Three rusty water-trucks stand at the edge of Kibbutz Malkiya, on Israel’s border with Lebanon; little bigger than a family car, they look like something out of an old cartoon.A collection of industrial leaf-blowers is stacked nearby.“This is all we have,” resident Dean Sweetland explains.
“We have just these - and the leaf-blowers - to blow the fire back onto the dead areas.”Dean, a Londoner who moved to the kibbutz eight years ago, is one of a dozen residents left to tackle recent bushfires in the area, sparked by Hezbollah rockets from Lebanon.“We’re on our own,” he says.
From the back terrace of his home - built from shipping containers, a few hundred meters from the Lebanese border - Dean Sweetland points out the plumes of grey smoke rising from the hills nearby, to the sound of distant bombs and fighter jets.Most of the other residents of Kibbutz Malkiya were evacuated in the days following the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October, when its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon began firing on communities here.
Families evacuated eight months ago are still living in temporary accommodation further south.The blazes here are a vivid reminder that the Israeli government’s promise to secure these northern areas and get residents back home is still unfulfilled.“We feel like we’re the forgotten people,” Dean says.
“They don’t care about the north.”The attitude among many in the country, he says, is “let it burn”.“I think we have to take out Hezbollah for 10km, maybe more,” says Yariv Rozenberg, the deputy commander of Kibbutz Malkiya’s civil defence team.“You can’t kill them all, and they won’t leave from here.
Before a meeting of the war cabinet to discuss the situation on Tuesday night, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, said the country was “approaching the point where a decision will have to be made”.The armed forces, he said, were “prepared and ready to move to an offensive”.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting troops and firefighters in the northern town of Kiryat Shmona on Wednesday, said the government was prepared for “a very strong action in the north.”“One way or another we will restore security to the north,” he said.Many believe a ceasefire in Gaza would help cool the situation further north.“Gaza is the key,” Dean says.
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Can someone please ELI5 why they think that HAMAS won’t just “evacuate” with the rest of these people? What’s the point of destroying a chunk of the city that was abandoned? I understand that they are destroying the “infrastructure”, tunnels etc. but not terrorists? Am I missing something?
Other than destroying the infrastructure as you mentioned, in an evacuation/refugee scenario it’s possible to identify individuals and check them against available intelligence.
Israeli intelligence has had a lot of time to at the very least identify Hamas’s chain of command. While the odd low-level fighter might slip through, any leader would get nabbed before they made it into a refugee camp.
Because people around here don’t like hearing that there’s a strategically valid, logistically viable method for clearing out the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza while minimizing civilian casualties.
Apparently nobody noticed that the moment the IDF started evacuating civilians and moving in Hamas is suddenly open to accepting terms. What I outlined is the thing they fear most: their leadership on the ground getting grabbed.
It’s not that uncommon. When a beehive is doing really well, it’ll “split”, meaning they’ll raise a second queen and the new queen will leave and half of the colony will go with her to establish a new hive somewhere. This is called swarming, and it’s the their version of reproduction. (Tangent: Contrary to popular belief, honey bee swarms are usually very docile since they don’t yet have a home to defend.) Once they find a suitable location to settle, they’ll move in. Without humans building things, a suitable location would usually be something like an old hollowed out tree. But humans build great beehive homes. Old houses with small openings between siding panels that allow bees into the walls are a common favorite.
Israel’s military says it has pulled out of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City after a two-week raid that left most of the major medical complex in ruins.
On Sunday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said al-Shifa had become “a terrorist lair” and that more than 200 members of Palestinian armed groups, including senior figures, had been killed, with others surrendering.
That was in marked contrast to their first controversial raid there in November, when it took several weeks for large numbers of tanks and vehicles backed by heavy air strikes to close in on the site.
For supporters of the Israeli military this has been evidence of the gains it has made during the war and its tactical success, launching a surprise attack on the enemy to strike it hard.
They argue that it shows the ease with which Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters were able to regroup after Israel pulled its forces out of northern Gaza and the urgent need to come up with a convincing post-war plan to govern the territory.
A recent UN-backed assessment warned that a famine in Gaza was imminent, prompting the UN’s top court last week to order Israel to enable an immediate “unhindered” flow of aid.
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Just ask Daniella Weiss, 78, the grandmother of Israel’s settler movement, who says she already has a list of 500 families ready to move to Gaza immediately.
Mrs Weiss proudly shows me a map of the West Bank with pink dots indicating Jewish settlements.
We meet Daniella at her home in the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, where red-roofed houses are spread over hilltops and valleys.
A few days later, Daniella Weiss is selling the idea of a return to Gaza over cake and popcorn at a small gathering, hosted by another settler in their living room.
In the shade of a sprawling tree, Yehuda Shimon is playing with his two young sons, who are in hammocks, hanging from the branches.
Outposts like his are multiplying in the West Bank, along with larger settlements, fragmenting Palestinian territory and stoking tension.
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This isnt a race with 1st or last. It only has “finished or didn’t.”
This year, 5 of 40 finished, which was a record. The “winner” finished at 58:44:59, with the other 4 finishing in the last hour. She is one of 17 people to ever complete the newer, fully unmarked race route.
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