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Three rusty water-trucks stand at the edge of Kibbutz Malkiya, on Israel’s border with Lebanon; little bigger than a family car, they look like something out of an old cartoon.A collection of industrial leaf-blowers is stacked nearby.“This is all we have,” resident Dean Sweetland explains.
“We have just these - and the leaf-blowers - to blow the fire back onto the dead areas.”Dean, a Londoner who moved to the kibbutz eight years ago, is one of a dozen residents left to tackle recent bushfires in the area, sparked by Hezbollah rockets from Lebanon.“We’re on our own,” he says.
From the back terrace of his home - built from shipping containers, a few hundred meters from the Lebanese border - Dean Sweetland points out the plumes of grey smoke rising from the hills nearby, to the sound of distant bombs and fighter jets.Most of the other residents of Kibbutz Malkiya were evacuated in the days following the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October, when its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon began firing on communities here.
Families evacuated eight months ago are still living in temporary accommodation further south.The blazes here are a vivid reminder that the Israeli government’s promise to secure these northern areas and get residents back home is still unfulfilled.“We feel like we’re the forgotten people,” Dean says.
“They don’t care about the north.”The attitude among many in the country, he says, is “let it burn”.“I think we have to take out Hezbollah for 10km, maybe more,” says Yariv Rozenberg, the deputy commander of Kibbutz Malkiya’s civil defence team.“You can’t kill them all, and they won’t leave from here.
Before a meeting of the war cabinet to discuss the situation on Tuesday night, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, said the country was “approaching the point where a decision will have to be made”.The armed forces, he said, were “prepared and ready to move to an offensive”.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting troops and firefighters in the northern town of Kiryat Shmona on Wednesday, said the government was prepared for “a very strong action in the north.”“One way or another we will restore security to the north,” he said.Many believe a ceasefire in Gaza would help cool the situation further north.“Gaza is the key,” Dean says.
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