As Israel-Hezbollah Cease-Fire Takes Hold, Thousands in Lebanon Head Home

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.