Life in the shadow of Hezbollah: Israelis of all faiths on edge as threats at northern border loom
JERUSALEM — I’m eating watermelon in the shade of a carob tree in the Druze village of Yanuh, three miles from the Lebanese border where Hezbollah terrorists are, at this moment, preparing for an all-out assault on northern Israel — and thinking, I would live here.
Mountainous and studded with wildflowers and fruit trees, northern Israel oozes pastoral tranquility. But I’m just a visitor on a press tour accompanied by a pistol-strapped security guard named Amit. I can afford to delight in nature without suffering the undercurrent of fear that pervades this place.
Some 60,000 Israelis living near the border evacuated their homes after the October 7 massacre in lieu of a Hezbollah invasion. Those still here live in constant anxiety, not over whether Hezbollah will breach the border, but when.
“Hezbollah will make its decision due to its own interests or Iranian interests or both, in a moment that we will not expect, that we will not be able to expect, and they will be prepared,” said Sarit Zehavi, founder of Hezbollah watchdog the Alma Center for Education and Research.
“And who will prevent that?”
We’re chatting at an overlook in the northern town of Kfar Vradim with stunning views of hilltop towns, and Lebanon looming beyond. Locals are frustrated by the lack of IDF presence in the region, where Hassan Nasrallah and his thugs have dropped more than 1,600 anti-tank missiles, rockets and other projectiles since October 7, according to the Alma Center.
The IDF does have forces in the north, but is reluctant to go to war with Hezbollah, especially with the bulk of its resources tied up battling Hamas in the south. Locals feel like sitting ducks.
“Hezbollah is more dangerous than Hamas,“ said Shakib Shanan, a former Knesset member living in the Druze border village of Hurfeish. “They have a lot of forces and other countries that would support them against an Israeli attack, and this is the reason that, until now, Israel doesn’t attack Hezbollah. We want not to fight two areas at the same time.”
Yet Shanan and his countrymen refuse to evacuate.
“Our village decided not to leave, not because we are so strong, not because we’re such fighters and not afraid,” he said. “We believe that the best place to be safe is your house. Until now, we’ve had, thanks to God, no bombs in our village.”
Shanan knows terror in the worst way. In 2017, his son Kamil was murdered by terrorists while working as a police officer in Jerusalem’s Old City.
“We don’t like killing. We don’t like wars,” he said. “[But] Israel cannot allow itself not to finish the war in Gaza without winning the war. There is no chance. [Otherwise] all of us would leave this land and start swimming in the Mediterranean Sea.”
In the north, as in much of the Holy Land, Israeli Muslims like Shanan live in harmony with Jews as well as Christians. To these simple people, Western charges of apartheid are not only laughable but irrelevant: Why sweat over abstractions like condemnatory UN resolutions when you’re already sweating the anti-tank missiles aimed at your kitchen window?
Besides, it’s not as if Hezbollah draws a distinction between Jew and gentile when firing its daily volley of missiles across the border.
Later, at the sparkling coast of the Sea of Galilee, I’m enchanted anew by the jaw-dropping beauty of this region. I’m sitting with Ortal Beeri, 41, whom in October the IDF evacuated from her home in Ma’ayan Baruch, a town less than a mile from the border.
“On October 7th, all of us saw, felt and heard what could have happened to us,” Beeri said. “I hate to say we were lucky, but it could have happened to us. It gives me chills to say it, but our luck came at someone else’s expense.”
Beeri, a mother of two, suffered the monumental loss of both her parents soon after October 7 (they died of natural causes). Road closures made burials in the family plot at Ma’ayan Baruch not only hazardous but a red-tape nightmare. But Beeri, adamant to get her parents to their final resting place, got it done.
“This is our home,” she said. “This is where my mother was born. My kids are 10th-generation Israelis. This is all we know. There is no other place for us. We will go back, but with a lot of fear.”
