liberation of 2000
The Lebanese national resistance was born with the escalation of the Israeli occupation in 1982, when the operation carried out by martyr Ahmad Qasir in Tyre was one of the first suicide operations that shook the enemy. This was followed by a series of qualitative and suicide operations that led to a gradual withdrawal from the mountains and the south, until the occupation settled in the border strip. The militias collaborating with the occupation-imposed policies of repression, extortion, and displacement against the population, especially in the towns of Aynatha and Bint Jbeil, in order to bring about demographic changes. With the escalation of the resistance, Israel began to lose control, the militias disintegrated, and the occupation withdrew on May 25, 2000, under the blows of the resistance, in a national liberation that did not witness revenge but was dominated by national consciousness and tolerance, confirming the role of the resistance as a unifying force for all Lebanese. Aynatha had its share of martyrs during the resistance operations in defense of the land, with two martyrs in 1987, one in 1997, and another in 1999: Abbas Nehme, Youssef Nasrallah, Ghassan Ghanem, and Ibrahim Fadlallah.
Why choosing temporary burial?
"Bayn Al-Rokon w Al-Maqam”
Abbas Nehme was martyred in 1987 at the Aynatha-Aytaroun axis, where he clashed with elite forces from the Golani Brigade, was wounded in battle, and martyred. His body was then transferred to Palestinian territory and returned in 1997 in exchange with the martyr Hadi Nasrallah. He was buried with the martyrs in Beirut until the residents returned to the town in 2000.
Ghassan Ghanem was martyred in 1997. He was killed at the Suwayda hill as part of a combat group belonging to the Islamic Resistance, where he was martyred immediately after being wounded. He was buried in Deir Qanoun al-Nahr until the return of the residents.
Ahmad Fadlallah, martyr in 1999. He and his group succeeded in attacking a position and occupying it for several hours, and during the withdrawal, he was seriously injured, which led to his martyrdom. He was buried in Beirut in Rawdat al-Shahidin.
The third martyr buried in this land is Yousef Nasrallah. He was martyred alongside Abbas Nehme in 1987 and was also captured, but his body remained in captivity until an exchange in 2004, when he returned directly to the town without needing to be buried in a temporary grave.
After six years of relative calm on the southern front, fighting broke out again, resulting in a number of casualties. They were buried in the same place where the first three martyrs had been buried, where civilians and mujahideen were laid to rest together. After that, the idea arose to design a special and distinctive memorial to honor these martyrs.
On July 12, 2006, the capture of two Israeli soldiers by the Islamic resistance near Ayta al-Shaab sparked the July War. Israel responded with a widespread aggression against Lebanon, focusing on destroying infrastructure and southern villages such as Bint Jbeil and Aynatha. Israeli forces sought to invade the area using elite troops and Merkava tanks, with the aim of separating Aynatha from Bint Jbeil, but they encountered a network of fortifications prepared by Hezbollah after 2000 and fierce resistance combining guerrilla warfare and military tactics, which inflicted heavy losses on them. Fierce battles took place in Karam al-Zaytoun, al-Sanasir, al-Mtyhna, and Saf al-Hawa, amid intense shelling that reduced Aynatha to rubble and left civilians dead.
One of the most notable massacres of the July War in Aynatha was the killing of 24 civilians, including women and children, in the home of Hajj Muhammad Ali Mustafa after they took refuge there to escape the bombing. The occupation forces targeted the house with spy planes and warplanes, completely destroying it, and the victims remained under the rubble until the aggression stopped. It was noteworthy that one of the women, Zahra Fadlallah, wrote her will in the shelter, sensing that her death was near. One of the owners of the house described the situation at the time: "Our house consisted of one large floor and a storage area. It was a large room without windows, meaning there was no source of light. When the war started, we took refuge there. There was a door inside the house that led to it, so we used it if we wanted to quickly fetch something from the house and return directly to the floor. The place was large but dark. We used flashlight batteries for lighting, and when the batteries ran out, we used candles. When the bombing intensified, we left the town. After we left, about 20 people, including men, women, and children, took refuge in the house and stayed there without going to the first floor, except when necessary. Due to the sensitivity of the situation, it was necessary to keep the house without lights. But despite all that, the enemy targeted the place and killed everyone inside. The bodies remained under the rubble until the end of the war, and nothing remained of the house. Immediately after returning, the relevant authorities worked to remove the rubble and recover the bodies, which were then buried.
The Planning
Stages of building the structure
2008
The Final Shape
The martyrs of the Holy Defense battle were characterized by their enthusiasm, influence, and effectiveness in their communities, in addition to their faith and religiosity, as well as their communication with people, meaning they were not closed off. More precisely, according to Sheikh Abbas's description, “they were effective religious people, present on the front lines, present in places of need and communities.” These young men influenced other young people by bringing them to mosques and helping them to get closer to God. The martyrs of the Holy Defense brought young people into the resistance, some of whom were later martyred, while others continue on the path and carry on the march. The speech of the Sheikh reflects on the deep bond between the martyrs of the Sacred Defense and those of the Support Front and the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2024. It highlights their shared traits: strong faith, active presence in society and on the frontlines, and their ability to inspire others, especially the youth. These young men were not isolated believers but dynamic, influential figures in their communities. Many were close friends—living, studying, and serving together—and some were martyred in earlier battles while others continued the path and fell later. Today, they are buried side by side, symbolizing their unity in life, struggle, and martyrdom.
After Hamas's “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation on October 7, 2023, Hezbollah opened a support front against the Israeli occupation in support of Gaza, starting on October 8 with attacks on the border, which continued for more than a year, during which we had hundreds of martyrs. Aynatha offered seven of its sons on the support front.
A funeral after 7 years
The first martyr was Abbas al-Souqia (Ali al-Hadi), who was martyred on October 22, 2023. He was the first martyr to be buried in the Martyrs' Cemetery since 2017. "The blessed martyr Abbas al-Souqia, the first convoy of love in Aynatha. In Aynatha, where wounds open their windows to the sun. The town buried its first martyrs in the battle of Tufan al-Aqsa, and the funeral was more than a farewell; it was the announcement of the birth of a new era of glory and loyalty. Since 2017, people have not come out for such an occasion. People came out as they had never done before, not to bid farewell to a body to the earth, but to embrace a soul that opened the door of dignity to death. The ululations mingled with tears of patience, and hands were raised as banners are raised in battle. The air was heavy with the scent of sacred soil and living blood, as if the earth itself stood on its tiptoes to welcome the first of the caravan returning to God.
The funeral scene was not a passing moment, but a collective covenant. Everyone who attended wrote their soul on the paper of readiness, and the martyrs followed after him like drops of light when the clouds part. The first martyr came as if he were a beautiful harbinger, awakening the town from its slumber of oppression. The whole town woke up and followed him, men, women, elders who knew the taste of farewell, and children who had memorized names without ever seeing their owners except on the walls of memory. The strange thing is that most of the martyrs who followed him were at the funeral, standing there in the front rows, carrying the coffin and shedding their last tears, followed by smiles... It was as if, in bidding him farewell, they were bidding farewell to themselves without realizing it. After a while, the one who carried the coffin carried his name a few days later, and the one who distributed the flowers distributed his blood in the same place. The funeral was solemn because it was not an ending, but a beginning. It was the beginning of a collective journey to heaven, an eternal scene that hung time on the shoulder of time and taught people that martyrdom is not the end, but a moment in which a person steps forward to lead a people to eternity. This is what Ali Khanafer, one of the sons of Aynatha, wrote when I asked him to describe that day of the funeral. It was a depiction of a scene that was repeated seven years later in this town, marking the beginning for others who took the same path.
The Martyrs
After that, Aynatha
produced a number of martyrs in the period from the support front to before the
war intensified on September 23. They are:
- Mohammed
Bakir Hassan Bassam (Khomeini) – in Maroun (missing body_
- Abed al-Karim Samhat (Jaafar) – in Maroun
- Mahmoud
Ibrahim Fadlallah (Shadi) – in Shahabiya
- Mahdi
Abbas Samhat (Jawad Maatouq) – in Hadatha in the pager’s device bombing
massacre
- Ali
Mouhammad Sleiman Samhat (Kazim) – in the walky-talky device bombing massacre (after
the funeral of Martyr Mahdi directly)
The Last Funeral With the Presence of the People
As for the last martyr buried in Al-Rawda in the presence of the townspeople, it was Martyr Hajj Jihad Shafik Khazaal Khanafer (Hajj Zohair), who was martyred on September 20, 2024, in the strike on the Al-Kaaem area. This was on September 21, when people gathered in the town despite all the surrounding circumstances, and it was a grand and amazing scene. On that day, the sounds of warplanes and drones did not subside, and while bidding farewell to the martyr in the town mosque, warplanes carried out a raid in one of the areas of Aynatha on the hill directly opposite the mosque. The martyr's sons and those who had come to bid him farewell raised their hands and chanted, “We are with you, Hussein, and we will never be humiliated.” The scene changed even more, and tears of sadness turned into patience and steadfastness.
25 September
The confrontation then escalated dangerously in the south on September 23, 2024, with shelling raining down on the entire south from the early hours of the morning. Southerners fled to various areas that day, while a number of young men remained in their villages to protect their land and repel any attacks. At dawn on September 25, after most of the residents had fled the town of Aynatha and the shelling intensified, two young men, Hussein Muhammad Baydoun and Ali Ahmad Bassam, were killed. They were buried immediately in the garden without a funeral or a large gathering of residents. Baydoun's father, a volunteer with the Health Committee in Aynatha, recounts that day: "Hussein and Ali were killed at dawn on September 25, around 3:30 a.m. The day before, they visited me in the hospital, said goodbye, and went to work as if they sensed that their last hours were approaching. On the day of the funeral, there were only about fifteen or sixteen of us: me, the father of the martyr Ali, Sheikh Abbas Ibrahim, Hajj Ghanem, a number of young people from the Health Corps, and, let's not forget, the young scouts from Al-Risala who also helped us. A number of young people who were later martyred also attended."
As the bombing continued in the south, Aynatha continued to lose its young people one after another, day after day, whether in Aynatha or outside it. The bodies of the martyrs were transported to different places, less dangerous than Aynatha, and were buried until the end of the war and the return to Aynatha, where these young people were honored with a solemn funeral...
After the war ended and a ceasefire was declared at 4 a.m. on November 27, 2024, the residents returned immediately to the town, most of whom had been waiting in Khaldeh with the rest of the residents of the south in neighboring villages and towns. From the very first moment, operations began to clear the rubble, open the roads, and recover the bodies. One witness recounts those first hours: "At 4 a.m., we were in Khaldeh waiting for the ceasefire to be announced so we could head straight to Aynatha. When we arrived, the work had already begun. The bodies of the martyrs were strewn along the sides of the road, from the entrance to Aynatha to its center, and the young people were doing their job to the best of their ability. Bodies of martyrs were recovered from Aynatha and beyond, from neighboring villages and even from the Bekaa. Mothers and relatives from the Bekaa were seen in Aynatha, searching for any trace of their sons." Then the work moved on to removing the rubble from the Martyrs' Garden and removing the blue dome, which had completely collapsed onto the ground, with many pieces scattered around the site. An attempt was then made to search for what remained of the graves and to carry out preliminary restoration work until the 66-day truce ended and work could be completed to restore the site and prepare for the grand funeral.
After the 66-day truce, work began on
improving and expanding the destroyed cemetery, which had been filled with all
its previous martyrs. The challenges after returning to the town were as
follows: Assessing the extent of the damage caused by the destruction,
searching for graves and restoring them as necessary, and then planning to
expand the site and bury new martyrs.
All of this required a great deal of planning
and effort to restore and attach the land to the cemetery. The steps were then
divided as follows: removing the rubble, identifying the old graves, expanding
the land, building walls, and digging and building new graves.
During this period, a large number of deposits were transferred to Aynatha and buried again in the town cemetery, and the residents began to visit them and bring flowers there. Some of the martyrs from neighboring villages were also buried in the Aynatha cemetery, because those villages had not yet been liberated, such as Aytarun and Maroun al-Ras.
While preparations for the cemetery were underway, another team was making arrangements for the funeral. Once the cemetery was ready, the date of the funeral was set. Thirty martyrs will be buried in the Aynatha Martyrs' Cemetery, including a female civilian martyr, the sister of a martyr who died in 2017.
February 22, 2025, was set as the day for the funeral and commemoration of the town's martyrs. Work began several days before the date by bringing the rest of the martyrs from their places of deposit, then the day before the funeral, those concerned worked to arrange everything necessary to organize the place for the farewell ceremony for the families of their sons and fathers, and to organize the place for the ceremony and funeral.
Dawn broke on Saturday, and I remember not sleeping that night. The farewell ceremony was scheduled to begin at 9 a.m., so we returned to the same place, but the scene was very different today. All the coffins were surrounded by their families and loved ones, everyone's eyes were filled with tears, and the wailing and cries of mothers could be heard everywhere. It was a shared sense of loss and grief. It was not just a story of a father who lost his son, or a son who lost his father. The scene was much bigger than that. That day, Anatha was experiencing a single grief, a single loss, and a single pain. We realized then that we had all lost our loved ones. No one's tears stopped flowing, the hugs did not disappear, nor did the words of solidarity. I cannot forget the scene of consolation that day. I was with the wife of a missing martyr, guiding her to the wives of the martyrs who were asking about him, when she saw one of them and hugged her, and they both began to cry. The wife of the martyr in the coffin said, “I comforted you, thank God, our pain is now one, but you are in a more difficult situation than me. My husband is in front of me, but yours is not. I don't know how we can comfort you!” All that remained was a sad smile, another hug, and words of consolation, patience, and praise. The scene did not change during the two hours of farewell. As you wandered among the coffins, you saw the same scene with different faces. A family mourning their loss, children crying for their parents, a mother crying for her child, young people crying for their friends, every mother crying for her children. It seemed like butterflies fluttering around a light, butterflies that keep approaching the light until they stick to it, even though they know they will burn. With these words, Sheikh Abbas described the scene.
From that closed hall, the martyrs were transported in decorated cars befitting them to the Martyr Salah Ghandour Roundabout, where nearly 70 martyrs had been killed. It was at this spot that the martyr Salah Ghandour carried out a suicide operation in 1995, and from there the funeral procession began, with a message described by the sheikh as: "O martyr Salah, your blood and your remains have borne fruit. This is your harvest: martyrs, victory, pride, and dignity. And these martyrs today will begin their funeral procession from the point where you ascended, so that one generation meets another, meaning that this resistance is a resistance of generations, a resistance that does not tire, does not surrender, and does not retreat or back down, with one generation handing over to the next. The funeral procession set off to reach the designated point, and the message here was also from Sheikh Shier to the symbolism of carrying the coffins the rest of the way, to be deliberate with the aim of reaching the garden while they are on the shoulders of their loved ones, as if we have a sea of people, and above this sea are yellow coffins. This image was also intentional, to be etched in the minds of young and old alike. With this scene, the coffins reached the platform.
"Forgive me, my beloved ones, for today is the day of farewell, O Aynatha, O Mount Amal, O town of scholars and martyrs, O stars shining in the sky, O glory shining on the hills of Amal... Aynatha, rise up and embrace the bodies of the martyrs of Haydar, men who did not bow down to the tyrants, nor did they bow down when the battle raged... Aynatha, rise up and gather the fragments that flew away in love and sacrifice for Muhammad, peace be upon him and his family, and the innocent blood that was shed in the sanctuary of the Mosque of Hussein, peace be upon him. Today we gather all the heads that were raised by the spears of the Zionists..." With these words, Ali Khanafer mourned all our martyrs, conveying in his words some of their heroism, some of our longing, and some of what is in our hearts.
The speech ended and the oath was taken, and the loved ones lined up, carrying the coffins on their shoulders in an orderly row, as if each of them were martyrs waiting for their turn to enter the garden. The sheikh described this line-up as an orderliness of our lives, but on the scale of these martyrs. The bodies settled in their places, and this place became a new refuge and haven, growing with its members and visitors, becoming the beginning and end of everything in this life, from which all days begin.
After the funeral and burial ceremonies, work continued on the cemetery to change its appearance and decorate it in a manner befitting the honor of these martyrs. Those involved worked to hang pictures, arrange the place, and plant flowers, so that it would return to being more beautiful than it was before.
