A man from the district of Marja’youn tells Splinter that he and his closest friend are heading south together and would defy any order from the Lebanese Army that would prevent them from returning and finding his son’s remains. “These precious men gave their life for this land, for our people, and we have a right and a duty to find them and give them a dignified burial,” he said. Israel, which has continued to defy the ceasefire agreement, not only by way of incessant surveillance of the Dahye but also its bombing campaigns carried out across South Lebanon, has no jurisdiction in its attempted occupation of South Lebanon; the ceasefire breaches committed by Israel have now surpassed 1,440 instances, over 800 committed by land alone. “We are here as owners of this land to mark the end of this ceasefire, and to return home. No one but God will stop us from returning home,” says Muna, a resident of the village of Yaroun.
Dozens of southern Lebanese villagers were recorded fearlessly confronting Israeli soldiers and Merkava tanks at zero distance, even taunting them in a manner that has become embraced as notoriously Lebanese. In one video, a woman stands in front of Israeli soldiers daring them to fire on her—her arms outstretched—and asking them to leave her land. In another video, a woman stands alone, just meters away from a Merkava tank, while a young man just killed by Israeli occupation forces is being carried away in the foreground. According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, Israel has killed at least 22 Lebanese citizens since the start of their aggression on January 26th, including a Lebanese soldier, and 6 women. Thus far, 35 villages have been liberated by the people of South Lebanon, who came with only a few possessions and mattresses to sleep on.
Despite the number of people killed and injured by Israel’s ceasefire violations, the border villages have begun to erect tents, refusing to abandon their land, bringing to mind the Fanonian principle of the land and its importance to an indigenous people: “For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.” It is this land, which has been home to these people since well before the first echoes of imperialism trespassed across what would become South Lebanon, that has remained a sacred embodiment of their resistant spirit. South Lebanon is holy ground, and the people refuse to abandon it.
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