after Israeli airstrikes destroyed multiple crossings over the Litani River, which sits roughly 30 kilometers from the Lebanese-Israeli border.