Farmers returning to their lands in Lebanon's south this weekend, amid an unofficial truce between Hezbollah and Israel, have found their crops ravaged by white phosphorus and their work hindered by unexploded munitions.

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) is fed up with the lack of response by the Biden administration against Iran after their continued attacks against American troops and military equipment, calling on Sunday for a "massive retaliation" that will bring it to an end. Cotton has labeled the Biden admin as "fearful" due to their continued lack of action over the growing issue. 

Lebanese farmer and minibus driver Abdallah Abdallah went back to his village near the Israeli border on Saturday to find that weeks of bombing had badly damaged his house and destroyed his tractor.

"What can I say? Israel has always been criminal, it has always targeted our houses," said Abdallah, 50, his face weary as he pointed to gaping holes in the walls of his two-storey home in Aitarun, just across from an Israeli military position.

As a cautious calm descended on the border of south Lebanon on Saturday, the second day of a four-day ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, villages that had emptied of residents came back to life – at least briefly.

Shuttered shops reopened, cars moved through the streets and, in one border town, a family on an outing posed for photos in front of brightly coloured block letters proclaiming, “I [HEART] ODAISSEH” – the town’s name

The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon has said that Israeli fire hit one of its patrols in the country’s south, despite a truce between Israel and Hamas largely quietening the Lebanon-Israel frontier.

“At around 12:00 pm, a UNIFIL patrol was hit by [Israeli army] gunfire” in the vicinity of Aitarun, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said in a statement on Saturday.

Webmaster addition: This is not going to help.

A UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol car came under fire from the Israeli troops near Aytaroun, UNIFIL Spokesman Andrea Tenenti said on his Telegram channel.

"Today at around 12 pm [local time - TASS], a UNIFIL patrol was hit by IDF gunfire in the vicinity of Aytaroun, in southern Lebanon," the spokesman said. "No peacekeepers were injured, but the vehicle was damaged."

Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at northern Israel on Thursday in one of the largest barrages fired from Lebanon since October 7, sending thousands of people in northern towns and communities rushing to bomb shelters.

In one salvo after midday, the IDF said some 35 rockets launched from Lebanon crossed the border into Israel. Hezbollah claimed responsibility, and said it had launched 48 rockets at an army base near Safed.

Rose Rostom, Nahida Mashouz and Ammar Hajeh have had their lives uprooted many times - by Palestinian militants, Syrian warplanes, Islamic State, Western-backed forces or the Israeli army.

Between them, they have fled their homes 20 times, most recently following border clashes between Israeli forces and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group sparked by Israel's war with Hamas militants in Gaza.

Rostom is Lebanese, Mashouz is a refugee from Syria and Hajeh is a Palestinian refugee.

On the day meant to honor Hezbollah’s own martyrs, the group’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, dedicated a considerable portion of his speech to fighters elsewhere in the region. In a televised address on November 11, Nasrallah praised not just Hezbollah’s strikes on Israel launched from southern Lebanon, but also “supporting fronts” in Iraq and Syria, where armed groups have carried out more than 60 attacks on American troops in the past month.