It’s been more than six months since Hamas terrorists rampaged through southern Israel, but here in the north, Oct. 7 never really ended.
On Oct. 8, the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah picked up where its ally left off, launching an ongoing barrage of rockets, missiles, and artillery shells into northern Israel.
While Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has enabled most of the some 129,000 Israelis who were evacuated from the south to return to their homes, nearly all of the 48,000 or so evacuees from the northern border area have remained displaced, according to government data obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
For Israelis, though, the crisis in the north is a constant reminder that they are the ones under attack, and Gaza is just one front in their much larger war of self-defense.
Hezbollah and Hamas—two of the numerous Iran-backed terror groups that surround Israel in a “ring of fire”—have both refused to negotiate ceasefires with Israel unless the Jewish state effectively lays down its arms in Gaza.
The Biden administration has held Israel back in the north and south, most recently warning the IDF against an invasion of Rafah, Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza.
In the meantime, Israel’s far north has been paralyzed. During a recent two-day trip across the length of the border with Lebanon, residents of the evacuated area spoke of widespread fear and frustration.
Amit Elasar, 57, a former IDF reconnaissance officer who trains soldiers and recruits in the north, struggled to contain his anger over the unprecedented evacuation.
On the evening of Oct. 7, Elasar recalled, he received a phone call from an old army buddy, now a IDF brigadier general, telling him to take his wife and children and head south.
The friend, whom Elasar asked not be identified, warned that Hezbollah was poised to launch a long-planned Oct. 7-style attack of its own.
No comments:
Post a Comment