Some weep while others stare blankly at makeshift cemetery in Lebanon’s evacuation zone
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The road into Tyre is lined with the yellow and green flags of Hezbollah. Billboards are filled with the faces of fighters who lost their lives in the many battles with Israel over the years.
We’re in the evacuation zone, the area of south Lebanon that Israel has told everyone to leave. And it’s not long before we see the mounting human cost of the latest conflict this community is engulfed in.
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A group of mourners is gathered by the side of the road at a temporary cemetery. Huddled around makeshift memorials, some weep, some hug, others stare blankly ahead. They’re here to bury four men that they say were medics and social workers. They were not, they say, fighters.
Ehsan Dbouk, a cleric for the group, says they’ve had to use this site because the men’s hometowns are no longer safe.
“We can’t bury our martyrs in their villages on the frontline,” he says. “We are dealing with an enemy that doesn’t distinguish between killing fighters and killing civilians.”
That enemy, they claim, represents an existential threat. Israel frames the Iran-backed group, proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK, in exactly the same way. Neither side is showing any sign of backing down.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has rapidly expanded the evacuation zone here. Until three days ago, it stretched from the border in the south with Israel to the Latani River. That has now been extended further north to the Zahrani River, about 25 miles from the border, raising fears of a ground invasion.
More than 800 people have been killed so far in the country and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.
But Ehsan dismisses allegations that Hezbollah is dragging the rest of the country into a war it doesn’t want and cannot win.
“The displaced are part of the resistance,” he says. “Hezbollah was born from their homes. They are the fathers and mothers of those fighting on the frontlines.”
You can see how battle-hardened those who stayed behind are. The IDF is fighting more than a force in Hezbollah – it’s battling a mindset. And after months of Israeli strikes in the middle of a ceasefire, supporters of Hezbollah believe they are fighting a just war now more than ever.
Nada Harb, a mother and Hezbollah supporter, tells me: “I won’t leave, I didn’t in the previous wars. I was born in war. But there was no resistance then like Hezbollah. The Israelis used to come at night, break down the door, they kidnapped my brother, my father, my sister, my uncle, and no one was allowed to say anything.”
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At her home, she takes us to her balcony to show us three buildings hit by airstrikes. She is exposed, vulnerable, but determined. The IDF insists it’s targeting Hezbollah’s infrastructure and leadership here.
But the civilian impact is already huge. The bridges, they say, that Hezbollah is using are also critical to civilians. And hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee this war already – many with no power, no shelter and no say in what happens next.
