Israel-Hezbollah conflict: Border life under threat

In the distance, the snow-capped peak of Mount Hermon looms over Kiryat Shmona, a town in northern Israel.

For the past three months, Kiryat Shmona has resembled a ghost town with empty streets and few open shops. From time to time, the eerie silence is broken by the sound of loud explosions. 

The city lies close to the Israeli-Lebanese border. The military bases of Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite militant group, are only a few kilometers away on the other side of the border demarcation line.

"You hear an alert, and you have five seconds to go to the shelter. Most of the time you hear the boom and then afterwards you will hear an alert," says Ariel Frish, who is part of the municipality's emergency team. "It means that if I am driving through the city, anything could hit me."

Around 23,000 people live in the town in normal times. However, shortly after the terrorist attacks on towns and military bases in southern Israel on October 7 by the militant Islamist Hamas — classified as a terrorist organization by Germany, the US, the EU and other governments — the Israeli government ordered its evacuation, alongside all villages in the north up to 3.5 kilometers (2.2 miles) from the border.

Since then, at least 50,000 people have left their homes in the border area. In addition, the military estimates that up to 35,000 people from further south have relocated towards central Israel.

Three months after the start of the war in Gaza, it is uncertain when these displaced people will be able to return home. In the past weeks, the cross-border fighting involving anti-tank missiles, rockets, and Israeli airstrikes has intensified.

Will the conflict with Hezbollah escalate?

Every day, potential indications of a major war against Hezbollah are discussed in the Israeli media, and considered risky but inevitable. Both sides could miscalculate the situation, military analysts say, or Israel could opt for a preemptive strike to change the current status quo.

The October 7 Hamas terror attacks have reinforced Israel's military doctrine that it must never again be defenseless.

"I don't know when the war in the North is. I can tell you that the likelihood of it happening in the coming months is much higher than it was in the past," said Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi in a statement while visiting an exercise for reserve troops in northern Israel.

Frish is one of the estimated 2,000 residents who have remained in Kiryat Shmona. His family has left town. A school principal of a religious school for boys, he is now part of the city council's emergency team.

"People are scattered all over the country," explains Frish. Most of them are staying in hotels, while others have rented private flats. Children are placed in other schools, businesses are struggling to survive and the fields are lying idle in the surrounding countryside.

The last major war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006 lasted six weeks. "But this war that started with the invasion of Hamas in the south frightened everyone because we understood that the Hezbollah threats could come true," said Frish.        

Hezbollah more dangerous than Hamas

A few years ago, Hezbollah published plans showing how its Radwan elite unit would "conquer" the north of the Galilee region in Israel. In 2018, the Israeli army discovered tunnels dug deep into the mountainous area extending from southern Lebanon to Israeli communities.

"It sounded to most of the people like a fantasy of Hezbollah's. This couldn't be, it couldn't happen. We have the IDF. We are strong. It will never be," says Frish. "But after what happened on October 7 with Hamas, which is much less prepared and much less powerful, we understood that we are in grave danger."

Most northern residents have come to terms with the fact that going home is not on the cards any time soon. As long as Hezbollah remains "right on the the border," a return of the civilian population is not foreseeable, confirms an IDF officer from the Northern Command, on condition of anonymity.

At least nine soldiers and six Israeli civilians have been killed in the cross-border fighting so far, mainly by anti-tank missile fire. Hezbollah, says the IDF officer, is currently only using around "1% of its military capabilities." According to estimates by the Israeli military, the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia has around 150,000 precision-guided missiles aimed at the country.

Meital Fershtman Yogev is one of the tens of thousands of Israelis who can no longer go home. For the past three months, a small double room with a balcony in a hotel complex on the Sea of Galilee has become a temporary abode. Instead of holidaymakers spending the mild winter days by the lake, hundreds of residents of various kibbutzim from the border area with Lebanon are accommodated here.

Until October 7, she lived with her partner and two small children in Yiftach, a tranquil kibbutz with around 400 inhabitants, barely a kilometer away from the demarcation line with Lebanon.

"Home is supposed to be the safest, safest place on earth, and suddenly to realize that home isn't the safest place anymore. Living next to the border I always felt safe there. I was running in the kibbutz, seeing Lebanon, the thought came into my mind but went away like a cloud in the sky," she says.

The family left the day after the Hamas attacks to stay with friends further away, thinking it was just for a few days. They later joined with the other members of the kibbutz and moved to the hotel to stay together as a community.

'Never again' has happened again

"Maybe history does repeat itself. We said 'never again.' But it did happen. All these terrible things," she says, emphasizing that their situation is bearable compared to what happened in the south.

Everyone knows there is no easy answer as to what will happen next. At the moment, diplomacy is still being given a chance. Israel is insisting that Hezbollah comply with Resolution 1701, passed by the United Nations Security Council after the last Lebanon war in summer 2006, and withdraw to an area north of the Litani River.

But for the evacuees from Yiftach, a move like this doesn't answer all their safety concerns.

"How do you make an agreement with terrorists? This is crazy. So how do I know that in four years, it won't be me, us here? This is a war about our existence in Israel, in these borders," Fershtman Yogev says.

Last year, she was one of the thousands of Israelis who demonstrated against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's controversial judicial overhaul. Although the country initially seemed united after October 7, the divisions and doubts have resurfaced as to whether this government can resolve the crisis.

Her partner was drafted into the army reserve service in the south right at the beginning of the war. Although he has been back home for a fortnight now, he has already received a new deployment order, this time for the north.

"I'm afraid again. And I'm angry," Yogev says. "I'm angry about the country. I'm angry about the politicians. I'm angry. How did we end up here? How did it happen to us?"

Edited by: Rob Mudge; Davis Alley Van Opdorp