“People here live day by day, for now nothing changes, but I am sure that there will be war with Hizbullah, with Syria and/or with Iran,” explains Shlomo, 42, who responds while sitting behind the wheel of his white pick-up truck while waiting for a colleague.
Shlomo lives in Katzrin, in the heart of the Golan Heights, between Syria and Lebanon, in the capital of the plateau “occupied” by Israel, according to a UN resolution; or the territory “in dispute” with Syria, according to Israel. He works at the local community center and delivers food to neighbors and soldiers in the area. And part of the escalation of war tension that the region is experiencing is known. Because the shock wave of the Gaza war also arrives here, and it gets worse.
“The situation is bad and getting worse,” Katzrin also summarizes, in a city that seems like an entire housing estate and in which tense calm reigns, the owner of the restaurant Ilan, who is surprised to see a foreigner. “It’s not a good time for business,” he complains while preparing a shawarma, the dish that is equally successful in Israel and the Palestinian territories. And it is not a good time for business, but neither for the rest.
In the West Bank yesterday at least seven Palestinians and two Israelis died. In Gaza, the war intensifies in the center and south of the strip after the Israeli army considers Hamas “dismantled” in the north. It totals nearly 23,000 dead, including two more journalists yesterday. On the border with Lebanon, hostilities with Hizbullah are repeated every day and yesterday could not be any different. In the Red Sea, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have demanded that all ships passing off their coast declare that they have no relationship with Israel so as not to be the target of their attacks, and yesterday there was an alleged attempted boarding. The Israeli army also announced on Sunday that they had found evidence in Gaza that Iran had trained Hamas in the development of precision missiles, without clarifying which ones.
Gaza is a fire that never goes out. The West Bank and Lebanon seem like a time bomb. The specific attacks in Syria and Iraq shock the entire region. And the Yemeni threat does not cease. Iran is even targeted. All of Israel’s borders except the Jordanian and Egyptian borders face war tensions. And the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and the EU high representative for foreign policy, Josep Borrell, are working these days to de-escalate them, so far without success.
Borrell first traveled to Lebanon and is now in Saudi Arabia. Blinken met yesterday with the Jordanian king, Abdullah II, who urged him to use his influence over Jerusalem to achieve a truce. And the emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, did the same, although his prime minister admitted before the meeting that the assassination of Hamas’ number two in Beirut, Saleh al Aruri, “makes it difficult” to negotiate. Today he passes through the United Arab Emirates and also Saudi Arabia.
“I don’t see the solution to the conflict, call me realistic,” responded Aner Wacobe, a former Israeli soldier in the second intifada (2000-2005) who is now in charge of protecting his agricultural community, Degania, on the shore of the Sea of ??Galilee, the first kibbutz of Israel. And he says that 70-80% of his neighbors think the same. He does it by refueling in a chair near the bus stop that takes him to the Golan Heights, looking at the Golan Heights. “This is a crazy country and there is a crazy situation,” he concluded.
