Displaced Lebanese face long wait home despite US-Iran deal

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM – Authorities in southern Lebanon warned people displaced by three months of war between Israel and Hezbollah against rushing home on Monday despite a US-Iran deal to end the wider conflict, as Israel said it would not withdraw troops from the south.

Lebanon has suffered the deadliest spillover of the conflict between the US and Iran, with thousands of people killed and some 1.2 million people uprooted by an Israeli offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, which opened fire on Israel in support of Tehran on March 2.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key mediator between Tehran and Washington, announced that a deal was struck early on Monday local time, and that the pact called for “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.”

In south Lebanon, where Israeli forces have occupied a self-declared security zone, municipal councils issued statements calling on residents to hold off on returning, the state-run National News Agency reported. 

Mona Mazeh, a displaced woman sheltering in Beirut’s Hamra district, had no immediate plans to return to her village near the southern city of Tyre. 

“Frankly, we are hesitant; Israel cannot be trusted,” she said. 

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, whose country is not a party to the US-Iran deal, said Israel would not withdraw from security zones in southern Lebanon, Gaza and Syria, and that it would retaliate if Iran attacked Israel due to events in Lebanon.

Katz said the security zone in southern Lebanon would be cleared of local residents, and “all terrorist infrastructure, including houses in contact villages”, in reference to Hezbollah.

There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah on the agreement.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a political ally of the group and head of the Shiite Amal Movement, said the agreement laid “the foundations for security and stability in the region, including Lebanon.”

In a statement, Berri thanked both Iran and the United States for including a halt to Israeli attacks on Lebanon in the deal, and described that provision as binding.

The Israeli military has been razing villages in southern Lebanon for weeks, saying it is acting against Hezbollah militants embedded in civilian areas of the predominantly Shiite Muslim region. 

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese Shiites are sheltering in other parts of the country. In Nabatieh, a devastated city in the south, Mohammed Daqdouq said he had returned on Monday morning to check on his home. 

“We’ll need a lifetime to rebuild, to rebuild it again and bring Nabatieh back to how it was,” he said. Iran, whose Revolutionary Guards established Hezbollah in 1982, had insisted that a Lebanon ceasefire be included as part of any broader deal with the United States.