The town of Metula on the Israel-Lebanon border -- this is where we are staying to cover Israel's northern battlefront. It's a ghost town, deserted except for a few journalists.
The proprietor of our small hotel always has her pistol at hand, just in case, she says. But there's a heavy artillery unit just nearby and there are tanks firing against a guerrilla army which has Katyusha rockets and mortars. How was a pistol going to help?
We found out last night amid a sudden flurry of soldiers racing towards the border fence, machine guns firing, and a helicopter firing overhead -- a massive and sustained barrage of artillery hitting Hezbollah positions and buildings on the hills opposite the town.
They had heard that Hezbollah guerrillas had infiltrated this small town. Imagining being taken prisoner, held hostage or worse, we realized what the pistol was for. Though it must be said we still don't know whether anyone actually did slip through the border fence.
But the incident highlighted the problem here: A first world army set against a militia whose military is a moveable feast. All the expensive F16s, the one ton bombs and the brilliant fighter pilots cannot take out a man with a rocket launcher on his back.
Israel may be pounding south Beirut, but the real goal seems to be the creation of a Hezbollah-free buffer zone at the border. Fighter pilots at Ramat David Air Force Base told us the military would be part of the solution, but the rest of it would have to be political in nature. So it's not just a buffer zone Israel is after, it's a completely different relationship with Lebanon.
Israel wants to share a border, not a front.
