Lebanese refugees flooded back to their homes in the war-ravaged south on Tuesday as the truce held for a second day and Israeli forces began a slow withdrawal.
People travelled south at a rate of 6 000 per hour, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, cramming into cars stacked with mattresses and bags in defiance of renewed Israeli threats. Israeli planes dropped leaflets over the southern city of Tyre warning refugees not to return home until a joint Lebanese-international force starts to deploy later this week.
Red Cross ambulances raced through the crater-pocked roads carrying the wounded or dead, while large aid convoys started to push into the hardest-hit areas.
Refugees also had to brave the dangers of unexploded ordinance scattered across fields and roads. In Tebnine, civilian vehicles and a UN convoy skirted around three small, unexploded cluster bombs on the main road in front of the local hospital.
The intensity of the destruction was starkly evident in Sidiqine, a bombed village near the massacre site in Qana. Amar Balhas arrived at lunchtime with his wife and eight children to find a ruin where his house once stood. An unexploded shell lay on the broken concrete carpeting his front yard. A pile of embers marked the remains of his incinerated tobacco harvest. ”All this was green before. Hard to believe that now,” said Balhas.
Israel had bombed his house twice before, he said, in 1996 and 1999. Yet he would not hesitate to start again. ”As we built before we will build again,” he said defiantly, an arm around his 10-year-old son. ”Israel wants us to crumble like the Palestinians did. But we won’t give in.”
Others had more limited reserves of stoicism. Next door, 75-year-old Fatme Azzam leaned through a bomb-blasted doorway and wept. ”I lost 35 people from my family in the first Qana massacre,” she said, rubbing her worry-lined face. ”Now this.”
Inside the dust-caked house of warped walls and cracked corridors, her young grandson lingered behind a door, tears welling in his eyes.
Down the street, Ali Bakri wrenched open the broken doors of his small supermarket, clearing the fridges of food that had gone rotten over the past month. About 80% of the village had been levelled, he estimated, and 60 people had died. ”The destruction is massive. It’s as if a tsunami or a second Hiroshima has hit.”
The mournful demeanour was broken when he pulled out his cellphone to play a video clip of his two-year-old triplets — two boys and a girl — splashing and laughing in the bath. ”They arrived from Beirut at nine this morning, thank God,” he smiled. ”If God is with us, we will rebuild together.”
In contrast, a trickle of residents returned to their homes in northern Israel, despite government offers of free transport from their temporary refuges.
Only a handful of passengers were aboard the buses that pulled into Kiryat Shmona, which suffered more than 1 000 Hezbollah missile strikes during the 34-day conflict. Many were unhappy with the outcome. ”I am very angry about the ceasefire. We should have continued the attack because it will only happen again,” said 74-year-old Janni Tzar as she returned from Tel Aviv.
Closer to the border in Metulla, returning residents watched bitterly as Israeli soldiers departed. Another war was inevitable, said shopkeeper Sam Eccadif. ”Never mind what the politicians say — we have lost the war. We did not achieve a single one of our objectives … The only people that can defend Israel is ourselves.”
An uneasy truce held in the pockets of southern Lebanon controlled by Israeli forces. Near Bint Jbeil, four tanks loitered under a grove of olive trees under the wary eye of Hezbollah fighters watching from a nearby hilltop. Moments later, a Red Cross convoy and a long line of civilian vehicles were held up as one of the tanks rumbled across the main road, followed by a military bulldozer.
Israel’s top General, Dan Halutz, who is under intense pressure over his performance in the war, said Israeli forces could withdraw from southern Lebanon within seven to 10 days, army radio reported. Some forward positions may be handed to UN forces as early as Thursday.
The Lebanese army was said to be preparing to send 15 000 troops south of the Litani River in line with the UN ceasefire agreement. An international force, probably led by France, is due to be deployed later this week.
Hezbollah’s battle against Israel, the Middle East’s most powerful army, has emboldened the guerrilla movement’s regional allies. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad declared victory for Hezbollah and said the Jewish state would think twice before pursuing ”terrorist policies” again.
The defiant statements ratcheted up tensions with Israel’s main ally, the United States. On Monday George Bush described the fighting in Lebanon as ”part of a broader struggle between freedom and terror”.
There were calls for Halutz’s resignation in the Knesset after it emerged he had sold off 120 000 shekels (£15 000) in shares only three hours after two Israeli soldiers were abducted by Hezbollah on July 12, triggering the war.
The general admitted the sale but said it had nothing to do with the prospect of a conflict, telling Maariv newspaper that he sold the portfolio because he had made losses on it before that date. — Guardian Unlimited Â