Nassim Badani
New Lines Magazine / May 26, 2026
May 25 is when we celebrate Liberation Day, the day Hezbollah vanquished Israel and expelled its military from South Lebanon. It is the inception of Hezbollah’s myth, the legend of a ragtag team of rebels that managed to do what the Arab world’s most powerful armies could not: expel Israel and liberate occupied lands from the Zionist enemy.
Twenty-six years ago, Israel withdrew its troops from South Lebanon after occupying the area for nearly two decades. In this telling, the militant group’s guerrilla tactics, its sacrifices and the civil resistance of the people of South Lebanon pushed the occupier out.
Now we are right back where we started. In the span of around two long months, Hezbollah managed to undo the gains it had spent decades building toward, gains it had sacrificed the blood of thousands of Lebanese and Syrians to achieve.
Hezbollah has thrust us into a political time machine and flung us back to the 1990s: South Lebanon is occupied again. People are dying at the hands of the occupier again. Families don’t know when they will be able to return to ancestral lands again. A displacement encampment has arisen in the heart of Beirut, and communal tensions are high.
While most of Lebanon enjoys a respite from the war, South Lebanon is still mired in conflict. Israel has killed more than 3,100 people in Lebanon since March 2. More than a million people are displaced, scattered between tents, schools and apartments rented at extortionate rates.
A ceasefire on April 16 was meant to quell the fighting. But when is a ceasefire not really a ceasefire? When Israel is involved. Much as it did in Gaza, Israel took a ceasefire agreement to mean a rewriting of the rules of engagement rather than an end to the engagement itself.
After the ceasefire was declared, most civilians went back to the south, checked on their properties, then fled, confident that what little peace that agreement brought would not last. The ones who stayed contend with daily airstrikes, drone strikes and the detonation of entire villages.
Israel is entrenched in South Lebanon, and its forces keep creeping northward. Forced displacement orders have not stopped. At least two were put out on Monday.
In response, Hezbollah has reverted back to its guerrilla ways and is doing what it knows best: waging unconventional war against an invading force and would-be occupier. Its use of drones has proven particularly effective, so much so that the Israeli media now abounds with commanders and soldiers complaining about their effectiveness and demoralizing effects.
The men of the south are giving themselves up for their lands and for a chance that their loved ones can go back home one day. But none of this is enough. Their effort seems in vain, and our lands seem forever gone — or at least they will be for decades. They are now firmly under the grip of an enemy that knows no mercy. Israeli troops are sacking villages and desecrating homes, and there is nothing to be done about it.
Israel is tired but not spent. We are. Hezbollah is able to wage a continuous war across a dynamic front, feeding the meat grinder in the south with Lebanon’s youth, including some of its best and brightest, but its people are spent. They have nowhere to go and no money to sustain them. They know the strength of arms will do nothing to bring them back home when the most powerful entities in the world have aligned themselves with their enemy.
Hezbollah forgot its function. Its function was deterrence; it wanted to be a regional force instead. That’s what you get for turning into a full Iranian proxy force: You act in the interests of your masters and not your own people. The land has also been lost along with the deterrence, culminating in a bleak future for the south’s spent populace. This reality is reflected in the endless stream of reports of death and destruction barely an hour’s drive away from the capital, as this sampling of state news headlines from the last hour shows:
“Israel targets Southern Lebanon, two injured near gas station.”
“Israeli airstrike destroys residential building in Nabatieh.”
“Israeli airstrikes and phosphorus shelling target Kfar Remman, Al-Qlaileh, and areas near Bazourieh.”
Meanwhile, the Israeli drones buzz perpetually overhead. Buzz is too light a word. They screech and scream at us throughout the day. As if to say: We are watching, we are coming, death is but a push of a button away. This is your life now.
Nassim Badani is a pseudonym for a Lebanese writer based in Beirut
