A man of about 65 years old holds a rifle with one hand and points his index finger with the other to trace from a distance the route of the technical fence, the electric fence that separates him one kilometer and two hundred meters from Lebanon: “We were told .” that the militiamen have secretly started digging tunnels on the other side for five years in order to reach this area. We train almost every day now, we have to be ready,” he tells the ANSA reporter.
Video On the border with Lebanon, in Kibbutz Sasa, Israel’s last outpost
Since October 7, the south and north of Israel have become two poles that attract each other, increasingly attracted by the fear of a new attack, this time from the border with Lebanon, but with the same methods that the terrorists used forty days ago have applied. At that time, 25 members of the Sasa kibbutz in the Upper Galilee region, in the northern part of the country, received “call number 8”, a call that signaled a state of emergency for those civilians who suddenly, even during their stay, were in their homes them into soldiers. “Five hundred people lived here, but almost all of them were evacuated and about fifty stayed behind to guard the place and carry out our activities,” says Yehuda Calò Livne, the town’s new security chief. Men have Kalashnikovs and women have pistols. But his wife, the Italian-born Angelica Calò Livne, does not hide her fears: “Ours is the last house among the row houses on the kibbutz and the first on the border with Lebanon, in the event of an attack we would be the most at risk”. As if that wasn’t enough, three of his four sons were drafted into the war in Gaza.
Video In the kibbutz one kilometer from Lebanon: “Our lives have changed since October 7th”
Meanwhile, at the gate on the hill at the entrance to the kibbutz, the men enter and leave the place and are busy with the comings and goings of tractors and trucks full of apples and kiwis, for the work continues but the control measures are now similar to that of a checkpoint. In addition, the kibbutz, having been largely displaced, is experiencing a coming and going of IDF soldiers, who are billeted in the village canteen to eat and take a few moments’ rest before returning outside to the positions facing north . The one hundred and twenty kilometers of the UN-occupied blue line along the border (fifty-two kilometers are controlled by the Italian contingent in the western sector) are constantly violated. The sky over Sasa, thundering even without clouds, bears witness to this: the debris of the rockets fired by Hezbollah and intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome is raining throughout the day, fortunately at some distance, while in the last few hours Israel has begun to hit the Positions from which the shots come. A climate of open war that has not existed since 2006, the year of the last Israeli-Lebanese conflict. “Four days ago, a rocket killed an electrician who was passing four kilometers from here and injured other people. It is impossible to keep families and children here for the moment, every day we remain closed in the bunkers for hours,” explains Angelica.
But over two hundred people continue to work in the orchards of the green and lush mountain village, which contrasts with the barren plain not far away, including many Arabs from surrounding villages, including Muslims, Christians and Druze. Even the well-known local factory was never closed: it produces bulletproof vests and armor systems. Today, security in Sasa is even more the core business of the kibbutz than before.
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