'It can happen again' Israeli calls grow for wider war along northern border

○mer Shita does not want another war, but thinks Israel may need one if his family are ever going to return to their home on the country's northern border.

- Emma Graham-Hatrison & Quique Kierszenbaum

He has put his life on hold - living miles from his wife and children, working part-time from a laptop so he can patrol the empty streets of their kibbutz, set in green hills with sweeping views of the first villages inside Lebanon.

But he is no longer sure the rest of Israel shares his commitment to bringing the evacuated community back. On a recent patrol he stopped to tease a friend weeding the front garden of his abandoned house for having too much hope.

"Safi still thinks he has a future here," Shita said with a laugh, pointing to the man who had briefly set his gun aside to garden in the sunshine.

Hezbollah fighters are just a few miles away, in Lebanese hills and villages across the valley. They have been trading fire with Israeli forces since 7 October, when Hamas launched its cross-border attack out of Gaza.

Within weeks about 80,000 people had been evacuated. Border towns, villages and kibbutzim are now ghost communities, where cats roam streets thick with weeds, and the silence is broken only by the sounds of war - artillery fire, and the blasts of rockets, anti-tank missiles and drones hitting Israeli soil and homes.

Most people will not return, Shita believes, unless Hezbollah are forced back from the border - even if a ceasefire in Gaza brings a deal to end hostilities and the government declares the north safe.

The security equation changed irrevocably when about 3,000 militants from Gaza broke across the southern border, kidnapping 250 people and killing 1,200. "It's like we are stuck in 6 October, but with the pictures from 7 October in our mind," Shita said.