Truce brings no relief for displaced from Lebanon's destroyed, occupied towns

A long-awaited ceasefire has brought relative calm to Lebanon, but it hasn’t brought peace of mind to Hussein Merhi. He is among tens of thousands who remain displaced because their homes were destroyed in Israeli strikes or their hometowns fall within a swathe of the south occupied by Israel’s military or, as in his case, both. “I still can’t go back to my village. It’s still occupied. My house is gone, and my livelihood is gone,” said the former farmer, who was living in the historic Lebanese border town of Kfar Kila, which now lies destroyed. Merhi, 39, spoke to Reuters in a university being used as a shelter in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon, following a ceasefire that took hold on Saturday between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. “We were displaced, and we’re going to remain displaced. There’s a ceasefire — what did I gain?” Stray dogs walk past the rubble of flattened homes and businesses, destroyed by the Israeli military, in the southern Lebanese village of Tibnin on June 24, 2026. —AFP/File ‘There’s no house, no village’ Israel’s military began an air and ground campaign in Lebanon in early March. As it expanded its operations, it ordered residents to leave large parts of southern Lebanon, as well as areas in the east and near the capital Beirut, some far from the front lines. More than 1.2 million people were displaced during the fighting — about a fifth of the population. Most of the displaced fled to relatives’ homes in safer areas but tens of thousands moved to government-run displacement shelters. The ceasefire that took hold on June 20 appeared to allow some to return to their villages: out of more than 103,000 in displacement shelters before the ceasefire, about 14,000 had left by Wednesday, according to figures from Lebanese authorities. Local officials in some southern Lebanese towns told Reuters this week that families were returning, but numbers were hard to estimate as many found their homes in ruins. A Lebanese woman removes broken met