By Cnaan Lidor
In the four months since returning to Kibbutz Eilon, Anat Goren has struggled to shake the feeling that “rockets could come down any second.”
That sense of danger lingered even after Israel and Iran ended their 12-day war. But the ceasefire, and the significant blow dealt to Iran, made it “easier to pretend we’re safe,” said Goren, a nurse and mother of three, speaking from Eilon, which lies about 1.5 miles from the Lebanese border.
Her cautious optimism echoes the mood in much of northern Israel, which is still recovering from the evacuation of some 60,000 residents during the yearlong war against Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy, which ended in November.
Iran’s recent military and strategic losses provide a degree of reassurance about Hezbollah as well.
The thinking is that the Iranian regime’s setbacks complicate Hezbollah’s ability to rebuild.
“Iran is the headquarters, bank and protector of Hezbollah. And right now, both Iran and Hezbollah are licking their wounds,” said Goren.
Iranian rockets killed 28 people in Israel and caused minor damage to vital infrastructure.
The scale of damage to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is especially important in assessing whether the war made Israel safer, said Dina Lisnyansky, a scholar of political Islam at Tel Aviv University.
In any case, Israel’s military achievements were significant, she said: the elimination of much of Iran’s top military command and more than a dozen nuclear scientists, the destruction of most of Tehran’s rocket launchers and air defenses, and, crucially, the precedent set by direct Israeli action in Iran.
“It broke a fear barrier for Israel and created a new one for Iran,” Lisnyansky said.
“Despite pressure from Iran, Hezbollah stayed out of the war,” she said. “They were not only militarily weakened but also politically vulnerable inside Lebanon.”
What Lisnyansky analyzes from her university office, others observe firsthand. Ron Hazan, 60, from Moshav Shavei Tzion, said, “They’re not going to waste a rocket on our tiny moshav,” he said, playing backgammon with friends on the beach June 24, in violation of wartime Homefront Command restrictions that were lifted the following day.
“The siren is our cue to go in for a dip,” he said on the beach at Shavei Tzion, near the city of Nahariya.
In December, Hazan toured the northern border with binoculars and saw “devastation on a whole different scale” on the Lebanese side.
“My son is in Lebanon now and he tells me Hezbollah is broken. I have eyes on the ground.”
Israelis from outside the region also concluded that Hezbollah is defanged, and that the Galilee was therefore safer during the war with Iran than Israel’s large population centers.
Back on Nov. 26, 2024, Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire that pushed Hezbollah north of the Litani River. Its top commanders were eliminated in precision Israeli strikes, including the Mossad’s “pagers attack.” Booby-trapped pagers sold to Hezbollah through a front company detonated, wounding hundreds of mid-level officers.
Then, rapid and accurate strikes by the Israeli Air Force obliterated Hezbollah’s camouflaged missile systems along the border, greatly reducing its capacity to strike key targets in Israel.
But some worry that much of Hezbollah’s infrastructure remains.
This concerns residents such as Shadi Khalloul from the Galilee village of Jish, located on the northeastern slopes of Mount Meron and home to many Arameans — a small Catholic ethnoreligious group that identifies strongly with Israel and is target of Hezbollah
“Life has returned to normal, but I’m sure many Hezbollah tunnels still exist,” said Khalloul, a reserve IDF officer and father of one.
His mother, Hasna, a retired kindergarten teacher, only opened the northern window of her living room in December after months of keeping it shut for safety, because it has a line-of-sight view to Lebanon.
“Finally, some light!” she said about the change. “Light always helps bring up hope.”
In Eilon, locals noted how the war with Iran caused dozens of people from central Israel to seek refuge there — an ironic reversal of the October, 2023 exodus when residents of the north fled south.
“We’ve decided to engage in some retaliatory price gouging,” Goren joked, referencing the high rents northerners paid when they fled south. In fact, most of the wartime arrivals, she added, were kibbutz residents who hadn’t yet returned permanently.
Just a few months ago, Eilon was a ghost town, its perfectly trimmed lawns overrun by jackals and wild boars. Only a few residents remained, most of them elderly and familiar with the cycles of war.
One of them, Ze’ev Katz, a retired electronics engineer, left in October for the first time. He needed to help his daughter, who also lives in the kibbutz and decided to join the evacuation. But when the war with Iran began, he returned to Eilon from Afula.
Katz said he felt so secure in the kibbutz during the war with Iran that he did not bother going to a bomb shelter during air-raid-siren alerts.
“I just went to the windowless room,” he said. “The Iranians aren’t going to waste a rocket on this place.”
About 7% of the population has yet to return, according to Agra, a former community director.
A similar number, she said, indicated they may not return at all.
“But then again, the homes they left were snapped up by newcomers.”
Overall, 69% of evacuees from the north have returned, said Ze’ev Elkin, the minister overseeing the Northern Rehabilitation Directorate, during a Knesset committee meeting on June 25.
But in places like Metula, the return rate is just 30%, locals said.
Once a vibrant town of artists and artisans, Metula today feels deserted aside from construction crews.
Its sports hall was hit twice by rockets. Most schools and 70% of homes suffered similar fates.
Ofer Vine and her family of six were among the first to return. She now works at the town’s only functioning supermarket, alongside her sister — the only other employee. “It’s quiet here. Especially when it gets dark. It used to feel too quiet, but now I like it. I have more peace. I waited so long to return.”
The family waited out the war at a state-sponsored hotel until the army lifted its ban on entry to Metula in January, 2025.
The town lies in a panhandle hemmed in by four Lebanese villages that Hezbollah used to shell the Israeli community. Most structures in those villages were damaged or destroyed by the IDF.
But there are signs of repopulation. In April, Vine, 22, saw green lights shining from the nearby village of Kfarkela, aka Kfar Kila. It turned out to be a newly rebuilt gas station.
“So yes, people are returning on both sides,” she said. “And we’ve had bad experiences with that. I’m not afraid. But I understand those who are.”
As for Metula’s once-thriving cultural scene and bustling hospitality industry, Vine is less hopeful. “I don’t see it coming back anytime soon,” she said, explaining that, unlike many rooted kibbutzniks, the small artistic community of Metula has been absorbed into that of Tel Aviv.
“It will be different, but it will be good. I have not lost my hope,” she said.
