They fled 40 kilometers from Hezbollah’s rockets; Eight months later, they hear the same air raid siren

Last year, Yamit Bar had been planning a long tour of Southeast Asia for months, a popular destination for Israelis like her. Her plan was to start it in mid-October. A week earlier, Hamas launched its surprise attack, Israel began bombing Gaza and the Hezbollah militia joined in with some – then timid and measured – projectiles that set off alarms in its kibbutz, Baram, just 300 meters from the border with Lebanon. Israel had just discovered the impregnability of its barriers and did not even know how many Gazan militiamen were still roaming its territory, so 450 of the 500 inhabitants of the kibbutz decided to relocate about 40 kilometers further south, in Tiberias, a city on the shores of the Sea of the Galilee whose numerous hotels, normally full of national tourists, today absorb 12,000 evacuees from the border area. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a “long and difficult” war that has left, eight months later and with no end on the horizon, more than 37,000 Palestinians dead, a complaint of genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague , and 64,000 Israelis and 94,000 Lebanese away from their homes. Bar, 25, couldn’t imagine it then. She hesitated whether to stay in her country, but she kept her travel plan.

This Tuesday, he landed back in Israel. She is still wearing the baggy pants from the trip. The last thing she expected was a welcome in the form of an air raid alarm, the first in Tiberias in eight months of crossfire. Just what the kibbutz escaped from her. “Was a shockcome back and listen to it here. See how the situation has only gotten worse with the passage of time. How it doesn’t get better. When I left, I was very sure that she would return to my house,” she says in front of the hotel where she is displaced.

At his side is Enosh Katz, a friend since childhood on the kibbutz. Four years younger, he is part of the local defense platoons on which the first response falls until reinforcements arrive. As he has remained in the area, he accumulates much more resentment, which he airs at every moment. Against the Netanyahu Government, for having “forgotten” and “sacrificed” the north these eight months while he fuels the war in Gaza “for personal gain.” Because of the feeling that the Armed Forces would have already invaded Lebanon if one twentieth of the daily rockets in the north had fallen in Tel Aviv. And for not having seen the attack on October 7th coming. “Obviously, I blame Hamas, but the Government has the blood of the victims on its hands,” he says.

Like the vast majority of evacuees from the north, Bar and Katz want an open war with Hezbollah.

Roughly speaking,The climb can lead to three places. One is for Israel to end the invasion of Gaza and for Hezbollah – as it has been ensuring for months that it will do – to cease its attacks. It wouldn’t be enough. “It would be like postponing the war for a couple of years,” argues Katz. The other is to seal a political agreement through mediators – it was started by France and now, above all, the United States – to truly implement United Nations resolution 1701 that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. That is, move the militia to the north of the Litani River, put an end to daily Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace and open the melon of differences around the divide. It doesn’t convince him either. “There is already an agreement, and it is called 1701. And look how it has been fulfilled…”

The only thing left, he understands, is a war that brings “a few years of calm,” like those that followed the 2006 conflict. It is a widespread opinion in Israel, where the future always appears tinged with the color of blood, as if wars were inevitable. and there was no alternative but to manage them every few years. “Our kibbutz is closer to Beirut than Tel Aviv,” he notes, before joking that we are all actually in the Lebanese capital. This is where navigation systems, such as Google Maps or Waze, place us, from a dozen kilometers further south. The Israeli army interferes with the GPS signal to prevent the guidance of projectiles.

Another displaced person, Orna Flusser, illustrates the same concept with her family. She is 65 years old and a few days ago she saw her five-year-old grandson. “It came to mind where each of us will be in 15 years. I will be 80 and will not have the strength to leave my house; “He will be a soldier fighting in the next war against Hezbollah,” she says in the dining room of another hotel in Tiberias, which hosts about 60 displaced people from Shear Yashuv, an agricultural cooperative three kilometers from the border with Lebanon.

Israeli tourists, attracted by the hotel’s spa, which reopened a few weeks ago, pass by – smiling, in white coats, flip-flops and sunglasses – and Flusser laughs at the dissonance. “We always say that people come to this hotel to rest and we come home to rest. “Nobody lasts eight months in a hotel.” Even being boutique and prohibitive for some pockets. At reception, a sign in Hebrew continues to announce the price for a double room (“only from 1,280 shekels”, 320 euros) that evacuees do not have to pay.

It is a beautiful 19th century building that still belongs to the Scottish church. A group of missionaries opened it as a hospital for the local population at the time, a mix of Jews and Arabs. “I know,” he replies, “but to me it’s a golden cage. I have 25 square meters of room and a bed twice as big as the one at home. The problem is not the conditions. I have nothing to complain about in that. The problem is that it’s not my house. And I want to return to my house, with my kitchen, where I can cook whatever I want whenever I want. “I have been here for eight months with the permanent feeling of being a guest.”

Flusser confesses that he did not even go to the shelter when the unprecedented alarm sounded in Tiberias. “For years I have lived with the idea that whatever kills me is a Hezbollah rocket or a truck on the road,” he justifies. He also goes to Shear Yashuv on weekends, despite its proximity to Lebanon. He doesn’t get into the safe room there either. “I only did it the day Iran attacked. “It was very new for everyone,” he clarifies.

His main argument is that it doesn’t matter where the anti-aircraft alarms scream because “sooner or later, they will end up ringing throughout the country.” “Whoever believes that this is going to remain as it is today [por este miércoles] lives in denial,” he adds. “Today” is the largest escalation between Israel and Lebanon in eight months that have gone from skirmishes parallel to the invasion of Gaza to a low-intensity war.

The night before, the Israeli army assassinated Taleb Abdala, the highest-ranking Hezbollah commander in the eight months of fighting, in southern Lebanon. The Shia militia took revenge a day later with its largest wave of projectiles: 215, activating alarms in different points, including – for the first time since October – Tiberias (except for a previous false alarm). The Lebanese militia has also promised stronger and more frequent attacks.

“The most difficult thing for all of us is the lack of horizon. And the great disappointment, that nothing happens. It’s like a game of ping-pong, but nothing happens.”

– By “something happens” do you mean an open war?

– Yeah

– And you don’t see any other option?

-Look, I’m not a politician. I don’t even know very well what I want. I just want the feeling of security of knowing that Hezbollah can’t be on my doorstep in five minutes.

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