But the kibbutz, unwilling to take any chances, raised money and made contingency plans — purchasing long rifles for the 25-member local defense unit, securing emergency sources of water and electricity and building a military clinic.
On October 7, when thousands of fighters led by Hamas – the Gaza-based militant group with increasingly close ties to Hezbollah – breached Israel's southern border, slaughtered 1,200 people and took 240 others hostage, Stift felt bitterly that residents Elon were surrounded. Right to worry.
“What happened in the South is exactly what we were saying could happen here, and it still can happen,” Stift said. “It's real.”
At least 70,000 Israelis from the northern border evacuated their homes in the wake of the attack, turning the area – like the devastated south – into a closed military zone. Several Israeli battalions, including thousands of soldiers, invaded. Across the border, Hezbollah fighters exchanged fire.
This is not an official war zone. However, Israeli artillery blasts and Hezbollah rockets echo through the rock-strewn mountains almost every day. The Israeli army says that Hezbollah used short-range mortar shells, Russian Kornet anti-tank missiles, and thermal bombs to destroy homes in Israeli kibbutzim.
More than 120 Hezbollah fighters and at least 20 civilians, including three journalists, were killed in Lebanon. 12 soldiers and five civilians were killed on the Israeli side.
On Tuesday, a suspected Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas official who helped the group strengthen its ties with Hezbollah and was designated by the United States as a “global terrorist.”
The strike heightened fears in the region that skirmishes along this volatile border region could turn into all-out war. Israel views Hezbollah, in contrast to Hamas, as an army with advanced training and an arsenal of about 150,000 missiles. Many Israelis fear their government will once again downplay the deadly threat.
Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, warned in a speech on Wednesday that retaliation for Al-Arouri's assassination was coming. He said that if Israel launched a war on Lebanon, it would be “very costly.”
Moshe Davidovich, head of the local council, which sent 40,000 people even before the official evacuation order was issued, said many residents viewed the battle on the northern front as a fight for their homes. But they said they were finding it difficult to decide where to live and how to enroll their children in school. Davidovich said they do not trust their “NGOs” in Jerusalem, where leaders are “preoccupied with politics and tactics – no strategy.”
For the unprecedented number of Israelis evacuated, from north and south, the state seemed largely absent. It took weeks for authorities to facilitate hotel stays and rental agreements. Northerners have received few answers about the condition of their homes or a timeline for when they will be able to return.
The Israeli government may once again be relying on “the illusion that agreements can be reached with our enemy,” Davidovich said, before pausing to take a call from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office.
“Until October 6, we were seen as the mayor of the Middle East. “After October 7, we are seen as having lost our ability to deter,” he said. “There's no question for us but to get it back.”
Israel is negotiating with the Lebanese government and representatives of Hezbollah – the country's dominant military and political force – to calm the situation. But on Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant told Amos Hochstein, a senior White House envoy, that there was only a “short window of time” to reach a diplomatic solution.
“We will bring back our citizens in the north and in the south,” Netanyahu said on Thursday. “To achieve this, we will apply maximum energy with maximum precision wherever it is needed.”
But many along the northern border have no confidence in Netanyahu, who has told Israelis for years that Hamas was contained in Gaza. It will be difficult here to convince similar guarantees regarding Hezbollah.
“What happened before October 7 cannot happen again,” said Dotan Razili, a reservist serving in his hometown of Kibbutz Elon. He pointed to the winding border wall — part concrete, part razor wire, reinforced with high-tech sensors and cameras that feed to monitors at nearby military bases. He said that after Hamas used drones loaded with grenades and snipers to shoot at cameras along the Gaza border, the “smart wall” was no longer enough.
“We fell in love with technology and forgot some very important and basic things,” Razili said.
He said his units adopted low-tech solutions, relying on IDF strategy manuals from the 1950s and old two-way radio phones.
Although Hezbollah forces have withdrawn from the border in recent weeks, after October 7, “no Israeli can say it will never happen again.”
Israeli officials are floating the idea of buffer zones — similar to those that existed when Israel occupied southern Lebanon from 1985 to 2000 — extending about four kilometers (2.5 miles) into southern Lebanon and several kilometers into Gaza, an enclave only 12 kilometers long. (7.5 miles) wide. Netanyahu also said that Israel wants to control the Philadelphia Corridor, which runs along Gaza's border with Egypt.
Yossi Harpaz, a sociologist at Tel Aviv University, said there was a shift in Israel's perception of defense — and the role of its border cities — after October 7.
He added: “The buffer zone is now in our lands, in the border areas,” which are now inhabited by soldiers, not civilians. October 7 was also “a violation of IDF doctrine, to take the fight into enemy territory.”
Noam Erlich ran a craft beer company out of Kibbutz Manara, a northern community that was evacuated for the first time in its history on October 8. 86 out of 155 homes in the town were destroyed, including his own. He sees the strength of border kibbutzim like Manara as a matter of national security.
“If the lighthouse is gone, the next border line will be Kiryat Shmona,” he said, referring to an Israeli city farther from the border. “Slowly, Israel’s northern border will reach Tel Aviv.”
“Kibbutzim cannot exist without government cooperation, and the government and infrastructure are collapsing,” Tirza Valentine said. Her mother, Rachel Rabin, was among the founders of Kibbutz Manara, and the sister of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the last Israeli leader to approach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
“Buffer zones don’t work,” she said. “If the only solutions being discussed are those that move from one war to another, then we are in trouble.”
Sarah Dadoush in Beirut contributed to this report.
