Sense of relief and steadfastness in southern Lebanon: Analyst
Hicham Safieddine, associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia, says now that fighting has ceased, people in southern Lebanon are processing “a lot of grief” both from the loss of their loved ones and “large-scale destruction” of their homes.
Israel’s strategy has been to “detonate and blow up wholesale villages”, Safieddine said, “because it couldn’t hold ground” in Lebanon, in contrast to the war in 2006.
While there is a “sense of relief” now in southern Lebanon, there is also a “sense of steadfastness and insistence and staying on the land, on preventing the Israelis from coming back again”, he said.
Mohammed Sleem hugs his daughter Menisa Sleem, as he meets her for the first time after two months in Tyre, Lebanon, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah
Cleaning up in Lebanon after months of Israeli attacks
‘Not a single home has been spared’: Tyre’s mayor
Hassan Dbouk, mayor of Lebanon’s southern city of Tyre, says entire neighbourhoods have been ravaged due to Israeli attacks and with them hundreds of homes and vital infrastructure.
“More than 50 buildings of three to 12 storeys have been completely destroyed by Israeli strikes”, while dozens of others have been partially damaged, he said.
“We can say that not a single home has been spared.”
Residents have begun to flood back into the city, home to a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But many leave at night because “there’s no more water in the whole city, and no electricity in the neighbourhoods hardest hit by the Israeli strikes,” Dbouk said.
On November 18, an Israeli strike targeted the Tyre water company, destroying a building and killing two workers. The strike cut off water to 30,000 registered customers, its chairman Walid Barakat, said.
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