The people of Lebanon woke up on Tuesday as if from a fever dream.
The previous day began with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel threatening to bomb Beirut’s southern suburbs, sending thousands fleeing and putting the Lebanese capital on edge. That prospect prompted Iran to warn that it would withdraw from peace talks with the United States.
President Trump intervened, announcing that Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia based in Lebanon, had agreed to stop attacking each other and suggesting that a major assault on Beirut had been averted. Hezbollah signaled it was open to a new truce, as the cease-fire with Israel that took effect in April was unraveling. Mr. Netanyahu also backed away from his threat against Beirut but insisted Israel would continue fighting in southern Lebanon.
Even by the standards of crisis-wracked Lebanon, the whiplash was dizzying. By Tuesday morning, the situation in the country was largely back to the way it was only two days earlier: Israel was bombing the south of the country, Hezbollah was attacking Israeli forces in Lebanon, and the cease-fire was being largely ignored.
“What sort of cease-fire allows bombing the south but just not Beirut?” said Abbas Mousa, 45, who lives in the coastal city of Sidon. “I don’t believe in these cease-fires that are announced almost on a daily basis.”
The daylong flurry of threats and diplomacy reflected a familiar reality for Lebanon, where decisions of war and peace are more often shaped by outside powers than its own government. Nowhere was that dynamic more evident than in Dahiya, the densely-packed Beirut suburb where thousands of residents caught in the cross hairs of Israel, the United States, Iran and Hezbollah made life-or-death decisions to stay or flee after Mr. Netanyahu issued his threat to attack.
Many returned to their homes on Tuesday, as an uneasy calm settled over Beirut. But some were not convinced that Israel’s promise not to target Beirut would hold.
“I don’t feel safe returning back to my house,” said Saada al-Qadi, 50, who fled her home in Dahiya for a relative’s apartment in the mountains north of Beirut. “These cease-fires are like anesthetic shots, I see no true cease-fire on the horizon,” she added.
Moussa Hariri, who lives in the center of the neighborhood, sent his wife and children to a shelter outside the area on Monday. But he refused to leave his home, resigned to a sense of exhaustion from the constant back-and-forth of evacuation warnings and talk of durable truces over the past three months.
“None of this really concerns me anymore,” he said. “I would rather die in my own bed. I don’t want to leave Dahiya.”
Iran and Hezbollah’s indirect appeals to Mr. Trump on Monday to push for a new cease-fire also highlighted a surprising reality that has emerged since the war broke out: A durable truce in Lebanon would benefit both the president and Hezbollah — unlikely partners — while his ally in Israel, Mr. Netanyahu, would stand to lose.
Mr. Trump could present himself as the broker of yet another diplomatic deal. Hezbollah could show that only it and its patron Iran — and not the Lebanese state — has the leverage to pressure Israel through Washington into halting the war. But Israel would emerge after months of fighting in Lebanon with little to show for it.
The latest war broke out in March after Hezbollah began firing at Israel in solidarity with Iran, days after the United States and Israel attacked Tehran in late February. More than 3,200 Lebanese and at least 30 Israelis have been killed in the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, according to the authorities in both countries.
On Tuesday, the attacks in southern Lebanon showed few signs of easing. In Nabatieh, a southern city for which Israel issued a new evacuation warning on Tuesday, most of the few people who remained there were sheltering in the main public hospital, residents said.
“The situation is extremely dangerous right now,” said Abbas Fahd, 45, a resident in Nabatieh who has not evacuated despite the Israeli warnings. Mr. Fahd said that he thought the threats and diplomacy on Monday were “all theater” and only deepened his sense of how little say Lebanese people have in the decisions affecting the country.
“We want a cease-fire,” he added, “but we do not believe the war is likely to end anytime soon.”
Hwaida Saad and Dayana Iwaza contributed reporting.
