As part of a U.S.-brokered agreement with Israel and Lebanon, residents of some southern villages are cautiously returning to their homes. What they have found is a shell of their former lives, and a daily menacing presence of the Israeli occupation.

Netanyahu may have been “coerced” by Trump into a ceasefire with Lebanon, but this won’t stop Israel from following a well-worn playbook: exploit sectarian divisions to weaken or disarm resistance while entrenching Israeli expansionism.

The IMF and World Bank are conditioning reconstruction funds on Lebanon’s normalization with Israel and disarming Hezbollah. In the Dahiya suburb of Beirut, the people who’ve lost their homes in the war think this is unacceptable.