Journey to Tyre, the historic city of Lebanon that Israel has left in ruins

Tyre (Lebanon)Mohamed Hijazi says it is like being buried alive. On April 17, in the early morning, an unexpected call changed his life forever. It was his cousin. He gave him the worst news: his younger sister, his three nephews, and his brother-in-law were among the nineteen victims rescued from under the rubble of the Hijazi building, opposite the Tir promenade. There were only a few minutes left before the ten-day ceasefire came into effect when Israeli planes bombed the building. The explosion ripped through the neighborhood at the very moment silence was supposed to begin. The truce arrived amid screams, tears, and rage.

"Why? Why?" repeats Mohamed, his voice broken. Beside him, a rescuer perched on the pile of rubble hands him fragments of his life: dusty photographs, torn clothes, stained objects. "I still can't process what happened... I feel like it's a nightmare," he says, and bursts into tears.

A few meters away, Reda Abbas Hijazi salvages what's left of his cafe. Among the rubble appear glasses, saucers, spoons, the ledger... The roof, by chance, held up. He and two customers survived. "We were commenting that there wasn't much time left until the ceasefire, and suddenly, we heard the metallic sound of the planes. Then the explosion. We threw ourselves to the ground," he recalls. He pulls up his trouser legs and shows the wounds left by the glass fragments.

"I've stayed here throughout the war. There's little work, but I have no other way to live. We want the army to take control and stop killing civilians." He pauses, as if measuring the weight of what he's about to say. "God hasn't wanted to take me with him yet. My brother, on the other hand, didn't have the same luck. He had left the hospital two weeks ago after heart surgery. Israel killed him."

In southern Lebanon, the city of Tyre has never completely emptied. Some have stayed despite the Israeli offensive, losing everything in the last few days, just before the truce. The destruction is not uniform: there are buildings standing next to others ripped open, staircases leading nowhere, facades revealing rooms suspended over the void.

A historic port, at a standstill

Tyre is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world, with more than four thousand years of history, and was one of the great centers of Phoenician civilization, from where trade routes departed throughout the Mediterranean. Its identity remains anchored to the sea. The port, heir to those two ancient Phoenician ports, is not just a workplace; it is also memory, economy, and landscape. Here, generations of fishermen have maintained an activity that still sustains thousands of people today. But the war also caused the water to become empty.

For weeks, the boats remained moored in a silent port. Unused nets, silent engines, empty boxes. The sea was still there, but it was inaccessible. Fear and restrictions imposed by the Israeli army pushed fishermen to stay on land or a few kilometers from the coast, under constant warnings. With the truce, some have returned, but without certainty.

Ali is preparing his small wooden boat. The engine coughs before starting. He looks at the horizon, but doesn't move away. "There's no work. We go out and come back with almost nothing. We can't go far. We have to keep an eye on the sky," he says without stopping to adjust the net. He points to the water, calm, almost still. "Before, we knew where the fish were. Now we know nothing. We've lost the season. Who will compensate us?"

Disappearance of tourism

Near him, other fishermen mend nets or clean hooks. Some have not even gone out again. Mohamed Amin, captain of a tourist boat, observes the empty dock, where fishermen and visitors used to mingle. "The sea has been completely calm. Not a single boat has gone out. My boat is for tourists, but no one is coming. We've been idle for weeks," he laments.

In normal times, the port of Tyre is also a meeting point, a thoroughfare for tourists and locals, with restaurants, nets spread out in the sun, and boats painted white and blue. Today, this rhythm is barely perceptible. The twenty-day extension of the ceasefire has provided a minimal margin of stability, but has not changed the perception on the ground. The truce remains fragile, punctuated by recurring violations in the form of incursions, gunfire, or the passage of planes and drones. No one considers it guaranteed.

In this gap between what has been agreed and what is happening, southern Lebanon is moving in a suspended normality. The dead are buried, the rubble is cleared, work is attempted to resume, but reconstruction remains out of reach.

While negotiations take place in Washington, the violence has not disappeared, it has merely become intermittent. This instability fuels uncertainty and conditions every daily decision, from returning home to going out to fish. For now, the truce is nothing more than an unstable pause. In Tyre, the sea is still there, as always. But calm has not returned.