In northern border town of Shlomi, a wary trickle home in the shadow of a fragile ceasefire

SHLOMI — Yonatan Baleli kept his falafel store open throughout the war even as Hezbollah rockets pounded the evacuated town of Shlomi, right on the border with Lebanon.

On Thursday morning, one day after the negotiated 60-day ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah went into effect, Baleli said that although he likes the new quiet, “there’s still no security for us here in the north.”

He looked toward the hill that marks the border between Israel and Lebanon. Since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah-led forces had attacked Shlomi and other communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it was doing so to support Gaza amid the war there that was sparked by the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7.

“I waited throughout the war thinking that I’d feel relieved when it was over,” Baleli said as he took a break from renovating his store. “But all I feel is uncertainty.”

“We killed [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah,” he said. “We killed a lot of Hezbollah fighters. But we still have 101 hostages in Gaza and a war there. And the government says we must wait another 60 days to see what happens.”

Temporary ceasefire

The deal brokered by the US secured a commitment from Hezbollah to stop its rocket fire while tasking the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) with preventing the terror group from rebuilding its infrastructure, US special envoy special envoy Amos Hochstein said on Wednesday.

Skeptics of the deal have questioned whether the LAF will be capable of standing up to Hezbollah, given that it has been unable to do so to date, but US officials argue that Western and Arab allies have now agreed to provide the LAF with more money, equipment and training.

On Thursday afternoon, the IDF said it carried an airstrike against a Hezbollah facility in southern Lebanon, after identifying activity there in clear violation of the ceasefire agreement. The facility had been used to hold medium-range rockets, according to the IDF. Also on Thursday afternoon, an interceptor missile was launched over the Western Galilee in response to what the IDF said later was a false alarm.

But on Thursday morning in Shlomi, residents of the town of 10,000 seemed to be waking up after a long war to a limited peace. There was more traffic on the road than there had been for months. The fighting was temporarily over and there was an odd, eerie quiet that came with the absence of explosions. Yet people expressed skepticism about what would happen next.

“We feel that the politicians agreed, but nobody’s said anything to us about what’s going on,” said Baleli, who lives in nearby Nahariya, which hadn’t been evacuated. He came to work at the falafel stand every day despite the dangers.

Some 60,000 residents were evacuated from northern towns on the Lebanon border shortly after Hamas’s onslaught in light of fears that Hezbollah would carry out a similar attack and due to increasing rocket fire by the terror group. Israel has been trying to make it safe for the residents to return, including through an ongoing ground operation launched in September.

Time to go home?

Residents remarked that the airstrike and interceptor missile incidents made them question whether they should return.

“The Shlomi municipality hasn’t told residents to return or to stay away,” said Shlomi spokesperson Ofir Shpigel. “We’re waiting for instructions.”

“As of now, there’s no plan to return home,” Shlomi Mayor Gabby Neeman told Army Radio on Wednesday. He complained that there “is no compensation being offered to residents for their losses, and no government commitment to invest in rebuilding the community.”

“Nothing is happening,” he said.

Neeman attended a meeting on Thursday of all the heads of municipalities in the Confrontation Line Forum with Knesset member Ze’ev Elkin, in charge of the Northern Rehabilitation Directorate.

Moshe Davidovich, chairman of the Confrontation Line Forum, said at the meeting that if they “want to tell the residents of the north to return home safely, we must ensure they truly feel safe. We must also ensure that all budgetary items are implemented, as nothing has been done so far.”

He said the two main focuses are “returning home and rehabilitating the region, and developing the region with a multi-year plan for the entire northern confrontation line.”

Since the war began, about 1.000 buildings in Shlomi have been damaged, said Shpigel. On Thursday, workers were trickling back to the town to start on repairs.

There was a festive reopening at the town’s Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot branch, which had been closed since October 8, 2023, with balloons and free refreshments for new and returning customers.

“The city isn’t back to normal yet, but we’re an anchor,” said Sagit Davidson-Cohen, the bank manager. She said she had waited more than a year to reopen the branch. “It’s very exciting.”

Still, Baleli was skeptical about what he called a “wait-and-see” attitude with the temporary ceasefire.

“To destroy a wall takes a few minutes,” Baleli said. “It will take two to three years to rebuild, to recover.”

Up close to the border

The road up to Shlomit, one of Shlomi’s newer neighborhoods, goes past the Hanita Forest, where there was the lingering smell of burnt trees lacing the air. The forest looked abandoned and still, with a sense of lurking danger.

In one of the last line of houses facing the border, Yaron Sella offered this reporter a tour through his home, which had been hit by Hezbollah rocket fire.

Sella and his family had evacuated for the whole war, and he wasn’t sure when the attack occurred.

He said his family wasn’t coming back yet because “we’re just getting organized.”

From Sella’s porch, one could see the border with Lebanon running in a zigzag up the side of the hill, only 300 meters (984 feet) away.

Down below is the initial infrastructure of a new neighborhood that is even closer to the border – less than 130 meters (426 feet).

More than 8,000 rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel in the past year, along with hundreds of drones and anti-tank guided missiles, resulting in the deaths of 45 civilians.

In addition, 76 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes, attacks on Israel, and in the ensuing ground operation launched in southern Lebanon in late September.

It seemed impossible to think about now, Sella said, but before October 7, he used to ride his bicycle around paths in the hill, and “the only things I was afraid of were cows and wild boars.”

Sella said he is accustomed to war. He had moved to Shlomi a month before the Second Lebanon War in 2006. His family was evacuated then as well.

“A week ago, there were so many explosions, we couldn’t have stood here,” he said on the porch, in the quiet.

“Maybe this ceasefire will buy us 20 more years of peace,” Sella said.