The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah appears to be holding and Lebanese are beginning to stream south to their homes

BEIRUT — BEIRUT (AP) — A ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah appeared to be honored Wednesday as residents in cars loaded with belongings streamed back into southern Lebanon despite warnings from the Israeli and Lebanese military to stay away from certain areas.

If a ceasefire occurs, the truce would bring an end to the nearly 14-month battle between Israel and Hezbollah, which escalated into all-out war in mid-September and threatened to plunge Iran and Israel, Hezbollah’s patron, into a wider conflagration entangle. It could provide some relief to the 1.2 million Lebanese displaced by the fighting and the tens of thousands of Israelis who have fled their homes along the border with Lebanon.

The U.S.-France-brokered deal, approved by Israel late Tuesday, calls for an initial two-month halt in fighting and requires Hezbollah to end its armed presence in southern Lebanon while Israeli troops return to their side of the border.

Thousands of additional Lebanese troops and U.N. peacekeepers would be deployed to the south, and an international body led by the United States would monitor compliance.

Israel says it reserves the right to attack Hezbollah if it violates the terms of the deal.

The deal would not address the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, where Israel is still fighting Hamas militants in response to the group’s cross-border raid into southern Israel in October 2023. But President Joe Biden said Tuesday his administration would make another push in the coming days to try to renew efforts to reach a deal there.

Hours before the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon took effect, Israel launched large-scale attacks that rocked the Lebanese capital Beirut, and a barrage of rockets from Hezbollah triggered airstrike sirens across much of northern Israel.

But calm appeared to return after the ceasefire began early Wednesday, leading Lebanese to head home in droves.

Israel’s Arab military spokesman Avichay Adraee warned displaced Lebanese not to return to their villages in southern Lebanon. According to the Israeli military, the armed forces opened fire to push back vehicles entering a restricted area.

The Lebanese military urged displaced people returning to southern Lebanon to avoid frontline villages and towns on the border where Israeli troops remain stationed pending their withdrawal.

However, some videos circulating on social media show displaced Lebanese defying these calls and returning to villages in the south near the coastal city of Tyre. Israeli troops remained present in parts of southern Lebanon after Israel launched a ground offensive in October.

On the highway that connects Beirut with southern Lebanon, thousands of people drove south with their belongings and mattresses on the roofs of their cars. There was a traffic jam at the northern entrance to the port city of Sidon.

Residents will return to the massive destruction wrought by the Israeli military during its military campaign. Villages where the military said it had found huge weapons caches and infrastructure allegedly intended for an October 7-style attack on northern Israel were razed to the ground.

Lebanese health authorities say more than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon in the past 13 months, many of them civilians.

Hezbollah is emerging from the war battered and bloodied, with the reputation it built through its 2006 fight against Israel that ended in a stalemate tarnished. Nevertheless, its fighters managed to put up strong resistance on the ground, slowing Israel’s advance and continuing to fire dozens of rockets, missiles and drones across the border every day.

“This is a moment of victory, pride and honor for us, the Shiite sect and for all of Lebanon,” said Hussein Sweidan, a resident who returned to Tire in southern Lebanon and said he viewed the ceasefire as a victory for the Hezbollah.

Sporadic celebratory gunfire could be heard at one of the city’s main roundabouts as returning people honked their cars’ horns and residents cheered.

In Israel, the mood was far more subdued, with displaced Israelis concerned that the agreement did not go far enough to contain Hezbollah and that it did not take into account Gaza and the hostages still held there.

“I think it is still not safe to return to our homes because Hezbollah is still near us,” said Eliyahu Maman, an Israeli who was displaced from the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, not far from the border from Lebanon and was hit hard by months of fighting.

On Wednesday morning, Kiryat Shmona remained quiet on a cold, rainy day. A handful of people milled around surveying the damage from previous rocket attacks, including the roof of a bus. The city’s shopping center, which had previously been hit, appeared to be damaged again, and a rocket was lodged in the ground next to a residential building.

The fighting killed more than 70 people in Israel, more than half civilians, as well as dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Lebanon.

It could take months for the displaced people to largely return to their communities, many of which have suffered significant damage from rocket fire.

But Israel scored major victories in the war, including the assassination of Hezbollah top leader Hassan Nasrallah and most of its top commanders and the destruction of extensive militant infrastructure. A complex attack involving exploding pagers and walkie-talkies widely attributed to Israel appeared to show a remarkable level of penetration by the secretive militant group.

The kind of massive, long-range rocket attacks that many Israelis feared before the war never fully materialized, either because they were destroyed by Israeli attacks or because Hezbollah held them in reserve. Hezbollah also failed to launch ground attacks across the border, despite the Israeli military providing evidence that it had invested heavily in preparing for such operations.

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Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press journalists Alon Bernstein in Haifa, Israel and Leo Correa in Kiryat Shmona, Israel contributed reporting.

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For more of AP’s war coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war