Villagers who live off the land in south Lebanon are rushing to sow their crops, making up for lost time after weeks of hostilities with Israel forced them to miss out on the start of the planting season. “I work from this, I produce from this, I live from this,” Zaynab Suweidan said as she sowed wheat in the village of Yater, in an area hit by Israeli strikes during heavy exchanges of fire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
After enduring its worst violence since a 2006 war, the area has been largely calm since Friday, when Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas agreed a temporary truce to the conflict they have been waging some 200km (120 miles) away in and around Gaza.
That war, which erupted on Oct. 7, quickly spilled into Lebanon, with the Iran-backed Hezbollah rocketing Israeli positions at the border and Israel launching air and artillery strikes in response.
Israel and Hamas agreed to extend the truce by one day on Thursday, bringing a seventh day of respite.
As a drone buzzed in the sky above her, Suweidan said she had stayed in her home throughout the hostilities even after it sustained some damage.—APP
