Angus Colwell has narrated this article for you to listen to.
According to my phone, I’m in Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport. Except I’m not. The Israel Defence Forces have scrambled the GPS of everyone within about an hour’s drive of the Israel-Lebanon 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 7 October, and the Israelis are fed up. They’ve evacuated 80 kibbutzim, nine villages, three community centres and two Arab villages. The phrase that ministers use to describe the displaced is ‘refugees in their own country’. The offensive in Gaza is winding down, and after that – says an official – ‘we are ready to deal with Lebanon’.
This week the British embassy advised people to leave Lebanon if they can. Officials sound resigned, prepared, perhaps raring for war on the northern front: ‘We are talking weeks, maybe days.’ I don’t know how literally to take them. As you get farther north, it gets quieter and quieter and the cars all start coming the other way. The evacuated areas – among vineyards and fields where bananas and avocados grow – have become known as ‘ghost towns’. Out in the field in 32°C heat, I can only hear one thing. Crickets.
Hezbollah has launched more than 10,000 rockets in the past nine months, and the Iron Dome has had little trouble intercepting them. The anti-tank missiles are trickier to stop. Sirens can and do go off at any time. I’m with a group of journalists with the Europe Israel Press Association. We’re told to get off the bus, lie down and cover our heads if the sirens go off. On the way to Matzuva, a kibbutz right on the border, the IDF suggests we change destination and go elsewhere.
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