2023-12-25 07:04:01
When 80 days have passed since Hamas carried out its attack against southern Israel and the international community looks towards the Red Sea, on the northern front there is the great threat to Israel: Hezbollah. The tension is maximum and no one wants to make a miscalculation. In the neighboring towns in the south of Lebanon, its inhabitants barely have seven seconds to take shelter from the moment the alarms sound until the projectiles fall. The arsenal of this hostile neighbor, with a direct line to Iran, and its military capabilities are much more powerful than those of Hamas. “People were used to living under rockets, the fear now is that there will be an invasion like in the south, like that of Hamas,” explains Gideon Harari, 66 years old.
After spending 25 years in Israeli intelligence – in unit 504 – Harari now dedicates his time to the security of his community. He patrols in the Shear Yeshuv moshav, where barely 120 people remain, most of them elderly and farmers. The rest (about 700 residents lived) have been evacuated by the Government. «The majority of young people and families left. It is normal. Although after more than two months in a hotel in Tiberias, they don’t want to be there. Many come every day to spend the day. And as he summarizes: “Everyone wants to return, but they want security.” The truth is that Shear Yeshuv is practically a ghost town. The gym, the dairy… Everything is closed. Fallen leaves cover the doors and silence reigns in this community.
In addition to its neighborhood patrol, which has “all kinds of weapons and there is always someone on guard.” Harari explains that there are thousands of Army troops deployed in this region. “We have all been on alert since 7-O,” a massacre that in his opinion should not have happened, since Israeli Intelligence had all the data in front of them, but they did not know how to read it.
Harari has had Hezbollah as a neighbor for 32 years. He had previously lived in Argentina, during the military dictatorship. He defends that his residence is this: «If you do not live on the borders of the country, you are not part of the country. I was not born in this part, but near Tel Aviv, but I fell in love with this place. “It is one of the most beautiful in Israel, with such green landscapes and such good people.” But just 10 km away, all the shuttles of the “Party of God” are pointing this way. What’s more, two Israeli civilians were injured this Wednesday by an anti-tank missile launched from southern Lebanon. These scenes are repeated almost daily. “I sleep very well, a dictatorship scares me more,” he admits.
“Hezbollah was not created as a result of the war of ’82,” Gideon rejects. “That’s a fable.” He recalls that the only Arab country with a Shiite majority is Lebanon, hence “it was the easiest country to exploit the Islamic revolution. “It is a very weak country, with continuous fights between Christians, Druze, Muslims… Many young Shiites went to study Islam there and when such a strong bond was created, Iran came to Lebanon.”
“The Iranians are prepared to fight until ‘the last Arab’,” jokes Gideon, remembering that they are Persians. “They are using organizations like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah or the Houthis in Yemen… as ‘proxies’ to advance Iranian interests in the Middle East. We, as Jews, bother them a lot,” he adds. The problem is that “Hamas did not share the 7-O plan with Iran, because a war with Israel is not good for Tehran and Hezbollah now. Hamas was ahead of them.” Of course, Gideon asserts that both join the solidarity with the Palestinians, for the sake of the gallery, they cannot sit idly by while the ground intervention in Gaza lasts. Hence he warns that “what we have here is a war of low, medium intensity. But it can change in just five minutes. As soon as one of the projectiles caused a massacre of Israeli civilians or vice versa, everything would escalate very quickly. “Iran was not interested in holding a 7-O at this very moment, it was more important for them to develop their nuclear plan.”
Lior Haiat, spokesperson for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, indicated in a meeting with Hispanic journalists that “since October 7, Hezbollah, the armed wing of the terrorist regime of Iran, has attacked Israeli soldiers and citizens from southern Lebanon.” Haiat explained that “Israel does not want to open another war front, but we are not going to let these attacks end without a response.” Furthermore, “if the international community wants to avoid a war in Lebanon similar to that in Gaza, it must do everything possible to comply with resolution 1701” of 2006.
Along the same lines, Gideon highlights that they do not trust the UN. “It did not help us in ’67, nor in ’73, nor did the force of Unifil” that was established in ’77. And now that resolution 1701 exists, they do not comply with it either. “We live in a very ugly neighborhood, our neighbors don’t like us being here.” Hence Gideon does not believe there is a diplomatic solution. In his opinion, “we speak Yiddish with the Arabs instead of speaking to them in Arabic, but we must speak to the Arabs in Arabic: that is, with a lot of fire.”
He believes that we Israelis “have a unique opportunity. The reason is on our side. “We have to wage a war, not against Lebanon, but so that Hezbollah moves 20 or 25 km away from the border and understands that it is not worth fighting with this neighbor.” Unfortunately, “there will be many deaths on both sides, but it is necessary.” There is no other “solution” and he remembers that he is not a politician and that is why he can say what he thinks. «We don’t have to talk, we have to shoot. “They have to understand that we have strength and we are powerful.”
Gideon does not think it is important to take down the leader of the “Party of God”, Hasan Nasrallah. «If he dies another will come. Hezbollah is not Hasan Nasrallah. It will continue without him. In 1992 we killed Abas al-Musawi and Nasrallah came, who is worse and much more intelligent,” he explains. “Isn’t that the biggest task we have.”
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