00:00It's lunchtime in Kiryat Shmonar. Sergio Helman makes hummus for his customers.
00:07Nowadays, most of the people who come are Israeli soldiers.
00:11I think this is my part in this work, to be here for the soldiers, for the citizens when they stay here.
00:22I can be in the army and this is what I know to do.
00:27This is my profession and I love my profession.
00:32Civilians are few and far between. Sergio is one of the few local residents who's still here,
00:39just a few kilometres from the border with Lebanon.
00:43Daily life here includes rocket, missile and drone attacks from Hezbollah.
00:48They're so close that an air raid warning only gives people 10 seconds to get to safety.
00:53Only a few days ago, two people were killed here in a barrage of rocket fire.
00:59Driving through the city, you can see the effect all that is having.
01:04This is one of the main roundabouts in Kiryat Shmonar and in normal times it would be bustling with cars.
01:09But now the streets are virtually deserted, you only really see military vehicles around here.
01:14Most residents have evacuated the area, turning this city essentially into a ghost town.
01:21We meet Ariel Frisch at a site where a rocket hit earlier this year.
01:26He's the deputy head of security for the municipality.
01:30He asked us not to show his face, for his own safety.
01:34Evacuation is the biggest win for Hezbollah.
01:37He never could have ever dreamed as a terror organisation of a better way to achieve a victory
01:44by striking fear for a great number of population.
01:48And this is why he always aimed in Kiryat Shmonar to the civilian areas,
01:52in order to strike fear in the residents that they will not dare to come back.
01:58Asked whether he thought politicians could stop the violence,
02:01he referred to a United Nations resolution meant to stop hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah after the 2006 war.
02:09We saw a lot of political solutions in the past.
02:12The main problem of political solutions is that there is no enforcement
02:18that will ensure that the solution will be kept.
02:23You can see the 1701 resolution was a resolution that Israel kept its side, but Hezbollah didn't.
02:30So what will be different on the next solution?
02:35The fear and mistrust is such that recent polls suggest
02:38only half of people who have left Kiryat Shmonar want to return home when the fighting is over.
02:45Sergio Helman pins his hopes on the Israeli army pushing Hezbollah and its specialist forces from the area.
02:52I think the army now does what all the citizens of the Upper Galilee want.
03:01Clean the front, the border from the Eraduan and Hezbollah.
03:10We need to clean, clean. We don't want to be, we want to live.
03:16The big question is whether Israel's soldiers can make local civilians feel like it's safe enough to return.
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