As if it were an improvised trompe l’oeil to distract from the harsh reality, several workers stretched a huge, brand new Israeli flag over the facade of a house that was badly damaged by a missile on Sunday morning. With it, they partially concealed the impacts of the shrapnel and the large hole that had opened in one of the rooms of the house. “On Saturday night, my daughter called me, worried about the announcement of the danger of attacks, and I slept in the safe room,” explains Zehava, 74, sitting on a chair on the sidewalk a few meters from her house in Kiryat Bialik, right in front of where the flag that camouflages the damage flutters in the wind. After an anguished evening in this kind of bunker, common in many Israeli buildings, a loud bang startled her at about half past six in the morning. Right in front, in the middle of the street, the projectile hit. She tells the story, safe and sound, with a certain emotion and a hint of tears that light up the eyes of this woman who emigrated from Romania in 1963. Stepping into the place with so much destruction, she is surprised that there were no deaths.
“We have been surviving as best we can for almost a year,” adds Joseph, 50, one of Zehava’s sons, who has rushed from Jerusalem to Kiryat Bialik to see her. This town is located next to Haifa, in the north-west of the country. He describes an atmosphere of tension and anxiety that is unprecedented, even though they have grown up “in this warlike atmosphere, under the threat of Lebanon. It is like those people who live in an area where earthquakes are frequent,” he describes.
A constant stream of warnings from various media, alarms and threats of attacks, especially from the north, make up this psychological war anchored in everyday life. The 60,000 residents evacuated from the border area are part of it, understands Lieutenant Colonel Yarden (who asks that his last name not be published), a reservist deployed since October 7 in the western sector of the dividing line with Lebanon, during a conversation on-linewith several journalists. Like other members of the army, and also of the government, he repeats like a mantra that the return of these inhabitants home is a non-negotiable condition for the stability of Israel.
It is a great burden that the 10 million Israelis have been divided by the war as if they had been hit by an axe, half on one side, half on the other, says Professor Amazia Baram, of the Department of Near Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Haifa, in a telephone conversation. There is 50% who are in favor of a ceasefire agreement in Gaza that includes the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners and, at least, the withdrawal of troops from different areas of the Strip. “I am in favor of a complete withdrawal,” he emphasizes. And that, he adds, would end the attacks by Hezbollah, which fires in solidarity with Hamas and Gaza. But there is another 50%, where the professor frames the thesis of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who “is not prepared to make concessions, nor to defend the ceasefire, nor to an exit of the hostages in exchange for prisoners.” “I think my view of the dispute is correct, because releasing the hostages is a moral duty. We have to get them out because the State of Israel betrayed them,” Baram argues.
At no point since the current war began on October 7 has Israel’s military superiority been called into question, despite having several fronts open, Yarden argues. The main ones are in Gaza and on the border with Lebanon. After the Hamas-led massacre that day almost a year ago, when some 1,200 people were killed and 250 kidnapped, the enemies of the Jewish State, with the regime in Tehran as their sponsor, have sought to inflict as much damage as possible, spurred on especially by the growing death toll – more than 41,000 today – that the Israeli offensive has left in the Palestinian Strip.
Some examples: some 300 Iranian projectiles flew over Israel on April 13 in response to several assassinations at its Damascus consulate; a drone launched from Yemen by the Houthi guerrillas hit a building in Tel Aviv on July 19 in support of Hamas; a missile launched by those same rebels fell near Ben-Gurion Airport on September 15; and this Sunday, one of the nearly 100 missiles fired from Lebanon by Hezbollah hit the aforementioned residential area of Kiryat Bielik, near Haifa, in response to the intense attacks throughout the week on Lebanese territory.
Knowing what’s happening outside means understanding what’s going to happen inside, so don’t miss anything.
KEEP READING
In all these cases, despite the huge deployment of weapons in the offensives, only one person died: a civilian who was in the house where the drone hit in July. Lieutenant Colonel Yarden attributes this to the 90% effectiveness of the three-tier anti-aircraft system, the last of which, the lowest, is made up of a shield called Iron Dome. This system is “what allows the country to continue functioning,” he says. In addition, the country is divided into some 2,000 zones that allow military officials to separate alerts down to neighborhoods so that, in the event of a missile approaching, they can warn only the inhabitants of the place where it is headed and the rest “can get on with their lives.”
The vast majority of the rockets launched by Hezbollah in the early hours of Sunday were intercepted, according to local authorities, with the exception of the one that hit Kiryat Bialik or the one that fell on a farm in a village near Nazareth. The fighting in the north has caused around fifty civilian and military deaths on the Israeli side since October 7.
But that does not mean that these attacks are not influencing the course of the conflict and, above all, the daily lives of the 10 million Israelis who are subjected to this permanent psychological war. Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ben-Gurion are three bastions of Israeli security, located in the most populated areas of the country.
For almost a year now, in the midst of incessant threats and shocks, Israelis have been living with their attention focused on Gaza and the northern border with Lebanon; with their attention focused on the statements of their military and politicians, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the forefront; and they also live with their attention focused on the announcements of the media and social networks. There is not a day when the alarm bells are not set off and tens of thousands of displaced people from both the north and the surrounding areas of Gaza are distributed throughout the country. Their return home remains a mystery.
Netanyahu has tried to show firmness after the attacks from Lebanon on Sunday: “If Hezbollah did not get the message, I promise you that it will get it.” But the debate over whether a high-intensity war will break out between Israel and the Lebanese militia-party remains a mystery gripping the country.
