As the Israel Defense Forces launched waves of airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon and jet fighters roared overhead on Monday morning, Moshe Davidovich, the head of Western Galilee’s Mateh Asher Regional Council, said that the response to Hezbollah might be “too little, too late.”
“For the past year, we’ve lived in chaos, fear of the unknown, and helplessness,” Davidovich told The Times of Israel.
Of the 32 communities in the 82-square-mile (212-square-kilometer) Mateh Asher region, eight have been evacuated, with more than 7,000 residents considered internally displaced citizens. Located on the biblical land of the tribe of Asher, the regional council supports a mix of kibbutzim, moshavim, and Jewish towns — including the coastal Rosh Hanikra on Israel’s border with Lebanon — and two Arab villages.
The population of about 25,000 includes Jews, Muslims and Christians.
Schools in the Mateh Asher region and all areas north of Haifa have been closed indefinitely since Sunday morning; events have been canceled, and stores are empty, as the IDF Home Front Command has restricted public activities in northern Israel.
“There’s been nobody to help us for the past year,” said Davidovich. He is also chairman of the Conflict Zone Forum, a group that represents some 60,000 residents of the 23 municipalities, villages, and regional councils along Israel’s northern border who have been forced from their homes.
Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza during the war against Hamas there. So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 26 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 22 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria without any injuries.
The escalation in the north came after last week’s pager and walkie-talkie blasts in Lebanon, which killed more than 30 members of the terror group and wounded thousands of others. The attack was attributed to Israel, which has not commented. It also follows Israel’s assassination on Friday of top Hezbollah commanders Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wahbi, along with other senior members of the group, in an airstrike on a residential building in Beirut, where the terror group leaders had gathered for a meeting in an underground room.
‘The government doesn’t help’
Davidovich walked with this Times of Israel reporter to show her two new electric school buses.
“But there is no school for who knows how long, so there are no children to use them,” he said.
The slogan of the war has been, “Together we’ll win”; however, Davidovich said that the “politicians in Jerusalem don’t care about us in the north.”
“They tell us they understand what we are going through, but they’re fake,” he said. “They then go back to talking about what restaurant they’re going to eat in.”
He said he is worried about the emotional distress not only in his region but in all of the evacuated northern region.
“Elderly citizens who built this country, who fought for it, who built their communities, now go from hotel to hotel,” he said. “I attend funerals of dozens of people in our region who have died – not from disease but from sorrow.”
Every day, he said, people call him and ask when they can return to their homes.
He said that others have told him they have moved to the center of the country and “they’re not coming back.”
Emotional distress
Sitting in her office in the Mateh Asher Regional Council, Alegra Davidi, director of social services, apologized for looking tired.
“I was up all night,” Davidi said. “A social worker and I were helping a woman whose husband stabbed her with a knife.”
Since the start of the war, Davidi said that reports of domestic violence have almost doubled in the region, compared to previous years. Half of those cases are in the Jewish sector.
At the same time, the 34 social workers on her staff have received four times as many reports of sexual abuse, neglect, drug and alcohol abuse, or violent behavior among 18-and-under children.
“Every day, we get calls about children in distress,” Davidi said. She talked about one girl who had moved so many times she refused to leave her bedroom, and another young girl who died by suicide in the spring.
“The kids are paying the price of this war with anger, fear, and anxiety,” she said. “But this isn’t the end,” she said. “We’ll see even more traumas.”
Passing time
About 200 evacuated people from the Mateh Asher region now live at the Aqueduct Hotel, a five-minute walk from the regional council offices.
In the well-decorated lobby, people sit together in groups, quietly talking, and a few small children whose kindergarten was canceled play a board game on the floor. Outside, the swimming pool glitters in the hot sun, but residents cannot swim in it because of Home Front Command instructions.
There is the sense that the people here are moving almost in slow motion, marking time.
“It’s gone on for far too long,” said Yakov Lasry, who was evacuated with his wife from Kibbutz Rosh Hanikra at the start of the war. “We don’t see an end.”
A woman who asked not to be named added, “The hotel really tries to help us, but this isn’t a normal life.”
Dying plants
At the Regba Garden Center, owner Hasan Sheehan of Hurfeish showed The Times of Israel all the flowering plants that he had tried to grow in a hydroponic system.
“They all died because there were no customers,” he said.
The store is still crowded with colorful flowers, plants and spices, however. Wandering in on Monday was Israel Jibli from Shlomi, an evacuated town that sits at the border, about 12 miles away.
“I won’t evacuate out of fear,” he said. “I buy plants, I put on music, I have a grill on the barbecue. I believe that I have to live my life. A day that goes by doesn’t come back.”
He said he has trained his two Labradors not to be afraid of the sirens.
“They sleep with me in the reinforced room of my house,” he said. “I’ve trained them not to be afraid.”
Davidovich said, however, that he has no idea what to tell people.
“I don’t know which is worse,” he said. “Being evacuated or living with daily rockets and bombs flying overhead. People call me, and they don’t have shelters in their houses. What can I say? Where can they go?”
