Israel's northern border attracts curious

By Hugh Sykes
BBC News, Kiryat Shmona

Now the border area is quiet

The Israeli army has improvised a small sightseeing area for tourists visiting the Israel-Lebanon border.

It is north of Kiryat Shmona, on the edge of a peach tree orchard, with views across a valley towards two hilltop towns in south Lebanon.

For a while, it is so peaceful you can hear the wind rustling the leaves of the fruit trees.

A van laden with tomatoes speeds silently along a Lebanese road about 500 metres to the north.

Then a coach load of visitors arrives from Tel Aviv. They babble with excitement and peer across the trees and take photographs and scrutinise a map.

I ask Benyamin if the war had been right.

"For sure! It wasn't enough," he said, laughing, "but never mind - next time!"

Soldier's mission

Amiyad Cohen's family are here. He's a young Israeli soldier, showing his parents and his sister where he fought Hezbollah - in Lebanon, just beyond the peach trees.

Israelis are coming to see where the fighting went on

He told me: "All the Hezbollah in our area ran away."

Amiyad is critical of the government led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: "The main problem was that they didn't let us finish the job. If we'd been allowed to get north of the Litani river, we would have won the war."

He went on: "The Israeli nation has a mission - to bring the moral message of God in the world. We have a more important mission. We have more responsibility because we're better."

I suggested that might sound arrogant.

"No. We're moral side of the world," Amiyad replied, "we're better because we are good, and we have a mission to bring good to the world."

Palestinians at the border

There's a Palestinian family among the peach trees too - they drove up from Jerusalem, to see the border which they wish wasn't there.

Five-year-old Tela grins at me, and giggles, and says "Shalom".

I ask her father Mohammed who was to blame for the war.

"Israel."

But Hezbollah started it, I suggest, by capturing the two soldiers on 12 July.

"Israel has Hezbollah prisoners, " he responded, "and Hezbollah wanted to free their men".

Military zone

Ofer Zafrani fears damage may be connected

In Kiryat Shmona, 8km (five miles) to the south, maths teacher and deputy-head of Danziger secondary school, Ofer Zafrani, shows me the damage inflicted on the school by three Katyusha rockets launched by Hezbollah.

The windows were blown out of the entrance hall and most of the classrooms.

The art class was wrecked. Easels and tables and chairs are lying on their sides, many of them broken. There are shards of glass on the floor. Some of the students' paintings have been ripped by shrapnel.

I say it's strange that the school was hit three times, and ask whether there is a military target nearby.

"No, no," Ofer replied.

And then he went on: "But - but the army were in Kiryat Shmona, and near the school was a lot of army. Maybe it's connected. All Kiryat Shmona was like a military base. It wasn't only a place that citizens live in."

Fear of Katyushas

Back at the border, a six-year-old Jewish girl from Haifa walks by, licking an ice cream and anxiously asking her parents if any Katyusha rockets will be fired today.

Houses in Kiryat Shmona came under attack

"No, you don't need to worry," her father tells her, "we're safe now."

"Inshallah," I say.

"Inshallah," they chorus.

I ask them how to say "God willing" in Hebrew.

"Bezrat Ashem."

They walk away repeating it: "Bezrat Ashem, Bezrat Ashem, Bezrat Ashem."