On the Lebanon border, Israelis say they face an enemy worse than Hamas

Margaliot, on the Israel-Lebanon border: The nightmare scenario world leaders are working frantically to avoid is one Eytan Davidi desires. Far from being scared that Israel’s war with Hamas will morph into a wider regional conflict, Davidi’s message is simple: bring it on.

The egg farmer and community leader lives in Margaliot, a hamlet of around 450 people perched high in the Naftali Mountains, just hundreds of metres away from the border with Lebanon. “We are in the most dangerous place in Israel right now,” Davidi says, standing outside his farm and family home. “All of this is Hezbollah,” he explains, pointing to homes and apartment buildings looking down upon us from across the frontier. On a clear day, you can see people moving around inside.

Chicken farmer Eytan Davidi at his farm in Margaliot on the border with Lebanon, which can be seen in the background.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Israel and Hezbollah – the Iranian-backed militant group that Australia branded a terror organisation two years ago – have traded fire across the border since the 1980s, but the fighting has intensified since Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel on their October 7 killing spree. Hezbollah has launched dozens of anti-tank missiles, rockets and mortars across the border in the past fortnight and sent gunmen across the border to infiltrate Israel.

On Monday, the Israeli government announced it was evacuating Margaliot and 27 other towns dotted along the Lebanese border to “reduce harm to civilians and enable the [Israel Defence Forces] freedom of action if it is required”. Davidi, however, is staying put and hopes Israel will seize the chance to wipe out Hezbollah “once and for all” – even as it prepares for a ground invasion of Gaza in the south.

“We cannot live here with guns pointed at our children playing in their backyards,” he says, declaring that Hezbollah is “much worse” than Hamas. The group’s 1985 manifesto states that “our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated”.

“We have seen what these arseholes can do,” Davidi says. “If the state of Israel does not initiate some sort of action to change the situation in Lebanon, people will not be able to stay here.”

Davidi’s neighbour, third-generation farmer Yonatan Yaakobi, is also staying put to help defend his community. A member of the local paramilitary emergency squad, Yaakobi hasn’t seen his wife and children in almost two weeks since they fled Margaliot to government-funded accommodation in Tiberias, by the Sea of Galilee.

Staying with him at the farm, where the pungent smell of chicken manure pierces the crisp mountain air, are five migrant workers from Thailand who he employs to harvest cherries, nectarines, apples and eggs. “Hezbollah are watching us,” he says, pointing to the buildings across the border. He wishes he could go back in time to the days when relations between Israel and Lebanon were friendly, and Lebanese workers would cross the border freely to work on his family’s farm.

Chicken farmer and emergency squad member Yonatan Yaakobi at his farm in Margaliot.Credit: Kate Geraghty

As Yaakobi serves up cardamom tea and sweets, a loud explosion erupts. We hurry to his safe room. Grabbing his walkie-talkie, he urges his Thai employees to do the same. Two anti-tank guided missiles from Lebanon have landed at Kibbutz Manara, a seven-minute drive away, prompting Israel to hit back with artillery shelling and air strikes.

Yaakobi does not believe Hezbollah wants all-out war with Israel now, but the risk of a miscalculation spiralling into a wider conflict is real. A Hezbollah spokeswoman this week described the group’s increased bombardments as a “warning” to Israel, but said the group had not decided whether to fully enter the Israel-Hamas war.

Israel has been shifting tanks and troops north to fortify the border in recent days, determined not to leave the Lebanese border exposed as it fights Hamas in the south. Israeli special forces units have also been conducting drills to test how they would respond to a co-ordinated Hezbollah incursion like that from Gaza a fortnight ago.

The Biden administration has privately urged Israel not to strike first by launching a military campaign against Hezbollah, The Times of Israel reported this week. The world saw a preview of what could come in 2006 when Hezbollah militants crossed the border and murdered three Israeli soldiers, triggering a 34-day war that led to the death of around 1300 people in Lebanon and 165 Israelis.

Hezbollah has amassed a stockpile of around 150,000 rockets, according to military experts, and has around 60,000 trained fighters, making it a fearsome opponent for any adversary. Certainly, it poses a more significant military threat to Israel than Hamas. A war between Israel and Hezbollah could also draw in Iran, the terrorist group’s largest benefactor. Echoing the language of former US president George W Bush ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week declared that Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas form an “axis of evil” that wants to bring the Middle East back “to an age of bondage and war and slavery and annihilation”.

The mayor of Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel, Avichai Stern (right), in the city’s command centre. Kiryat Shmona is four kilometres from the Lebanon border. Credit: Kate Geraghty

A 20-minute drive downhill from Margaliot, the mayor of Israel’s northernmost city has already set up a war room with fellow officials and military leaders to respond to the inflamed tensions on the border. Avichai Stern says Kiryat Shmona has faced persistent missile attacks from Hezbollah for the past 36 years.

“No other city has this record for so long,” he says, with a defiance verging on pride. The city’s 24,000 residents, who have only 10 seconds to seek shelter when missile sirens sound, are accustomed to violence. But most have fled to safer locales, rendering Kiryat Shmona a ghost town.

Stern says it is untenable for his residents, as hardy as they are, to continue living in the mountains under the perennial risk of attack. On his phone he shows us a Hezbollah propaganda video demonstrating how the group would purportedly invade and conquer northern Israel. Asked about egg farmer Eytan Davidi’s desire for a decisive war with Hezbollah, Stern says he agrees “100 per cent” despite the heavy price Israelis would pay in lives and money. “I hope for it,” he says.

As Stern guides us around the war room, a resident named Perchya arrives at the centre desperate for help. The 61-year-old, who depends upon an oxygen tank to survive, desperately wants to evacuate but hasn’t been able to escape.

Perchya, 61, wants to evacuate but hasn’t been able to escape. She has sought help from local officials, who promised to assist her. Credit: Kate Geraghty

She lives alone in an apartment with no safe room, no bars on the windows and no one to look after her. Because her home is four kilometres from the border, rather than two kilometres, she has not yet been entitled to government-funded emergency accommodation.

“Everything is exposed, I have no family,” she says, collapsing into tears. A city official jots down her details, promising to help. An all-out war may not have broken out, but for residents like Perchya, life on the borderline has already become unbearable.

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