As the Lebanon ceasefire holds, Metulla stands empty

Metulla, located in the far north of Israel at the top of the Hula Valley on the border with Lebanon, is a beautiful city.

Before the war, I remember coming here for trips, sometimes to stay in the town or to walk in the Ayun Stream Nature Reserve. Now, the town is mostly deserted because it has been under Hezbollah rocket fire since last October. Its residents were evacuated along with the other 60,000 Israelis who live up here.

Today, Metulla is quiet; the ceasefire with Hezbollah is holding. Israel launched Operation Northern Arrows on September 23, and the ceasefire began five weeks later on November 27. With the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the terroroist group appears even more weakened. The question now is when will Israelis return to towns like Metulla.

I drove up on Sunday to see what it was like. The road to the town snakes along the valley, with the Ramim mountain ridge to the left. This separates the road from Lebanon, so it feels safe from any direct fire by Hezbollah. However, prior to October 1 when ground troops entered Israel’s restive neighbor to the north, the terrorist group could launch rockets easily on this road and there would be little advance warning.

The same sense of vulnerability was felt in Metulla. It was even worse for the homes there that face Lebanon and have no cover; any anti-tank missile can be launched straight at them.

During the last year, this seemed like a no-go zone because it is at the end of the valley and feels exposed to Hezbollah fire. Prior to the ground operation, the enemy sat on hills that overlooked this town. The villages in Lebanon seem to ring this Israeli town: Kafkila to the west, Khiam to the north, and Deir Mimas to the northwest.

To the west, there was a hill where Hezbollah used to fly its flags and also had a large image of al-Aqsa Mosque. This was symbolism and propaganda; Hezbollah wanted to show Israel how it could do whatever it wanted near the border.

Hezbollah threats were clarified after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Israel evacuated the northern border communities because of fears that Hezbollah would carry out an October 7-style attack, which it had been planning to do for years. After Israel evacuated border communities such as Metulla, there was a domino effect and the city of Kiryat Shmona, a ten-minute drive down the valley, was also evacuated. In October 2023, it looked like Israel would empty out its border of civilians because of fear.

Meet Arie Almog

I wanted to meet with Arie Almog, a resident of the town who had remained throughout the war. To get to the town, one has to pass through a gate at the entrance, with a security team soldiers standing guard, as there are many communities in this area. These are the kitot konenut (Rapid Response Security Team) made up of soldiers usually on reserve duty who also are security volunteers from local communities.

Almog came to meet me and a colleague as we waited at the entrance. He then drove in front of us to his pretty home which overlooks the Hula Valley. Outside the home, everything seems quiet and deserted. The wind blows, there is a dog, two tractors are on the street and one has flat tires; they don’t seem like they have been used in a year. Much of the town is like this, left as it was when it was evacuated.

He shows us his flowers and plants, which have not wilted – a sign of life, much like Almog himself: a stalwart who stayed on. He is in his 70s and says he won’t leave his home. “I think it was wrong to evacuate people,” he said. He described how fear led to the evacuation and this led the town to become a kind of closed military zone. The army moved in, the civilians moved out.

Almog knows this area and this valley, after having moved here from Kfar Blum in the Hula Valley almost 30 years ago. Metulla is a unique town, much older than the surrounding communities. It was founded in the 1890s, and some of the old stone buildings that made up what was once its main street can still be seen. The architecture here blended the local and the modern when the first Jews built homes here. Now, it has expanded and the homes are modern, one might even call them villas, overlooking the area.

The elder Metullan says that only a handful of people remained in the town during the war. “People are afraid to return and they have fear because of the 60-day ceasefire,” he says.

The fear also impacts the future: Will students who once studied in this area return? What will happen to the Canada Center, the sports and tourist center, here? What about the restaurants and small hotels? One hotel has a photo of Israeli troops entering Lebanon in 1982. At the time, the Shi’ite villagers came out to greet them with smiles. That changed over time; now there is Hezbollah.

Almog is an optimist. “People are afraid because the situation is not clear and the government hasn’t made it clear what will happen,” he said. But, he wants to be optimistic and show us the town. We got in his car and drove around; only a few people were on the street. Many of the homes seem to have been cleaned out a bit of some of the old furniture, like some residents threw out things that sat all year here.

Israeli media has often portrayed this town as heavily impacted by rocket fire. Almog wanted to show us its true face: Most of the homes are not damaged, and some that are can be fixed. Many areas are not impacted by the war; others are worse hit, with rocket strikes and shrapnel visible.

The town has also been damaged by tanks that rolled through, as soldiers have been living in the town for a year. All of this had an effect – it was necessary to defeat Hezbollah and protect Israel, but now things must return to normal.

We arrived at a field lined with small trees in long lines, at the end of which we saw Lebanon and a village on a hill, overlooking us. Hezbollah is gone from there now and the homes in Lebanon have been flattened.

In this orchard, five people were killed in October by a Hezbollah projectile; four of them were Thai workers, and one was Israeli. I walked among the trees to the place where the people were killed; I understood the fear now.

Almog drove us back to his home as the sun was setting and the Ramim ridge was about to turn dark. Beyond the ridge, troops continue to operate in southern Lebanon to keep the Hezbollah threat away, as the ceasefire holds.

President Isaac Herzog came to the northern border on Sunday and said he visited Moshav Margaliot and Kibbutz Manara, “breathtaking landscapes ravaged by war. Places defended by emergency response teams, from where many residents were forced to evacuate away from the immediate reach of Hezbollah’s constant missile and rocket attacks.

“Yet, the brave residents of these amazing communities never gave up on their homes, even as they paid a painful price in destruction and hardship.”

His message, and those of the stalwarts like Almog, are a reminder that Israel will prevail and that these communities must return.