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Israel settles into new border with Lebanon |
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May 27, 2000 METULLA, Israel, MAY 26 (AP) - A farmer tended trees by the border with a pistol in his belt, soldiers moved cement blocks and barbed wire in front of roads leading north, and Prime Minister Ehud Barak told Israelis to get Lebanon out of their system.
Israel on Thursday declared its withdrawal from Lebanon complete - and Israelis began settling into their new border.
The new frontier, though tense, has so far disproved dire predictions of renewed warfare beginning the morning after Hezbollah reached Israel's doorstep.
In some places, Hezbollah activists and Israeli soldiers, separated by barbed wire fences, faced each other down. In others, fruit orchards provided a buffer.
At a strip of frontier between this border town and the Lebanese village of Kfar Kila, only a coil of barbed wire a meter (yard) high separated the two countries that are technically at war.
A Lebanese Christian trying to join his parents and two siblings who had fled to Israel awaited permission to step over it. "I can't live alone," Joseph Aoun said.
Barak said Israelis had to get used to separation between Israel and Lebanon.
"For more than two decades, Lebanon was part of the routine of our lives as a scene of army activity," he told a special session of parliament held in northern Israel. "The army is no longer on Lebanese territory."
Barak's aides confirmed Thursday that the army had finished dismantling outposts along the border that jut into Lebanon, clearing the way for the United Nations to verify the withdrawal. Israel hopes U.N. troops will deploy along the border and prevent Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas from attacking.
In the meantime, soldiers set up blockades and stood guard in apple orchards to keep civilians away from the border, meters (yards) from where Hezbollah supporters held demonstrations and threatened to kill Israelis.
The soldiers are under orders not to shoot unless their lives are in danger, and Hezbollah guerrillas on the other side warned demonstrators not to throw stones.
Israeli tour guide Daniel Avraham took a group of American and Australian tourists to see a Hezbollah demonstration where men fired automatic rifles into the air and held up a mortar shell.
He said he always brings groups to the so-called Good Fence, a gate where Lebanese workers used to cross into Israel. The army closed the gate for good Wednesday, as the last of its troops left Lebanon, so Avraham took his group to the border fence through a back road. He stopped 50 meters (yards) from the demonstration.
"This is close enough," he said.
For Aviad Belsky, the border is a little too close, but he doesn't have a choice - three-fourths of an acre (about a third of a hectare) of his apple trees border Lebanon.
Thursday, he made the rounds in his orchard with a pistol stuck in his belt.
Belsky said Lebanese demonstrators just across the fence brandished automatic weapons in his direction.
He is considering plowing new roads leading to his fields, so he won't have to pass the border fence each morning.
Belsky said he hoped the frontier would remain peaceful, now that Israel's occupation of Lebanon, along with the casualties it claimed in young Israeli soldiers, had ended.
"They got what they wanted, and we got what we wanted, too," he said.
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