For months after the Israel-Hezbollah war that devastated southern Lebanon, the Alawieh family would visit a hillside near their ruined home to catch whatever glimpse they could of what remained.
Their olive trees were gone. So were their goats, and the lemon and fig orchards that had taken years to bear fruit. Their house was just a pile of rubble.
Israel had agreed to a Jan. 26 deadline — two months after a cease-fire took effect — to withdraw its remaining forces from southern Lebanon. That day, Mousa Alawieh set out with his three teenage children and a cousin, eager to see what was left of their home in the border town of Aitaroun.
Mr. Alawieh, 45, a metal worker, had been displaced for more than a year and struggling to make ends meet. He had hoped to salvage whatever possessions he could from the wreckage, family members said.
But he never made it home.
As he and his family were driving through their flattened town, they encountered at least two Israeli soldiers on the road who shot multiple times at the family’s car, killing Mr. Alawieh, according to video footage verified by The New York Times and accounts from his brother and brother-in-law.
Asked about the shooting of Mr. Alawieh, the Israeli military said the matter was “under review.”
Israel had delayed its withdrawal that day, but Mr. Alawieh was unaware and believed the military had begun to pull out of Aitaroun, according to Yaacoub Alawieh, his brother.
More than 100,000 people are still displaced in Lebanon, according to the U.N. migration agency, nearly all of them from the hard-hit south, where Hezbollah has long exercised de facto control. They, along with the tens of thousands of Israelis displaced across the border, are all desperate to return home.
Mr. Alawieh’s killing was a reminder of the dangers many Lebanese still face, even with hostilities paused.
The displaced are uncertain about whether Israel will remain indefinitely in Lebanon and when they will be able to return home. Many of their towns and villages now lie in ruins, and it also unclear who will foot the mammoth bill for reconstruction.
After Israel and Lebanon agreed to extend the Jan. 26 withdrawal deadline, Israeli forces continued to occupy large portions of southern Lebanon. A new date for the withdrawal was set for Tuesday, and Israeli forces pulled out of the remaining populated towns and villages along the border.
But the Israeli military said this week that it intended to stay at a number of strategic points inside Lebanon beyond the deadline for its complete withdrawal.
Israel once occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years and with each delay in the pullout, fears of another prolonged occupation have grown.
The latest war began brewing after the surprise Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah began attacking Israeli positions in solidarity with Hamas, its ally.
After nearly a year of low-level clashes, Israel launched a full-scale offensive in September — assassinating many of Hezbollah’s leaders and destroying much of its weapons stockpiles. It was Lebanon’s most destructive war in decades.
Israel has issued a series of warnings to residents of southern Lebanon — including on Jan. 26 — not to return to their hometowns yet because its military forces were still deployed there. But thousands of Lebanese have defied those orders in their eagerness to go home.
Israeli forces killed at least 24 people in southern Lebanon on Jan. 26 alone, according to health ministry, and more were killed in the days that came after.
Mr. Alawieh was so excited to go home that he did not even check the news that day, his brother said, so he was under the impression that Israeli troops had begun to withdraw to the outskirts of Aitaroun.
But as his car rounded a bend inside the town, at least two Israeli soldiers suddenly emerged in the road ahead, according to video footage filmed from inside the vehicle by Ali, Mr. Alawieh’s 15-year-old son.
Mr. Alawieh panicked and slammed his vehicle into reverse. The family raised their hands in the air. A gunshot rang out — one, two, then 20 — a salvo of bullets puncturing metal and glass and skin.
“Get down, Dad, get down!,” shouted Ali from the back seat, his sisters screaming in fear.
“No, Dad!,” shouted Ali. “Dad! Dad! Dad!”
As their father began to bleed, the Israeli soldiers ordered the children out of the car and questioned them, Mr. Alawieh’s brother said, relaying what he was told by his family members who were inside the car at the time. The soldiers then told them to walk straight ahead without looking back. They left their father behind in the car, wounded but still alive.
Rukaya Alawieh, Mr. Alawieh’s 18-year-old daughter, was injured in the shooting and it took her an hour to reach the nearest hospital to find her father help. By the time the ambulance arrived at the car, he was dead.
Like many other residents of southern Lebanon, Mr. Alawieh was affiliated with Hezbollah, according to his brother. But he was not a fighter or a full-fledged member, the brother said. Hezbollah has long operated a roster of social and humanitarian services in lieu of Lebanon’s ailing state, and Mr. Alawieh became involved in the group’s social work shortly before his death.
Many residents who have been able to return to their homes in southern Lebanon have often arrived back to find nothing left standing.
The extended Alawieh family lost 11 of their homes, said Marwan Qassem, Mr. Alawieh’s brother-in-law, who owned a house in Aitaroun and also ran a large family farm there, both now in ruins.
“When I saw the damage to the house, I asked myself, where do I begin?” he said.
During the war, Mr. Qassem and Mr. Alawieh spent months bouncing between temporary accommodation with their families, trying to escape Israel’s widening offensive.
First they fled the border region to an area where the airstrikes soon struck. Then they headed for the capital, Beirut, but that was bombed too. It was a seemingly endless loop, searching for safety, but never quite safe.
Today, his family is in limbo, still unable to return home and consumed with grief over their losses. Forced to lay their father to rest away from the family cemetery in Aitaroun, the children have struggled to process what happened, Mr. Qassem said.
Ali’s cheeky laugh has given way to reticence. And Rukaya, his elder sister who scrambled to find help after their father was shot, is traumatized.
“Sometimes she is silent,” Mr. Qassem said. “Sometimes she cries.”
Arijeta Lajka and Myra Noveck contributed reporting.
