PBS News reports that cars are queuing to enter Kfar Kila, a southern town near Deir Mimas, Lebanon. By: Bassem Mroue, Associated Press Villagers begin to return to southern Lebanon as the Israeli army withdraws under the peace agreement. World February 18, 2025, 2:10 PM EST. Kfar Kila, Lebanon (AP) – Israeli forces withdrew from border villages in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, meeting a deadline set by a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, but remained in five strategic overlook locations inside Lebanon. Top Lebanese leaders denounced Israel’s continued presence as an occupation and a violation of the agreement, insisting that Israel must complete its withdrawal by Tuesday. The troops’ presence is also a sore point with the militant Hezbollah group, which has demanded action from the authorities.

Lebanese soldiers moved into the areas from which the Israeli troops withdrew and began clearing roadblocks set up by Israeli forces and checking for unexploded ordnance. They blocked the main road leading to villages, preventing anyone from entering while the military was looking for any explosives left behind. Most of the villagers waited by the roadside for permission to go and check on their homes but scores pushed aside the roadblocks to march in. Elsewhere, the army allowed the residents to enter. Many of their houses were demolished during the more than yearlong conflict or in the two months after November’s ceasefire agreement when Israeli forces were still occupying the area.

In Kfar Kila, a border community, many were astonished by the level of destruction, with large parts of houses swept out; some knelt on the ground and prayed in the village’s main square.

PBS News reports that cars are queuing to enter Kfar Kila, a southern town near Deir Mimas, Lebanon. By: Bassem Mroue, Associated Press Villagers begin to return to southern Lebanon as the Israeli army withdraws under the peace agreement. World February 18, 2025, 2:10 PM EST. Kfar Kila, Lebanon (AP) – Israeli forces withdrew from border communities in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, meeting a deadline set by a U.S.-brokered truce agreement that concluded the last Israel-Hezbollah war, but remained in five important overlook points within Lebanon. Top Lebanese politicians criticized Israel’s ongoing presence as an occupation and a violation of the agreement, insisting that Israel must complete its pullout by Tuesday. The soldiers’ presence is also a sore

The Associated Press interviewed Jaber and his family in early November, and Jaber expressed concern that Israel would establish a permanent presence in southern Lebanon, and that the home he had built over the previous six years for himself, his wife, and their two sons would be destroyed. At the very least, that concern proved to be valid. “Not a single house in the village is still standing,” Jaber told me. “It is like an earthquake wiped out the village.” “The situation breaks my heart,” Jaber remarked, standing in the town graveyard. “They excavated the graves and opened the vaults. I’m not sure what security threat the dead posed to them.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz stated that the Israeli army “will stay in a buffer zone in Lebanon in five control posts” to protect against any Hezbollah ceasefire violations. He also stated that the army had established new positions on the Israeli side of the border and dispatched reinforcements there. “We are determined to provide full security to every northern community,” Katz told the crowd. However, Lebanon’s three highest officials — the president, prime minister, and speaker of parliament — issued a joint statement saying that Israel’s continuing presence at the five places violated the ceasefire deal. They urged the United Nations Security Council to take action to force Israel’s complete withdrawal.

The U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the head of the country’s UN peacekeeping mission, Lt. Gen. Aroldo Lázaro, both attacked Israel’s military deployment in a joint statement. The two, however, cautioned against “overshadowing the tangible progress that has been made” since the cease-fire deal.
On October 8, 2023, Hezbollah began shooting missiles across the border, one day after a deadly Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel, which triggered the Gaza war. Israel replied with shelling and bombing in Lebanon, and the two sides became embroiled in an intensifying conflict that culminated in a full-fledged war in late September. At the height of the violence, more than 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon, and over a million were displaced, with more than 100,000 unable to return home. On the Israeli side, scores of people were killed, and approximately 60,000 were displaced.
Hussein Fares left Kfar Kila in October 2023 for the southern city of Nabatiyeh. When the violence became more intense in September, he and his family relocated to Sidon, where they were granted a room at a school for displaced people. “I have been waiting for a year and a half to return,” said Fares, who owns a pickup truck and works as a laborer. He acknowledged that the reconstruction effort will take time.

Cars queue as they seek to enter the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila, after an Israeli military spokesperson said that Israel would keep troops in several posts in southern Lebanon past a February 18 deadline for them to withdraw, in Deir Mimas, Lebanon February 18, 2025. REUTERS/Emilie Madi