Abeer was 19 when she heard the news on 25 May 2000 that southern Lebanon had been liberated after 18 years of Israeli occupation.
Within hours, her family had left Beirut and was heading south to their hometown Kfar Kila, a centuries-old village right on the border with Israel.
“It was a joy like I had never experienced before,” said Abeer, now an events coordinator for musicians.
Twenty-six years later, she has been displaced from the city of Nabatieh by Israel’s relentless bombardment of southern Lebanon. She now lives in a tent in Beirut’s Biel district with her two dogs.
Israel’s war on Lebanon has displaced more than one million people since 2 March. Hundreds of thousands remain unable to return home as Israeli troops continue to occupy dozens of villages, while 45 percent of towns in southern Lebanon have been damaged or destroyed.
Sitting outside her tent and longing for home, Abeer says she hopes the south will be liberated once again.
“We need to remember this day because we were victorious and hopefully we will be again. They have turned Kfar Kila into a football field,” she told Middle East Eye
Kfar Kila is among a dozen villages along Lebanon’s southern border that have been gradually flattened by repeated Israeli bombardment over the past two and a half years.
“Our grandparents, my mother and father are buried in Kfar Kila,” she said. “I pray we can return to them, to our homes and to our work.”
In 1982, the Israeli army invaded southern Lebanon in an attempt to dismantle the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.
The Israeli parliament approved Operation Peace for Galilee, under then defence minister Ariel Sharon’s claim that troops would advance no more than 40 kilometres, and that the operation would last two to three days.
Instead, Israeli forces reached Beirut and remained there for three years before withdrawing to southern Lebanon, where they stayed for a further 15 years.
A sustained guerrilla campaign mounted by Hezbollah throughout the 1990s, targeting Israeli positions and those of its allied militia, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), forced Israeli troops out of southern Lebanon.
'We have this country due to people’s sacrifices. These aren’t just words. Liberation cost lives, families, time that detainees spent in prison'
This was neither Israel’s first nor its last invasion of Lebanon. It entered in 1978 under Operation Litani and had previously occupied the Chebaa Farms in the 1967 Six Day War.
This history is not new to political activist Tarek Serhan, 28, who holds a master’s degree in human rights. Raised in Dahieh, Beirut’s southern suburbs, with roots in Dweir in the Nabatieh district, he remains deeply tied to the south, despite being only two years old on the day of its liberation.
Serhan lives in a small Beirut apartment he shares with his dog, Lexy, its entrance adorned by a Lebanese flag. It was also the home he shared with his parents and grandmother, who had sought refuge there from Israel’s intense bombardment of Dahieh.
He regularly travels to his village of Dweir and others to attend funerals and offer condolences to families he knows.
“When I was in the village three or four weeks ago, people were not afraid,” Serhan said, pointing to the resilience of southerners.
“They were carrying the martyrs on their shoulders during the procession, in the middle of the village, under warplanes and bombardment. My heart was full, honestly.”
