A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
It's the first day of a 10-day ceasefire to pause the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump said this morning that Israel is now, quote, "prohibited" by the U.S. from bombing Lebanon. He said, quote, "enough is enough," with three exclamation points, and vowed to make Lebanon great again.
MARTÍNEZ: We're joined now by NPR's Kat Lonsdorf in Beirut.
Kat, still pretty early in this ceasefire. How's it going so far?
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Yeah. Well, A, it - so far, it seems to be holding. The ceasefire went into effect at midnight here last night, so we're really just settling into the first full day. In the hours before, there was a barrage of attacks from both sides. Israel carried out a wave of airstrikes in Lebanon's south. Hezbollah fired several rockets into northern Israel. But since then, things have been relatively quiet. In terms of how people are feeling, there is a little hope. You know, a ceasefire is always welcome in war. But people also realize this is temporary, so it's a cautious optimism.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. And we just heard Leila say that President Trump announced a ceasefire yesterday after a phone call with the leaders of both Israel and Lebanon. But here's the thing...
LONSDORF: Yeah.
MARTÍNEZ: Hezbollah was not involved in the discussions of the ceasefire. So, I mean, how does that going to work?
LONSDORF: Right. Yeah. Hezbollah is the Iran-backed militia that operates in Lebanon. It kicked off this latest round of fighting by firing rockets into Israel in early March. It's a legitimate part of Lebanon's government with several seats in Parliament, but its military wing often operates independently of the state. Hezbollah has been very against direct talks between Israel and Lebanon, and it's skeptical of a ceasefire with Israel. Israel has been known to not respect them in the past. You know, after Israel and Hezbollah reached a deal back in 2024 after the last war, U.N. peacekeepers recorded more than 10,000 violations of that ceasefire, nearly all of them by Israel. And now Israel is occupying a huge swath of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah put out a statement saying it will resist that occupation, so it's unclear exactly how that will work within the context of this ceasefire.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. Now, I know there's been more than a million people in Lebanon that have been displaced since Israel started their heavy bombardment. Will they be going home now?
LONSDORF: Largely, no. Both Israel and Hezbollah have told people it's still too dangerous. About a fifth of Lebanon's population has been displaced in all of this. We checked in with one man. His name's Hussein Farhat (ph). He fled his home in - early in the war and has been staying in the center of Beirut. He told us he might venture back to his house and shop to check on them, but a temporary ceasefire means he won't be going back permanently yet.
HUSSEIN FARHAT: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: "It's heartbreaking to just visit your home and then leave again," he says. "Absolutely heartbreaking."
You know, but for many of the people displaced, they don't have homes to go back to. Israel has demolished more than 40,000 homes in the south, according to Lebanese officials, taking over whole villages to create what it calls a security buffer zone to keep Hezbollah from firing rockets into Israel. It's not clear how long Israel intends to be there, but yesterday after the ceasefire was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, quote, "we are not leaving."
MARTÍNEZ: OK. And zooming out a bit because a ceasefire is really a part of the bigger picture of negotiations in the Middle East happening right now.
LONSDORF: Right. The current two-week ceasefire between the U.S., Israel and Iran is set to expire in just a few days. Iran has said it wouldn't engage in further talks with the U.S. unless there was a ceasefire with Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. So now this temporary agreement potentially helps keep talks between the U.S. and Iran moving. But these ceasefires, you know, like so many ceasefires, are precarious, and the collapsing of one could easily collapse the other.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Kat Lonsdorf in Beirut.
Kat, thanks a lot.
LONSDORF: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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