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By half-past-midnight, 30 minutes after the truce began, many had already packed their belongings into their vehicles and begun the journey. They took their pets, picnic chairs, groceries, and even washing machines and couches.
The main road to southern Lebanon was choked with traffic on Friday as displaced families travelled back home weeks after fleeing Israeli strikes, defying warnings by the Lebanese state, Hezbollah and the Israeli army over the fragile ceasefire.
The 10-day truce between Israel and Lebanon took effect after more than six weeks of fighting that left more than 2,000 people dead in Lebanon and displaced more than one million.
For hours, The National's reporters were stuck in long queues of cars, many piled high with mattresses and belongings, as families made their way south. Some travelled in lorries packed with everything they owned.
Along the motorway, young men handed out water to ease the journey for families enduring hours-long delays on their way home. Many ignored the Lebanese military's recommendation to refrain from returning owing to the tenuous nature of the truce.
Some began their journeys before dawn, with people seen walking or riding scooters across the Qasmiyeh Bridge near Tyre, the only remaining crossing in the western region linking southern Lebanon to the rest of the country. The bridge was hit hours before the ceasefire and was hastily patched up.
Later that day, it took approximately four hours to cover the final four kilometres before reaching the Qasmiyeh bridge – a journey that would normally take 10 minutes.
Some travellers waved the yellow flag of Iran-backed Hezbollah, as well as the Lebanese flag. People gathered on bridges along the road to welcome southerners, cheerfully waving and playing music.
Some are unable to return to their homes in the south because Israeli troops remain on Lebanese soil following a ground invasion aimed at carving out a “security zone”. Others have nothing to return to after their villages along the border were destroyed by the Israeli military.
Under the terms of the temporary ceasefire, Israel has the right to take “immediate measures in self-defence” against anything or person that it deems a threat.
It is not a truce that is favourable to the residents of south Lebanon.
A woman held a boot out of her car window as she drove through the heavy traffic. There was a bouquet of yellow roses inside the boot. “I’m going to Ayta Al Shaab, if I can get to it,” she said.
The flowers represented her son, Ali Abdelnabi – a doctor and member of Hezbollah killed weeks ago as the Israeli military advanced into the village, which has now been bulldozed. She will also have to find a way to cross the Litani after Israel destroyed crossings to the south, severing it from the rest of the country.
With Israeli troops still in areas close to the border, she risks being shot at when she visits her son's grave, but she did not appear worried. “The living are tired,” she said. “And the dead are at peace.”
A man driving south with his wife and three children said they were going back to their home in Tyre. “We’ll cross the bridge. We’ll find a way. And if we die, we’ll die together,” he said.
Although glad of the respite from conflict and happy to be travelling home, he was unhappy with the changes the war had brought. “Last year, the Israelis were occupying five points in south Lebanon,” he said. “Now they’re occupying dozens.”
Israel and Hezbollah reached a ceasefire in 2024 after fighting a devastating war for more than a year, following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.
Fighting resumed on March 2 this year after Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel. The Tehran-backed militant group said it was avenging the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Israel-US strikes, and responding to more than a year of ceasefire breaches, with near-daily Israeli violations recorded.
Israel retaliated with force that was described as “disproportionate” by EU and western officials, and civilians in Lebanon paid the heaviest toll.
A harrowing journey
The hours passed. Children nagged tired mothers for ice cream. Restless passengers socialised, walking up and down the line of cars as they waited for the traffic to break. Relatives, neighbours and strangers alike visited each other’s vehicles.
The 10-hour journey to the south took a toll on travellers. There was an elderly couple in a battered Mercedes Benz, windscreen and windows blown out by an air strike on a nearby building, but still running. A family of five in a crammed tuk-tuk that later broke down, forcing passers-by to push it up the crater of a damaged bridge into the south. A gaggle of children in the back of a lorry flashing victory signs at cars that never quite seemed to pass them.
As the day ended, thunder rolled across the sky, a storm was coming. “It’s an Israeli jet,” an old man sitting at a rest stop joked. Chunks of hail fell from the sky, kicking up dust and debris from six weeks' worth of accumulated Israeli strikes on the region.
The apocalyptic weather was accompanied by apocalyptic faces driving in the opposite direction. Those who had returned to find their homes destroyed, or even missing, or attempted and failed to return to the 55 ‘no go’ villages listed by Israel.
Exhausted families who spent more than hours on the road to get a glimpse of their homes and villages grimly turned back.
Khalil, a man in his 40s who successfully entered the village of Qlaileh – under Israeli occupation – said he was forced to turn back when his return was met by artillery fire towards his car.
“I didn’t even have enough time to take proper photos of my house,” he said. “It wasn’t safe.” His whole family had planned to return to their house – packing everything into the lorry – only to discover it was destroyed – along with 75 per cent of the village.
He gazed ruefully at the row of cars crossing the partially-destroyed Qasmiyeh bridge as they headed south. They, at least, still carried the hope that their homes were left standing.
“This bridge looks better than my house,” he said bitterly.
