ARAB AL-ARAMSHE – Adeb Mazal, 36, the head of the Bedouin village Arab al-Aramshe, stopped his car on Sunday morning right on the Lebanese border. He was on his way to inspect the damage at the community center where a Hezbollah-launched anti-tank missile attack killed one soldier and wounded 17 other soldiers and civilians in April 2024.

He opened the trunk of his car, pulled out a package of cat food, and fed a stray cat.

“Since the war, there are more stray cats and dogs,” Mazal said. “There are even cows and donkeys that wandered in from Lebanon.”

Like their Jewish neighbors in Kibbutz Adamit, 2.2 kilometers (1.4 miles) away, the 1,700 residents of Arab al-Aramshe — the only non-Jewish community evacuated in Israel for 16 months during the war — have returned to their homes in the Western Galilee.

Sunday was the first day that kindergartens, schools, and offices were officially opened in 32 communities in northern Israel. Residents of Arab al-Aramshe and Adamit in the Western Galilee were among the 60,000 people uprooted during the war. Now, they are restarting their lives — but with an altered set of perceptions.

Mazal said that the massacre of October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists launched a devastating attack on southern Israel, slaughtering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 hostages amid acts of brutality and sexual assault, underscored a stark new reality.

“Hamas killed and kidnapped Bedouin Arabs in the south,” Mazal said. “We have no doubt that Hezbollah would also kill and kidnap us in the north.”

The Hezbollah terror group began striking northern Israel on October 8, 2023, in support of Hamas during the war in Gaza. More than a year of Hezbollah attacks killed 46 civilians and 80 IDF........

© The Times of Israel