Thousands Stream Homeward as Fragile Peace Begins in Lebanon

Thousands of civilians began the journey back to their war-ravaged, mostly abandoned communities around Beirut and in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as a U.S.-backed cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah took tenuous hold after more than 13 months of bloodshed.

Vehicles stuffed with whatever items people took as they fled Israeli bombing crawled bumper to bumper on roads heading south from Beirut, the capital. For the people in them, elation, relief — and, for Hezbollah supporters, defiance — vied with grim knowledge: They might not have homes to return to, and the 60-day truce might not hold or bring the hoped-for end of the deadliest, most destructive war their nation has suffered in decades.

But it was not clear when the people of southern Lebanon, bordering Israel, could go back, as the Israeli military said it would not yet permit residents in an area that had been a Hezbollah stronghold, used to launch most of its attacks on Israel. About one-quarter of Lebanon’s more than five million people have been forced from their homes by the war.

People did begin to return on Wednesday to Hezbollah-controlled areas in and near Beirut that had been pummeled by Israeli air power, often to find large swaths reduced to rubble, tangled steel and broken glass. Some buildings stood torn open, their broken interiors exposed to the elements. Smoke still rose from Israeli airstrikes that continued through the night until the cease-fire took hold at 4 a.m.

“We can finally go home. We’re so happy, thank God,” said Hanna Trad, 39, who fled to Beirut in September, with her husband and three children, from their southern village, Maarakeh. But she added that she had heard that many of her neighbors had been killed and that the windows of her house were shattered.

In northern Israel, where tens of thousands of people fled to escape barrages of Hezbollah rockets and drones, there was no apparent rush back to the evacuated towns, whose residents — as well as the Israeli authorities — took a wary view of truce.

Under the agreement — mediated by the United States and France, and accepted by the governments of Israel and Lebanon — Israel will pull its military from Lebanon, while Hezbollah will move its fighters out of southern Lebanon. But the timing for those withdrawals remains uncertain, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said that it will depend on how events unfold, and that Israel retains the right to strike if it sees hostile action by Hezbollah.

Israel said Wednesday that it would appeal an arrest warrant for Mr. Netanyahu issued by the International Criminal Court, accusing him of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, while France’s government strongly suggested that it would not immediately arrest him if he traveled there. France is a signatory to the treaty that created the court, but its foreign ministry said there are other considerations in dealing with a country, like Israel — or the United States — that is not.

The cease-fire in Lebanon is intended to create a buffer zone in southern Lebanon between the two forces, from the Israel-Lebanon border to the Litani River, with the Lebanese military, which has not been a party to the conflict, and a U.N. peacekeeping force sending their troops to the area. The Lebanese military dispatched some of its forces to the south on Wednesday, and convoys of its vehicles made their way parallel to the civilians trying to return.

The Israeli military said it would prevent people from entering parts of southern Lebanon, and would impose a nighttime curfew for those who remain there, until Thursday morning. “We do not want to harm you — but our forces will not hesitate to engage with any forbidden movements in this zone,” Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, said on social media.

Israel’s military shelled two villages in southern Lebanon, and said in a statement that its soldiers had opened fire after identifying a vehicle in “a zone prohibited for movement,” forcing it to turn around. Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said he had ordered the military to “operate aggressively” given the entry of some Hezbollah members into the area of Kfar Kila, a southern Lebanese town.

Near Beirut, Ismael Faris, 52, a postal worker, surveyed the damage sustained by the apartment building where he lived with his wife and two children, and said he could not afford the necessary repairs. “There is no way we can come back now and there is no way we can find a new house,” he said.

In northern Israel, the military allowed residents to return briefly on Wednesday to Metula, a border town. Galit Docotorsh, whose house there was hit by Hezbollah rockets, saw the destruction for the first time when she and her husband went to collect warm clothing. While there, she said, “We heard gunshots.”

Odie Arbel expressed a mix of relief and worry about returning to Kibbutz Yiftah, just over a mile from the border, fearing that the tight-knit community he knew before the war would be gone.

After a war that killed about 3,800 Lebanese and 100 Israelis, according to their governments, much remains unclear about the tentative peace, including how long it will last and whether both sides will comply with its terms. A similar cease-fire that ended a 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war was never fully enforced.

Whether Lebanon, rived by factions and mired in economic crisis even before the war, can rebuild remains to be seen. It has been, Prime Minister Najib Mikati said in a televised address, “one of the harshest periods of suffering that the Lebanese have lived in their modern history.”

Nor is it evident yet how badly the war has disabled Hezbollah, or whether the weak Lebanese government has the ability or the will to restrain the group, which has been sapped by the deaths of many leaders and fighters, the destruction of much of its infrastructure and its utter failure to fight off the Israelis.

In neighborhoods where Hezbollah holds sway, people began sweeping up, sharing tearful embraces or just staring numbly at the devastation. Some waved Hezbollah flags and, despite the evidence before their eyes, declared the war a victory.

President Biden hailed the cease-fire as an opening to also end the related war in the Gaza Strip between Hamas and Israel, though months of intensive diplomacy in that conflict have come up empty. Mr. Biden, with less than two months remaining in office, said on social media that the United States would “make another push” in the coming days for a Gaza cease-fire.

But on Tuesday night into Wednesday, Israel struck dozens of sites in Gaza that it said were Hamas military targets, killing at least 33 people and injuring 134 others, according to the Gazan health ministry. Thirteen of the deaths, including those of six women, came in an Israeli strike on Al-Tabin school in Gaza City, which has been operating as a shelter, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense, which runs emergency response in Gaza.

Many Gazans feel frustrated and hopeless, seeing the war in Lebanon halted even as Mr. Netanyahu vows to finish the destruction of Hamas, which still has an unknown number of fighters and holds about 100 hostages taken from Israel, some of them dead.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 residents and injured more than 100,000, according to local authorities, who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Most of the population has been displaced and is plagued by acute shortages of food, fuel, shelter and medical care, and much of the infrastructure has been destroyed, including homes.

The war with Hamas, which is backed by Iran, began with the group’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that left about 1,200 people dead and kidnapped about 250. Within hours, Hezbollah, which is much more closely tied to Iran, began firing rockets onto Israeli positions in solidarity with Hamas.

For months Israel and Hezbollah traded sporadic fire, and more than 100,000 people on both sides of the border fled their homes. In September, Israel sharply escalated its attacks in Lebanon, and launched a ground invasion that forced wholesale evacuation.

Reporting was contributed by Christina Goldbaum, Iyad Abuheweila, Jack Nicas, Raja Abdulrahim, Ameera Harouda, Adam Rasgon, Gabby Sobelman, Natan Odenheimer, Diego Ibarra Sanchez, Christina Kelso, Ephrat Livni, Enjoli Liston, Aurelien Breeden, Patrick Kingsley, Daniel Berehulak, Andrés R. Martínez and Hannah Yi.