More than 640,000 internally displaced Lebanese have returned to their homes since a ceasefire took hold on 21 June, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported on Thursday. Yet roughly 500,000 people remain displaced, many from border villages reduced to rubble, as a framework agreement signed last week between Lebanon and Israel struggles to translate into a durable peace.

The ceasefire, which followed a US-Iranian understanding to de-escalate the wider Middle Eastern war, halted three months of Israeli air and ground operations that Lebanese authorities say killed around 4,300 people. Under the new framework, brokered by Washington, Israel would gradually withdraw from southern Lebanon and the Lebanese army would deploy, beginning in two pilot areas, while Hezbollah’s arsenal is dismantled. President Joseph Aoun has insisted the accord does not legitimise any Israeli occupation and that Lebanon’s sovereign decision to delink its trajectory from the Iranian-American confrontation is a challenge for those ‘accustomed to tutelage.’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, has declared that troops will remain in a ten-kilometre-deep security zone as long as Hezbollah poses a threat, and the military has continued to strike what it calls Hezbollah targets despite the truce.

The return has been uneven. While authorities have dismantled informal tent camps in Beirut and its suburbs, dozens of border towns remain uninhabitable. The IOM data, collected in coordination with local authorities, shows that the majority of returnees are from areas farther from the frontier; those closest to the Israeli security zone face ongoing military restrictions and sporadic attacks. The Lebanese diaspora, which watched the escalation with what community representatives describe as deep trauma, sees a cautious shift in public sentiment against Hezbollah’s dominance, though older generations remain sceptical that the militia’s influence can be uprooted.

The framework agreement does not set a timeline for Israeli withdrawal, linking it to the completion of Hezbollah’s disarmament—a task that analysts in Beirut and Western capitals assess the Lebanese state is ill-equipped to enforce. Hezbollah, backed by Tehran, swiftly rejected the accord. Negotiations between the two countries, which have no diplomatic relations, have gone through five rounds under US mediation. The next concrete step is the deployment of the Lebanese army in the two designated pilot zones, but no date has been announced. Until the disarmament question is resolved, the full return of the displaced and the reconstruction of the south remain on hold.