It only took a day after the start of the Gaza war for the first rocket to be launched from south Lebanon into the Galilee.
Since then, there have been attacks almost daily, and on some days dozens of rockets are fired. Nine civilians and 11 soldiers have been killed in Israel. More than 200 Hezbollah fighters and about 40 civilians have died in Lebanon.
The Israeli government evacuated 43 communities within five kilometers of the Lebanese border, from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Golan Heights in the east, creating an effective security zone inside Israel along the entire length of the northern border.
The evacuees that Israel forgot
More than 60,000 Israelis from the North have been displaced and are living in hotels or with relatives, friends, or in rental accommodation, away from the danger zone as the state of low-level warfare continues.
The evacuees have already been away from their homes for six months, and the government has extended the evacuation period into the summer. Israeli government officials have held talks with the heads of the local municipalities in the North about the possibility that the school year will not open on September 1 because of the ongoing tension and the potential for a major flare-up.
The residents of the North feel abandoned. Only a few ministers have actually visited the area, and no designated administration similar to the Tekuma Authority, which was formed to handle the western Negev, has been formed for the North.
“Every morning, I wake up early and walk around Metula. Then I cry,” said David Azoulai, the mayor of the small community which straddles the Lebanese border. “Then I call the evacuees whose homes have been damaged, and then I feed the dogs that were left behind.”
Azoulai, along with a small security detachment, is the only civilian left in Metula. The rest of the 2,500 residents were evacuated to hotels in Tiberias soon after the start of the Gaza war to escape Hezbollah rocket fire.
The border fence is only 150 meters from the first Metula home, and two Shia villages on hills across the border look down on the village, granting Hezbollah terrorists an unobstructed line of fire.
Every couple of days, a projectile slams into one of the deserted homes. The Russian-made Kornet anti-tank guided missiles have been particularly lethal: 130 of the 600 plus homes, in what was a thriving community based on agriculture and tourism, have already been damaged. Some have been totally destroyed.
Metula was founded by pioneer farmers from Russia in 1896 as the northernmost Jewish colony before Israel was established in 1948. On only one occasion in the past – in 1920 when Arab gunmen attacked British and French troops in the area – did the residents flee.
“We have to change the equation. I want the government to act and remove the Hezbollah threat. We don’t want all-out war, but I can’t see any other way,” said Azoulai. “I don’t trust Hezbollah, and I don’t trust Lebanon. Maybe an agreement between the US and Iran will remove the Hezbollah threat. All we want is to live in peace and security.”
Despite the daily cross-border exchanges of fire, the Hamas expectation that Hezbollah would launch an all-out war, opening a second front, has failed to materialize.
US envoy Amos Hochstein has drawn up a peace plan. But he recently suspended his shuttle diplomacy aimed at restoring quiet on the northern border, convinced that Hezbollah will continue its attacks until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
According to Lebanese media reports, Hochstein’s plan consists of three stages: a ceasefire in parallel with a Gaza ceasefire; Hezbollah gunmen withdrawing from the Israeli border and the deployment of some 15,000 Lebanese troops along the border; and indirect negotiations between Lebanon and Israel over marking the land border and adding an international observer force.
Israel says it will remove the Hezbollah threat, preferably via diplomatic channels. But if not, with a war. At the end of March, a senior Israeli official said that a ground operation would be launched in the North after an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. “Attaining the strategic objective of restoring the residents of the North to their homes will necessitate a ground war. We’ll do that after Rafah, not simultaneously,” the official said.
Sarit Zehavi, president of the Alma research center focusing on Israel’s security challenges in the North, believes that in the absence of a full-scale war, the Israel Defense Forces are currently following a middle, interim path.
“The objective of this third way is to obtain as many Israeli military gains as possible as long as fighting with Hezbollah continues, but to do so without descending into war, and to maintain this situation until a ceasefire is reached.”
The tit-for-tat attacks have been maintained to date to avoid a broad-scale conflagration that neither side currently wants, but the danger exists that a single mistake or miscalculation could lead to a full-scale war.
Some Israeli strikes are deep into Lebanese territory, more than 100 kilometers north of Metula, from north of Beirut to the Bekaa Valley around the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek. Targets have included Hezbollah’s drone warehouses and some of its air defense batteries.
The Hamas attack on October 7 was a copy-paste of the blueprint drawn up, and widely publicized, by Hezbollah a decade ago: a massive rocket barrage as a cover for large-scale cross-border infiltrations by well-trained, elite units with the aim of infiltrating Israeli border communities to kill and kidnap as many civilians and soldiers as possible.
The possibility of such an attack by Hezbollah’s Radwan strike force still exists, although is unlikely at this juncture due to the damage Israel has inflicted on Hezbollah (some 300 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, according to Israeli estimates) since October and the large deployment of Israeli forces along the border. The Israeli strikes in the border zone on the northern side of the border have forced Hezbollah to pull back most of its Radwan fighters.
However, the atrocities of October 7 have instilled fear in Israeli residents of the North, and few are likely to return to their homes until Hezbollah is pushed far from the border on a permanent basis. UN Resolution 1701, passed following the 2006 Second Lebanon War, called for the removal of all militia forces to north of the Litani River, 20-30 kilometers north of the border, but Hezbollah still deployed throughout southern Lebanon with impunity.
Kiryat Shmona, with a pre-war population of 24,000, lies 10 kilometers south of Metula. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the town sustained incessant rocket fire from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in south Lebanon, then dubbed Fatahland. But the residents stayed put, and the town became a symbol of Israeli steadfastness under fire.
Not long ago, a top IDF general told the mayor that he would evacuate Beirut before evacuating Kiryat Shmona. The town was not in the original government evacuation plan, but after October 7 residents started to flee and the government acceded to the demands to relocate Kiryat Shmona residents as well, turning it into the largest community in the North to be evacuated.
The evacuation itself was chaotic, as the residents clambered onto buses without the government organizing alternative accommodation in time.
Today, Kiryat Shmona resembles a ghost town. Only 3,000 residents remain – mostly emergency service workers and those who find it too difficult to relocate, such as the elderly and infirm.
Traffic is so light that the municipality has stopped operating the traffic lights. Only one supermarket is operating, and that closes at noon and often lacks fresh produce. Residents report that wolves and other wild animals roam the streets at night.
On March 27, a barrage of more than 30 rockets was directed at Kiryat Shmona, killing one person who was trapped in the burning rubble of a factory in the town’s industrial zone. Other buildings and vehicles were damaged. That attack came after an Israeli targeted killing of a senior member of a Palestinian Sunni militia and six other members of the group in the village of Hebbariyeh in southern Lebanon.
More than 25 buildings, six kindergartens, and two schools in Kiryat Shmona have been hit by Hezbollah rockets. Two people have been killed and more than a dozen wounded, including two who suffered serious injuries.
“Before October 7, we were prepared for Hezbollah rocket fire, but October 7 changed everything,” said Ariel Frish, Kiryat Shmona’s deputy security officer. “No one will come back until it’s safe. We will not live with the threat of Hezbollah knocking on our door, killing and raping us. If we don’t eliminate the threat, a war will be just a matter of time.”
Many of the evacuees have already decided not to return to Kiryat Shmona. Others are sitting on the fence. But the longer the uncertainty continues, the greater the chances are that residents of Kiryat Shmona, and the other evacuees from northern Israel, will relocate elsewhere on a permanent basis. Pressure is mounting on the government to act. ■