Since the start of the war in Gaza, “we have been expecting a real war with Lebanon, and even more so in recent days,” worries Florence Touati-Wachsstock: in the north of Israel, residents fear a new armed confrontation with the Lebanese Hezbollah after a sudden rise in tensions.
In this region, exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and the Lebanese Islamist movement have been almost daily since the start of the war against the Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 7.
Fears have been heightened since Saturday, after a rocket attack that killed 12 young people and injured dozens on a football field in Majdal Shams, a small Druze town located a few kilometers from Lebanon.
Visiting Majdal Shams on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hezbollah of being the perpetrator and warned that this “terrorist organization” would pay “a high price.”
For nearly ten months, Hezbollah has been firing projectiles at Israel, saying it is acting in support of Hamas and the Palestinians, but it has denied being the author of the deadly rocket fire.
“Stay? Leave?”
“Before, we felt safe, we didn’t feel any danger,” says Amal al-Shaar, a resident of Majdal Shams, at the bedside of her 12-year-old son Adam, who was injured by rocket shrapnel. Now, “we have paid the price with the lives of our children,” says the 46-year-old mother, emotion visible in her eyes.
“It’s scary and Majdal Shams has paid the price,” adds Florence Touati-Wachsstock, in Maalot, another small town in northern Israel that has become a target of Hezbollah fire. “We’re not even inside the shelter yet.” [antiaérien pour se protéger des bombardements] “We can already hear the explosions,” says the 47-year-old educator.
“Should we stay? Should we leave? When will we know we have to leave? We have no idea what might happen tonight, tomorrow,” she worries.
In the same region, an Israeli civilian was killed on Tuesday by a falling rocket.
At the Galilee Medical Center in the small town of Nahariya, fear of war with Hezbollah is on everyone’s lips.
On October 7, the day of the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war in the Gaza Strip, the director of the Galilee Medical Center, Masad Barhoum, decided to move services to the underground parking lot, which is protected from missile attacks.
“We are the only hospital operating underground or in a protected area since October 7,” said the doctor, an Israeli Arab.
“Ready to hold out for seven days”
Tens of thousands of Israelis living near the border were evacuated shortly after the start of the Gaza war nearly ten months ago, but in Nahariya, a small seaside town about 15 kilometers from the border, the population remained.
In Mr. Barhoum’s eyes, Nahariya has become the “new frontier,” now the closest place to the border where residents have not been evacuated, he said.
“When there is a war, it will be here,” he said, “but the medical center for the region is ready to hold out for seven days” without any contact with the outside world.
In the underground passages, between the different departments of the hospital, one can see small Israeli flags hanging in the form of garlands since the beginning of the war against Hamas, as a sign of support.
In the neonatology department, the first to be transferred to the basement, the babies are under heavy protection. The alarm sirens are not heard in the basement and only the noise of the incubators disturbs the silence of the room.
“We are safe here, far from the world,” says Vered Fleisher-Shefer, director of the department, who refuses to “live in fear.”
In 2006, during the second Lebanon war, thousands of rockets were fired by Hezbollah into northern Israel in a month. But this time, Mr. Barhom said, “the scenario that is emerging” in the event of a new war is thousands of rockets fired into Israel every day.