On the border with Lebanon, the towns are almost emptied of their inhabitants. The Israelis are hoping for a large-scale war to drive Hezbollah away.
“They can see us, this road is dangerous.” Annat Zisovich scans the mountains, her gaze watchful. Less than two kilometers away, the top of the hills marks the border with Lebanon: “Hezbollah is entrenched along the border. It is a constant threat.”
Annat is the spokesperson for Kibbutz Yiftah, which is almost adjacent to Lebanese territory. In mid-October, a few days after the fighting between Hezbollah and the Israeli army began, she fled her home with her husband and two children to take refuge in a hotel in Tiberias, 50 kilometers to the south. Every Friday, a day of rest in Israel, she returns to the kibbutz “to support our soldiers who are on duty here.” The 48-year-old brings them a few cakes and the support of the community, which has almost entirely fled. “Out of 300 residents, only about 20 have returned to the kibbutz,” she tells Duty.
The North under threat
Soldiers stand behind metal barriers at the entrance to Yiftah. In the small towns bordering Lebanon, these soldiers from the north are almost the only ones left there, in case of a land invasion. The kibbutz is empty, the shutters of the houses are closed, no cars drive through this town that is usually lively on Fridays. “We all want to go home,” says Annat, “but it’s too dangerous.”
With a dejected look, she drives past agricultural fields covered in ash. “No houses were hit by missiles in Yiftah. However, the plantations surrounding the kibbutz were decimated by fires, due to Hezbollah rockets.” In early June, rockets fired by the Shiite group caused major fires in northern Israel. “The kibbutz almost burned down,” Annat says, pointing to scorched trees on the outskirts of the town.
The sirens sound daily in northern Israel, “especially in the last few weeks,” Annat says, because since early June, the fighting has escalated dangerously. The IDF, the Israeli military, has approved a plan to attack Lebanon for “total war,” and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has warned the Jewish state that he “does not fear war.” On Thursday, in response to Israel’s assassination of a senior Hezbollah commander, the Shiite militia fired 200 rockets into Israeli territory, killing a soldier from the Yiftah Reserve Armored Brigade. It was one of its most massive attacks in recent months.
Since October 8, the day after Hamas attacked Israel, the fighting has been mainly contained around the border between Lebanon and Israel. A high-intensity conflict would lead to deadly clashes in the major cities of both countries. For Annat Zisovich, such a scenario would be “destructive” for Israel. “We must favor the diplomatic option, because Hezbollah is heavily armed,” she says. But in her entourage, this discourse is in the minority: “Most people in the north want a strong war, they want to end the terrorist threat once and for all.”
Support for total war
A few kilometers away, Kiryat Shmona resembles a ghost town. Before October 7, the town on the border with Lebanon had a population of nearly 20,000. Barely 1,000 souls remain. Inhabited mostly by Israelis who support the Likud party, Kiryat Shmona is usually a supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu. But the threat posed by Hezbollah is creating anti-government anger among the residents who remain. This is the case for Moshe Benzaken, 38. “The government is weak. It does not have the courage to really confront Hezbollah. However, we have the power to defeat this militia with our powerful army,” he says, his face lined with anger. Moshe fled the rockets to Haifa at the beginning of the war, “but I could not bear to be a refugee in my own country.” So I came back after two weeks.”
The man walks through the empty streets of Kiryat Shmona. Most of his friends have left the city. “It’s sad to live like this,” he tells the Duty. A tour guide in the region, he has not been able to work since the war began. But like all Israelis living near Lebanon, he receives state aid of 6,000 shekels (about $2,200) a month to live. Moshe says he is “not afraid of Hezbollah’s missiles” because “they usually fall on military positions.”
He heads toward a shelter in the street, a nine-square-meter facility with thick concrete walls. “There are these all over the city,” he says. “You can come here if the sirens go off.” In eight months of war, he has only had to take refuge in such a shelter once. “I hope it was the first and the last. Who knows what the Hezbollah terrorists might do tomorrow?” he asks, pointing to the nearby hill that separates him from Lebanon. “We occupied southern Lebanon until 2000. We can go back if that’s the price we have to pay for peace here. Total war is the only option for a return to normal life.”
This is also what the members of Lobby 1701 think, a group of activists from the north who demand that the State of Israel ensure the return of their security. The name of the association refers to Resolution 1701 voted by the United Nations Security Council after the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel. This imposed the disarmament of the Shiite militia and its withdrawal north of the Litani River, 30 kilometers from the border. Demands that Hezbollah has not respected until today since the militia, whose military arsenal is said to be more powerful than in 2006, is stationed on the border with Israel. On Thursday, after Hezbollah fired rockets on Israeli territory, Lobby 1701 accused Israel, on its X account, of having “abandoned the inhabitants of the north”, deploring that there were no “planes [de chasse israéliens] on the way to Beirut”.
To push Hezbollah back from the border, “total war is the only option,” insists Ariel Frish, rabbi and deputy head of security in Kiryat Shmona. Armed with an HK416 automatic weapon, the cowboy-looking man enters a completely demolished home. “It was a Hezbollah rocket that destroyed everything on October 26,” he says, keeping one hand on his weapon. Kiryat Shmona is targeted two to three times a day by terrorist missiles. Here, the Iron Dome [système de défense antiaérien d’Israël] can’t do much, because the missile launch is too close. The residents have only 20 seconds to find shelter when a warning siren sounds.”
The security official gets busy. “Let’s not delay, we are on maximum alert today. Yesterday, the Israeli army killed a senior Hezbollah official. They might retaliate,” he announces, sounding alarmed. “Since the beginning of the war, one civilian has been killed and twenty others wounded in Kiryat Shmona,” laments Ariel Frish. “Hezbollah is using new, more deadly weapons. It has acquired a military arsenal that we have never seen before. We cannot live with this threat at our doorstep. We must cleanse South Lebanon.”
October 7 was a turning point for northern Israelis. Once confident in the Israeli army’s ability to protect them, they now feel vulnerable. Those living near the border fear that Hezbollah will commit a massacre similar to that perpetrated by Hamas. “It’s possible,” says Yahir Levy, 39, a resident of Kiryat Shmona. “They dug tunnels that connect Lebanon to Israel, they can come here and kill us right in the eyes.” The man, who has remained in the town since the start of the war with his father and brother, takes refuge in an underground shelter set up in his home every time the sirens sound. “But the shelter won’t protect me if they come to Kiryat Shmona.”
Hezbollah has expressed its refusal of an all-out war, and the United States is pressuring Israel to avoid such a scenario. But in the north, the drums of war are beating, the balance of power is fragile, the region could at any moment tip into chaos.
This report was financed with the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund-The duty.