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The apparent detente between Hezbollah and Israel after a major weekend clash has eased fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East, but for people in the region any sense of relief is undermined by a deeper sense of stagnation.
More than a dozen months into the Gaza war, some 150,000 displaced Israelis and Lebanese are still waiting to return to their homes along the border between the two countries, where air strikes and rocket attacks by the Israeli army and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia had been creeping up long before Sunday.
The violence there is intertwined with the 10-month-long war in Gaza, where tens of thousands have been killed and nearly all of the population displaced. Many are still awaiting a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas as they take refuge in makeshift shelters and streets torn apart by Israeli bombardment. Families of the dozens of hostages still held by Hamas and its allies are also awaiting a deal to release their loved ones.
“Our mission should be to get us home,” said Giora Zaltz, chairwoman of Israel’s northern regional council, where some residents of the Lehavot HaBashan kibbutz left last October after Hezbollah began firing into Israel.
Zaltz said the balance between the two sides had not been altered by Israel’s airstrikes on Sunday, which the Israeli military said prevented a major Hezbollah attack. He said the situation remained frozen for residents of Israeli border communities: About 60,000 Israelis were displaced, though those who remained faced daily Hezbollah rocket attacks.
Zaltz said Israel’s approach to fighting Hezbollah is to “destroy infrastructure or kill its commanders.” But he added that when it comes to creating conditions for displaced Israelis to return home, “the state and the army are currently failing in this regard.”
Tensions in the Middle East have been high for weeks following the assassinations of senior Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in back-to-back weeks. The Israeli military said it killed Shukr in an airstrike but did not claim responsibility for Haniyeh’s death, although Hezbollah and Iran, which support both groups, vowed severe revenge for Israel’s killings.
Israel launched airstrikes against Hezbollah early Sunday, followed by a barrage of rockets and drones from Hezbollah, but without causing any visible damage. Both sides quickly declared victory and said they would return to a new normal: endless retaliatory attacks. Iran, for its part, appears to have stopped its retaliation, at least for now.
Many in Lebanon breathed a sigh of relief after both Israel and Hezbollah said they would withdraw from an all-out war. Zeinab Hourani, a graphic designer living in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, said nearly deserted streets were coming back to life.
Ms. Hourani said she postponed some plans and began looking for an apartment outside the suburb, known as Dahiyeh, because of concerns that Israel could attack the area. But after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech Sunday afternoon suggesting the fighting would be curbed, “some of the people who had left because of the tension came back,” she said.
But for more than 100,000 displaced Lebanese in the south of the country, conflict and chaos continue. Nasrallah has vowed to fight until Israel ends its offensive against Hamas in Gaza, while months of ceasefire talks brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar have failed to overcome key differences between the two sides.
Fatima Surour, who fled her hometown of Ramiyah, near the Israeli border, said her father wanted to pack up and return home after the fighting subsided on Sunday. But she stopped him because she knew the town was still unsafe.
“We have ties to Gaza, but it doesn’t look like we’ll be returning anytime soon,” Ms. Al-Sroor, 35, said.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 40,000 people have died as the war enters its 11th month, exacerbating Gazans’ sense of despair.
In the Deir al-Balah area of central Gaza, packed with hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians, Sameh Saad waited at a field hospital hoping to receive a final round of treatment for his leg, which he said was injured months ago by shrapnel from a falling artillery shell explosion.
He said many Gazans feared that a widening of the war to the entire region could prolong Israel’s offensive on Gaza for months. Even if that prospect had faded for now, he said, most had little hope that ceasefire talks would succeed.
“Every time there’s a pause, we hope it’s over as soon as possible,” he said. “But it always turns out to be a mistake.”
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