Israelis Returning to Homes in Northern Towns Wonder About Life After Latest War

KIRYAT SHMONA, northern Israel – The last time our CBN News crew visited Kiryat Shmona in Israel’s north, it was a virtual ghost town and rocket attacks from Hezbollah were an everyday reality.

Now, with two months of relative peace, more than 60,000 Israelis displaced from their homes are able to return. Life, though, is far from normal, as businesses struggle to reopen, with only a fraction of the residents back home.

Irene Olshansky, owner of the Villa Vitrage spa, told us, “We had to evacuate from (Moshav) Beit Hillel. We couldn't stay here. The army asked us to leave Beit Hillel because they're afraid from the bombs.”

Olshansky added, “We had to shut everything down – the Jacuzzis, the swimming pool, the refrigerators full of food. We didn't know for how long we would be gone.”

Hope is budding along with Spring, although there is still concern things may never be the same.

“In the first week, I couldn’t stop crying all the time,” Olshansky admitted, and said, “Until the hostages come home, our joy will not be complete.”

***Please sign up for CBN Newsletters and download the CBN News app to ensure you receive the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.*** 

We traveled to a farm just outside Kiryat Shmona, only a few miles from the Lebanese border. It’s known for the beautiful oranges and pecans that grow here. Now, however, they’re having a hard time finding anyone to help with the harvest.

The trees are full of fruit, but the foreign-born workers who usually come from Thailand and elsewhere to help have already moved on to other jobs; so the farmers hope they can get people to come back and help them get their fruit to market.

At the Villa Vitrage spa, the family is working to rebuild and welcome guests again.

Yuval Olshansky, Irene’s son, observed, “Yeah. It’s so funny that we're doing this interview now because now we are planting all the plants that (were) destroyed during the war.

 He added, “So, we cleaned everything and started to plant everything, renew everything, and then now, people start to come back"

For those who have returned, hope remains that their region can be rebuilt and return to normal.

Yuval Olshansky stated, “To see people come back, to see everything come to life again, it's amazing. I sometimes just stand and stare – I can't believe it's happening."

At the extreme northern border of Israel sits the town of Metula, which has been a ghost town for the last 15 months. But now people are starting to come back. The town is almost literally a stone’s throw from a Hezbollah-controlled village, which contained rocket launching sites where the Iranian-backed group fired at Israeli towns daily.

Today, that village is nothing but rubble.

Tony Abutbul’s shawarma shop in the center of Kiryat Shmona was the only restaurant to stay open for the entire war, feeding many Israeli Defense Forces troops protecting the region.

Abutbul recalled, “We worked all through the war. We were open while everyone else was evacuated. We were the one business that was working. And for that reason, the people feel safer coming back home. "

Abutbul estimated, “Maybe 40 percent of Kiryat Shmona’s community has come back. Some people have settled elsewhere. They got used to life in bigger cities like Tel Aviv, where there are more opportunities, more schools, more jobs. I think some people will not come back.”

Even those who have remained or returned realize the war is not over.

Irene Olshansky confided, “I cannot tell you the feeling, now I'm talking to you and starting to cry. Because I think about all the people that don't come back, and about the families and the babies that were murdered there. And I love you, Israel very, very much. I don't want to leave Israel.”