‘There will be a lot of deaths’: Israelis living near Lebanese border fear tit-for-tat escalation

Yair Pinhas grew up hiking in the hills around Kiryat Shmona, his hometown in northern Israel, near the border with Lebanon.

“We always thought that the October 7 (attack) would happen here, we always talked about it,” he said, rolling a cigarette outside a hotel on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, about 40 miles from Kiryat Shmona.

Pinhas’ parents and his elderly grandmother have been living in this hotel for almost a year, ever since they were evacuated from Kiryat Shmona following the October 7 terror attacks. Pinhas spent months couch-surfing with friends in Tel Aviv before renting an apartment there; he comes regularly to see his family.

Kiryat Shmona, which sits in a pocket of Israeli land surrounded by Lebanon, just a couple of miles to the south and east from the border, sits on the opposite side of Israel to where the Hamas-led attacks took place last year. But its proximity to Lebanon makes it vulnerable to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group that has been attacking Israel on a regular basis over the past year, in support of Hamas.

Israel has responded with cross-border attacks and the two sides have been engaged in a tit-for-tat escalation since October 8. Hezbollah has said it will not stop striking Israel until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.

The city was hit multiple times in recent months, most recently by a barrage of rockets that caused heavy damage and several fires on Friday morning, according to Israeli police.

“When I was growing up, it wasn’t just sirens like now… it was someone blaring from a car, ‘everybody get to shelters! Everybody get to shelters!’ And in school, when the alarm went off, nobody was freaking out because we were used to it,” he said.

“Everybody goes into the shelter, you hear the bombs and then wait for somebody to tell you it’s safe to leave,” he explained, adding that while the locals have gotten used to attacks from the skies, there has always been the worry that Hezbollah could try to storm them from the ground.

“There was a warning some months before October 7, saying you need to know that the next war won’t be just rockets. They will come here. There are a lot of tunnels, and we need to prepare ourselves… and we didn’t. People are stupid. Until something happens, you don’t really act,” he said.

But then came the shock of the terror attacks, when Hamas and other militant groups killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel and kidnapped some 250 more into Gaza.

“Everything has changed then,” Pinhas said. “We thought our army was strong and prepared and suddenly you see this, shooting everywhere. I had three friends who were at the Nova festival, one of them died, two were saved,” he said.

‘There will be a lot of deaths’

The Israeli government said the fate of people like Pinhas is among the reasons why it needs to act forcefully against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly meeting last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hezbollah had fired more than 8,000 rockets at Israel since October 8, forcing some 60,000 people to flee their homes along the border.

“Israel has been tolerating this intolerable situation for nearly a year. Well, I’ve come here today to say enough is enough. We won’t rest until our citizens can return safely to their homes,” he said.

Shortly after Netanyahu spoke at the UN, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a deadly strike on the Lebanese capital Beirut, targeting and killing Hezbollah’s long term leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Three days later, the IDF said it was launching a “limited and localized” ground operation in Lebanon. The IDF’s top spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the move was designed to prevent an October-7 style attack by Hezbollah and “to enable all 60,000 Israelis to safely return back to their homes in northern Israel.”

But at least some of the people whose fates Netanyahu invoked during his speech are questioning the decision.

“I think that it’s very dangerous for the army to go to Lebanon, because there are many, many traps… I think that we can protect the border by plane. Or go (in) and come back… But not stay (in Lebanon), it’s too dangerous,” she said.

Hatan, whose house overlooks the Lebanese border, has lived in Shtula her whole life. She said that she’s worried current warfare is much more deadly than it was in 2006, the last time Israel invaded Lebanon.

Pinhas, too, is conflicted about Israel’s decision to cross the border.

“It’s very hard. On (the) one hand, I can say, yes, you’re right, because we need to go back home and we need to bring peace to our town. So my first thought is we need to do something about it, because their (Hezbollah’s) main purpose is to kill us,” he said.

“But the other thing that I’m feeling, and everybody’s feeling that, is that this is very dangerous, and there will be a lot of deaths. Hezbollah, they know very well their territory there, this is their playground. This is not like in 2006, this is not a small group, we gave them a lot of time to prepare themselves and get a lot of ammunition,” he added, referencing the 2006 Israeli invasion into Lebanon which lasted 34 days and ended in a stalemate after killing some 1,100 people on the Lebanese side and about 170 Israelis.

The Israeli offensive is among the most intense in decades, surpassed only by its bombing of Gaza.

Standing on a hilltop in Kiryat Shmona, the scale of the bombardment becomes apparent as a steady stream of loud bangs reverberates throughout the valley. A loud boom when the artillery round gets fired, followed by a whizz overhead. A while later, a deep thud of the impact somewhere behind the border.

A city of some 22,000, Kiryat Shmona has turned into a ghost town over the past year. Signs of destruction are clearly visible throughout its streets – shrapnel holes in facades, damage caused by falling debris, destruction caused by direct hits by rockets.

On Thursday, marking the Jewish new year, the Pinhas family snuck back into Kiryat Shmona for a brief visit.

“To water the plants and feed the cats. There are many street cats in Kiryat Shmona and they need feeding,” Pinhas said.

Several rockets were fired at the city from Lebanon on Thursday but were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense systems, the bright light of interceptor missiles popping up in the skies and chasing away the threat.

A black and white cat, meanwhile, continued to rummage through the pile of debris lying in front of a family home destroyed in an earlier rocket attack.