DEKYAS NEWS World Breaking News and Trusted Source
Related Articles
In November, Avi Avraham and his wife left their home in Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel to attend a wedding. Moments later, a rocket ripped through their third floor, shattering the windows—destroying life as they knew it.
They and their son moved south to safety and have since been living as evacuees in a hotel paid for by the Israeli government in the hills of Birya, Israel, halfway between the Sea of Galilee and the border with Lebanon.
“Living in hotels is not a solution,” Avraham told CBC in Hebrew through a translator. The family of the 72-year-old retired bus driver has been living in the hotel for seven months and there is no clear plan for the future.
“We don’t know what will happen. That puts us in an unpleasant situation.”
He is one of tens of thousands in both Israel and Lebanon displaced by the volley of cross-border missiles launched by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group in Lebanon, and by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in Israel. a conflict that, according to observers, has long been in danger of escalating into a full-blown war.
Defending the northern border
In recent days, talk of further defending this northern border has been on the minds of both Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, before his Sunday trip to Washington, DC, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a Sunday interview with Israel’s Channel 14 .
“After the intense phase [in Gaza] is finished, we will have the opportunity to move part of the armed forces to the north. And we will do this,” Netanyahu said. “Primarily for defensive purposes. And secondly, to take our [evacuated] residents at home.”
Get the latest on CBCNews.ca, the CBC News app and CBC News Network for breaking news and analysis.
Hezbollah has exchanged attacks with Israel almost daily since the war in Gaza broke out on October 7 after a Hamas-led attack in southern Israel aimed at pulling Israeli forces out of the disputed Gaza Strip.
Ofer Shelah, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, says that with the longer-range weapons and drones Hezbollah now uses, “the margin for error is shrinking,” and the conflict is heading toward a full-blown outbreak. scaling up war “without either side deciding they really want it.”
He says there is no way to truly guarantee safety for displaced Israelis to return to their homes.
“The problem is, again, just like in Gaza: what are you trying to achieve? What is the end state you want to achieve? And I don’t think we will be able to achieve a stable end state through military means.”
The end of the conflict cannot come soon enough for Yakov Naftali, another resident who has been evacuated and lives in the hotel in Birya.
“I think the situation as it is now, quite frankly, has been stretched to the real edge of possibility,” he said in Hebrew.
Naftali, 62, held out in his home in Margaliot, located along the border with Lebanon, until March this year when his six sisters and four children finally convinced him it was not safe to stay.
His parents helped establish the farming community in the 1950s and he had lived there all his life, but he says that after two workers on his farm were killed in rocket attacks, his family finally convinced him it was too dangerous , so he left. , reluctantly.
“In my opinion, the solution is to go in and destroy them,” Hezbollah’s Naftali said.
“There is another solution, a political one,” he said, adding that he believes it would only last a few years before the situation returns to what it is now.
Rocket attacks lead to fires
At the fire station in the nearby town of Hatzor HaGlilit, firefighters must deal with the now almost daily rockets that land across the northern landscape – often in smoldering pieces.
Fire Chief Dror Buhnik, 49, who was also a firefighter in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, says the main difference between then and now is intensity.
“In 2006 there were missiles, but they were weaker, and it was temporary,” he said through a translator. “Hezbollah is launching more rockets that are more powerful, and those attacks have escalated in recent weeks.”
The problem is only exacerbated by the dry, hot summer weather.
“Now every missile has the potential to lead to a major fire,” he said. “And it’s happening. In recent weeks we’ve had some very large fires.”
On the afternoon CBC News visited the fire station in Hatzor HaGlilit, there was an emergency call about a rocket landing at a nearby military base. Fire engines went to the scene and plumes of smoke were clearly visible coming from the ground.
The IDF posted a message on its Telegram messaging channel saying that a soldier had been seriously injured as a result of a drone hit.
An uncomfortable holding pattern
It’s all been taking too long for Avi Avraham.
“We have not seen anything that has changed in the slightest the situation we have been suffering for the past eight months,” he said.
‘I prefer an agreement. But if war comes, it is the government’s decision, not mine.”
In the meantime, he longs to return to Kiryat Shmona, but he’s found himself in a kind of awkward holding pattern, waiting to see what happens next.
He kept a fragment of the rocket that hit his house as a sort of dark souvenir and went back to his hotel room to retrieve the metal piece to show the CBC News team.
“Now I have an ashtray,” he said.
