When Orly Gavishi-Sotto saw images of Hamas-led forces attacking southern Israel on Oct. 7, she worried about her kibbutz, a mere 500 yards from Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
Ms. Gavishi-Sotto, 46, has spent more than two decades in Hanita, a hilltop kibbutz with a view of the Mediterranean Sea. Seeing Hamas attack Israel in the south, she feared that Hezbollah, the militant group that dominates Lebanon, might be capable of doing the same in the north.
“The first thought on Oct. 7 was that could have been us,” she said. “It was absolutely terrifying.”
Ms. Gavishi-Sotto is now among the roughly 60,000 Israelis displaced from their homes in northern Israel, an evacuation prompted by Hezbollah attacks that began immediately after the Oct. 7 assault, and that have been followed by tit-for-tat exchanges of fire ever since. For most of the past year, she and her three daughters have lived outside Hanita, moving among a hotel, a rented apartment and another kibbutz.
In the last week, Israel has ratcheted up the pressure on Hezbollah by beginning a major bombing campaign, with the stated goal of allowing residents in the north to return to their homes.
Some displaced Israelis hope the military escalation will restore quiet to their hometowns. But others express skepticism about the prospect, saying they had lost faith in the Israeli government a long time ago. That group contends the government hasn’t provided sufficient support for the displaced and that, until the last week, it hadn’t taken strong enough action to push Hezbollah away from their communities.
Tens of thousands of people have spent months scattered across the country, straining the connections of tight-knit communities in the north. “I very much want to believe the government cares about our situation, but I’m simply not able to,” Ms. Gavishi-Sotto said. “They abandoned us for an entire year.”
Hezbollah started firing on northern Israel nearly a year ago in solidarity with Hamas, its ally. Since the start of the war in Gaza, its fighters and Israel’s military have exchanged strikes in the north, with both wreaking havoc on the opposite side of the border — killing combatants and civilians, destroying homes and setting farmland on fire.
Over the past week, Israel’s attacks increased exponentially. Last Tuesday and Wednesday, Israel blew up pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah before pivoting to the most significant and intense strikes against the group since the 2006 war in Lebanon. The bombing campaign has destroyed weapons stores and killed senior Hezbollah commanders who Israel said were developing plans to invade northern Israel.
The Israeli military said that on Monday alone, it struck approximately 1,600 targets affiliated with Hezbollah.
At the same time, Hezbollah has also fired deeper into Israel, setting off air sirens in Tel Aviv and Haifa, two of the largest cities in the country.
The Lebanese health ministry said that at least 558 people had been killed and more than 1,800 wounded on Monday, making it the deadliest day of attacks in the country in at least two decades. The figures released by the ministry do not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but it has said that many of the casualties were women and children.
In northern Israel, frustration among the displaced has grown as they have watched their military fight Hezbollah but fail to create conditions under which they would feel comfortable returning to their homes. Some are calling for a demilitarized zone along the border, a buffer that would keep Israel and Hezbollah forces further apart. Such a zone was drawn up in 2006 as part of a United Nations Security Council resolution passed the last time Israel and Hezbollah fought a war, though both sides have been accused of violating it.
Zami Ravid, a resident of Metula, the northernmost town in the Galilee, said his home had been seriously damaged by a rocket last week.
“A war is a disaster; no one wants a war,” said Mr. Ravid, 82, an owner of a museum of rare instruments who has been living in Tel Aviv since October. “But this buffer needs to be created for the good of Israel as a state.”
Hezbollah has said it will stop firing rockets and drones into Israel only if Israel and Hamas reach a cease-fire agreement in Gaza. Efforts to achieve such a deal have repeatedly failed, and hopes for one have faded as Israel and Hamas have staked out irreconcilable positions.
Seeing the military intensify its operations in Lebanon had raised hopes for some in the north that the strikes might force Hezbollah to back down, or set the stage for a mediated end to the fighting.
In Netua, a kibbutz less than a mile from the border, Seth Dekanu said the scaled-up assault on Hezbollah had enabled him to breathe “a sigh of relief” even as he acknowledged that war, and the rising civilian death toll, was “tragic.” As a member of the kibbutz’s security team, Mr. Dekanu has been able to leave the site once a week in the past year, to see his wife and two young sons, who were evacuated.
“Since the start of the war, we’ve been sitting here, waiting to be attacked,” said Mr. Dekanu, 27, one of a few residents remaining in Netua. “Now we’re finally on the offensive.”
Amir Adari, a resident of Yiftah, a kibbutz sandwiched between Lebanon and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights in a sprawling section of northern Israel known as the Galilee, said he supported Israel’s military blitz against Hezbollah. But he emphasized that the government should leverage it to reach a diplomatic resolution with the group.
“We should make a strong show of force before striking a deal,” said Mr. Adari, 49, who has been living with his family in Livnim, a village beside the Sea of Galilee.
Waging war, Mr. Adari said, was not something he desired, but he said he felt there was no alternative. “If we give up on the Galilee, soon we will be giving up on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem,” he said.
Other Israelis rejected the notion that military action would bring long-term calm, citing the failure of past wars in 1982 and 2006 to achieve that goal.
“Wars beget wars,” said Daniella Porat Penso, 57, a volunteer spokeswoman for the Yiftah kibbutz. “I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve seen one war after another and we’re still dealing with this situation.”
Wars, she said, “won’t solve our problems.”
Source: nytimes.com
