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2025-02-19 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
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IDF withdraws from Lebanon border villages, keeps ‘buffer zone’; Lebanese army deploys
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[IsraelTimes] Israeli troops remain in 5 strategic outposts inside southern Lebanon; Katz warns Israel will ‘forcefully’ enforce terms of truce; Lebanon to seek UN’s help on ‘Israeli violations’
The Israel Defense Forces pulled out of southern Lebanese villages but remained in five key positions Tuesday morning, around an hour before the deadline for the withdrawal expired under the ceasefire deal with Hezbollah.
The IDF did not officially confirm completing the pullout, but the matter was confirmed by observers on both sides. Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF was remaining in "a buffer zone," with "five strategic outposts," and would enforce the ceasefire "against any violation by Hezbollah."
"The Israeli army has withdrawn from all border villages except for five points, while the Lebanese army is gradually deploying due to the presence of explosives in some areas and damage to the roads," a Lebanese security source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
The Lebanese Armed Forces said Tuesday morning that it had deployed overnight to several villages and towns in southern Leb
 ...Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects....
after the IDF withdrawal.
LAF troops entered Aabbasiyyeh, Majidieh, Kafr Kila, Marjaayoun, Odaisseh, Markaba, Houla, Mays al-Jabal, Blida, Mahbib, Maroun al-Ras, Yaron, Bint Jbeil, and several other locations near the Israeli border, the Lebanese military said in a statement.
The deployment was being carried out in coordination with a US-led committee supervising the November 27 ceasefire with Israel and the UN observer force UNIFIL, the LAF added.
The LAF said engineering units were surveying the areas, opening roads, and safely removing unwent kaboom! ordnance left behind from the fighting.
Several local authorities, including Mays al-Jabal’s municipality, have called on displaced residents to wait for the LAF to deploy there before coming back, so as to guarantee their "safe" return.
Israel said it would meet the February 18 deadline to withdraw under a ceasefire but remain deployed in five strategic positions in southern Lebanon.
A spokesperson for the Lebanese presidency said late Tuesday morning that Beirut would consider any remaining Israeli presence on its lands an occupation and has the right to use all means to ensure an Israeli withdrawal, without mentioning the five posts.
After a meeting between Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and parliament speaker Nabih Knobby Berri
...perennial Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, head of the Amal Shiite party aligned with Hezbollah, a not very subtle sock puppet of the Medes and Persians...
, the three leaders said the Lebanese army was ready "to assume all its duties along the... borders," according to presidency spokeswoman Najat Charafeddine.
She added that Lebanon would also seek the UN Security Council’s help to "address Israeli violations and compel Israel to immediately withdraw."
In a statement earlier on Tuesday, Katz said the IDF would "forcefully" enforce the terms of the ceasefire deal in Lebanon and act against any Hezbollah threat.
"Starting today, the IDF will remain in a buffer zone in Lebanon in five strategic outposts and will continue to enforce [the deal] forcefully and without compromise against any violation by Hezbollah," he said.
"Hezbollah must withdraw fully beyond the Litani River line and the Lebanese army must enforce and disarm it under the supervision of the mechanism established under the leadership of the US," Katz added. "We are determined to provide full security to all northern communities."
Under a ceasefire deal brokered by the United States in November, Israeli troops were granted 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon, where they had waged a ground offensive against fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group since early October.
Hezbollah operatives were to leave the zone and Lebanese troops were to deploy in the area within the same period. The original deadline was January 26, but was extended until February 18 as Israel argued Lebanese army deployment was not happening quickly enough.
Last week, the US authorized the IDF to remain in the five points, though it was not clear how long troops would stay there.
The military said on Monday that it was prepared to stay at the posts for a lengthy period, until Hezbollah fully withdraws beyond the Litani River and the Israeli politicianship instructs it to leave.
At the five positions, the IDF constructed military posts that will be manned by troops.
The IDF also ramped up its defenses on the Israeli side of the border, with several new posts, one in front of every Israeli border community; better surveillance capabilities, including more cameras, radars, and sensors; and triple the number of troops compared to before the war.
The ceasefire deal ended two months of full-scale war that followed months of lower-intensity exchanges.
Should the ceasefire continue to hold after the IDF withdrawal, tens of thousands of displaced residents of northern Israel will begin to return to their homes on March 2.
Lebanon civil defense retrieves 23 bodies from border towns after Israeli pullout
[IsraelTimes] Lebanon’s civil defense has recovered 23 bodies from several border towns on Tuesday after Israeli troops withdrew under a ceasefire deadline, according to a statement carried by official media.
“Specialized teams today… managed to remove 14 bodies from Mais al-Jabal, three from Markaba and three from Kfar Kila, in addition to three from Odaisseh,” says the civil defense statement published by the state-run National News Agency.
Lebanese search for dead in devastated villages as Israel withdraws
[IsraelTimes] Residents of south Lebanon have returned to devastated villages, searching for the bodies of relatives killed in last year’s war between Israel and Hezbollah, as Israeli troops withdrew from most of the territory.
In the frontline village of Kfar Kila, barely a building was left standing. “I reached my neighborhood and I couldn’t tell where my house had been,” says one resident, Noha Hammoud.
“The entire neighborhood is destroyed.”
Rescue workers had pulled several bodies from the rubble, and had even found two people still alive, she says. Local sources say those found dead and alive were fighters from Hezbollah, thousands of whom were killed in the war.
Senior Lebanese politician Ali Hassan Khalil, who hails from the south, says hundreds of residents have gone to inspect more than a half dozen villages that became accessible, adding that the Lebanese army was still working to clear roads.
However, Israel’s continued presence in five south Lebanon posts left “an open wound,” he adds.
The conflict, which began when Hezbollah opened fire on October 8, 2023 in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, displaced tens of thousands of Israelis from northern Israel and more than a million people in Lebanon.
At the Israeli Kibbutz Misgav Am, next to the border with Lebanon, some residents visited and planted trees.
“Although we had to evacuate, our hearts stayed here,” says one of the kibbutz members, Daniel Malik. “We really want to come back but there is big uncertainty because we don’t know when it will be safe.”
In Yaroun, another frontline village in Lebanon, a woman holds a bouquet of spring flowers in one hand and Hezbollah’s yellow flag in another as she surveyed the destruction.
Rescue workers pulled at least one body from the rubble.
“Our feeling is a mix of joy and sadness because there are still martyrs we have yet to find,” says returning resident Suhaila Daher. “All the destruction can be replaced, thank God, but the martyrs will not return.”
Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah, speaking to Reuters in Yaroun, says: “The Israeli enemy is still occupying Lebanese land and this Lebanese land must be liberated and now the primary responsibility falls on the Lebanese state.”
IDF carries out controlled explosion near Lebanese village before withdrawing – report
[IsraelTimes] The IDF carried out a large controlled demolition near southern Lebanon’s Kfar Shouba a short while ago, before withdrawing from the area, Lebanese media reports. The military has not yet commented on its withdrawal from south Lebanon.
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Posted by trailing wife 2025-02-19 00:00||
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