Attack on Hezbollah leaves northern Israel more angry than relieved: “Are we second-class citizens compared to Tel Aviv?” | International

Ido Azoulay is not convinced by the demonstration of air power and intelligence of his country, Israel, by mobilizing 100 aircraft to surprise thousands of Hezbollah projectile launchers in Lebanon. Rather, it irritates him. In the neighborhood of the historic city of Acre, 36 kilometers from the Lebanese border, there has been a low-intensity war going on for almost 11 months between one side and the other – which this morning was marked by an anti-aircraft alarm, a direct rocket attack and an explosion from the interception of another, which left the remains of glass and curtains on the ground and shrapnel marks in many houses. Like almost the entire north of the country, he also feels distressed. “Who am I? A second-class citizen? All this time, we have been terrorized by the regularity of bombings and they don’t care. And now, when rockets were about to hit Tel Aviv, did we launch a preemptive strike? “For us, no, but for them, yes?” he says in the modest hair salon of his friend, Tomer Eitaz, slightly damaged by shrapnel.

The three 24-year-old friends today recall with particular anger the phrases that are commonly heard in the region, especially in recent months. From one, Yagin Azulay: “The government leaves us sold.” All three voted for the Likud party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has a fief in Acre, in the last election in 2022, but they regret it. “Right now, if he were in front of me, I would ask him: What do you want? Do we keep quiet like the poor despite all this uncertainty that affects our bodies and how we make a living?” says Ido Azulay.

Acre has not been evacuated, as it lies outside the nearest border strip to Lebanon. With 50,000 inhabitants, it was – in better times – one of Israel’s most touristy cities, thanks to the Crusader heritage, with a walled citadel inhabited by Palestinians. They are the descendants of those who stayed during the Nakba (the exodus of six million Palestinians) seven decades ago, and today they share the city with Jewish immigrants whom the state has moved into new territory. Rather, they lead parallel lives, except when they erupt into ethnic conflict, like in 2008 or 2021.

The rockets fired this afternoon from nearby Lebanon at these simple residential homes built for Jews with no resources bring forth a double feeling of discrimination. As part of the north, it faces the threat of dozens of daily projectiles (although Hezbollah did not direct its attack against civilians and Acre has only been targeted exceptionally these months) without the army attacking Lebanon with blood and fire, as it has done with Gaza. And because of its Sephardic origins, Tel Aviv is compared to a stereotype of Ashkenazi privilege, – Jews originally from Central or Eastern Europe -, in a gap of origin that has yet to be healed in Israel.

Despite the fact that the prime minister is a political creature who has recently regained his popularity when everyone considered him disgraced, Netanyahu has stumbled this Sunday in a sense of forgetting the periphery in relation to the center of the country, where Tel Aviv and the highest salaries are located. The prime minister has rubbed salt on the wound and earned the anger of the regional authorities in the north by calling the Israeli unexpected attack “peace for Tel Aviv”. This is a play on words with peace for Galilee, which is the name of the second invasion of Lebanon in 1982 after the failed Palestinian attack against the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom.

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Choosing that name for the operation after 11 months of nearly daily attacks focused on the north “is the culmination of the Israeli government’s disconnection with hundreds of thousands of civilians,” Moshe Davidowitz, David Azulai and Giora Zaltz responded to the heads of the three government councils in the region. “From now on, we stop communication with all members of the government until we find a full solution for our residents and our children. Prime ministers, ministers, coalition members, government officials and all government employees, wherever they are, we have not cared about them for ten and a half months. From now on, we are not interested in you. Do not call, do not come and do not send messages. We have managed on our own so far,” they said in a joint statement.

A “total war”

The “solution” they are seeking is here a euphemism for what the three friends clearly envision: “total war,” in the words of Itaj. “War, war, without a doubt,” in the words of Ido Azoulay. “It’s better than uncertainty. I will wear the uniform tomorrow to enter Lebanon.”

A political agreement to keep Hezbollah’s specific forces away from the border, as negotiated by France and the United States, or a ceasefire in Gaza to calm the Lebanese front, as the mediators in Cairo are seeking this Sunday, does not it already serve them. “Since October 7, staying with Hezbollah on the other side of the border is not an option. Place. Let’s say, October 6 was acceptable. Not today,” Yagin Azoulay summarized.

This is the general sentiment in northern Israel. Despite the unpredictable consequences for the Middle East and Hezbollah’s heartland, only an open war will allow people like Gershon Mateh to sleep in peace, and allow the thousands of people expelled since October to return to their homes without fear.

33-year-old Maté moved from India to the Jewish state in 2014 without “ever” thinking of finding himself in such a situation. Despite the shock in his body, he shows each room of his house, while he says that during the attack he was sleeping with his wife in the room of their two children, aged eight and four. “So that they get used to staying in their bed, not ours,” he justifies.

Then the air raid alarm sounded, he grabbed the young children and rushed to shelter: “I didn’t even have time to leave the house. “We heard the explosion at the front door.” He shows the broken glass on the child’s bed on his mobile phone. “If we had taken 15 seconds more, imagine what would have happened to her,” he adds, his wife beside him clearing the last glass from the floor and filling suitcases with clothes.

They will spend the night in a hotel, like all the residents of the building, near whose feet you can see blinds and fallen pieces of glass. Neighbors and spectators have come to comment on the shrapnel marks on the walls and to touch the metal pieces of the interceptor, which were inside the small crater created when it fell.

“Everyone knows we are at war and the government is not using its full strength,” admits Matve. “But I will return home when everything is fine. I have a rental contract to honor. What is the alternative? Also, is there any place (in Israel) where someone can give us a 100% guarantee that no rockets will hit us? No.”

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