Early Wednesday morning, a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah took effect, ending more than a year of conflict. In Tiberias, the northern city to which many Israeli were relocated after being displaced from their homes near the Lebanon border, news of that agreement was met with frustration, with many displaced Israelis concerned that Israel had not done enough to ensure they could safely return to their homes.
“I didn’t spend a year and two months out of my house for a shameful surrender agreement like this one,” Moran Dadosh, displaced from Moshav Goren in the northern Galilee, told Davar the day before the cease-fire was signed. “It’s a shameful surrender agreement that puts the security of our children in the auspices of France and the Lebanese military. The villages of southern Lebanon are Hezbollah posts—that, the IDF itself, which found tunnels, can testify to.”
Dadosh, who has spent the past many months relocated to a hotel in Tiberias, said that this sense of anger is widespread across the city’s displaced people. Some residents said they were planning to protest the cabinet’s meeting to finalize the deal.
Orit Haim, displaced from Israel’s northernmost city of Kiryat Shmona, said she didn’t sleep all night out of frustration at the deal. “I’m furious. I’m angry. The sense is that they rushed to close a deal for political reasons,” she said. “Why is it more urgent to close a deal in the north than in the south, where we have hostages?”
She said that a better deal would see the Israeli military staying in Lebanon for a long period and creating a buffer zone.
Displaced northerners in Tiberias are most angry about the deal, but locals to the city are angry as well. Michael Vashon, owner of a small boating business in Tiberias’ desolate boardwalk, said that locals have also been affected by the longstanding displacement of Israelis from the Lebanon border. Vashon said that tourism has been hit hard as the presence of evacuees in the city’s hotels cut down on Tiberias vacations.
“We’re ready for this to be the situation for another year,” Vashon said. “But until they’re down on their knees begging for forgiveness, there’s nothing to talk about.”
Vashon said that the Israeli military’s goal should be the total destruction of Hezbollah. “Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves in this same story in another few years,” he said.
This article was translated from Hebrew by Leah Schwartz.
