Dean Sweetland casts his gaze over a forlorn street in the Israeli community of Kibbutz Malkiya. Perched on a hill overlooking the border with Lebanon, the town stands mostly empty after being abandoned a year ago. The daycare is closed. The homes are unkempt. Parts of the landscape are ashen from fires sparked by fallen Hezbollah rockets. Even after a tenuous Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire designed to let Israelis return to the north, the mood here is far from celebratory. “The ceasefire is rubbish,” said Sweetland, a gardener and member of the kibbutz’s civilian security squad. “Do you expect me to ring around my friends and say, ‘All the families should come home?’ No.” Across the border, Lebanese civilians have jammed roads in a rush to return to homes in the country’s south, but most residents of northern Israel have met the ceasefire with suspicion and apprehension. “Hezbollah could still come back to the border, and who will protect us when they do?” Sweetland asked. Israel’s government seeks to bring the northern reaches of the country back to life, particularly the line of communities directly abutting Lebanon that have played a major role in staking out Israel’s border. But the fear of Hezbollah, a lack of trust in United Nations peacekeeping forces charged with upholding the ceasefire, deep anger at the government and some Israelis’ desire to keep rebuilding their lives elsewhere are keeping many from returning immediately. Sarah Gould, who evacuated Kibbutz Malkiya at the start of the war with her three kids, said Hezbollah fired on the community up to and just past the minute when the ceasefire took effect early Wednesday. “So for the government to tell me that Hezbollah is neutralized,” she said, “it’s a perfect lie.” “I won’t even begin to consider going home until I know there’s a dead zone for kilometers across the border,” the 46-year-old Gould said. Some wary Israelis trickled back home Thursday and Friday to areas farther from the border. But communities like Kibbutz Manara, set on a tiny slice of land between Lebanon and Syria, remained ghost towns. Orna Weinberg, 58, who was born and raised in Manara, said it was too early to tell whether the ceasefire would protect the community. Perched above all the other border villages, Manara was uniquely vulnerable to Hezbollah fire throughout the war. Three-quarters of its structures were damaged. In the kibbutz’s communal kitchen and dining hall, ceiling beams have collapsed. The uprooted floorboards are covered with ash from fires that also claimed much of the kibbutz’s cropland. Rocket fragments abound. The torso of a mannequin, a decoy dressed in army green, lies on the ground. Weinberg tried to stay in Manara during the war, but after anti-tank shrapnel damaged her home, soldiers told her to leave. On Thursday, she walked along her street, which looks out directly over a UNIFIL position separating the kibbutz from a line of Lebanese villages that have been decimated by Israeli bombardment and demolitions. Weinberg said UNIFIL hadn’t prevented Hezbollah’s build-up in the past, “so why would they be able to now?” “A ceasefire here just gives Hezbollah a chance to rebuild their power and come back to places that they were driven out of,” she said. The truce seemed fragile. Even in less battered communities, no one returns […]