Five days after the massacre in the envelope, we wandered around the charred kibbutzim. Under the bright sun, the eyes could not digest what they saw, the shattered houses, the blood on the beds and in the children's playrooms, the pacifiers that were silent testimony to a little life that disappeared forever. The soul that could hardly resist the smell of death wafting through the air. Above all, there hovered the deathly silence of a killing valley. A silence that screams, unfamiliar, hit us.
After the barrage into Kiryat Shmona: Two houses on fire // Kiryat Shmona Municipality Spokesperson's Office
Three weeks later, yesterday, we were wandering around the north. On Route 90 towards Kiryat Shmona, traffic is sparse, the sky is gray and rain drips from time to time. This is the beautiful season of the Upper Galilee, yellowish and greenish autumn, pleasant winds that break out without prior preparation. But the beauty of northern roads is now hidden under camouflage nets, and hundreds of armored personnel carriers and tanks walk on the asphalt at the entrances to kibbutzim and on city boulevards.
Kiryat Shmona has become a ghost town
Kiryat Shmona became a ghost town. In the old tenements, the shutters are closed, the windows are locked. On the fronts of the houses here and there a punctured football left behind. There is no children's erosion on the street, the balconies are silent, Amar's mythological falafel is closed.
Is it a different kind of quiet, the one before the storm? Even if it does not break out in force against Hezbollah behind the ridge, it is clear that something significant must happen in order for life here to return to normal. This time the silence is familiar. It is unclear what the storm will be and how it will arrive, but it will appear.
At 14 p.m., a combat team on the outskirts of the city gathers for a briefing. Reservists are well equipped, maintain discipline and silence, operate quietly and confidently. A tank platoon is parked behind a blue-and-white sidewalk, the engines are working.
The streets are empty, but at least they will be clean, Photo: Eyal Margolin, Genie
We are in a war zone, and the urban space takes on the character of a forward outpost. In the first day after October 7, countless tanks and armored personnel carriers made their way here on caterpillars on main roads in the north, as befits an emergency. The stabilization was tremendous and quick - to avoid surprise from the north.
We sit under eucalyptus trees and on the bank of a tributary of the Dan River. Two reservists quickly bathe in it to freshen up. From time to time, artillery batteries in the area disturb the peace with a deafening noise. The vigilance is felt, every day is a day of battle.
Every day, Israel's defense improves, the enemy hardens and absorbs, and the Israeli defense line in the north is stretched like a spring that can turn into an offensive hurricane. The main front is in the south, but every conversation with the people here comes with emphasis: it's a different kind of game; If it erupts, it will set new boundaries for life in the Galilee.
Tank in Kiryat Shmona, photo: Uri Dagon
Leaving Kiryat Shmona, just before sunset. The rain continues to drizzle nerves, the Lebanon mountains opposite, and Mount Hermon prepares for the night right above us. The fields that were in preparation for winter are full of military tools, the quantities are almost unimaginable, and the contrast between things is like the contrast in the soul between the pain of what happened to us and the pride in what we see before our eyes now.
Giora Saltz, head of the Upper Galilee Regional Council, greets us at the entrance to the council's armored war room, with an M16 shortened on it. The rest of the council members are also in combat procedure - with their weapons on them.
In the command room, veterans of the council sit and supervise assistance to council residents, those who have vacated hotels and those who have not. Every morning, the farmers come here to work on the crops almost to the border, or at least to the area where the military allows them to reach it.
The parking lot remains deserted, photo: Eyal Margolin, Ginny
Saltz and his men have seen it all. They have been here for more than 40 years and do not intend to give up even during the most difficult period of the Galilee finger. They command civilians, and report that some of the residents, certainly those who are not adjacent to the fence, are beginning to return to their homes after a month outside. But Saltz's confident, monotonous voice also begins to tremble when talking about "the day after."
"We were at the peak of the boom," he says, "the expansions in the kibbutzim had more demand than supply, people took out mortgages and came from the center here. Now that our eyes have seen what happened in the south, the inhuman tragedy, who can tell those residents that this will not happen to us? We have two kibbutzim whose fence is the fence of the State of Israel. How will they live here with the Radwan force sitting in front of them?"
Existential interest
Saltz and his friends are sure that they themselves will live here and prosper here, but for many residents who flourished the Galilee in other decades and are not familiar with periods of war on the border, the question remains open.
Saltz. Civilian commander, photo: Spokesperson for the Upper Galilee Regional Council
"On October 7, something big broke in the country," says Saltz, "the contract between the state and its citizens was broken. I have people on the council who are already coming back here, to take care of chicken coops on the mountain and cowsheds in kibbutzim HaEmek, to take care of crops. These are the people of the earth."
He is angry at the image they have attached to the kibbutz members, that they have turned them into land thieves, into the "First Israel," who have distorted what they really are: people of action, border guards.
This is the case in the Gaza envelope, so in the Jordan Valley, so in the Golan and so along the Lebanese border. People with a plow in their right hand and a weapon in their left hand – Israelis, Zionists. Saltz knows they won't go anywhere, but he, as well as all residents of Israel's northern border, are looking for an answer about their future there. In the war before them, will the enemy be defeated – or will what will happen is what will be? They are not willing to accept the second answer. An existential matter.
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