Rebuilding Israel's North post-Lebanon ceasefire will take five years

An identical message came both from municipal officials and the residents of Metulla and Kiryat Shmona: Rebuilding the area after 14 months of Hezbollah’s attacks is not a matter of months or a year, but likely five years.

The comments were made to The Jerusalem Post during a tour of the North on Monday. They added that almost no one has returned, as of Monday, despite two weeks having passed since the November 26 ceasefire. Manara and some other towns that were heavily hit are in similar circumstances.

Kfar Yuval and other villages are still completely closed and abandoned.

Kfar Giladi and several other towns are experiencing a trickle of returning residents because their homes and infrastructure were not as destroyed as the other places; still, these number very few.

One thing in common to all of these places is that a majority of the population – especially those with children – will not even consider returning until the end of the school year. So, even in the best-case scenario where they want to return, a vast majority of the towns are guaranteed will continue to be ghost towns for another seven to nine months.

How many really want to return? Some believe that the second the 60-day ceasefire ends, Hezbollah will violate it with what would be considered “small” aerial attacks. But what is “small” to the rest of Israel will once again prove deadly for these residents.

Others believe that Hezbollah will be patient and wait several years to rehabilitate its rocket arsenal before attacking, but are virtually certain that an attack will come.

Kiryat Shmona Spokesman Doron Shneper told the Post that, “after 15 months, the war is still going on, and the residents are still impatiently kept from their houses. We need absolute security and a complete victory, not a ceasefire.”

Pressed that the IDF has killed 25 Hezbollah fighters since the ceasefire, he responded, “We don’t need the IDF to kill 100 or 1,000 of Hezbollah, we need Hezbollah not to exist… We cannot have another October 7” carried out by the terrorist group against the North.

When asked about why Kiryat Shmona is advancing with government funds earmarked for rebuilding the area, like Shlomi – the rebuilding of which has been confirmed by the Post via photos, though there is no visual confirmation – he said it was better to wait to rebuild until true security was achieved, rather than rushing to rebuild only for the newly built structures to be destroyed by Hezbollah again.

Statistics play a big part in these deliberations. In Metulla, for example, out of 650 structures, 100 were directly hit by Hezbollah rockets or anti-tank missiles and some 400 experienced indirect hits. This means that more than 75% of the residencies are not even in a condition to be reoccupied.

Additionally, almost no one in Metulla has proper safe rooms; many have none, while a small number have much older ones that are in disrepair and would not hold up against Hezbollah’s current weapons.

Shortly before the war started, 39 residencies were due to get new safe rooms; only 16 were built by the time the war began, and two of them were destroyed by more powerful Hezbollah rockets, since they are only designed to protect against less powerful attacks.

Hezbollah has fired 1,600 rockets and mortars and 450 anti-tank missiles at Metulla alone since the war began. Metulla security chief Doron Mano noted that many of the houses were hit by a large barrage on September 19.

The statistics

One house he showed, belonging to Zami Ravid, experienced multiple hits. The house had stood for 50 years. The second floor was mostly destroyed, which led to the collapse of the house onto large portions of the first floor.

Several other houses on the same street were struck in the same barrage.

Another house in a different neighborhood of Metulla was hit by the same barrage, also with significant damage to the roof, and a disfigured-looking pool.

A neighbor, Sarah Caspi, was back temporarily on Monday to check on the status of her house, which experienced more minor damage.

She said she was still interested in living in Metulla at some point, but the situation is complex: None of her children who also used to live there want to return, and “they think I am crazy” for wanting to come back.

Caspi noted that just three weeks ago, the IDF found some of the largest volume of Hezbollah weapons in any one place in southern Lebanon – inside a tall Lebanese tower that overlooked her house from less than a kilometer away.

She and her children realize that they could have been Hezbollah’s quick and easy victims in an October 7-style invasion.

Pressed further about why she wanted to return, she acknowledged that before the war, her residence was worth around NIS 5 million, and that now she could not sell it if she wanted to; sometimes economic realities triumph over safety.

Kiryat Shmona’s numbers – in percentages – are less bad: “Only” around 400 out of 7,000 structures were directly hit – about 6%. But in terms of the quantity of structures that must be rebuilt, this is a staggering four times the number of Metulla. And, many of these structures are larger and more complex than a small house.

Shimon Amsalem, an engineer from Kiryat Shmona, rattled off the names of several schools that were directly hit, along with rebuilding projects that will be more expensive and complex than a house. The Post can verify that the damage to some of these schools is substantial.

Other larger structures were hit as well, like the Nehemia Mall, which has a hole in its ceiling. The only store that was operating in the mall on Monday was the pharmacy, one of a short list of “essential” shops, along with several food stores.

Kfar Giladi and other towns with fewer direct hits have had a trickle of returnees, said Candice Ormerod, who showed a hit to the town’s well-known hotel. She described to the Post strikes and fires around many parts of the town that have completely changed the landscape – but at least do not prevent residents from returning. Around 30 residents have come back to join another 25 of the town’s security team, who were there throughout the war.

But, those numbers are still relatively tiny compared to the approximately 1,000 people who had been living in Kfar Giladi before the war.

Like Caspi from Metulla, Omerod is also struggling with her future of whether to stay in Kfar Giladi or move elsewhere, as she balances wanting to be with her daughter and the economic realities of owning a residence in a town which suddenly has become less desirable.

To summarize, the Post found that almost no one has returned to the North, families will not return before the summer or fall, if at all, and a delay in building safe rooms could also hold up people returning. Additionally, residents are worried about Hezbollah attacking both after the 60 days of the current ceasefire run out and in a few years, and many have made new lives in areas where they spent the last 14 months.

If Israel wants to save the northern border cities and towns, it will be a monumental, long-term, complex, and creative effort.