|
Life In Northern Israel is Reshaped By New Violence
All Things Considered: July 19, 2006
Life In Northern Israel is Reshaped By New Violence
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I’m Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
I’m Robert Siegel.
We are entering the second week of fighting between Israelis and Hezbollah, and living conditions in Lebanon are worsening. In parts of the south of the country, electricity and water have been cut and hospitals are running out of supplies. Hundreds of people are trying to flee north to escape the fighting. We’ll have more on the humanitarian situation in a moment.
BLOCK: Israeli soldiers crossed the northern border into Lebanon today and clashed with Hezbollah guerillas. Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets into Israel. Israeli forces responded with relentless fire from tanks and heavy artillery. For the Israelis who live among the Lebanese border, in just a week this kind of activity has become almost ordinary.
NPR’s Mike Shuster reports from Adamit, which sits on a ridge just a few hundred yards from a Hezbollah outpost.
SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION
MIKE SHUSTER reporting:
Throughout the day, Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets were hitting Haifa and Nahariya and other targets inside Israel. And in response, all day long Israeli tanks and artillery pounded Hezbollah outposts just over the border. This is an area where each side can hide its weapons, sharp mountain ridges and deep gorges covered in rich green firs and Cyprus trees. Dan Cohen(ph), a teacher and tour guide who lives here in Adamit, pointed out the smoke rising across the border just inside Lebanon.
And the smoke over there suggests that the Israelis have hit an outpost of Hezbollah just across the valley?
Mr. DAN COHEN (Adamit resident): Yes. And something is burning, so I’m sure that there must have been some sort of ammunitions there that have caught fire.
SHUSTER: So it may be that the Israelis think that the Katyushas that were launched a little while earlier that hit Haifa might have come from here?
Mr. COHEN: I wouldn’t be surprised if they came from this hill in front of us.
SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION
SHUSTER: The Israelis who live as close as this to Hezbollah positions admit a curious sense of their own safety. The sound of artillery is ever present, as is the whoosh of the rockets flying overhead from Lebanon. But they live under the arc of the missiles and shells.
Mr. COHEN: From here I can see the entire western Galilee, and I was talking to my friend Brahah(ph), who lives in a settlement just outside of Nahariya, telling her that I had come home back from shopping and I was safe. And as I was talking to her I told her, oh, I hear a couple of Katyushas that are flying overhead. We continued our conversation and after a sentence or two, Brahah says, oh the Katyushas have just landed. And we continued talking, and then I said, oh, now I hear them. Because it takes a while for the sound to get to me.
SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING
SHUSTER: To be sure, there is danger here. It was only a few miles to the east, in the settlement of Zarit, that this conflict erupted a week ago, when Hezbollah guerillas killed three Israeli soldiers and seized two others. At the home of Rozia Gilboa(ph), several people sit out on her deck, surrounded by almond and pomegranate trees, grape vines and a peppermint herb garden and talked of their feelings about the conflict. Mayer Shockit(ph) places himself on the left in Israel and expresses mixed feelings about the operations in Lebanon.
Mr. MAYER SHOCKIT (Resident, Israel): We are stronger. We have a great air force, but I’m sure nobody in Israel like to kill people. I don’t like it. I hate it. I'm for peace, but it’s the only way that we know now. We don’t want to go back by infantry and tanks. We just want that they won’t shoot at us. Believe me, Israel won’t shoot at no country if this country won’t shoot at us.
SHUSTER: Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Israelis supports the current operation to destroy Hezbollah. Few people have expressed doubts, but Rozia Gilboa, an architect, is nagged by questions. Her friends and neighbors don’t want to hear it, she says.
Ms. ROZIA GILBOA (Resident, Israel): There are TV reports from Lebanon, from Beirut, and to see the damage and the destruction - for sure, Hezbollah gave them a good reason, but I think it should be dealt in political ways. I think maybe the blow was justified, but now is the time for serious negotiations, serious negotiations with the Palestinians. Let us not forget the Palestinians, they are part of it.
SHUSTER: Israel is not negotiating with Hezbollah or the Palestinians. Here it is pounding away at southern Lebanon, and one by one the Hezbollah posts on the ridge are disappearing.
Mike Shuster, NPR News, Adamit at the Israeli/Lebanese border.
Copyright ©2006 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information, please contact NPR's Permissions Coordinator at (202) 513-2000.
This transcript was created by a contractor for NPR, and NPR has not verified its accuracy. For all NPR programs, the broadcast audio should be considered the authoritative
version.
|
