Israel warns residents on both sides of Lebanon border to stay away

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military issued new warnings to residents on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border on Friday, telling them not to return to their homes, as the fragile U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah appeared to largely hold despite another Israeli strike in southern Lebanon.

The military released a list of more than 60 towns in southern Lebanon that it said remained off-limits to civilians, including large centers like Bint Jbeil, Marjeyoun and Naqoura, the home of the U.N. peacekeeping force in the country. The country’s hard-hit south has been the focal point of the war.

The Israeli military “does not intend to target you and therefore you are prohibited at this stage from returning to your homes,” Avichay Adraee, a military spokesperson, said in a statement posted online directed at residents of the towns. “Anyone who moves south of this line puts himself in danger.”

It is not clear when hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese will be able to return to their homes in the south. Under the ceasefire agreement that took effect Wednesday, Israeli forces will gradually withdraw from southern Lebanon over 60 days.

In his first address since the truce, Sheikh Naim Kassem, Hezbollah’s leader, argued that the war with Israel, lasting almost 14 months, had been a victory for the Iran-backed militia — a difficult proposition given the blows Hezbollah sustained, including the assassination of its previous chief, Hassan Nasrallah.

“We are looking at a great victory,” Kassem said in a televised speech from an undisclosed location. “We are victorious because we prevented the enemy from destroying Hezbollah, and because we prevented him from quashing the resistance or critically weakening it.”

But his statements were unlikely convince many Lebanese. In exchange for the truce, Hezbollah gave up on its original goal in the war, to force Israel to end its campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. And in addition to Hezbollah’s own losses, the Israeli campaign against it demolished entire communities.

Adding to jitters over the fate of the truce, the Israeli military said Friday that it had carried out another airstrike in southern Lebanon, targeting what it said was a mobile rocket platform belonging to Hezbollah. A day earlier, the military said it had struck a rocket storage facility in the country’s south.

Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported Friday that the Israeli military was enforcing restrictions on returning to towns in the border area with gunfire and shelling. It said Israeli tanks shelled a building in the town of Burj al-Moulouk in southern Lebanon, and were also seen moving into the town of Khiam, where earlier in the week the news agency said two journalists were injured by Israeli fire.

The Israeli military declined to comment on those reports. Photos of tanks near Khiam, which were verified by The New York Times, circulated on social media Friday.

In a video aired by Lebanese broadcasters Friday, a man on a dirt road in Khiam says he and others with him have received “permission” from U.N. peacekeeping forces and the Lebanese military.

Seconds later there are several bursts of gunfire. “They shot at us,” the man says as he runs for cover. It was not clear if there were any injuries. The Times verified the video and determined that it was taken next to Khiam’s cemetery.

The Lebanese military has also warned civilians about returning to southern border towns, and a spokesperson for the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon said it did not have authority to grant permission to be in that area. It was the latest indication that the ceasefire agreement and military directives have led to confusion among Lebanese about where they can and cannot go.

The Israeli military also released a more general warning to residents of border towns in Israel, which had been the target of Hezbollah rocket and drone attacks for months, telling them the area, evacuated by tens of thousands of residents, remained under a “general closure.” It warned that it could have to intercept aerial munitions, and so the risk of shrapnel falling into evacuated towns could not be ruled out.

One of the Lebanese towns that Israel labeled as off-limits on Friday was Ain Ebel, a Christian village near the border. Rakan Ashkar Diab, a father of two, fled the town for Beirut in October but decided to return Friday despite the warnings.

He passed destroyed houses along the way, he said, but arrived to find his own home still standing. He said he would not bring his family back yet because of the Israeli warnings, but he hoped to have them home in time for Christmas.

“We are waiting to see how the situation unfolds,” Diab said. “It’s still a bit fragile, the ceasefire.”

Israel stepped up its airstrikes in Lebanon in September and then launched a ground invasion after almost a year of near-daily Hezbollah rocket fire into northern Israel, which Hezbollah said was an act of solidarity with Hamas, its ally in the Gaza Strip.

The result has been devastating for both Lebanon and Hezbollah, a militant group that is the country’s most powerful political player and military force. It has been the deadliest conflict in Lebanon since the country’s 15-year civil war ended in 1990, and has forced roughly a quarter of the population from their homes. The fighting has killed about 3,800 Lebanese and 100 Israelis, according to their governments.

Under the ceasefire agreement that went into effect at 4 a.m. Wednesday, both sides will observe a 60-day truce while Israel gradually withdraws and Hezbollah moves its fighters north of the Litani River, which runs somewhat parallel with the border with Israel.

That will create a sort of buffer zone to be policed by a U.N. peacekeeping force and Lebanon’s military, neither of which have been combatants in the Israel-Hezbollah war.

But the agreement does not say when civilians will be permitted to return to their homes. On Wednesday, tens of thousands in Lebanon began to go back to ruined communities in the Dahiya area outside Beirut and in the country’s south and east.

A similar ceasefire deal that ended a war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 was never fully enforced.

Ori Gordin, the commanding officer of the Israeli military’s northern command, told Israeli troops in southern Lebanon that it was now their job to “enable and enforce” the ceasefire.

“We will enforce it aggressively,” said Gordin, in a video of the remarks released Friday by the military. “We do not intend to let Hezbollah return to these areas.”

At the same time, the war between Israel and Hamas continues. A gunman attacked an Israeli bus near a settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday. Hamas identified the attacker as a member of its military wing and said he had been killed.

The attack wounded several people, three of them seriously, according to Israel’s emergency service. The Israeli military said four of its soldiers were lightly wounded, and that it had “neutralized” the shooter.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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