Metula, Northern Israel — 

From the border communities of northern Israel, the rooftops of Lebanese villages are visible in an area the Israeli government now holds as a “security buffer zone.” And for more than 60,000 Israelis living in the frontier towns, the war with Hezbollah is not a distant reality.

When air raid sirens sound here from Hezbollah’s rockets, there is no gap between warning and impact. Unlike in the rest of Israel, residents have only seconds to run for cover.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced another expansion of the military buffer zone inside Lebanon to “finally thwart the threat of invasion and to push the anti-missile threat away from our border.” The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has claimed that Hezbollah was planning a ground offensive into Israel akin to Hamas’ October 7 attacks in 2023.

The announcement was welcomed on the Israeli side of the border.

“This is what we expect the IDF to do: to be before us, not behind us,” says Nisan Zeevi, a venture‑capital professional and third-generation resident of Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, located 800 meters from two villages he says are Hezbollah strongholds. “We cannot be the first line with Hezbollah. We need the army before the enemy.”

Some 55,000 residents of northern Israel who had been displaced for over a year returned home after a November 2024 ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, reassured by Netanyahu that the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group had been set “years backward.”

Zeevi is pointed about what followed. “Just a year ago they sold us a promise: ‘We destroyed Hezbollah.’ You can come home. It’s safe.’ I was convincing new families to move here. And suddenly, we are back in the same situation.”

Israel had been conducting frequent strikes on Hezbollah targets during the ceasefire, but no rockets had been fired from southern Lebanon into Israel for over a year. That changed on March 2, when Hezbollah fired on Israel days after the US and Israel launched a war against Iran, vowing retaliation for the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader.

The Israeli response has been aggressive: a massive aerial bombardment of Hezbollah positions – including in densely populated cities, displacement of a million Lebanese with no option for return, and a full‑scale Israeli ground incursion in the south of the country.

Netanyahu’s government has declared its intent is to establish what it calls a permanent security buffer zone in southern Lebanon, in an attempt to push Hezbollah forces and its rocket arsenal away from Israel’s border. Israel occupied a similar security buffer in southern Lebanon from 1982 until 2000, when it was pushed out by Hezbollah.

Since the latest round of fighting began, Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets at Israel, sometimes more than 500 in a single day. Two Israeli civilians were killed last week: a 43-year-old father of four from Nahariya was struck by shrapnel while biking to a shelter, and a 27-year-old woman from Moshav Margaliot, who was killed after pulling over during a siren and sheltering in a roadside ditch. A third civilian died from cross fire from Israeli forces. Nine Israeli soldiers have been killed in southern Lebanon from Hezbollah anti-tank missile fire.

Israel’s strategy marks a deliberate reversal from its approach after October 7, 2023. Rather than evacuating civilians from the danger zone in Israel, the government has opted to force residents of southern Lebanon to flee their homes and establish a buffer zone on that side of the border.

The military is currently holding positions up to 10 kilometers deep in Lebanon, an Israeli military official told CNN. The government is aiming to go even deeper, targeting at least 18 military positions across the area with declarations of plans to control territory all the way up to the Litani River, some 15 to 20 miles north of the Israeli border.

Defense Minister Israel Katz, explicitly citing the Gaza model, has laid out the principle: “where there are terror and missiles, there are no homes and no residents.”

Human rights organizations have repeatedly warned that Israel’s military actions in Gaza may amount to war crimes, including the failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and the destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure.

As Israeli forces push deeper into Lebanese territory, the human cost is mounting. More than 80 towns and villages have been emptied, more than 15% of the country’s population has been displaced, and more than 1,200 people have been killed by Israeli strikes, with thousands more wounded, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

Still, for the communities on the Israeli side of the border, Israel’s military plans in Lebanon are widely viewed as the only way to achieve normalcy.

Ofri Eliyahu, 40, a mother of three, stands inside the 1,500-square-meter innovation hub opened in January by the “HaBayta” grassroots initiative, working to attract young professionals and startups to the region. Home to drone companies, edtech startups, software firms. Investors, she says, are looking. “They see strong people. People who don’t give up so fast, that is how we became the Start-Up Nation.” She describes a vision of an “Israeli Silicon Valley,” then pauses, “and then the rockets come.”

Eliyahu is unequivocal about not evacuating Israel’s northern communities once again.

“If you want to give a win to Hezbollah, it’s empty towns,” she says. “Every person who lives here chose to live here. It’s not the safest place. But the meaning of living next to a border is big. You want to belong to something bigger than you.”

Yet alongside that resolve, structural failures and political priorities are compounding strains between the Israeli government and the locals. A 2018 government plan called “Northern Shield” promised protected structures for all homes and public buildings within nine kilometers (5.6 miles) of the border. A January 2026 state comptroller report found the plan underdelivered, with over 42,000 residents still unprotected – roughly one-fifth of the population. Local mayors say pledged funds have not been transferred, and the program remains unfinished.

Another concern is the protection of Route 90, the only highway connecting the small and scattered communities of the north, on which the 27-year-old woman was killed last week. Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system does not routinely protect highways, classifying them as “open areas” – a designation that has become a flashpoint. “Our day-to-day lives happen between the towns. We need them to protect our roads,” Eliyahu says.

In Metula, Israel’s northernmost town – where 60% of homes were damaged in the last conflict and some 17% of residents have not returned – deputy council head Avi Nadiv points to a school that has not opened since October 2023. Founded more than 130 years ago, before the Israeli state was established, it stands now as a quiet monument to interrupted continuity.

“I want the government to ensure we go up to the Litani and more,” he says. “I want the army before the people, not after. When I see the army before me, I feel safe.”

Nadiv’s house was hit by a Hezbollah rocket in the previous conflict and only recently did he return from displacement. He speaks about the Lebanese civilians across the border, recalling workers crossing daily into Metula for jobs in tourism and farming before Israel’s 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon, drawing a clear line between Hezbollah and people who don’t present a threat to Israel. “If people want to live there, not to put a bomb under the house, they can come back,” he says.

In Kfar Giladi, Zeevi envisions distant hope. “We have no dispute with Lebanon. An Iranian proxy settled between us,” he says, before another round of sirens blares. “My dream is to have coffee in Beirut.”