BEIRUT – The Israeli regime bombed an entire village in southern Lebanon after the ceasefire agreement on September 27, 2024.
I spent a day in Odaise, Lebanon’s border village, witnessing firsthand the widespread destruction caused by the regime’s army.
It looked like the aftermath of a natural disaster, but it wasn’t. This was artificial. The entire village was destroyed to the ground.
But something else called for even greater attention.
During the two-month ground war with Hezbollah, Israeli occupation forces did not destroy the entire residential streets.
When I spoke to locals, they all shared the same story.
The Israeli army planted explosives around the village and exploded them after reaching the ceasefire agreement.
During the war, Israeli infantry faced fierce resistance from Hezbollah in Odaise, struggling to seize and occupy the village.
Only after Lebanon’s resistance had fulfilled part of the ceasefire agreement and retreated behind the Ritani River, where Israeli forces had occupied the village.
He was calm about what the Israeli army did afterwards. A deliberate act of destruction that appears to be designed to erase traces of the village.
Among the locals I spoke to was a woman named Halima. When she cleared the tile ble from the destroyed house, she told me that the village video, filmed before the ceasefire agreement, showed it was still unharmed.
Ahmed was with his wife and five-year-old son, Amir. When they inspected the ruins of the house next to them, he agreed that Odaise had been destroyed after the ceasefire.
Other locals on the street shared the same accounts and confirmed that the destruction occurred after the ceasefire.
They also shared several other feelings: they did not regret Hezbollah, who opened the support front in Gaza, and they did not feel sad about the destruction of their homes.
They all believed that an invasion of Israel’s land had been created for years.
They also felt that Hezbollah’s duty was to open a military support front in solidarity with Gaza on October 8, 2023.
Israeli forces apparently exploited the withdrawal from Hezbollah’s tropical border regions to destroy these regions, creating an image of victory for the Israeli people.
Israeli troops and Merkaba tanks on the edge of this mountain village were stationed across the northern Palestine border.
“They are not men. They are co-sick,” Halima said. “After the ceasefire, only the ward sick people blew up the village. They couldn’t defeat our boy.”
The Israelis delayed the withdrawal of occupying forces from the southern Lebanon border, extending it until February 18th for more than the 60 days stipulated in the ceasefire agreement.
In a controversial move, even after February 18th, occupying forces continue to maintain five points along the Lebanese border.
“Resistance should not have agreed to a ceasefire,” Ahmed argued.
He has no regrets about his home being demolished. “We will rebuild again and again. This is our land, not even their land,” he said.