METULA (JTA) — Daniel Dorfman had only recently reopened his pizza restaurant in this kibbutz just hundreds of meters from Israel’s border with Lebanon when war broke out again. His Ayuni Pizza Bar had been closed since October 2023, when Hezbollah began waging war on Israel, turning the border region into a dangerous ghost zone.

Now, Hezbollah is again sending hundreds of missiles from Lebanon into Israel as part of what the terror group has dubbed “Operation Chewed Wheat.” Named after a Quranic passage about diminishing one’s enemies, the rocket and missile bombardment comes amid the United States and Israel’s ongoing military campaign against the Iranian regime.

Dorfman, who insists that Ayuni has “the best pizza within a kilometer of the Lebanon border,” isn’t sure how much more he can take.

“It was one hit after another,” Dorfman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “First COVID, and then October 7, war with Hezbollah, and now this — how can I be expected to survive it?”

And yet Dorfman isn’t closing Ayuni’s doors. Even as the echo of explosions from both outgoing artillery fire and incoming drones could be heard late into the evening last week, and with little of the advance warning about incoming rockets that Israelis in other cities get, many residents of Metula were out and about in the streets, shopping at the supermarket, walking their dogs and, yes, grabbing pizza — although at a fraction of the pace as during peacetime.

Indeed, residents of Israel’s north are hardly packing up and leaving, unwilling to repeat the dislocations that followed Hezbollah’s entry into the war against Israel sparked by the bloody Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023, after which the Israeli government mandated their evacuation.

“They’re going to stay at home, even during this terrible situation,” said Asaf Artal, a partnerships manager at IsraAID who works with border communities. “It’s very uncomfortable, very scary on the one hand, but on the other hand, you have to act as a community, to bring strength to your community. If you do it in the darkest time or the hardest time during the war, you’re going to be stronger when it’s over.”

Metula, like other kibbutzes in Israel’s periphery (how small communities far from Israel’s urban centers are known), was hit hard by the last round of fighting with Hezbollah. Many of the buildings in the kibbutz were damaged, and according to Metula’s spokesperson, only 40% of residents have returned after the ceasefire in November 2024.

In his 22 years at IsraAID, Artal has witnessed firsthand the impact of evacuation. “When you are forced to relocate and spread all over, you lose........

© The Times of Israel