Northern officials angered by expected Hezbollah truce, call for residents not to return home

Local council leaders in the north express anger over the expected truce between Israel and Hezbollah, saying that the safety of residents is not guaranteed.

“Do not surrender to terrorism. Do not make this shameful agreement. This is a sad arrangement, an agreement of surrender by the Israeli government to Hezbollah, an arm of Iran,” Metula Mayor David Azoulay tells Channel 13.

“The threat has not been removed. We will not agree to return to the reality of October 7 in the north,” he says.

Azoulay says that 70 percent of homes in Metula have been damaged and that residents should not agree to return.

“The reconstruction will take at least two years. For as long as there is no real security here, not just a ‘sense of security,’ we will do everything to not return,” he says.

Moshav Margaliot Chairman Eitan Davidi tells Channel 12 that it is inconceivable “we will be relying on Lebanon to guarantee our safety,” referring to the fact that the agreement will not include a buffer zone secured by the IDF.

“Northern residents didn’t leave their homes for over a year, just to return to having Hezbollah as neighbors,” Davidi says.

Speaking to Radio 103FM he warns of “the massacre that the [elite Hezbollah] Radwan forces will carry out here in a few years time.”

Davidi charges that “the massacre in the south [on October 7] will pale in comparison to what will happen here.”

The military has reportedly told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it has broadly achieved its aims in Lebanon against the Hezbollah terror group.

Netanyahu is expected to convene the high-level security cabinet in Tel Aviv later today to approve a 60-day ceasefire with the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon after more than a year of war.

Since October 8, 2023, 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 amid the war there.

Some 60,000 residents were evacuated from northern towns on the Lebanon border shortly after Hamas’s October 7 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 enable the residents’ return, including through an ongoing ground operation.