Hezbollah strikes on northern Israel raise fears that full-fledged war could be next

Amna Nawaz:

This weekend, a drone fired from Lebanese Hezbollah injured 18 Israeli soldiers, one of the highest single-casualty incidents since Hezbollah opened fire on October 8, one day after Hamas' attack in Southern Israel.

Nick Schifrin and his team have been reporting from Northern Israel, and Nick joins us once again — Nick.

Nick Schifrin:

Amna, more than 60,000 Israelis are still evacuated from the border with Lebanon.

Today, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel had — quote — "effectively lost its sovereignty there." Some 95,000 Lebanese are also displaced. And tensions are very high, as we saw beginning right on the Israel-Lebanon border.

The Northern Israeli town of Shtula has no residents, only a newly built home damaged in a newly built neighborhood abandoned, and Lieutenant Colonel Dotan, who requested we only use his first name.

Lt. Col. Dotan, Israeli Defense Forces:

One rocket hit there that was able to destroy the whole house. This house has to be rebuilt. It hit the foundations, completely destroyed it.

Question:

When did this happen?

Lt. Col. Dotan:

This happened exactly a month ago.

Nick Schifrin:

Shtula once prided itself on its view.That's Lebanon beyond the wall. Now that proximity is its greatest threat.

Lt. Col. Dotan:

We have five minutes. After five minutes, we can be shot.

Nick Schifrin:

Hezbollah videos show what it describes as Iranian-made munitions hitting Shtula's homes.

Lt. Col. Dotan:

The missile hit over here. See, this is the first impact. Come to this side. And you can see it going through one wall, and then a second wall over there. You see the hole? That's from the missile. The clock stopped at 5:15.

Nick Schifrin:

A clock frozen in time. Back on October the 8th, the family who lived here was given only minutes to flee, not enough time to pick up their laundry, still on the line.

Lt. Col. Dotan:

This is a laundry room of a civilian family that, because we evacuated them, weren't here. If they were here, they would get killed. And you don't get a warning at all. You duck or you run away.

What we demand is that Hezbollah stops firing at us. It's unacceptable. It's like firing from Tijuana on San Diego.

Nick Schifrin:

Hezbollah has launched more than 5,000 rockets into Israel, killing more than 10 civilians and 15 soldiers and helping ignite wildfires that burned a record 9,000 acres. Forests that used to be popular in the summertime for thousands of tourists are now silent and scorched.

Sergeant Tamir's family has also been evacuated.

Sgt. Tamir, Israeli Defense Forces (through interpreter):

Right now, we're in a war.

Nick Schifrin:

Since October, Israeli airstrikes have killed 350 Hezbollah militants and 80 civilians. Senior American officials have visited Lebanon and Israel, hoping to calm tensions with a diplomatic agreement to move Hezbollah back at least to the Litani River, an average of four to six miles north of the border, as the U.N. Security Council long ago demanded.

Lt. Col. Jordan, Israeli Defense Forces:

And that's to change two things. One is to prevent a Hamas-style attack, a surprise ground invasion of Northern Israel, and, number two, to get the homes away from the anti-tank missiles.

Nick Schifrin:

Jordan is a reserve lieutenant colonel who grew up in Miami. He and senior Israeli officials say ground operations in Southern Gaza are beginning to end, allowing the military to reinforce the north. Israel is also expanding enlistment.

Lt. Col. Jordan:

The less troops that are fighting in Gaza, the more heading up towards the north. The IDF Northern Command is ready for the next mission up north.

Nick Schifrin:

And now Israel is issuing an explicit threat that U.S. diplomats have said cannot be restrained.

Lt. Col. Jordan:

The firepower that the IDF will use in the next Lebanese war is be exponentially greater than what's happened down south against Hamas in Gaza, exponentially.

They need to understand that the pictures that they see in Gaza is going to be a preview of a feature film that's going to happen in Lebanon. Lebanon will not be recognized if we go in. They will go back to the Stone Age.

Nick Schifrin:

The threat is mutual. On Friday, Iran's UN mission tweeted: "Should Israel embark on full-scale military aggression, an obliterating war will ensue."

Wherever you turn in the north feels like war footing. Israel tries to block Hezbollah's guided missiles by jamming GPS, including ours.

Man:

The GPS doesn't work because the military. Google Maps thinks we're in Lebanon at the moment.

Nick Schifrin:

Israel has evacuated all residents within 2.5 miles from the border. Just outside the evacuation zone, 2.7 miles from Lebanon, is Elkosh, home to 17-year-old Stav Shmuel and her grandparents.

Elkosh's school closed, and 90 percent of her friends live even closer to the border and had to evacuate.

Stav Shmuel, Elkosh, Israel, Resident:

I went crazy, like, the first few months. I was very, very out of place, and I couldn't decide on what to do. And my brain was, like, really disorganized. So it was a very difficult time in the first two months.

Nick Schifrin:

Last month, she graduated high school, and her classmates sang a song of lament about the close of one chapter. The next one for nearly all of them is the military.

Stav Shmuel:

If I get accepted, I will go to university and study law like a regular person. And then I will enlist as a lawyer to the army.

Nick Schifrin:

Elkosh only has a population of about 275. But one of its residents is now infamous, Shlomi Ziv, taken hostage on October the 7th and rescued last month in a daytime raid that also killed more than 200 Palestinians.

Last week, he and his daughter returned home to a hero's welcome. But without a cease-fire in Gaza, homecomings for the rescued or the displaced will remain scarce.

Question:

Do you see an end in sight?

Stav Shmuel:

No, not right now.

Nick Schifrin:

And so Israel is preparing for war on a border that remains hot and tense.

For the PBS "NewsHour," I'm Nick Schifrin.