Bedouin and Jewish residents who evacuated from north return home to mourn and rebuild

ARAB AL-ARAMSHE – Adeb Mazal, 36, the head of the Bedouin village Arab al-Aramshe, stopped his car on Sunday morning right on the Lebanese border. He was on his way to inspect the damage at the community center where a Hezbollah-launched anti-tank missile attack killed one soldier and wounded 17 other soldiers and civilians in April 2024.

He opened the trunk of his car, pulled out a package of cat food, and fed a stray cat.

“Since the war, there are more stray cats and dogs,” Mazal said. “There are even cows and donkeys that wandered in from Lebanon.”

Like their Jewish neighbors in Kibbutz Adamit, 2.2 kilometers (1.4 miles) away, the 1,700 residents of Arab al-Aramshe — the only non-Jewish community evacuated in Israel for 16 months during the war — have returned to their homes in the Western Galilee.

Sunday was the first day that kindergartens, schools, and offices were officially opened in 32 communities in northern Israel. Residents of Arab al-Aramshe and Adamit in the Western Galilee were among the 60,000 people uprooted during the war. Now, they are restarting their lives — but with an altered set of perceptions.

Mazal said that the massacre of October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists launched a devastating attack on southern Israel, slaughtering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 hostages amid acts of brutality and sexual assault, underscored a stark new reality.

“Hamas killed and kidnapped Bedouin Arabs in the south,” Mazal said. “We have no doubt that Hezbollah would also kill and kidnap us in the north.”

The Hezbollah terror group began striking northern Israel on October 8, 2023, in support of Hamas during the war in Gaza. More than a year of Hezbollah attacks killed 46 civilians and 80 IDF soldiers and reservists.

The conflict was halted on November 27, 2024, with a temporary ceasefire in Lebanon that has mostly held.

Mazal said he had plenty of work to do to rebuild the village, but nowhere to do it, since the offices in the community center building were destroyed.

“This is my office now,” Mazal said, holding up his phone as he stood in the community center, taking in the damage, again. Several pigeons flew in through shattered windows.

The village is set on three rolling hills with grazing cows and goats. Mazal and a friend, Ali Abu Shahen, 25, drove this Times of Israel reporter up a narrow road chewed by tank treads to the northern-most edge of Arab al-Aramshe for a quick visit to an area that is still a closed military zone.

From the hilltop, one could see the Mediterranean Sea to the west. In the east, the snow-capped peak of Mount Sannine in Lebanon, 109 kilometers (68 miles) away, was also visible.

View of snow-capped Mt. Sannine in Lebanon, from Arab al-Aramshe on March 2, 2025. (Diana Bletter/Times of Israel)

Abu Shahen looked down below at the ruined houses in the mostly Bedouin village of Dhiara in Lebanon, where relatives of Arab al-Aramshe residents used to live. The meandering border cut a thin line between the two villages.

“Before the war, we’d come here every week,” Abu Shahen said. “We’d go close to the border to watch weddings and wave to the people on the other side. The village didn’t want Hezbollah, but the group took it over and destroyed it.”

Mazal looked around the pastoral landscape.

“It was very difficult for people of Arab al-Aramshe to be evacuated during the war,” he said. “Some of them returned before the ceasefire, even though it went against Home Front Command instructions. The Bedouin are tied to the land and their animals.”

Then he glanced at his watch — and troops stationed nearby. “Our visit is up,” he said. “It’s time to go.”

‘Shrapnel and debris all over’

At Kibbutz Adamit, Sunday was also a day of new beginnings.

A teacher stood at the doorway welcoming children to the gan, or kindergarten, which had been closed for almost two years.

“Welcome back!” she called to one of the children running up to greet her.

The staff was the same as it had been before the war, but half of the children registered in the kindergarten had not yet returned.

“Some said they will come back after Passover,” said Adamit manager Naomi Bechor, who estimated that 80 percent of the 370 residents of the tree-filled kibbutz will return to start the new school year in September.

During the war, there was some damage to houses in the kibbutz, which was established in 1958. However, Hezbollah rockets severely damaged the kibbutz community center and several other public buildings.

A month ago, when Bechor received word that the kindergartens would be opening on March 2, she said she had “no idea how that could happen since there was still shrapnel and debris all over the place.”

Yet kibbutz staff and volunteers pitched in to get the kindergartens ready.

“For a year and a half, I dreamed of returning home,” said Efrat Amir, who was evacuated with her five children, aged two to 17, while her husband stayed behind in the kibbutz to serve in the emergency response team.

Amir moved to Kibbutz Kfar Masaryk, 35 kilometers (21 miles) away, where she commuted to Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, where she works as a nurse.

The community center of Kibbutz Adamit, destroyed by Hezbollah rockets during the war. (Diana Bletter/Times of Israel)

“But when I left Kfar Masyryk, where I had made friends and felt part of the community, I cried,” Amir said.

On Sunday morning, Amir had just dropped off her youngest child at his new nursery school in Adamit after getting two of her older children onto a school bus at 6:30 a.m. They are now commuting back to Kfar Masaryk so they can finish the school year at their current school.

“It’s very confusing,” Amir admitted.

Amir accompanied this reporter along a path through an overgrown landscape to the destroyed community center. She stood by an overlook and gazed out at the Lebanese border, about 400 meters (0.25 mile) away.

“We thought we lived in a Garden of Eden,” Amir said.

She described how her oldest son used to wander through the woods with his friends all the way to the border with Lebanon.

“The only thing I worried about was snakes,” she said, looking back in astonishment at what she called her naivete.

“We thought there was peace and now we realize that there was never peace,” she said. “We lived in greenery and happiness, but on the other side, they lived in hate and war. And now those two realities have collided.”