It is summer. The Lebanese may be uncertain of their country's future but in Tyre, where only weeks ago Israeli missiles rained down on the famously serene city, neither danger nor the eyes of the occupation could keep residents and visitors from the sea.
Thousands of people poured into Tyre’s famous sandy beaches on Sunday, swimming and sunbathing against a backdrop of smoke over the nearby village of Mansouri after an air strike hit earlier that morning.
Mona is among the thousands. Like many, she’s on her first visit to Tyre’s beach this summer. “I kept hesitating,” she told The National. “I thought 'what if something happens?' But in the end, I decided to come. It might be the last opportunity we have.”
She looked quietly at the thick cloud looming in the background of an otherwise picture-perfect scene. Further south, visible from Tyre’s shore, Israeli troops on the ground are still detonating and razing buildings standing inside the area they occupy.
Israeli attacks on the south have only started to diminish after yet another ceasefire was agreed on in Washington on June 26 – the latest attempt to stop the Hezbollah-Israel war and Israel’s deepening invasion of south Lebanon.
But they have not stopped. The Israeli army carries out home and village demolitions within its so-called ‘security zone’ daily and continues to strike what it claims are Hezbollah targets. The group has so far stopped launching rockets into Israel.
Despite the Iran-US ceasefire on the verge of collapse, full-scale war has not resumed in Lebanon. But it still simmers amid fears that regional tension might, once again, spill into the country.
The next round of direct negotiations between the Lebanese and Israeli governments will be held this week. It is touted by the country’s political class as a diplomatic breakthrough, but few on the ground have much faith in the efforts.
Mona shrugged as she watched her son play in the calm Mediterranean. She is originally from Houla, a border village now inaccessible to its residents due to Israel’s military occupation of the south, but she lives in Tyre. Her family's old home in Houla was destroyed in Israel’s wanton destruction of Lebanon’s border towns.
“There's nothing left there,” she sighed – but even that knowledge did not ruin her day at the beach.
Lebanese, perhaps none more than southerners, have become resigned to a habitually precarious existence: economically, politically and existentially. “That's Lebanon,” Mona said. “What can we do about it?”
During the war, like most of Tyre’s population, she and her family were forced to flee the city due to Israeli bombardment. A simple Sunday at the beach offers her two children a rare moment of normality after months of hardship marked by displacement and loss.
“I teach my children to love life,” she said. “We're people who love life.”
On Saturday, a series of heavy aerial attacks briefly filled club resort owners with fear that they would have to close for the season, although the strikes did not land inside the historic city.
“Not as many people came yesterday because of the strikes,” said Mira, who owns one of the restaurant huts along Tyre’s public shore. She, too, has recently returned to her city, which was largely depopulated during the war.
“Honestly, we don’t know what to expect this season,” she said. “For now, we’re just happy we were able to open.”
Tyre’s coastline is emblematic of a Mediterranean summer. On Sunday, every table in Mira’s restaurant was full. Parents sat under umbrellas as their children played in the sand. Women in bikinis basked under the hot sun, while others wearing full hijab swam in the warm sea. Groups of young men played football as the laughter of children braving the waves filled the air.
Nearby, four young men gathered at a table were drinking beer from frosted glasses. They came from the city of Sidon to enjoy Tyre’s placid shore.
“Western media portrays us in a bad light, as if we’re extremists who want death,” said Oday. “But, in reality, we just want to chill. We want to enjoy the summer.”
When asked how to reassure wary tourists in Beirut and elsewhere, for whom south Lebanon might mean only war and destruction, he said: “Come to the beach. See for yourself.”
For now, at least, Tyre’s beach is accessible.
