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Exclusive: Israel Pushes Separation Wall Construction, Lebanese Troops Hold Guard

UNIFIL employee monitors Israel's construction of a barrier on the Lebanese border, Asharq Al-Awsat
UNIFIL employee monitors Israel's construction of a barrier on the Lebanese border, Asharq Al-Awsat
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Exclusive: Israel Pushes Separation Wall Construction, Lebanese Troops Hold Guard

UNIFIL employee monitors Israel's construction of a barrier on the Lebanese border, Asharq Al-Awsat
UNIFIL employee monitors Israel's construction of a barrier on the Lebanese border, Asharq Al-Awsat

The calm and tightened security along the southern Lebanese border is far from resembling the sound of drums of war rolling.

With that cleared, politics has managed to contain prospects of an all-out war between the two forces. But working diplomatic efforts did not stop Lebanese troops from remaining on guard in case matters take a sudden turn for the worse.

UNIFIL peace-keepers, on the other hand, maintain attentive observations as Israeli construction machines continue their work on erecting a separation wall according to plan. Nevertheless, the wall does not encroach on disputed points.

Five kilometers away, the thudding of machines is all but strange for residents in Naqoura, the last Lebanese border town with Palestine on the southernmost coast.

Locals say they have grown accustomed to hearing construction noises across the wide space.

“These are the Israeli rock-drilling mechanisms,” says a local when asked about the thudding.

“They run 8:00 am through 4:00 pm,” others added.

At the border checkpoint, all the signs point towards war almost breaking loose last week. Lebanese soldiers dug up trenches and tightened procedures and ran extensive patrols to prevent any unauthorized person from crossing into the area.

The army, side by side with intelligence, are prepared and focus all working capacity towards the Israeli construction site.

The scene is split into two, Lebanese Army troopers and three UN peacekeepers, monitoring construction on one side of the border, facing 10 workers who manage the massive wall’s construction and Israeli soldiers looking beyond cement blocks into the Lebanese side. Though soon, Israeli soldiers disappear behind the wall.

Israeli soldiers are hiding behind the wall, and the Jewish state will soon follow suit and disappear behind the five-and-a-half meters tall wall.

The wall will also block the coast of Nahariya, which is easy to see from a high ground where the Lebanese soldiers and UNIFIL members.

Nevertheless this wall, will not cross disputed points-- UNIFIL and Lebanese army personnel monitor and document Israeli construction steps to prevent its construction in the border conflict zones pending the end of Lebanese diplomacy.

The wall, of which less than 100 meters have been built so far, has not been set off from the first coastal point. But from a high point east of border—launching from point D1, keeping in mind that unregistered maritime borders are an extension of the land border.

Any error of a few centimeters in the land would constitute an error of hundreds of kilometers into the sea. The maritime boundary is another matter of dispute, and Lebanon insists on its sovereignty over all its territory whether on land or into the sea.

In fact, there are no border violations at the place where the first section of the wall is now being built, which is why it is not interrupted by diplomatic efforts. The violations are located down east, since border point D1 has been agreed upon in the demarcation of the border in 1923.

There are 13 points of border dispute between Lebanon and Israel, on which Israel intends to build its wall, maximizing tension.

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Israelis are Wary of Returning to the North Because they Don't Trust the Ceasefire with Hezbollah

A general view of the border line between Israel and Lebanon following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, as seen from its Israeli side, November 28, 2024. REUTERS/ Shir Torem
A general view of the border line between Israel and Lebanon following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, as seen from its Israeli side, November 28, 2024. REUTERS/ Shir Torem
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Israelis are Wary of Returning to the North Because they Don't Trust the Ceasefire with Hezbollah

A general view of the border line between Israel and Lebanon following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, as seen from its Israeli side, November 28, 2024. REUTERS/ Shir Torem
A general view of the border line between Israel and Lebanon following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, as seen from its Israeli side, November 28, 2024. REUTERS/ Shir Torem

Dean Sweetland casts his gaze over a forlorn street in the Israeli community of Kibbutz Malkiya. Perched on a hill overlooking the border with Lebanon, the town stands mostly empty after being abandoned a year ago.
The daycare is closed. The homes are unkempt. Parts of the landscape are ashen from fires sparked by fallen Hezbollah rockets. Even after a tenuous Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire designed to let Israelis return to the north, the mood here is far from celebratory.
“The ceasefire is rubbish,” said Sweetland, a gardener and member of the kibbutz’s civilian security squad. “Do you expect me to ring around my friends and say, ‘All the families should come home?’ No."
Across the border, Lebanese civilians have jammed roads in a rush to return to homes in the country's south, but most residents of northern Israel have met the ceasefire with suspicion and apprehension.
“Hezbollah could still come back to the border, and who will protect us when they do?” Sweetland asked.
Israel’s government seeks to bring the northern reaches of the country back to life, particularly the line of communities directly abutting Lebanon that have played a major role in staking out Israel’s border.
But the fear of Hezbollah, a lack of trust in United Nations peacekeeping forces charged with upholding the ceasefire, deep anger at the government and some Israelis' desire to keep rebuilding their lives elsewhere are keeping many from returning immediately.
When the truce took effect, about 45,000 Israelis had evacuated from the north. They fled their homes after Hezbollah began firing across the border on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with its ally Hamas in Gaza. That triggered more than a year of cross-border exchanges, with Lebanese villages in the south and Israeli communities facing the border taking the brunt of the pain.
During the truce's initial 60-day phase, Hezbollah is supposed to remove its armed presence from a broad band of southern Lebanon where the military says the militant group had been digging in for years by gathering weapons and setting up rocket launch sites and other infrastructure. Under the ceasefire, a UN peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL and a beefed-up Lebanese army presence are supposed to ensure Hezbollah doesn’t return.
Many residents of northern Israel are skeptical that the peace will hold.
Sarah Gould, who evacuated Kibbutz Malkiya at the start of the war with her three kids, said Hezbollah fired on the community up to and just past the minute when the ceasefire took effect early Wednesday.
“So for the government to tell me that Hezbollah is neutralized," she said, "it’s a perfect lie.”
Residents fear for their safety in the far north in Gaza, where Israel is pushing forward with a war that has killed over 44,000 Palestinians, Israel’s goal is the eradication of Hamas. But in Lebanon, Israel’s aims were limited to pushing Hezbollah away from the border so northern residents could return home.
Israeli critics say the government should have kept fighting to outright cripple Hezbollah or to clear out the border area, which is home to hundreds of thousands of Lebanese.
“I won’t even begin to consider going home until I know there’s a dead zone for kilometers across the border,” the 46-year-old Gould said.
Some wary Israelis trickled back home Thursday and Friday to areas farther from the border. But communities like Kibbutz Manara, set on a tiny slice of land between Lebanon and Syria, remained ghost towns.
Orna Weinberg, 58, who was born and raised in Manara, said it was too early to tell whether the ceasefire would protect the community.
Perched above all the other border villages, Manara was uniquely vulnerable to Hezbollah fire throughout the war. Three-quarters of its structures were damaged.
In the kibbutz’s communal kitchen and dining hall, ceiling beams have collapsed. The uprooted floorboards are covered with ash from fires that also claimed much of the kibbutz’s cropland.
Rocket fragments abound. The torso of a mannequin, a decoy dressed in army green, lies on the ground.
Weinberg tried to stay in Manara during the war, but after anti-tank shrapnel damaged her home, soldiers told her to leave. On Thursday, she walked along her street, which looks out directly over a UNIFIL position separating the kibbutz from a line of Lebanese villages that have been decimated by Israeli bombardment and demolitions.
Weinberg said UNIFIL hadn’t prevented Hezbollah’s build-up in the past, “so why would they be able to now?”
“A ceasefire here just gives Hezbollah a chance to rebuild their power and come back to places that they were driven out of,” she said.
The truce seemed fragile.
Associated Press reporters heard sporadic bursts of gunfire, likely Israeli troops firing at Lebanese attempting to enter the towns. Israel’s military says it is temporarily preventing Lebanese civilians from returning home to a line of towns closest to the border, until the Lebanese military can deploy there in force.
Even in less battered communities, no one returns home. Though the atmosphere along the border was tense, Malkiya showed signs of peace. With Hezbollah’s rockets stopped, some residents returned briefly to the kibbutz to peer around cautiously.
At a vista overlooking the border, where the hulking wreckage of Lebanese villages could be made out, a group of around 30 soldiers gathered. Just days ago, they would have made easy targets for Hezbollah fire.
Malkiya has sustained less damage than Manara. Still, residents said they would not return immediately. During a year of displacement, many have restarted their lives elsewhere, and the idea of going back to a front-line town on the border is daunting.
In Lebanon, where Israeli bombardment and ground assaults drove some 1.2 million people from their homes, some of the displaced crowded into schools-turned-shelters or slept in the streets.
In Israel, the government paid for hotels for evacuees and helped accommodate children in new schools. Gould predicted residents would return to the kibbutz only when government subsidies for their lodging dried up — “not because they want to, but because they feel like they can’t afford an alternative.”
“It’s not just a security issue,” Gould said. “We’ve spent more than a year rebuilding our lives wherever we landed. It’s a question of having to gather that up and move back somewhere else, somewhere that’s technically our old house but not a home. Nothing feels the same.”
It’s unclear if schools in the border communities will have enough students to reopen, Gould said, and her children are already enrolled elsewhere. She’s enjoyed living farther from the border, away from an open war zone.
There’s also a deep feeling that the communities were abandoned by the government, Sweetland said.
Sweetland is one of roughly 25 civilian security volunteers who stayed throughout the war, braving continual rocket fire to keep the kibbutz afloat. They repaired damaged homes, put out blazes and helped replace the kibbutz generator when it was taken out by Hezbollah fire. They were on their own, with no firefighters or police willing to risk coming, he said.
“We didn’t have any help for months and months and months, and we pleaded, ‘Please help us.’”
Sweetland said he will keep watching over the hushed pathways of the once-vibrant community in hopes his neighbors will soon feel safe enough to return. But he predicted it would take months.
Weinberg hopes to move back to Manara as soon as possible. On Thursday, she spotted a former neighbor who was about to leave after checking the damage to her home.
Weinberg grasped her hand through the car window, asking how she was. The woman grimaced and began to cry. Their hands parted as the car slowly rolled out through the gates and drove away.