‘Hezbollah are better soldiers than Hamas – we could be next’: RICHARD PENDLEBURY reports from one of the most strategically vulnerable communities in Israel

Uria Goldman gives a wry smile. ‘I know it sounds crazy,’ he says, ‘but my wife will not return to the kibbutz unless we fight a war against Hezbollah.

‘This situation needs to be settled once and for all; not for six months or a year, but 50 years, so our children can live in peace.’

Until October 7, the 36-year-old father of three was selling kitchen equipment. His community, the Kibbutz Ma’yaan Baruch, had a population of more than 700 Israelis, who grew crops, raised livestock and hosted urban tourists who wanted to experience the great outdoors.

Today the settlement is a cross between a ghost town and a besieged military camp. The yoga studio and nursery are closed, as is the Museum of Prehistoric Man. Barbed wire has been uncoiled across lush lawns, sandbagged firing points have sprung up on street corners and Mr Goldman no longer concerns himself with sink units or washing machines.

Instead, he is armed with an assault rifle and patrols the otherwise deserted California-style neighbourhoods on a golf buggy. On the back of his T-shirt are the words ‘Volunteer Tactical Team’.

Besieged: Uria Goldman discusses the ‘situation’ in Kibbutz Ma’yaan Baruch with Mail journalist Richard Pendlebury yesterday 

People stand by as civil defence workers search for victims and survivors in the rubble of a building that was hit by Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday

Richard Pendlebury met Idit Stein, (pictured) the mother of a six-year-old boy, who explained why she and others had to leave Ma’yaan Baruch. She said: ‘Our home is near the Lebanese border, only 500 metres, so it has become part of the situation’

This dystopian new ‘situation’ – a word that one hears repeatedly in Israel today – is due to location.

Situated at the foot of the long-disputed Golan Heights, in a finger of Galilee clamped between the Lebanese and Syrian borders, Ma’yaan Baruch – established in 1947 – is one of the most strategically vulnerable communities in the country.

When on October 7 Hamas terrorists overran and massacred a number of kibbutzim close to the Gaza Strip, the residents here and in other northern border communities, saw the writing on the wall. The pressing question was this: if the small and relatively unsophisticated Hamas group could wreak such bloody havoc, what could the more formidable, Iranian-backed Hezbollah, sat the other side of the kibbutz’s boundary fence, do?

In the face of this existential threat there was only one course to take: immediate evacuation.

Today, aside from Mr Goldman and the 30-strong local citizens’ militia or reservists mobilised into the army, the entire population of the kibbutz and several others in the surrounding Hula Valley, are living as refugees in hotels and resorts around the Sea of Galilee.

It was there I had met Idit Stein, the mother of a six-year-old boy, who explained why she and others had to leave Ma’yaan Baruch. ‘Our home is near the Lebanese border, only 500 metres, so it has become part of the situation,’ she said.

Uria Goldman gives a wry smile. ‘I know it sounds crazy,’ he says, ‘but my wife will not return to the kibbutz unless we fight a war against Hezbollah.’ Pictured: Civilian defender Uria Goldman with Richard Pendlebury

Uria Goldman is armed with an assault rifle (pictured) and patrols the otherwise deserted California-style neighbourhoods on a golf buggy. On the back of his T-shirt are the words ‘Volunteer Tactical Team’

Ma’ayan Baruch near the Lebanese border in Northern Israel, which has been evacuated

‘When everything started I felt very insecure. On that Saturday, my husband was called up to the army and I was left alone in my house with my son. I was thinking if the terrorists can go to Be’er [a kibbutz next to the Gaza Strip, where 110 residents were slaughtered by Hamas] and that is two kilometres from the border, then [Hezbollah] can certainly come here.

‘The next morning I took my son and drove to the centre of Israel to my parents. Two days later, on October 10, [the government] evacuated our entire kibbutz to here.’ She says they brought only the clothes they were wearing. They are glad to be safe but there is also great uncertainty.

‘We don’t know when or how we are going to go back home,’ she says. ‘Some of my friends wonder if they will ever want to go back home again. How can you live without security, thinking someone might get into your house in the middle of the night and take your child?’

Hezbollah is said to possess an arsenal of 150,000 rockets of greater accuracy and power than those fielded by Hamas. It fought Israel to a stalemate in 2006 after it killed three Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. Since October 7, the group has limited itself to sporadic missile, mortar and artillery fire into Israel. It has not committed to a sustained blitz or ground war to support Hamas, yet.

Israel has reportedly killed more than 40 of its fighters. In anticipation of the worst, its border areas have been emptied of civilians.

Situated at the foot of the long-disputed Golan Heights, in a finger of Galilee clamped between the Lebanese and Syrian borders, Ma’yaan Baruch (pictured) – established in 1947 – is one of the most strategically vulnerable communities in the country

Mr Goldman and his colleagues offer us coffee in a makeshift bunker by the entrance gate. The IDF has reinforced the area but the civilian soldiers are under no illusion about the threat they face. In the absence of the army, citizen militias took the brunt of the Hamas assault on October 7

As we talk, an alert comes over the radio. Mr Goldman and his colleagues take up their guns and put on their flak vests. A drone can be heard overhead. We are told armed infiltrators have been spotted in the Shebaa Farms area, on the high ground that dominates the kibbutz. We have to leave and later learn that the infiltrators were ‘neutralised’ by an Israeli drone

To reach Kibbutz Ma’yaan Baruch, we travel through the city of Kiryat Shmona, which is located a couple of kilometres from the Lebanese border. The 20,000 population has been evacuated south.

Mr Goldman and his colleagues offer us coffee in a makeshift bunker by the entrance gate. The IDF has reinforced the area but the civilian soldiers are under no illusion about the threat they face. In the absence of the army, citizen militias took the brunt of the Hamas assault on October 7. ‘We could be next,’ Mr Goldman says. ‘What happened in the south could happen here. We know Hezbollah are better soldiers than Hamas and they are only a few hundred metres away. But this is my home and I have to defend it.’

As we talk, an alert comes over the radio. Mr Goldman and his colleagues take up their guns and put on their flak vests. A drone can be heard overhead. We are told armed infiltrators have been spotted in the Shebaa Farms area, on the high ground that dominates the kibbutz. We have to leave and later learn that the infiltrators were ‘neutralised’ by an Israeli drone.

In the south, Gaza burns. In the north the war only smoulders. But the kibbutznik idyll may have gone for ever.

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