‘No other choice’: Northern border towns predict war with Hezbollah
Residents fear cross-border assault by terror group; security official in one town says ‘everything changed’ after October 7, ‘because we understood invasion is really a threat’
Displaced residents of Israel’s northernmost town have learned to dread hearing from David Azulay — the man who calls when Hezbollah rockets have smashed into their abandoned homes.
The 57-year-old has been mostly on his own since nearly all of Metula’s inhabitants fled following the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in October.
As head of the town council, Azulay felt an obligation to stay behind and monitor damage wrought by Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group as it fires missiles and mortars on northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas, its Gaza-based ally.
That has meant sleeping in a bomb shelter in Metula — bordered by Lebanon to the west, north and east — while keeping a grim tally of the destruction.
So far, 130 of 650 homes have been hit in the town, some with entire floors destroyed and entrances covered in glass and rubble.
Now, with the Gaza war in its sixth month and no end in sight to near-daily fire between Israel and Hezbollah, Azulay said the only solution could be no-holds-barred fighting to clear Hezbollah from the border and make the area safe for evacuated Israelis to return.
“I don’t see another way for citizens to come back safely to their homes here,” he said this week, standing not far from a bombed-out car in the middle of a street lined with citrus trees.
“We’ve had enough of war, but we have no other choice right now. They are shooting at the houses of civilians, not army bases,” he told journalists in Metula on a press visit organized by authorities.
‘I don’t sleep at night’
The idea that Hezbollah is trying to provoke a war is commonly held among Israelis in the north, where tens of thousands have been displaced, reducing 43 communities to “ghost towns,” said former military intelligence officer Sarit Zehavi.
Both Paris and Washington are pursuing plans to defuse hostilities, but Zehavi said she feared any deal might not address the threat posed by the group.
She told reporters during a presentation that was part of the press visit that Hezbollah would “prefer to drag Israel into war rather than initiate it. But they are still capable of infiltration.”
“I don’t sleep at night worrying that we will end up with a ceasefire that will not eliminate completely this capability,” she added.
The damage on both sides of the border is real, but that does not mean all-out war is inevitable, analysts noted.
“It’s unlikely that Hezbollah wants a full-scale war as there would be no element of surprise, which is essential for the group when the balance of military power is asymmetrical,” said Hamish Kinnear, senior Middle East analyst with Verisk Maplecroft.
“A full-scale war being initiated by Israel remains unlikely as it maintains its focus and resources on fighting Hamas.”
Israel’s top ally the United States is also set on avoiding a wider regional conflagration if possible.
Hussein Ibish of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington asserted it was Israel’s — not Hezbollah’s — actions that had been increasingly escalatory, including strikes on Baalbek some 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the border.
He said there were signs Israel was preparing for a “spring offensive” in Lebanon, or at least working hard to send that signal.
“They want to create the impression that this is an unavoidable war to make northern Israel safe for human habitation again,” he said.
Amid the constant attacks from Lebanon, Israeli officials maintain the country will no longer accept Hezbollah’s presence along the border, in contravention of the UN resolution that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War. They say from those positions, the terrorists could launch an attack similar to Hamas’s October 7 massacres in southern Israel.
Jerusalem also says the situation whereby tens of thousands have been driven from their homes for months by Hezbollah’s attacks is intolerable and unsustainable.
‘We deserve peace’
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 amid the war there.
So far, the skirmishes on the border have resulted in seven civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 10 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
Hezbollah has named 244 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon, but some also in Syria. In Lebanon, another 42 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and at least 30 civilians, three of whom were journalists, have been killed.
These tolls are dwarfed by those of the Israel-Hamas war.
The October 7 Hamas attack saw thousands of terrorists storm southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and take over 250 hostages of all ages, while committing numerous atrocities.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 31,000 people in the Strip have been killed in the fighting so far, a figure that cannot be independently verified and includes some 13,000 Hamas terrorists Israel says it has killed in battle. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 gunmen inside Israel on October 7.
Yet in Kiryat Shmona, another northern Israeli town emptied of most civilians, deputy security chief Ariel Frisch said the October 7 attack changed how he and his neighbors saw Hezbollah.
“On October 6, we could go to Metula, see beyond the border with the Hezbollah and laugh. Here is Hezbollah, they have weapons, so what? We have the IDF, we are safe,” he said, referring to the Israeli military.
After the attack, “everything changed, because we understood invasion is really a threat.”
Now he wants that threat to be “eliminated” so life can go back to normal.
“We want peace and we deserve peace,” he said. “This isn’t peace and this isn’t life.”
The Times of Israel Community.