Besieged: Uria Goldman discusses the ‘situation’ in Kibbutz Ma’yaan Baruch with Mail journalist Richard Pendlebury yesterday / Richard Pendlebury met Idit Stein, (pictured) the mother of a six-year-old boy, who explained why she and others had to leave Ma’yaan Baruch. She said: ‘Our home is near the Lebanese border, only 500 metres, so it has become part of the situation’
Published November 1, 2023
Uria Goldman gives a wry smile. ‘I know it sounds crazy,’ he says, ‘but my wife will not return to the kibbutz unless we fight a war against Hezbollah.
‘This situation needs to be settled once and for all; not for six months or a year, but 50 years, so our children can live in peace.’
Until October 7, the 36-year-old father of three was selling kitchen equipment. His community, the Kibbutz Ma’yaan Baruch, had a population of more than 700 Israelis, who grew crops, raised livestock and hosted urban tourists who wanted to experience the great outdoors.
Today the settlement is a cross between a ghost town and a besieged military camp. The yoga studio and nursery are closed, as is the Museum of Prehistoric Man. Barbed wire has been uncoiled across lush lawns, sandbagged firing points have sprung up on street corners and Mr Goldman no longer concerns himself with sink units or washing machines.
Instead, he is armed with an assault rifle and patrols the otherwise deserted California-style neighbourhoods on a golf buggy. On the back of his T-shirt are the words ‘Volunteer Tactical Team’.
READ FULL STORY
SOURCE: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12695557/Hezbollah-better-soldiers-Hamas-RICHARD-PENDLEBURY-Israel.html
RELATED: In northern Israel, farmers struggle on in fear of Hezbollah attack
Dafna (Israel) (AFP) – The second milking had just finished, with the few remaining residents of kibbutz Dafna persevering under the threat of a new front opening in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.
An Israeli soldier assigned to protect kibbutz Dafna on the border with Lebanon, October 30, 2023. © FADEL SENNA / AFP
Published October 31, 2023
Here, a few hundred metres (yards) from south Lebanon, where Israeli foe Hezbollah holds sway, the spectre of another October 7 haunts civilians.
Almost all of the 1,050 residents of this agricultural community were evacuated to hotels close to the nearby Sea of Galilee. Only around 15 men stayed behind, charged with the security of the kibbutz.
Dafna is reached down a narrow and poorly maintained highway that Israelis call “the old northern road”.
Now, it is deserted, the cause clearly visible across the border — positions of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group allied to Iran which has said it stands ready to step up its operations against Israel if circumstances warrant it.
Twice a day, one less than before the war, the farmers come to milk their cows. “If we didn’t, they’d die,” said Arik Yaakobi, 45, one of the few who stayed.
“People are scared to return because of the possibility that Hezbollah might repeat what Hamas did,” he said.
On October 7, Hamas militants stormed across the Gaza border and attacked farms, villages and a desert music festival in southern Israel, killing an estimated 1,400 people, most of them civilians, according to Israeli officials.
In response, the Israeli army launched an unrelenting bombardment of Gaza which killed more than 8,500 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
In Dafna, only soldiers were visible on the streets. The signs of a hurried departure by its civilian residents were everywhere — children’s toys strewn on lawns, bicycles discarded against playhouses, laundry still hanging out to dry.
READ FULL STORY
SOURCE: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231031-in-northern-israel-farmers-struggle-on-in-fear-of-hezbollah-attack
RELATED: Lebanon’s Hezbollah works to curb hefty losses in Israel clashes, sources say
Members of Hezbollah carry the coffin of Hezbollah member Abbas Shuman, who was killed in southern Lebanon amidst tension between Israel and Hezbollah, during his funeral in Baalbek, Lebanon, October 23, 2023. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky Acquire Licensing Rights
Published October 31, 2023
BEIRUT, Oct 31 (Reuters) – With dozens of Hezbollah fighters killed in three weeks of border clashes with Israel, the Lebanese group is working to stem its losses as it prepares for the possibility of a drawn-out conflict, three sources familiar with its thinking said.
The Iran-backed group has lost 47 fighters to Israeli strikes at Lebanon’s frontier since its Palestinian ally Hamas and Israel went to war on Oct. 7 – about a fifth of the number killed in a full-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.
With most of its fighters killed in Israeli drone strikes, Hezbollah has unveiled its surface-to-air missile capability for the first time, declaring on Sunday it downed an Israeli drone. The missiles are part of an increasingly potent arsenal.
The Israeli military has not commented on Sunday’s reported drone incident. But Israel said on Saturday it had stopped a surface-to-air missile fired from Lebanon at one of its drones and that it responded by striking the launch site.
One of the sources familiar with Hezbollah’s thinking told Reuters that the use of anti-aircraft missiles was one of several steps taken by the Shi’ite Muslim group to curb its losses and counter Israeli drones, which have picked off its fighters in the rocky terrain and olive groves along the border.
Hezbollah had made “arrangements to reduce the number of martyrs”, the source said, without offering further details.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is due to deliver a speech on Friday, in what will be his first address since the Israel-Hamas war erupted.
Since the Gaza conflict flared, Hezbollah’s attacks have been calibrated to contain clashes to the border zone, even as it has indicated a readiness for all-out war if necessary, sources familiar with its thinking say.
Israel, which is waging a war in the Gaza Strip that it says aims to destroy Hamas, has said it has no interest in a conflict on its northern frontier with Lebanon, where it has said so far that seven of its soldiers have been killed.
“I hope we will be able to keep the quiet on this front,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told a briefing, adding that he believed Israel’s strong defence forces and their actions in Gaza had deterred Hezbollah till now.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel would unleash devastation on Lebanon if a war did start.
READ FULL STORY
SOURCE: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanons-hezbollah-works-curb-hefty-losses-israel-clashes-sources-say-2023-10-30/
RELATED: Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, explained
What is Hezbollah, the group backing Hamas against Israel?
Hezbollah supporters rally ahead of the 2022 elections, raising flags and a portrait of the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. AFP/Getty Images
Published October 28 , 2023
As Israel begins ground operations in Gaza, the potential for the conflict to expand regionally — including to Lebanon, the home of Israel’s longtime enemy Hezbollah — has heightened.
In recent days, Israel has increasingly traded fire with Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Islamist militant organization and Lebanese political party, along its northern border. Dozens have been killed, representing the most significant escalation in violence since Israel fought Hezbollah in a bloody 2006 war. Over the past few weeks, more than 19,000 people have fled southern Lebanon in anticipation of further violence.
Hezbollah counts Hamas — the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza and launched the October 7 attack on Israel — as an ally. Both groups are designated as terrorist organizations by many countries. After Israel responded with its siege and onslaught of airstrikes on Gaza, one of Hezbollah’s top officials had a message for Palestinians trapped there: “Our hearts are with you. Our minds are with you. Our souls are with you. Our history and guns and our rockets are with you.”
But it’s not clear if that means Hezbollah, with its extensive military experience and estimated arsenal of as many as 120,000 missiles, is readying to formally enter the conflict. Should Hezbollah open a front against Israel, it would be costly for both sides as well as for their international allies, and the US has stationed aircraft carriers nearby in the Mediterranean to remind the organization of that.
READ FULL STORY
SOURCE: https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/10/28/23935157/hezbollah-lebanon-israel-hamas-palestine-gaza-iran-militia-group
