(Bloomberg) -- A chandelier hangs by a thread next to a collapsed wall in the dining room. Shattered crockery litters the kitchen floor, the fridge open, a key hanging beside a blown-out window. This house in the northern Israeli village of Metula, once a favored holiday resort, is one of scores hit in the past six months by the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which says it’s acting to support the besieged Palestinians of Gaza.
Mayor David Azoulay stands inside the house hit by two anti-tank missiles, part of a tour of his evacuated community. “Our national anthem tells of our being ‘a free people living in our land,’ but we are not free anymore to live here,” he says. “I sleep in a bomb shelter. I rise early and walk the streets to check on the latest damage. And I weep.”
His insecurity highlights the potency of the conflict that is under way on Israel’s northern border, while the world is focused on suffering in Gaza as Israel seeks to destroy Hamas. Like the Palestinian group, Hezbollah is backed and heavily funded by Iran and is considered a terrorist group by the US. It, too, states openly its goal of destroying Israel. And, by all accounts, its forces and firepower are far more developed. Erratic spikes in fighting are a reminder that if clashes get out of hand, they will prove harder to resolve and end with even greater devastation than the war in Gaza.
Just last week, Israel carried out one of its deepest strikes inside Lebanon since fighting began. Israel’s air force hit targets in the Bekaa Valley, driving the Lebanese death toll since October to over 250. Hezbollah unleashed one of its most forceful attacks in response, firing 100 Katyusha rockets. The Israeli death toll from Hezbollah in the current conflict stands at 17.
US and French officials have been shuttling between Beirut and Tel Aviv in the hope of brokering an agreement to move forces of each side back from the frontier and end escalation. A wider war with Hezbollah could draw Iran directly into the conflict and force the US to do the same.That’s the doomsday scenario Israeli officials have repeatedly said they were preparing for since Oct. 7, when Hamas operatives burst from Gaza into southern Israel, killing and kidnapping hundreds. Israeli military chief of staff Herzi Halevi last month said what is increasingly heard from the top ranks of the government: “We are now focusing on being prepared for war in the north.”Hezbollah started firing missiles at Israel’s north following the October attack in support of Hamas. Within days, the Israeli government began ordering more than 60,000 residents of 43 communities in the area to evacuate. As its air force and artillery attacked Hezbollah outposts across the border, some 90,000 Lebanese were also relocated.
Nearly all Israelis have been traumatized by the October attack, but those in the verdant north were hit especially hard. This is not only because of the assault’s brutality -- entire families were killed in their homes -- but because their vaunted military was so slow and failed so miserably to stop it for many long hours. And what Hamas did in the south, according to former Israeli intelligence officer Sarit Zehavi, was drawn from Hezbollah’s playbook.
“The plan of Hezbollah and its elite Radwan force goes back 10 years and involved taking over the whole of Galilee,” said Zehavi, who founded the Alma Research and Education Organization dedicated to studying Hezbollah and the security problems of northern Israel. “Southern Lebanon is pocked with tunnels built for war, just like Gaza. What happened on Oct. 7 was based exactly on that plan and could be a dress rehearsal for what happens here.”
Hezbollah never publicly acknowledged the existence of such a plan, which Zehavi said stipulated Lebanese militants crashing through the border and taking over not only military bases but kibbutz collective farms and small towns and seizing residents as hostages.
Since Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah, the area had been relatively quiet, with many assuming it would stay that way. But the same had been assumed of Hamas and the south — and the failure there to understand what was being planned has forced a re-examination of conventional wisdom about Hezbollah. The Lebanese government places the blame for the tension on Israel, saying its forces have consistently violated Lebanese airspace and used prohibited weapons as it kills Lebanese civilians.The current negotiations between Lebanon and Israel are unlikely to solve the problems because they’re aimed at convincing Hezbollah to withdraw from the border area, according to Zehavi.
“Hezbollah is also a social movement and political party,” she said. “How can it withdraw from southern Lebanon? We should be talking about disarming the area. An agreement to evacuate eight to 10 kilometers, as is being discussed, will not give us security.”
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says he won’t agree to a cease-fire until there’s a truce in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, according to Hamas officials who don’t distinguish between fighters and civilians. Talks are under way in Qatar to stop the fighting, but they’re long and drawn out.
The feelings of insecurity in Israel’s north are so profound that many residents, who’ve been living in hotels or with relatives elsewhere in the country for nearly six months, are threatening never to come back unless the threat they sense from Hezbollah is removed. They no longer have faith that their military can protect them if Hezbollah were to invade. That’s led many Israelis to favor ongoing military action. Some top officials in Jerusalem, including Foreign Minister Israel Katz, said they regret having evacuated the area.
Ariel Frisch, deputy security chief for the town of Kiryat Shmona, points to kindergartens and schools that have been hit and describes new weapons used by Hezbollah, including explosive drones and the Burkan, developed with Iranian assistance and capable of carrying a load of up to 500 kg of explosives.
Kiryat Shmona, with 24,000 former inhabitants, is the largest community in the border area. Never in its history had it been forcibly evacuated, Frisch said. A top military officer once told town leaders that he’d evacuate Beirut before Kiryat Shmona, he added. Yet it was done two weeks after the Hamas attack and in utter chaos. Residents are divided among more than 200 hotels. It’s a ghost town.
Families are enrolling their children in other schools as the area sits vacant except for tanks and soldiers. Residents like Frisch say their only concern is an end to the threat by Hezbollah — and if it doesn’t come soon, the area will wither away.
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