TYRE, Lebanon (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel’s military will stay in southern Lebanon, where it has occupied up to 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border.
The remarks were his first comment since the U.S.-Iran deal was signed. Netanyahu said Israel must “maintain a security zone in southern Lebanon, and it requires that we must not leave there as long as Israel’s security needs require it.”
He has made similar comments in the past about Israel’s refusal to withdraw from southern Lebanon.
The U.S.-Iran deal to end the war in the Middle East, signed overnight, also calls for an end to the war in Lebanon, where Israel has been fighting the militant Hezbollah group, but it’s unclear what that means in practice.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
TYRE, Lebanon (AP) — Adnan Kaour returned on Thursday to check on his home in southern Lebanon ‘s coastal city of Tyre — once known as an idyllic summer getaway spot — just a week after Israel issued warnings for all of its residents to evacuate.
The warnings were followed by sweeping airstrikes on the city, which Israel said targeted the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group.
What Kaour found back in Tyre, shattered his hopes — his dream family apartment overlooking the shimmering Mediterranean Sea was a heap of rubble and shattered glass.
His return coincided with the announcement of an agreement between the United States and Iran to end the war in the Middle East. The deal also calls for an end to the war in Lebanon, where Israel has been fighting Hezbollah, but it’s unclear what that means in practice.
Israel and Hezbollah are not parties to the agreement. Iran insists Israel must withdraw from the large swath of southern Lebanon it is occupying, but the wording of the interim deal doesn’t explicitly require that and only ensures Lebanon’s “territorial integrity.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to comment following the signing of the deal though Israel has vowed to keep its troops in Lebanon while Hezbollah says it’s committed to resisting Israel. Fighting between the two sides, which was still underway on Wednesday in villages and towns of southern Lebanon, could derail the deal.
Many hope the US-Iran deal signals better times
For residents in the south of crisis-battered Lebanon, hopes of better times are mixed with skepticism —there had been too many ceasefire announcements that had failed to halt the fighting.
Kaour lives in Germany, but spends most of the summer in Tyre. Last month, when an Israeli strike hit their street without warning, he was a abroad with his family.
When he returned, he saw his building, with a popular sweets shop and an electronics store on the ground floor, was still standing, unlike surrounding structures — buildings that were all leveled to the ground.
But the walls and the windows of his apartment had been blasted out. He was relieved his family had not been there, he said. They all survived.
“I’m hopeful for peace, and God willing this is the end of the war, and everyone can go back to their homes,” he said. “We are living abroad, but our minds are here in our country.”
Outside, the street filled quickly with people trying to clear the rubble.
Kaour’s neighbor one floor above, Samih Haidar had also just returned and found his door bolted by wooden boards.
He tried to kick them down, but failed, then anxiously waited as two men who had been clearing rubble on another floor came and unscrewed the bolts.
Through a gap, Haidar climbed in. He didn’t know what to expect — he had rented the apartment out to a family displaced from another area in the south, people who were close to a trusted friend of his.
Then his anxiety turned into shock: broken furniture, shattered glass, rubble and a burned out kitchen. Neighbors told him the kitchen caught fire after the strike. He slowly walked through each room, quietly filming with his phone. He doesn’t know what became of the family — displaced from Tyre like scores of others, he presumed.
He wants to hope, he said.
“We want things to work out and live in safety, so there can be stability for us and everyone else,” Haidar said.
Morning strikes pierce a tenuous ceasefire
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported several Israeli drone strikes on Thursday morning in the country’s south, including one on a car in the town of Kfar Tebnit that killed one person and critically wounded another.
Israel did not comment on the strikes.
To the north, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) away, displaced families huddled along the waterfront in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. Most of them have sleeping in tents for months, living day-to-day in limbo. For others, it’s a bench or a mattress on the ground.
Many said they’re not convinced that the U.S.-Iran deal will hold or that they will be able to return to their homes — if they still have homes to return to. In the border area close to Israel, many Lebanese villages have been almost completely demolished.
“I haven’t felt relieved at all,” said Mohammed Ashmar, displaced from the border village of Deir Seryan, holding a cup of coffee and sitting near his tent on the waterfront. “Until I get back to my home … I won’t be convinced of anything.”
The Israel-Hezbollah war has displaced more than 1 million people in Lebanon, and killed nearly 3,900, according to Lebanese officials. About 30 Israeli soldiers and a defense contractor have been killed in or near southern Lebanon, and two civilians have been killed in northern Israel, according to Netanyahu’s office.
Speaking during a visit by foreign dignitaries on Thursday, Lebanon’s Social Affairs Minister Haneen Sayed said the country faces urgent humanitarian needs but also the daunting task of planning for the return of displaced families and reconstruction of the destroyed areas.
“The Lebanese people deserve peace,” she said. “They deserve to return safely to their homes, rebuild their communities, and look to the future with confidence and hope.”
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