A memorial near the farming community of Shear Yashuv, two kilometres from the border with Lebanon, commemorates the 73 soldiers who lost their lives on 4 February 1997 in what became the worst air crash in Israel’s military history. Two helicopters collided over this site while they were heading towards one of their bases in the neighbouring country during the Israeli occupation. The breeze moves the plaques hanging from a tree that remember each of them with their name, while in the sky the roar of Israeli fighter planes roars. This Saturday alone, Hezbollah has launched 65 rockets at this area, according to the Israeli army, which has not reported any casualties. In the early afternoon, from the top of a hill, some of these projectiles were visible. It has been 27 years since that helicopter crash and 24 since Israel left Lebanon, but the spectre of a new occupation looms amid the growing violence.
One of those soldiers, Alejandro, was the son of Roberto Hofman, a 71-year-old writer and painter who has been living in a Tel Aviv hotel for 11 months after being evacuated from Metula. This town of about 2,000 inhabitants is one of the main targets of the Hezbollah party-militia. Its urban centre is practically surrounded by the border with Lebanon, right in an area that is under the control of this Shiite group and about ten kilometres by road from where Alejandro died.
“Losing a son is very hard. Ale was then 19 years old, 11 months and a few days old, because he would have turned 20 on March 9,” he laments as he sharpens his memory. This irrecoverable absence for his family, together with the death of hundreds of other uniformed personnel during the bloody occupation, and the experience of more than two decades as a resident of a border in permanent conflict, serve the writer to rule out another military invasion of the neighboring country as a solution, as some military officials are proposing these days.
“What we really need to do is create a kind of strip within the north” of Israel, which should be accompanied by the creation of new military bases, Hofman said in a telephone conversation. He also argues that the UN mission in Lebanon, which he considers useless as a peacekeeping force, should be abolished and he proposes that it be replaced by troops from countries such as the United States, France or Germany.
Hofman, who arrived from Argentina in 1986 with his wife and two children, is one of the 60,000 inhabitants of northern Israel – on the Lebanese side, there are 100,000 evacuees – who have been driven from their homes by the war that began on October 7. Specifically, those who are within the five-kilometer strip from the border with Lebanon and remain scattered throughout the country in hotels, rented homes or taken in by relatives. In recent days, the government of the Jewish state, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has set itself the goal of allowing everyone to return safely. However, pessimism prevails among those interviewed for this report. “That is not realistic at all,” Hofman replied when asked about the prime minister’s intentions. “Insecurity cannot be changed with words alone,” he added, referring to Netanyahu’s rhetoric, which he believes is far from being enough to restore the confidence of residents to return to their homes.
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That is not the problem for Joseph Shoshana, a 43-year-old soldier who is receiving a pension after being discharged for post-traumatic stress disorder. He is one of those who has not left his home in Kiriat Shmona, a town of 20,000 inhabitants two kilometres from the border, 90% of which has been abandoned since the first days of the conflict. Proud of his past, the entrance to his home is presided over by a flag of the paratroopers corps. He remembers his time as a fighter during the Second Intifada while frowning at all the fellow soldiers who were left behind.
His wife Ora, his eight-year-old son Michael, and his five-year-old daughter Alice went to live in a hotel for a month. “But my wife is the one who takes care of me and they ended up coming back, even though I told them to stay away,” explains Shoshana during a walk through the deserted Kiryat Shmona, pointing out one of the missile impacts on the ground a few dozen meters from her house and others on the surrounding buildings. Over the past few months, the family has been collecting fragments of the launches by both Hezbollah and the Israeli anti-aircraft defense.
With almost everything closed and hardly any activity in their city, Michael and Alice remain in school on a kibbutz to the south. “It has been a very hard year, especially for the children. But this is our home, there is no other. Between the coronavirus and the war, they are ruining their childhood,” she laments. However, despite the fact that “the Lebanese government cannot control Hezbollah and only Israel can do so,” she believes that repeating the invasion of the neighbouring country “would be shit.” “Our life would get worse. The war is shit. Many dead, many casualties… also on the other side, who also have children. It would be very painful for everyone,” she concludes, and at that moment shows the alarm that warns of possible attacks on her mobile phone.
Shoshana feels that the rulers have abandoned the inhabitants of the north, especially those of her city. “Look, a drone falls in Tel Aviv and everyone is mobilized. Hundreds of them fall here and they don’t care,” she explains, referring to the drone launched by the Houthi guerrilla from Yemen in July that crashed in the Mediterranean city and killed a resident. On Friday, the sky of Kiryat Shmona was again filled with white trails from Israeli anti-aircraft defenses amid a great roar.
Luis de Vega
On the outskirts of that city, in the moshav (agricultural community) Shear Yashuv, where the helicopters crashed in 1997, is now home to 200 of the 700 residents. Some have returned when they saw that the war was becoming entrenched, as at first it was almost completely emptied, explains Gideon Harari, head of the emergency services who will turn 67 on the anniversary of the war, October 7. “For the 70 children who have returned with their families, it is difficult to live in a war zone,” but “Kyriat Shmona is much more unsafe,” says this ex-soldier, referring to the fact that it is targeted almost daily. Despite being located just 2.5 kilometers from Lebanon, Shear Yashuv has not been directly hit in the current conflict, but “an Iranian Shajed model drone with explosives that did not explode did fall here next door,” adds Harari while charging the drone in the living room of his home. walkie-talkieHe believes that Israel must now strike a “big blow.” “If not, we will lose a great opportunity to end this war, because they are very weak now,” he says.
“Ready to come back”
The day Lea, 67, and her husband Ariel, 70 (neither is their real name) left after being forced to leave Metula by the arrival of the missiles and the evacuation order, she made a promise: not to clean their house until they could return permanently. But they never thought that, almost a year later, they would continue renting a house on a journey that has already taken them to five different houses. They arrived at their current one in July and, Ariel explains, they chose it because it is the closest place to Metula that the authorities allow them. It is the Kibbutz Sde Nehemya, from where they go twice a week to check that their residence is still standing and in order, to tidy up the garden a little and feed the neighborhood cats. “Our house is very, very dirty,” she describes with a smile. “Imagine, almost a year…”
Like Hofman, another veteran of Metula, who can easily distinguish Israeli bombings from those of the enemy, this couple has been living with border violence for years and that, perhaps, is what leads them to distance themselves from “all those Israelis who only want to solve this by force.” Ariel, in fact, would not have left if it were not for his family. “I am not afraid. I am ready to return,” he insists while describing a daily life plagued by alerts, planes, and explosions that can shake them both day and night even though they are in a house, the current one, where there is no evacuation order. It is a chalet that is not even two years old. “We are better here than those who have been in hotels all this time. And better also than those who are on the Lebanese side.”
Their desire is to return to the town where they have lived for three decades, but they also recognise that it will not be easy. “We should not have left,” Lea adds with some sadness. They say this even though they are aware that just a few hours earlier Metula had been hit by several missiles. Both are betting on the diplomatic route. “I do not want an invasion of Lebanon, nor a great war. Until now everything has been tried. We left behind a thousand dead there. The only solution is an agreement, something that both parties respect if we want to remain in this land,” Ariel says bluntly. “My dream,” he concludes, “is to wake up one day and be able to go shopping in Beirut, which is closer to us than Tel Aviv.”
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