Below us, the sea glistens. The sun is out and we have a perfect view of the coast.
It could be a lovely spot but instead, within moments, we’re about to dive for cover.
Welcome to the border between Israel and Lebanon.
We have come here accompanied by the Israeli army, keen to show the grasp they have over the area and also, I’ll discover, to express anger at the United Nations (UN).
But also to satisfy our curiosity – just what is it like on this border, with so many rockets, missiles and drones flying across it daily?
So here we are, on the dividing line between the two nations.
From where I’m standing, I can look right and see the border wall rising up at the top of a ridge. Ahead, there is an Israeli army base, which has been hit several times by Hezbollah rockets.
And then over to my left, maybe 100 metres along the road is the official border crossing, now it is only used to allow UN officials to pass.
‘A high price for the war’
There are no tourists here now. In fact, other than soldiers, we haven’t seen anyone for a while.
Around 60,000 Israelis have either been evacuated or have fled this region.
The purpose of Israel’s campaign in southern Lebanon, says Lieutenant Colonel Jordan Herzberg, an operations officer in the army’s 146th Division, is simple – to ensure that those people “can move back home and live with safety and security”.
Lieutenant Colonel Herzberg says the sound of shells firing into Lebanon is the ‘sound of freedom’
“These people have paid a very high price for the war,” he says.
“The economy here is all about agriculture and tourism, and both of those are non-existent. They have been targeted with hundreds of anti-tank missiles – you might call them anti-home missiles. They hit people’s homes – normal civilians’ homes.”
Over the road, a cafe sits idle, with nobody looking at its annotated map. A cable car, which normally takes visitors down to see caves and British-built railway tunnels, stands idle.
On the other side of the wall, Israel has been conducting its ground campaign, going from house to house, pushing its troops several miles into Lebanon.
An annotated Israeli tourist map of border area
They say they have discovered huge stockpiles of weapons and ammunition – enough, they claim, for Hezbollah to have launched a widespread attack on the civilian population that could have been even more devastating than Hamas’s assault on 7 October.
The Israelis support their army by regularly firing shells into Lebanese territory. As we stand at the border, we can see smoke billowing into the air from the ridge.
‘That is the sound of freedom’
We are about to leave when there is a sudden, urgent call to take cover. We shelter behind a wall, listening through the sudden silence. A soldier tells me that they have spotted a UAV – a drone.
“It could be very dangerous,” she says.
A few minutes go past, and then we are told it’s safe, but that it’s also time to go. As we drive away, we see the cloud of smoke in the air where the drone was intercepted and destroyed.
The Israeli border wall
A couple of miles from the border, we watch as smoke billows into the sky. There is a loud boom as another shell is fired into Lebanon.
“That is the sound of freedom,” Lt Col Herzberg said.
But this, he insists, is a war that should never have happened, and he blames the UN. For nearly two decades, following the end of the 2006 war, UN peacekeepers have been stationed here and Lt Col Herzberg insists they haven’t done their job.
‘If they had done their job, we wouldn’t be fighting’
Resolution 1701, under which Israel and Lebanon agreed a ceasefire, called for all armed groups to be removed from an area between the border and the Litani River, nearly 20 miles away.
In reality, it has never happened. Hezbollah has built tunnels and brought in weapons and people.
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“The UN has been here since 2006 and their mandate is to prevent any armed groups in the south of Lebanon other than Lebanese armed forces,” Lt Col Herzberg told me.
“Clearly they haven’t done that because we are fighting Hezbollah armed forces in southern Lebanon. We have found some of the Hezbollah positions literally under the noses of the UN bases.
“What have they been doing for the past eighteen years? If they had done their job, we wouldn’t be fighting this war.”
Kandice Ardiel is the deputy spokesperson for UNIFIL, the UN’s force in Lebanon. She told me that it was clear that the ceasefire had not been implemented.
“We’ve never denied that there are issues and that is why the mission has continued to be here. We have consistently noted and monitored the proliferation,” she said.
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“We have seen videos, including one of a tunnel a few hundred metres from one of our positions in Lebanon. But we are here at the invitation of the Lebanese government, so we have to ask the Lebanese army to facilitate our access. Peacekeepers cannot go on their own into private property. And that permission was never granted.
“Peacekeeping is a challenge. Neither of these parties were fully committed to Resolution 1701. We saw this from the beginning and what we’re seeing now is a result of that lack of trust.”
