Editor’s report: The Hezbollah flag that I Saw from Sarah Benarroch’s Home on the Border with Lebanon
On hearing that the IDF killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah ,my mind took me back to a visit to the home of former Winnipegger Sarah Benarroch in the scenic mountainous town of Shlomi, in northern Israel right on the border with Lebanon, where the air was fresh and my children rollerbladed in a carefree manner through the town. Sarah’s home was so close to the border that as I walked down her street I actually could see yellow Hezbollah flags flying on the Lebanese side of the border. Sarah and her family are included in the over 60,000 Israelis who were evacuated from their homes right after Oct 7 and have not been able to return since Hezbollah has attacked these towns constantly, with rockets and artillery shells, causing extensive damage in northern Israel.
It is important to remember that Hezbollah began bombarding Israel on Oct. 8 - the day after 6000 Hamas and other Jihadists invaded Israel from Gaza and massacred 1,200 people, sparking the current war. This was not about Israel's counterstrike, which had not even begun. Hezbollah’s actions were about piling on in hopes of severely damaging the Jewish state - en route to its destruction.
On October 7, if Nasrallah had decided to invade the north, to massacre Jews, take them hostage in its vast tunnel system in the mountainous terrain of Southern Lebanon and capture the Galilee, he likely could have done it. On Oct 7, Israel was completely unprepared for this, and it was in fact rather miraculous that an invasion of the Galilee didn’t happen on Oct 7. (This is all the more miraculous in that we now know that since entering Lebanon this September, the IDF has found weapons caches of Hezbollah weaponry in forward positions very close to the northern border with Israel, as well as about 100 sites of tunnel shafts, water stores and supplies, including thermal scopes, blood bags for transfusions and medical kits marked Made in Iran. This show that when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah spoke openly about invading and conquering the Galilee, it was far from just talk.)
I was in Israel during the 2006 2nd war in Lebanon, and remember well how all the state bomb shelters had not been properly maintained or prepared (As an aside, I remember well how I first learned that that war erupted in 2006 when a vendor in downtown Netanya offered to lower the price of a backgammon set, telling me there was a discount since war with Hezbollah
had erupted, and tourists were clearing out). That 2006 2nd war in Lebanon, did not lead to a decisive Israeli victory. It ended with UN resolution 1701, according to which Hezbollah was to be disarmed and moved north of the Litani River, and the buffer zone in Southern Lebanon was to be patrolled by 15,000 UNIFIL soldiers. But complications occurred right away as the UN asserted that dismantling Hezbollah was not its direct mandate and it could only help Lebanon disarm the organization. Lebanon, of course, was too weak a state to do this.
But for 18 years (2006-2024), successive Israeli governments (all of which were led by Netanyahu except for one year of the Bennett-Lapid government) nothing was done by Israel to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its military force on the border. Israel knew that UNIFIL soldiers turned a blind eye as Hezbollah carved out an extensive tunnel network, and built up a huge arsenal of long range precision guided missiles, which could serve as an existential threat to Israel.
The big question is, as Hezbollah built up its weapons, tunnel system and number of fighters, where was Netanyahu who ought to have taken action to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure and deal with this ticking time bomb many years ago? I think the answer is that Netanyahu and the IDF became complacent, and in fact became addicted to the quiet on the northern border. It was easier to put off the problem, let the Israeli economy flourish and enjoy the good life, even though the problem of Hezbollah only got worse and the Iranian proxy will now be much harder to defang, notwithstanding Israel’s recent successes against it. The notion that the Israeli army could downsize and rely more on technology in light of Hezbollah’s designs on the north, are difficult to comprehend. But there were 17 years of “shekel” (quiet) albeit this was a false sense of security.
There will be a state commission of inquiry into the failure to repel the Hamas invasion of Oct 7, but already Amit Segal, a well known Israeli correspondent who is right of centre, has called for a state-commission of inquiry into how Israel allowed Hezbollah to violate UN resolution 1701 and rearm along its northern border, causing such a threat that 60, 000 people have not been able to return to their homes, their business’s destroyed, and it’s unclear when they will be able to return.
Whatever military gains Israel makes will have to be translated at some point into political/diplomatic gains such that the residents of the north will be willing to return. It is also possible that the IDF will be in Southern Lebanon for a more lengthy period until a reasonable plan is put in place to ensure residents of the north can return.
I imagine calls such as Amit Segal’s for a commission of inquiry into how the threat from Hezbollah was allowed to flourish, will only grow at some point. The Hezbollah flags I saw from Shlomi ought never to have been there in first place.