The image of Muhammad Abd al-Salam Nasralah was in the center. Accompanied by photos of two other deceased Hezbollah members: the former party leader, Hasan Nasralah, and his supposed successor, Hashem Safieddine. Several dozen people lined up in front of the speaker in a small space carpeted with flower petals.
On the eve of the symbolic Ashura festival - a sacred commemoration for the Shiite community, to which the three deceased belonged - the announcer emphasized the need to accept "the sacrifice" by recalling the figure of Hussein, the grandson of Mohamed and the second spiritual leader of this branch of Islam, whose assassination is remembered during those ten days.
Many residents of the Lebanese city of Hula took the opportunity of the funeral to visit the ruins of what used to be their town. The enclosed area for the funeral seemed to be the only modification made in the village since the journalist's last visit. The rest remained the same. A succession of buildings turned into mountains of rubble.
Muhammad Abd al-Salam was killed by an Israeli drone this Monday while tending to his beehives. The daughter of Mahmud Hassan Atue, Hadiya, says that her father was killed by another unmanned aerial vehicle on May 29 "while watching over a water tank." "He was dressed in civilian clothes, he was not carrying any weapons. He was doing his job, he was a municipal employee in charge of water distribution," she states.
For Tel Aviv, however, the activities of the two deceased do not seem to be the main issue. It was that both were members of Hezbollah. "The message is that there cannot be Hezbollah members south of the Litani River. They are killing them one by one," says Hussein Yehya, a resident of Kfar Kila, one of the Lebanese towns bordering Israel.
"Hezbollah is respecting the ceasefire but Israel continues to kill our people every day. How long are we going to endure without responding?" Hadiya wonders in perfect English, which she learned during her Biology degree.
The words of the 26-year-old reflect the anguish in the southern region of Lebanon in the face of repeated Israeli airstrikes, despite the ceasefire in place between Hezbollah and Israel since November 27, 2024.
The recurrent bombings - which have reached the capital Beirut - have resulted in at least 176 fatalities, a mix of civilians and militants, according to the count by the local newspaper L'Orient Le Jour. A tragic toll that has heightened apprehension in the Arab nation due to the instability caused by the Israeli attack on Iran, Hezbollah's main supporter.
The country's authorities are trying to keep Lebanon - a battleground where the military struggle between Tehran and Tel Aviv has raged for decades - out of the current conflict.
Various spokespersons of the paramilitary group, as cited by Lebanese media, have made it clear that the Party of God will not intervene in this war, following the significant punishment it received during its confrontation with Israel.
According to the Israeli think tank Alma Center, Tel Aviv's forces eliminated over 170 high-ranking officials and commanders on the ground during the war, and around 15 percent of the paramilitary group's personnel.
After the ceasefire, the Party of God agreed to withdraw its forces away from the Israeli border, handing over all its positions to the Lebanese army. Days ago, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam stated that the local armed forces had "dismantled over 500 military positions" of the group south of the Litani River.
The non-involvement of the Lebanese armed group in the current conflict is a judgment shared even by Israeli experts. Former advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu, Orna Mizrahi, expressed in a recent analysis for the Institute for National Security Studies of that country that "Hezbollah seems to remain outside the circle of war" for several reasons, including its "weakness after its defeat in the war" and "the continuous Israeli attacks almost daily against its operatives and infrastructure."
However, amidst the war fervor, Tel Aviv and its main supporter, US, have demanded that Hezbollah surrender all its weapons, as indicated by numerous reports leaked by local media. An option impossible to accept for Hassan Nasrallah's successor, Naim Qassem.
According to the publication Al Modon, the message conveyed by US envoy Tom Barak to the new president Joseph Aoun is that either Hezbollah ceases its armed activity or Washington will leave the path open as it has done in Iran "for another war by Israel."
At the same time, Tel Aviv seems to insist on its intention to create an almost uninhabited strip around the border to the extent that in March and April, it launched an aerial offensive to destroy dozens of containers that had been set up as temporary dwellings in over a dozen towns near its territory. The burnt structures are still visible in the area.
"In Kfar Kila, they had placed five: one to serve as a bakery. Two that were supposed to be bathrooms and two others as offices. They burned them all in one night. The message is that nobody can live in the area. It doesn't even allow setting up tents," explains the aforementioned Hussein Yehya, alias El Argentino.
His village, located right next to the wall marking the beginning of Israel, remains a sea of uninhabited ruins like Houla. "Only two families and the mosque's cleric have returned," points out the Lebanese as he drives through routes bordered by mountains of rubble.
The desolation is almost the same as observed in November 2024 throughout the area where both countries converge. New constructions are an exception, and none are found in neighboring towns of Israel.
"Make art, not war"
The small café of Abbas Youmaa is an exception. The Lebanese has resorted to local ingenuity to try to protect himself. He painted the place blue, as if it were a UN base - in fact, he placed a UN flag inside - and left the roof open to allow Israeli drones to monitor what happens inside. The enclave is located right on the demarcation line, meters from an Israeli base. Youmaa shrugs when asked if he trusts that this strategy will prevent them from destroying it again as it happened during the previous war.
Local activists who have decorated some walls of the village of Maifadoun with graffiti saying "Enjoy life" or "Make art, not war" are also a rarity in a geography where hardly any vehicles circulate due to the constant buzzing of Israeli drones.
Hizbullah's inactivity in the Iranian-Israeli clash is another element contributing to the progressive deterioration of Iran's influence in the region, which it projected for years through allied groups like the Lebanese movement or the militias it supports in Iraq, Yemen, or previously in Syria. The fall of the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad disrupted this entire strategy.
Since Israel began bombing Iran on the 13th, the only group from the so-called Axis of Resistance - Tehran's allied militias - that has supported its mentor has been the Yemeni Houthis, who have been launching missiles at Israel for months. On the same day as the initial Israeli attack, US sources told AP that one of their bases in Iraq had been attacked with 3 drones, which were shot down, but no one claimed responsibility for the incident.
The image of Yalal Nasser, owner of the Liilandee restaurant in the southern city of Nabatiye, smoking a water pipe amidst the ruins of his establishment on the same day the ceasefire was declared between Hizbullah and Israel last year, was one of the most iconic images of those days in the Arab country.
The 50-year-old Lebanese managed to reopen the place a month and a half later. "I had to invest over $200,000," he points out.
The Liilandee is located in what used to be the most modern shopping center in Nabatiye, which was destroyed when the Israelis bombed the street, literally crushing almost a dozen buildings.
"The bombs fell on the other side of the street, but the shockwave destroyed the entire shopping center. I had been sleeping in the restaurant for over 10 days. I left for Beirut three days earlier. If I had stayed here, we wouldn't be talking now," says Nasser.
For him, as for many Lebanese, the current conflict between Tel Aviv and Tehran is both a relief and a spectacle, which they watch daily while clinging to their hookahs. For once in many months, the rockets that Nasser has recorded with his phone in recent days are not aimed at Lebanese territory, but at neighboring Israel.
The country's social media is filled with the video of the wedding or young people dancing in a nightclub, celebrating as they dance to the tune of Iranian missiles. "Here, people celebrate with shouts and gunfire in the air," explains Hussein Yehya, alias El Argentino, a resident of the village of Kfar Kila who is displaced in Nabatiye.
Lebanon has become one of the main routes used by Tehran's missiles to target Israel, especially Haifa and the northern region, due to the lack of air defenses in this country to stop their advance. Iran thus replicates the continuous violations of Lebanese airspace that the Israeli air force has been carrying out for decades.
"There is resentment and discontent towards Iran"
Yalal Nasser is one of the many Shiite Lebanese who share the satisfaction of seeing Israel and Iran now suffering the ravages of total war. "Israel is the traditional enemy. When I was eight years old, they were already here, occupying Lebanon. But where was Iran when Israel was destroying us? Weren't they the ones saying we had to sacrifice for Palestine?" he comments.
This is an opinion shared by a significant sector of that community and even by Hezbollah militants, according to Nicholas Blanford from the Atlantic Council think tank.
"There is resentment and discontent towards Iran from Hezbollah because they feel abandoned in the recent conflict," he told Al Jazeera.
More broadly, the Lebanese - like the Syrians - share a sense of disillusionment towards two power poles that they identify as the source of many of the troubles that have shaken the region in recent decades.
As the reputable local newspaper L'Orient Le Jour wrote in its editorial this Tuesday, it is "a confrontation between two monsters, each with its share of responsibility for the bloody upheavals in our part of the world. A medieval theocracy bent on exporting its ideology, and a state (Israel) driven by its biblical delusions of hegemony, governed by a man who sees no other possibility for political survival than war."
Only the convinced, like Hadiya Atue - the daughter of a Hezbollah militant - express unrestrained joy at the destruction Israel is facing, without considering the impact on Iran. "It was time for them to feel the pain and fear that we Lebanese have felt," she concludes.