Displaced Lebanese wary as ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah begins

Beirut, Lebanon – Abu Haidar’s legs dangled out the passenger side of his car onto the pavement at Beirut’s waterfront. He had folded up his mattress – the one he’s slept on for the last six weeks – and packed it on top of his car.

It was a few hours before the midnight start of a 10-day ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel was set to take effect. Abu Haidar’s car was packed, and he planned to head to his village, Kherbet Selem, about 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the border.

“At 11pm, I’m going home, not at 12,” he told Al Jazeera. He said he would find a way around the fact that Israel had bombed the last working bridge to the south earlier on Thursday.

Few others, however, planned to follow suit. Displaced people in downtown Beirut told Al Jazeera they didn’t trust the Israelis to uphold the ceasefire and would wait before returning to their homes. And that’s if they had homes to go back to at all.

All but one room of Fadal Alawi’s home in the Hay el-Sellom neighbourhood of Beirut’s southern suburbs was destroyed. Next to him stood Haytham Dandash and his wife, Ruwayda Zaiter, whose home was completely knocked down.

“We’re going to stay here the whole 10 days,” Dandash said. Only when a longer agreement is put into effect will they go home, he added.

Intensifying before ceasefire

When a previous ceasefire came into effect in the early hours of November 27, 2024, after a year of war, the mood was joyous. Families packed their belongings into their cars, and by the early hours of the morning, most centres hosting the displaced were empty as traffic jammed the roads to Beirut’s suburbs and the south.

This time, however, the mood is less joyous. Displaced people near Beirut’s waterfront said very few people had packed their things and left. Some said they would wait for the morning hours to see if the ceasefire held to go check on their homes in the heavily-attacked Beirut suburbs. But some, like Ali Jaber, a tuk-tuk driver from Mayfadoun near Nabatieh in south Lebanon, said he didn’t trust the Israelis not to strike cars on the highway.

Earlier on Thursday, United States President Donald Trump had announced a ceasefire would be implemented at 5pm Eastern Time (midnight Beirut time) after speaking to Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun. The announcement came after six weeks of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, with battles raging in the south after the Israelis invaded in early March.

The city of Bint Jbeil, where then-Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah made a historic speech following the end of Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, has been the site of an intense battle in recent days. On Thursday, the Israeli military heavily bombed villages and towns all over southern Lebanon, following a pattern of intensifying attacks before the proposed ceasefire. The Israeli military has also published videos of its forces detonating entire villages in southern Lebanon in recent days.