Israel says it is ready for another war

My phone says I’m at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport. But that’s not the case. The Israeli Defense Forces have encrypted the GPS data of everyone within about an hour’s drive of the Israeli-Lebanese border. The same navigation system that tells my iPhone its location is the same navigation system that Hezbollah could use to identify targets in northern Israel. They’ve been firing across the border since October 7, and the Israelis have had enough. They’ve evacuated 80 kibbutzim, nine villages, three community centers and two Arab villages. Ministers refer to the displaced as “refugees in their own country.” The offensive in Gaza is winding down, and after that, according to one official, “we’re ready to deal with Lebanon.”

This week, the British Embassy advised people to leave Lebanon if they can. Officials sound resigned, prepared, perhaps hungry for war on the northern front: “We’re talking weeks, maybe days.” I don’t know how literally to take that. The further north you go, the quieter it gets and the cars all go the other way. The evacuated areas – between vineyards and fields growing bananas and avocados – have become known as “ghost towns.” Out in the field in the 32C heat, all I can hear is crickets.

Hezbollah has fired more than 10,000 rockets in the past nine months, and the Iron Dome unit had little trouble intercepting them. The anti-tank missiles are harder to stop. Sirens can and do go off at any time. I am travelling with a group of journalists from the Europe Israel Press Association. We are told to get off the bus, lie down and cover our heads when the sirens go off. On the way to Matzuva, a kibbutz right on the border, the Israeli army suggests that we change our destination and go somewhere else. It doesn’t matter that I’m not a soldier: “When Hezbollah sees people, they shoot at them.”

Hezbollah is a more sophisticated enemy than Hamas – it has closer ties to Iran, a huge missile arsenal, some 25,000 fighters and 30,000 reservists. Yet Israeli officials insist they are not afraid. “I sleep like a baby,” says a bespectacled IDF lieutenant colonel who spends his days looking out at the Lebanese mountains from a few kilometers away. If Israel has to turn north, “what happened in Gaza will be child’s play.”

In the quiet northern town of Mateh Asher, a 15-minute drive from the border, Ishay Efroni never takes his hand off his huge gun. He is the regional council’s security chief. “He looks scary, but he’s cute,” the mayor says, chuckling. Efroni doesn’t giggle or smile, though. The situation is unbearable, he says, especially for children. “They had Covid for two years and couldn’t go to school for another year because of Hezbollah.” If they don’t return on September 1, they will miss another year, he adds. In two weeks, Mateh Asher will host a raft-building competition for some of the remaining children. “They need to feel that life is somehow normal.”

Israel is prepared to advance deep into Lebanese territory if Hezbollah does not cease its attacks. “If a rocket hits Haifa (a city in northern Israel), something will happen to Beirut,” one official says. “I don’t want to say they’ll go back to the Stone Age, but there will be a big problem with electricity.” The threat goes the other way, too. Israeli research recently concluded that the Iron Dome could be overwhelmed by Hezbollah’s weapons, and a state energy official said Israel would become “uninhabitable” if the power goes out. But fear of Hezbollah’s weapons does not seem to frighten Israeli officials. Zohar Palti, a former head of the Mossad’s intelligence directorate, admits that Hezbollah could hit some tall buildings in Tel Aviv. “But do you expect us to be paralyzed?” he says.

The next day we visit Kibbutz Nir Oz. A quarter of its residents were killed or kidnapped on October 7. A woman named Irit Lahav welcomes us. She spent more than seven hours in her safe room that day, saying goodbye to her daughter. Her makeshift lock worked and somehow she is still living here. We step over broken glass and enter houses blackened by heat bombs. They stink. We are a two-minute drive from Gaza and you can hear the terrible, booming sound of Israeli cannon fire every minute or so. The amount of suffering crammed into these few square kilometers is enormous.

Theresa May once said there are “girls’ jobs” and “boys’ jobs”. There is no such thing in Israel. Many of the Israeli soldiers I meet are young women with American accents. One I speak to is fascinated that I am from London. She has been there a few times: “I want to go back!” I try to convince her that her life is a little more interesting than mine at the moment. She has family in Britain but grew up in Israel and was drafted into the Israeli army last year. She is only 18. She will serve for a while longer, but after the war she wants to open a restaurant. “I really, really hate war,” she says. “But sometimes violence is the only way to achieve peace.”

On the beach in Tel Aviv, soccer-mad crowds gather to watch the Italy-Croatia match on a big screen. I fall asleep to the sound of people playing beach volleyball and wake up to the sound of people playing beach volleyball. Most Israelis I speak to sleep well. No one seems prepared for the war everyone expects. But they say they are.