As northerners sent home, hard-hit Metula says more time needed to heal war wounds

METULA – Two hours after most IDF troops withdrew from southern Lebanon earlier this week, Metula Mayor David Azoulay stood on the edge of town and gazed across some fields toward the village of Kafr Kila, an Iranian-backed Hezbollah stronghold less than a kilometer away.

“I don’t know what will be in the next 10 days,” Azoulay said. “I don’t know what will be tomorrow.”

From October 8, 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles and drones into Israel in solidarity with fellow terror group Hamas, until November 27, 2024, when a ceasefire was reached, Metula was the scene of near daily devastation, forcing nearly all of its 2,100 residents to flee.

Now, with the tenuous ceasefire still holding, the Israeli government is asking those evacuated from across the north since the outbreak of the war — 60,000 people in all — to return to their homes starting in early March.

“But there is nothing to return to,” Azoulay said.

A city hall survey recently found that 62 percent of Metula residents will not return in March, and another 16% say they will not return at all.

Liron Alkobi, 28, counted herself and her boyfriend in the latter group. She had come to Metula to clean the house of her boyfriend’s parents that had been damaged during the war, but had no intention of staying.

Before the war, Alkobi had lived with her boyfriend in Metula. Once they were evacuated to Tiberias, “we made new friends and started a business, Extreme Sport.”

“We don’t want to come back,” she said.

The war’s destruction

Metula says it was hit harder than any other location in the north during the war. Because of its proximity to the border, the city wasn’t only subject to rocket and drone attacks, but also anti-tank missiles, which only have a range of a few kilometers, more than enough to reach the Galilee panhandle town from across the border.

Out of 650 homes in Metula, 460 have sustained damage from attacks, 120 of them severely, according to a letter the city sent to the attorney general citing property tax claims, Haaretz reported recently.

Azoulay said that 30 public buildings in the town had also been heavily damaged. Hundreds of anti-tank missiles were fired at the town.

In the letter, Metula’s city council petitioned the government to postpone the return of the city’s residents until July 1 so it can focus on rebuilding.

“There are no lights in the streets, no sidewalks, no health clinics, schools, or grocery stores,” Azoulay told The Times of Israel.

The government wants people to return as “a symbol of victory,” he said. But he argued that it is still too soon.

Among the public buildings that were hit was the local elementary school, which was heavily damaged. Repairs are not expected to be completed for several months.

“Children who have been evacuated for the past two school years have already changed schools so often,” Azoulay said. “Why should families move back here when their children will have to go to yet another school?”

There are also worries that fighting could resume, endangering returnees or forcing them to leave yet again.

The Israel Defense Force has tried to plan for this by bolstering defenses on the Israeli side of the border, tripling troop numbers as compared to before the war and setting up military posts at the entrance to every Israeli border community. It has also invested in better surveillance capabilities, including more cameras, radars, and sensors.

Across the border, Israeli soldiers are maintaining their presence at five posts along the frontier indefinitely. One of those posts is on a hill opposite Metula.

‘Part of the routine’

With rolling hills, green fields, and the snow-capped peaks of the Golan Heights, Metula is surrounded by beauty. Within the town, however, is destruction.

Everywhere there are shards of glass, debris, rubble, and ruined houses.

Metula was once a tourist spot. The Canada Center, home to an Olympic-sized swimming pool, two ice skating rinks, and other attractions, is closed indefinitely.  The last update on its website lists hours for the end of the Sukkot holiday in early October 2023.

The area remains a closed military zone, meaning no visitors can enter without authorization from the army. It maintains the feel of a war zone, with military jeeps and heavy vehicles rumbling over chewed-up roads.

Before the October 7 Hamas-led attack, Liat Cohen Raviv “believed that the IDF would always protect us,” she said.

Raviv, a Metula resident for the past 30 years, recalled that resident had become used to the routine of low-level harassment from across the border, including Hezbollah supporters jeering at the Israelis or pointing lasers at drivers’ eyes to blind them.

“We considered that just part of the routine,” Raviv said.

“We had the strong belief of who we are, what we are, and how protected we are,” she said. “Yet on October 7, that idea crumbled. We are not as protected as we thought, and now it’s a process of regaining confidence.”

Raviv still spends most of her time evacuated away from the city but has tried to rebuild confidence for the move back with a series of dark-humor videos about life in Metula now.

In one, she orders pizza and gives directions around destroyed roads and houses. In another, she tries to borrow sugar from neighbors but finds there is none. In the end, she finds sugar in the teachers’ room at the destroyed elementary school.

“If you’re not going to laugh about it, then you’re probably going to cry about it, right?” said Raviv, who heads Matzpinim, a civic forum for evacuated northerners she and others founded a few weeks after the war began.

Her jokes come with a pointed edge, however, like a skit in which she quips about needing an athletics department to “chase after people in the government” to help the north.

“Nobody will talk to us,” she said.

Currently, 20 people live in Metula full-time, according to a municipality spokesperson. As more northern residents return, they realize that they will need more than just four walls and a roof to come back to.

“We have to make sure that we have culture, education, businesses, coffee places, medicine, and public transportation,” she said, “which, all together, give you quality of life.”

Bunker mentality

According to the compensation plan as explained by MK Ze’ev Elkin, head of the Northern Rehabilitation Directorate, northern residents who return to their homes in early March will receive grants for a maximum of NIS 25,360 ($7,165) per adult and NIS 12,680 ($3,580) per child for up to seven kids.

Families with children are supposed to be given the option to remain in their current state-funded accommodations until the end of the school year, though some say they are being forced to move back earlier.

Kila view: Metula’s edge looking toward Kafr Kila in southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights.

“The hotel asked us to leave,” said Eitan Shkalim, a Metula resident who has lived with his family in a Tiberias hotel since the war began. “The school is burned down. We are doing renovations on our house. Where are we supposed to go?”

Elkin said that funds from a budget of NIS 3.4 billion ($960 million) will be allocated to local authorities in the north to prepare for the return of residents. Some of the money will be allocated to ensure that educational institutions such as schools and daycare centers can reopen and operate.

The rebuild is taking time. Metula’s main street, once lined with beautiful cafes, a promenade, and boutique hotels, is today a construction site.

Even City Hall remains a work in progress. Throughout the war, Azoulay and his staff were relocated to a bunker in the center of town.

“We’re still there,” he said.

Elkin could not be reached for comment.

As the move back date approaches, the cross-border violence has yet to completely halt, with the IDF continuing to operate against Hezbollah when it identifies threats.

Ahead of Tuesday’s pullout, the IDF said it carried out “intensive activity” in southern Lebanon, removing any remaining threats it could find, from caches of Hezbollah weapons to tunnel infrastructure. The troops operated in areas up to eight kilometers (5 miles) inside Lebanon.

The night before the pullout, “our house shook” from the bombs, said Galit, a Metula resident who requested that only her first name be used.

She and her husband had returned to their damaged house that day to work on removing debris before contractors came to begin repairs. They want to stay in Metula, Galit said, but it is a “terrifying situation.”

“This terror isn’t just the problem of Israel or even of the Middle East,” she said. “This is a worldwide problem. Terror will knock on anyone’s door.”