Barbed wire and mud — the border between Israel and Lebanon hours after the ceasefire came into force
Barriers and barbed wire along the "blue line" — the UN-designated border between Israel and Lebanon.
Narrow, winding and pockmarked with bumps, divots and small craters.
This is the road, if you can call it that, that runs parallel to the "blue line" — the border between Israel and Lebanon, drawn on the map by the United Nations more than two decades ago.
As we come around a bend, a wall of concrete slabs appears beyond the shrubs.
It's sprayed with burnt orange mud thrown up by the tracks of tanks and wheels of heavy vehicles that have driven up and down this path in recent months.
Concrete barriers used to shield IDF positions can be seen along the blue line.
The distant buzz of an Israeli drone, keeping watch of activity on both sides of the border, is a reminder of what's just happened here.
While this route may have been busy before, it's now just the ABC driving along it.
And it's quiet. Eerily quiet.
There are no birds chirping.
Many trees have been toppled or charred in fires and explosions.
Massive earthmoving vehicles have been parked in clearings, painted in the military's customary khaki, while coils of steel barbed wire have been rolled up and pushed aside.
Armoured Israeli heavy earthmoving equipment sits abandoned near the border with Lebanon.
There are green signs declaring the area beyond here is an active military zone where civilians are not welcome.
The hue of the warnings is in contrast to the thick mud, more clay-like in texture and colour, that has caked the tyres of the ABC's car during the slow trip.
The blue line remains a closed military zone.
Thankfully, the rumble strips on the road, designed to alert drivers they are veering out of their lanes, help to shake it from the wheels and brakes once back on roads leading towards the communities that live along the Israeli side of the border.
A United Nations observation tower sits just over the fence.
The personnel staffing it will have their work cut out for them, as they ensure Israel and Hezbollah observe the truce they have agreed to.
A UN peacekeeping forces observation post watches over the blue line.
Enemies and neighbours
There's not much distance between the Israeli and Lebanese communities who have been caught up in this conflict.
At some points, it's just a couple of hundred metres between villages and the proximity masks the reality of travel here.
"We used to sit on Saturday mornings and say 'I wish we could drive to Blida [in Lebanon] and have hummus there, because it's so close,'" Daniella Porat Penso tells the ABC.
She lives in the Yiftah kibbutz, with a Lebanese village clearly visible from the edge of her community.
Lebanese villages seen from the Israeli side of the border.
"They're neighbours and they're apparently enemies, unfortunately," she said.
"The people who live in the villages are probably people like us.
"They have families, they have different circumstances, maybe a different culture, different threats from within, I don't know."
She quipped she couldn't choose her neighbours within her kibbutz, let alone over the border.
Daniella Porat Penso can see settlements in Lebanon through her kibbutz's fence.
"It's hard for me to believe that they didn't have anything to do with Hezbollah — not because they're bad people, maybe because that's what they were brought up to believe," Ms Porat Penso said.
"But they're still my neighbours. What can I do?"
The life coach lost her husband just weeks before the October 7 attacks by Hamas against Israel, which in turn triggered fighting between Israel and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
She evacuated her home for a few months, before returning home earlier this year.
A defensive position inside kibbutz Yiftah.
"I'm not afraid," Ms Porat Penso said.
"I've been living in this region for most of my life, and I'm not afraid.
"People say, 'how brave you are' — I'm not brave. I'm not."
Many others in kibbutz Yiftah haven't returned.
Ms Porat Penso believes it's a part of a national identity crisis.
"Since October 7th, we've changed. Something happened to us, to us all," she said.
"We're wounded, we feel much less confident in our ability to protect ourselves. And people are more anxious.
"It's too dramatic to overlook it."
Daniella Porat Penso says she is happy to stay in her kibbutz near the border with Lebanon.
Ms Porat Penso has seen wars in this area multiple times, over decades.
And while she's happy to stay in the area, with a ceasefire now in place, she insists not everyone shares that view.
"Whenever you're in a room with five Jews, there is like maybe 7 or 10 opinions, right?" she said.
"You can kind of understand that there are different interpretations for everything."
An observation post at kibbutz Yiftah looks towards the border with Lebanon.
The fighting near Ms Porat Penso's house was hard to ignore.
One day, she awoke to the ground trembling.
An Israeli explosion at a claimed Hezbollah weapons depot not far over the border was so powerful it triggered earthquake warnings.
Tanks ready if ceasefire breaks
Israeli forces are withdrawing troops and weapons from the immediate vicinity of the border, but they are not going far.
A short distance from Yiftah, a field has been turned into a parking lot for tanks and armoured personnel carriers — standing ready should the ceasefire not hold.
Israeli tanks have been parked in a field near Metula, just south of the border with Lebanon.
Military vehicles still outnumber civilian cars, but more residents are returning. Slowly.
Access isn't clear for all towns, however — Metula, for example, is still considered an active military zone.
The town sits on a finger of land that juts into Lebanon, surrounded by the country to the north, east and west.
Troops are stationed along gates into the community, turning away many.
The community has been hit hard during the fighting, and some residents still do not know what they're returning to.
Another community, evacuated hours after the October 7 attacks, is Misgav Am.
Metula in northern Israel is still a closed military area, surrounded on three sides by Lebanon.
Only 200 metres away from danger
Omri Sofer, his wife and two children had been living in their new house on the kibbutz for only a year before they fled.
They now rent a house from some friends, an hour and a half away from their home.
Omri Sofer and his family had to leave their home, which he says was only 200 metres from a "terrorist house" in Lebanon.
He said he misses his home, even with its proximity to a threat he sees from Lebanon.
"The closest house is about … 200 metres," he said.
"And the house that was in Lebanon wasn't a family house, it was a terrorist house.
"And no one lives there, and they found some weapons and actually some tunnels that go into the border from this house to our houses."
Mr Sofer knows his house is still standing — albeit, with a mouse problem given his absence.
But he is not convinced this ceasefire is a good idea.
Omri Sofer says a stronger ceasefire agreement is needed to protect his family.
He believes a truce is necessary, but this one is too weak.
"My son is 10 years old and my daughter is six, and I don't want them to be massacred like in the south [in Gaza]," he said.
"I want them to grow old, I want to be a grandfather some day."
He paused when asked whether leaders, such as Benjamin Netanyahu, had considered his community and circumstances when deciding to back the ceasefire.
"Our leaders, they are the people who need to decide the right decision for our future," Mr Sofer said.
"I guess some people are just tired from this fight — this is a very, very long war and people need to try to go back to the normalisation of their life, previous life.
"I really don't know. This is a very good question. I really don't know."
By：ABC(责任编辑：admin)
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