Northern evacuees question whether a ceasefire deal is enough to see them home

NAHARIYA — By day, Miro Vahknin works in his beauty parlor in the coastal city of Nahariya. Each night, he serves on the first response team of his kibbutz, Rosh Hanikra, which abuts the northern border.

He rarely sleeps at home with his children and wife, who were evacuated from the kibbutz more than a year ago and now live in the nearby city of Nahariya. His business there has seen a 40 percent drop as swaths of the population of northern Israel currently live elsewhere.

But Vahknin doesn’t want Israel to sign an expected ceasefire with the Hezbollah terror group.

“Despite the difficulties in my personal life, I’d rather we continued fighting and only agree to a ceasefire when we’re really in control,” Vakhnin said on a rainy Tuesday morning as he ate a hastily made sandwich in front of his hair salon.

He paused as he received an alert on his telephone. “You see,” he said, showing the screen. “There’s a drone infiltration. If there’s an emergency, I have to leave immediately.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the high-level security cabinet in Tel Aviv were expected on Tuesday evening to approve a 60-day ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, after more than a year of war instigated by the Iran-backed terror group.

At the same time, an official stressed that Israel was accepting only a cessation of hostilities, not an end to the war on Hezbollah.

Since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it was doing so to support Gaza amid the war there that was sparked with the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7.

Some 60,000 residents were evacuated from northern towns on the Lebanon border shortly after Hamas’s onslaught, in light of fears that Hezbollah would carry out a similar attack and due to increasing rocket fire by the terror group. Israel has been trying to make it safe for the residents to return, including through an ongoing ground operation launched in September.

While some residents in the north welcome the possibility of returning to their homes and prewar routines, northern officials have expressed concern about a ceasefire deal that they say won’t guarantee security to the region.

Metula Mayor David Azoulai strongly denounced the expected ceasefire agreement, telling The Times of Israel that it was “a surrender agreement by the Israeli government to the Hezbollah terrorist organization.”

The agreement “allows Hezbollah to rehabilitate itself and rebuild its military infrastructure,” Azoulai warned.

Azoulai is also afraid that Hezbollah will attack residents of the north the way Hamas did in the south on October 7, 2023, when thousands of terrorists stormed Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 into Gaza.

But in the north, Azoulai said, “it will be 30 to 40 times more devastating than the disaster in the south.”

Making peace with your enemies

In the Arab town of Mazra’a, about 4 kilometers (2.4 miles) south of Nahariya, Amir Awad, a labor lawyer, said he’s in favor of a ceasefire.

“You have to make peace with your enemies, not with your friends,” Awad said as he stood next to Bonjour Bakery, which he also owns, at the entrance to the village. He believed that Israel has to solve the problem with Hezbollah “politically and not military.”

The attacks from Lebanon on northern Israel since October 2023 have resulted in the deaths of 44 civilians, including a 27-year-old man who was killed after an Iron Dome interceptor missile malfunctioned during a Hezbollah drone attack just outside Mazra’a in August.

Awad said the war has caused trauma to children.

“We need peace,” he said. “We need a return to regular life.”

He said he’s in favor of the deal because “the continuation of fighting hasn’t brought about the results we want.”

Others in the north disagreed, however.

Moshe Davidovich, the head of the Mateh Asher Regional Council and chairman of the Conflict Zone Forum, said in a statement that if an agreement is signed between Lebanon and Israel that doesn’t include the establishment of a buffer zone near the border with a “strong international force and the removal of Hezbollah beyond the Litani River,” Israel will be making a “historic mistake.”

“We will repeat history,” he said, “facing broken promises and ineffective agreements, as we did after the First Lebanon War and the Second Lebanon War.”

Of the 32 communities in the 82-square-mile (212-square-kilometer) Mateh Asher region, eight have been evacuated, with more than 7,000 residents considered internally displaced citizens.

He said that Israel should only sign an agreement in which the security of northern residents is insured.

Ruined economy in the north

Nahum Rachamim never left the evacuated town of Shlomi, which sits right on the northern border.

In addition to his anger at the government because of what he perceives as its “abandonment of the north,” he also expressed concern because the economy is “ruined.”

He said that some people who left the north “will never return.”

“There will be a ceasefire, but there won’t be people to live here,” Rachamim said.

Even Nahariya, a lively seaside city ordinarily lined with cafes and shops, was empty.

A barrage of 10 rockets targeted the city and nearby areas on Monday night, resulting in a 70-year-old woman hospitalized in serious condition. On November 21, a man was killed in another rocket attack on the city.

Rebuilding trust

Gali and Itzik Cohen were evacuated from Kibbutz Adamit after the war began last October. The kibbutz, which has about 300 members, is next to the Bedouin town of Arab al-Aramshe, less than 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the Lebanese border.

The couple is now staying in Bustan Hagalil, a community close to Acre.

Gali took a break from teaching via a teleconference to talk with this reporter.

“I’m for a ceasefire because I believe in solving problems by agreement more than by power,” she said.

Yet she isn’t sure she’ll go back to Adamit once a ceasefire deal is in place. She said she has gotten used to her new community and not having to drive up the long, winding hill to get to Adamit, which she calls, “the periphery of the periphery.”

“I want to be sure that if we do move back, I’ll be able to walk around outside and feel safe,” she said. “I also want to see which of my friends come back and if my grandchildren return.”

Itzik, who manages the orchards of the kibbutz, said he has begun making plans to prepare the groves for next year “as if we’re going to be able to go back and start over.”

Since the kibbutz area has been declared a closed military zone, kibbutz workers have been unable to tend to their crops and trees. The kibbutz has lost thousands of peach, avocado, mango, and nectarine trees, Itzik said.

Rebuilding the economy of the kibbutz and the surrounding northern region will be challenging, especially if people are reluctant to return, he said.

Cohen, who lived in Adamit since 1979, said there were areas of the security wall between Israel and Lebanon that were broken, but it never previously concerned him. He used to take visitors to the border wall; from there, they could look into Lebanon and see people “in villages living their lives.”

But that was before October 7.

“Maybe we were living in an illusion,” he said.

“What will it be like if there is a ceasefire?” he asked. “There have been rockets and drones, damage to kibbutz buildings, and I doubt whether attacks won’t happen again.”

“After October 7, our trust in the army and the government was broken,” Cohen said. “They don’t care about the hostages. They don’t care about the north. It will be very hard to restore our trust.”