GeT RICH QUICK

 On a hilltop in the Israeli town of Kfar Vradim, a weather vane displays an image of a bicycle riding over a rainbow and the words of an Israeli pop song: “How good it is that you came back home.”

As you stand beneath the sign, gazing across the ancient hills of the Galilee towards Lebanon, just a few miles away, these cheerful lyrics seem out of tune with the daily reality.

A relentless bombing campaign by Hezbollah has driven more than 60,000 Israelis from their homes in the border region and turned 43 communities into ghost towns. Unlike them  Kfar Vradim has yet to be officially evacuated but some of its inhabitants have fled south to safer parts of Israel.

If one of the goals of war is to squeeze your enemy’s territory, Hezbollah is succeeding without the need for a full-scale assault.

The militant group, which is vastly better armed than its fellow Iran proxy Hamas, claimed last week that it had carried out more than 2,100 “military operations” since 8 October. 

Barrages of mortars, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), and precision-guided anti-tank missiles are launched daily into Israel.   

According to the Beirut Urban Lab, Israel has responded with more than 5,300 strikes of its own, mostly conducted by drones.

This simmering conflict in a region that is home to Jews, Arabs, Druze and Christians  has so far claimed the lives of 25 Israelis and 430 people inside Lebanon, of whom 342 were members of Hezbollah.  Nearly 100,000 Lebanese have fled their homes.

The risk of a full-scale war breaking out grows by the hour.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah made its boldest move yet by releasing footage from a spy drone flying over Israeli warships in the port of Haifa. The group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, claimed it represents a fraction of the sensitive military information it now possesses about targets deep inside Israel.

Israel then announced the approval of “operational plans” for a ground assault into southern Lebanon. Foreign Minister Israel Katz warned: “We are getting close to the moment of deciding on changing the rules of the game. In an all-out war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon severely beaten.”

It is far from clear that Israel has the military capability to do that.  Its last war with Hezbollah, in 2006, ended in stalemate and since then Hezbollah’s forces have become more battle hardened following long service in the Syrian civil war. The group’s arsenal is now believed to comprise 150,000 missiles and rockets, including hundreds that can hit southern Israel. Additionally, it possesses around 2,000 suicide and intelligence-gathering drones, along with the latest cyber-warfare capabilities.

The UN Security Council Resolution 1701, put in place after the 2006 war, created a demilitarised zone on the Lebanese side of the border but both sides have increasingly ignored it. Hezbollah has deployed its fighters on the ground in violation of the resolution, while Israel has repeatedly invaded Lebanese airpsace with drones and fighter jets.

The impact on those who remain in their homes on the Israeli side is evident. A South African resident of Kfar Vradim, out for a walk on the scenic hilltop, says: “People in the south live under the threat of rockets from Gaza but have a few seconds to run for shelter. Here we don’t even have seconds. We’re face-to-face with Hezbollah, so staying here means risking your life while waiting for the destruction of your home. We need our government to give us our lives back.”

His friend recalls an experience that has become terrifyingly routine: “I was walking a few miles north of here last week when I heard a small blast, followed by a bigger one and then a huge explosion. It was a Burkan rocket, a flying barrel bomb used in the Syrian civil war, now aimed at our backyards.”

Citizens in dozens of towns on the Lebanon side also suffer, with the villages of Alma al-Shaab, Kfar Kila and Deir Mimas directly in the firing line. More than 800 residents have fled Alma al-Shaab, just one mile from the border, with the town’s deputy mayor William Haddad reporting 130 homes have been damaged or destroyed.

Sarit Zehavi, a former Israeli military intelligence lieutenant-colonel and current head of the Alma Research & Education Centre, which analyses Hezbollah’s tactics, is convinced that a full-scale attack is imminent.

She plays one of Hezbollah’s training videos from 2008, which anticipates the tactics used by Hamas on 7 October. The video shows thousands of rockets being fired, followed by sea and land incursions, targeting Israeli border communities and using civilians as human shields and hostages. Is this still the plan today?

“Probably not,” Zehavi says. “But the principle will be the same when the time comes. Rockets, invasion and hostages. With ten times the firepower of Hamas.”

Zehavi, who has lived on the border for 17 years, continues: “In a normal year, we would have few dozen small attacks. After the war of 2006, the feeling was that Hezbollah was deterred. In the last two years, something changed. They have built watchtowers and positions along the border. Thirty new positions have appeared in the past year alone.

“Hezbollah wants the collapse of Israel and is willing to wait until the time is right. It has all the patience in the world. Hezbollah will make its decisions based on Iran’s interests and strike at a moment we will not expect and cannot predict.”

Hezbollah’s confidence stems from its leadership role in Iran’s network of 14 Shia Islamist militias operating in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen, the West Bank and Gaza. Each has a unique relationship with Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard but Hezbollah, the largest and most heavily armed, is more a partner than subordinate.

Smaller militias in the axis include Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the West Bank, the Houthis in Yemen, the Fatemiyoun Brigade in Syria, Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq and the Al-Ashtar Brigades in Bahrain. 

Like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah’s war machine extends deep underground. The group has constructed extensive border tunnel networks equipped with stairs, electricity and air conditioning. Zehavi shows me footage she filmed inside one. “It’s 80 meters deep and starts in a business premises in a Shiite town across the border. It was discovered fully operational in January 2019, but without an opening on the Israeli side. It’s an impressive feat as excavating in the north is hard work. Hamas digs through sand but Hezbollah must dig through rock. This tunnel took them a decade. Since 2019, the IDF has found six such tunnels, but the full extent of this subterranean threat remains unknown. Just like Gaza, we are dealing with an underground city here in the north. Hezbollah can emerge in unexpected places, giving us almost no time to react.”

General Amos Yadlin, head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, said that America’s involvement will be pivotal to how Israel tackles the threat from the north. “It could be a limited operation to remove Hezbollah from the border or escalate into an all-out war with a threefold objective: removing the immediate threat, severely damaging Hezbollah’s power elements and renewing deterrence.”

However Major General Amidror, former national security advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu and a fellow at the Gemunder Centre for Defence and Strategy in Washington, DC,  believes Israel has not made a final decision on its strategy. “The status quo cannot continue much longer but only after we finish in Gaza can we determine what’s needed. The only thing we know for sure is that Hezbollah’s continued presence on the border is untenable.”

Almost half of Israel’s 2.2 million Arabs live in Israel’s Northern District, placing them in the line of fire. Druze community leader Shakib Shanan, a former Knesset member, knows the horrors of conflict personally. In 2017, his son Kamil was shot dead by Palestinian gunmen while working as a police officer in Jerusalem.

Shanan refuses to leave his hometown of Hurfeish, where nine people were injured in a drone attack earlier this month. “The residents decided to stay,” he says. “Not because we are unafraid. We simply believe the best place to be is where we have always been. This is our village. This is our home. We are not going anywhere. Israel now has no choice but to win two wars. If it fails, we’ll be forced to start swimming in the Mediterranean.”

• First published in the Sunday Times