Aoun votes in South, says there are 'guarantees' Israel won't disrupt polls

President Joseph Aoun voted Saturday in his southern hometown al-Aishiyeh in the fourth and final round of the country’s municipal and mayoral elections.

Aoun headed to al-Aishiyeh after inspecting the electoral operations rooms in Sidon and Nabatieh.

“These elections prove that the will of life is stronger than death and that the will of construction is stronger than destruction,” Aoun said in Sidon.

Speaking to reporters after casting his vote in his hometown al-Aishiyeh, in the Jezzine district, Aoun said: “I protected the elections throughout 40 years (as an army officer and commander), and today I’m casting my vote for the first time in an electoral juncture.”

Asked whether there are “guarantees” that Israel will not stage attacks in the South during the electoral day, Aoun said: “There are guarantees and I call on voters to turn out heavily.”

“The message should be is that the South belongs to Lebanon and is the heart of Lebanon and nothing should deter the resilience will of the Lebanese,” the president added.

Israel carried out a wave of intensive airstrikes on alleged Hezbollah targets in the South on Thursday, one of the fiercest since the latest war. Calm has however prevailed since Friday morning in a sign that the international community may have managed to rein in Israel to secure the success of the electoral process.

Hezbollah ran an alliance with the Amal Movement of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and both are expected to win mayoral races and the majority of seats in municipal councils. Both groups already won many municipalities uncontested.

South Lebanon is the fourth and last district to vote in the elections since May 4. Among those who voted Saturday were Hezbollah members wounded in the Sept. 17, 2024, explosions of thousands of pagers that blew up near-simultaneously in an operation carried out by Israel. More than a dozen were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded.

Residents of villages and towns on the border with Israel, including the village of Kfar Kila that was almost completely destroyed during the war, cast their ballots at polling stations set up in the nearby city of Nabatieh. Residents of other border villages cast their ballots in the port city of Tyre.

"Southerners are proving again that they are with the choice of resistance," Hezbollah legislator Ali Fayad, who represents border villages, said in Nabatieh.

Lebanon's cash-strapped government has been scrambling to secure international funds for the war reconstruction, which the World Bank estimates at over $11 billion.

Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, one day after a deadly Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel sparked the war in Gaza. Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes in Lebanon that escalated into a full-blown war that left more than 4,000 dead in Lebanon and more than 80 soldiers and 47 civilians in Israel. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire went into effect in late November.