As Hezbollah rockets keep raining down on them, Israelis want the military to deliver a knockout blow

David Vaknin estimates that he was about 30 seconds away from certain death earlier this week.

On Tuesday, a construction supervisor from northern Haifa was working in a second-floor apartment when the emergency sirens sounded. He says he had barely made it to the safe room when a Hezbollah missile pierced the roof, hitting the same spot where he had been moments earlier.

“My life was saved as a gift to me,” he told CBC News on Wednesday, stepping over the pieces of crushed concrete and rebar littering the apartment floor to look through a hole in the ceiling at the clear sky above.

“I was saved from destruction — you can see pieces of the rocket,” he said, holding up a twisted piece of metal.

Even before this close conversation, Vaknin said he supported Israel in taking up the fight against Hezbollah fighters on the ground in Lebanon. Now he is more certain than ever that Israel must deliver a knockout blow.

“There are injuries and fatalities every week. We can't go on living like this,” he said. “We must defeat this hatred and these terrorist organizations. We must deal with them once and for all.”

Kudos to Netanyahu

On the ground floor below, fishing shop owner Ginadi Toybis sat outside his shop and listened to the footage his CCTV cameras had captured the day before after the rocket hit. He agreed with Vaknin.

“If it weren't for (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu, we wouldn't be here,” he said.

– How did Bibi say that? he said, using Netanyahu's famous nickname. “This is for future generations – for our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, so that there will be no more wars.”

Although the Israeli public is devastated by divisions over how to deal with Hamas in Gaza – negotiate a ceasefire to free the remaining hostages or continue the brutal war to try to wipe out the militant group – most Israelis appear to have no hesitation when it comes to Hezbollah.

The assassination of Hezbollah chief and Israeli nemesis Hassan Nasrallah on September 27 resulted in greetings from Israelis and praise from Israeli opposition parties.

Within two weeks, virtually all parties in the Knesset, or parliament, supported sending ground troops into southern Lebanon to achieve what opposition leader Yair Lapid – who is also a former prime minister – called a “total defeat” for Hezbollah.

Since Israeli ground forces officially crossed the border into southern Lebanon on October 1, the Haifa metropolitan area, 40 kilometers south of the border, has become Hezbollah's main target.

On Tuesday, he fired over 100 rockets into the city and surrounding areas. Dozens more were released on Wednesday.

An Israeli military spokesman said more than 3,000 rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon in October alone, although interception by Israeli missile defenses prevented many casualties and limited the damage.

At an underground emergency command center in Haifa, CBC News met with the city's mayor and other senior leaders who said dealing with the rising number of rocket attacks is a huge challenge, but doable.

Mayor Yona Yahav said that the people of Haifa had lost faith in the prospects of finding a peaceful solution.

“They are losing trust in our neighbors,” he said. “And this is very bad for the future.”

“If you want peace in the Middle East, you must have partners for peace. And every day you go through circumstances like this, you lose faith.”

Battered, but not beaten

Hezbollah, which Canada and other Western countries consider a terrorist entity, released a video by deputy leader Naim Qassem claiming that even after the assassinations of most of its top leaders, the group is in better shape than Israel gives it credit for and that its ground forces are successfully thwarting Israeli incursions nearby border.

Notably, Qassem stated that he supported the ceasefire agreement, without mentioning linking it to the Gaza ceasefire, which was one of Hezbollah's main conditions.

More than 60,000 Israelis in the north have been living away from their homes for over a year as Hezbollah has fired rockets across the border frequently, though in limited numbers, since October 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.

However, since Nasrallah's death, the intensity of the ground and air war has increased significantly on both sides.

The IDF announced the death of a twelfth soldier on Thursday in combat with Hezbollah since the ground operation began. Dozens of other IDF members were wounded, many in critical condition. Israel's first civilian deaths since the escalation of the conflict with Hezbollah also occurred on Wednesday, when a couple from the northern city of Kiryat Shmona, who were reportedly out walking their dog, were killed by shrapnel. Hezbollah said they were targeting “enemy forces” there.

In addition to attacks on Hezbollah leaders, Israel says it has eliminated hundreds of militants since the ground operation began. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the deaths of its senior members but gave no other casualty figures.

Lebanese authorities say nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon and the capital, Beirut.

Attainable goals?

Despite Israel's tactical successes against Hezbollah's leadership and enthusiastic public support for Prime Minister Netanyahu's policy of escalating operations, there are larger questions about Israel's strategic goals.

In a video statement earlier this week, Netanyahu appeared to suggest that his broader war goal is to change Lebanon's political makeup by eliminating Hezbollah as a force there.

“I tell you, people of Lebanon: free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end,” he said, before ominously alluding to the mass destruction Israel has wrought in Gaza.

“You have a chance to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to the destruction and suffering we see in Gaza. It doesn't have to be this way.”

Israeli attacks in Gaza last year destroyed more than 60 percent of the territory's buildings, killed more than 42,000 people, injured nearly 98,000 and forced 1.9 million to flee their homes.

The International Crisis Group, a non-governmental organization focused on resolving global conflicts, sounded the alarm in its latest assessment of Israel's actions in Lebanon and the direction of the conflict.

“Israel has not publicly presented a coherent plan to transform its recent military achievements into strategic gains,” the report said. “In particular, despite its demonstrated battlefield prowess, it is unclear whether Israel has the vision on how to prevent a resumption of attacks from Lebanon once the incursions and bombings end.”

Israel has fought several wars in Lebanon in the past; its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000, is the most noticeable and devastating.

In 2006, Israel and Hezbollah fought for a month after former then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered ground troops to enter. He later negotiated a ceasefire, resulting in the adoption of UN Resolution 1701, which called on Hezbollah to withdraw its forces back north of the Litani River. , a natural border located approximately 20 kilometers from the current ceasefire line between the two countries.

Since then, both sides have accused the other of violating the terms of the agreement, and Hezbollah remains firmly entrenched in Shiite Muslim villages south of the river.

Concerns about escalation

Olmert, who is 79 and not participating in the elections, is among the few prominent Israelis who are currently warning against taking a maximalist stance against Hezbollah.

“(Israel) should be very concerned,” he told CBC News in an interview in his Tel Aviv office. “How can we be sure that Hezbollah will not return from the Litani River to the border and expose Israeli citizens again?”

Olmert said: “(If) you don't know the solution before entering Lebanon, why did you enter? I think we need to reach a compromise.”

Olmert, a longtime enemy of Netanyahu, claims that Israel's current prime minister has put the country on a path to endless war because in Lebanon – as in Gaza – Netanyahu has failed to present a plan to end the fighting.

“There is one strategy that Netanyahu has, but it is in no way related to Israel's national interest,” Olmert said. “His strategy is to keep (the war) indefinitely as long as (he) can, to get as far away from October 7, 2023 as possible, so that perhaps (he) can somehow maneuver more of the Israeli public opinion into she freed herself from the burdens of what happened and (her) responsibility.”

Netanyahu rules with the support of far-right parties in the Knesset, which are pushing for the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and even the Gaza Strip.

Olmert claims that for now Israel is able to wage war on many fronts. However, the public's patience and the country's resources will not last long.

“I think there is a limit,” Olmert said. “And that we are getting very close to this… border that could be very, very significant and very, very dangerous to the safety and security of the State of Israel.”

“I would rather we understand (the strategy) before we have to pay for it.”