Along the borders with Syria and Lebanon, skeptical residents welcome peace while it lasts
KIBBUTZ EL-ROM – The stretch of land that was once part of a closed military zone separating Israel and Syria in the Golan Heights is a desolate landscape full of rocks, grasses and landmines.
Since the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and until recently, the Israeli side of the border has been restricted to the military, said Shimon Michael, head of the emergency response team at nearby Kibbutz El-Rom. He recently drove the Times of Israel to the border on a mild fall day.
Dotted with apple orchards and wind turbines spinning in the wind, the bumpy dirt road continued through the so-called Valley of Tears. There, 175 IDF tanks somehow managed to hold off 700 Syrian tanks and prevent them from breaching the Israeli border during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Michael, 38, said that before the full-scale invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which Hamas-led terrorists killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 hostages in the Gaza Strip, he lived with the illusion that the Syrian border was “the quietest border in Israel.”
“But the Oct. 7 massacre changed the idea that nothing could happen to us,” Michael said.
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On October 8, 2023, a day after the Hamas massacre, the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah began launching almost daily rocket and drone attacks from Lebanon, forcing the displacement of around 60,000 residents in northern Israel until the ceasefire on November 27, 2024.
Shimon Michael, head of the emergency team at Kibbutz El-Rom in the Golan Heights, stands near the new Israeli-patrolled buffer zone between Israel and Syria that the IDF occupied with the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December 2024, with a view of Mount Hermon in the background, on October 23, 2025. (Diana Bletter/Times of Israel)
Although residents of the Golan Heights were not evacuated, “our mentality suddenly changed,” Michael said.
Previously, as manager of the boutique hotel El-Rom, Michael focused on visitor events and planting gardens with specimen trees and lush flowers. After the war began, he led the emergency response team, which was equipped and “ready for combat in 10 minutes.”
The Syrian village of al-Hamidiya lies in the United Nations-controlled buffer zone between Israel and Syria, which the IDF occupied with the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December 2024, as seen from the border fence, about five kilometers (two miles) from Kibbutz El-Rom, the Golan Heights, on October 23, 2025. (Courtesy of Gal Fitusi)
On this trip, he and another member of the El Rom emergency team, Gal Fitusi, traveled to the border fence along Syria for the first time. They stared at the nearby Syrian village of Al-Hamidiya.
The village lies within the buffer zone between Israel and Syria. While the UN was still present in the region, the IDF occupied the buffer zone after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024.
“In the weeks after the fall of al-Assad … that was the only time we were afraid,” Fitusi said.
A convoy of IDF vehicles approaches a United Nations position on the Israel-Syria border in the Golan Heights on December 11, 2024. The Syrian army’s Tel Kwdana post can be seen in the background. (Emanuel Fabian/ Times of Israel)
The IDF has since been deployed to nine posts in the region and operates in areas up to 15 kilometers (nine miles) deep inside Syria.
On the same day that The Times of Israel visited the area, troops arrested suspects trying to smuggle handguns, assault rifles and magazines from Syria into Lebanon. It was the second foiled smuggling plot from Syria to Lebanon in a week.
“We’re not worried, but we’re ready,” Michael said. “The new buffer zone was created by the IDF to ensure that there is no ISIS on our border.”
A United Nations post in the Mount Hermon area of southern Syria, March 11, 2025. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)
Lessons from 1973
Since 2010, Erez Boshy has lived in Kibbutz El-Rom, where he works in the visitor center. Although the city has only about 500 residents, the center has attracted thousands of visitors from around the world, including as far away as China and Singapore, who come to tour the Valley of Tears and watch a 20-minute film about that fateful battle.
He said that since the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, visitors have started visiting the center again.
“What have we learned from the Yom Kippur War, 50 years and one day before the October 7 massacre?” Boshy asked rhetorically. “We haven’t learned anything. Why are we still talking about it? Because we should never forget it and this way we can prevent terrible things that could happen.”
Erez Boshy stands in front of memorabilia from the Battle of the Valley of Tears during the 1973 Yom Kippur War in the visitor center of Kibbutz El-Rom on October 23, 2025. (Diana Bletter/Times of Israel)
Major (res.) Avraham Levine told the Times of Israel by telephone that he had just returned from monitoring the road that stretches along Israel from the border with Syria to the border with Lebanon.
Levine, a Golan Heights resident and media director and senior speaker at the Alma Research and Education Center, an independent nonprofit that specializes in security challenges on Israel’s northern border, said Hezbollah is trying to “bring people back to the villages in southern Lebanon along the Israeli border because that is their human shield.”
In accordance with the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon, the Lebanese army is tasked with dismantling all unauthorized military installations and confiscating weapons in the area near the Israeli border, and moving north to the Litani River, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) away.
However, the IDF continues to attack Hezbollah operatives in southern Lebanon, saying they “constitute a violation of the agreements between Israel and Lebanon.”
Major (Res.) Avraham Levine, media director and senior speaker at the Alma Research and Education Center. (decency)
Last Wednesday, a platoon leader from the Hezbollah terror group’s elite Radwan force was killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon. The activist was involved in moving weapons in Lebanon and carrying out attacks against Israel. Also on Sunday, the IDF killed Abd a-Sayed, a commander of Hezbollah forces in the region, hours before Defense Minister Israel Katz and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee toured the Israel-Lebanese border.
“We are not living in the illusion that we were in before October 7th,” Levine said. “Nothing has completely changed, except the fact that Hezbollah cannot currently implement plans to attack Israeli communities because they are further back. It’s not that it has stopped wanting to attack.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz (left), U.S. Mission to the United Nations Advisor Morgan Ortagus (center) and Northern Command chief Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo near the border with Lebanon, Oct. 26, 2025. (Ariel Hermoni/Department of Defense)
“I feel safe. I feel safe’
At the observation point at Kibbutz Misgav Am, located on the edge of the border with Lebanon, Amit Davidpur, an IDF reserve soldier who grew up on the kibbutz, spoke to The Times of Israel as she stood among the rubble caused by Hezbollah rocket fire in the early weeks of the conflict. She and her family were among 160 kibbutz residents evacuated from the kibbutz during the fighting.
Since the ceasefire, all but two families have returned to the kibbutz. Six new families have also moved in.
“Before October 7, we were living in a dream,” said 23-year-old Davidpur. She had come to the observation point to explain the current situation to the many visitors from all over the country who had come to tour the kibbutz. Apart from the observation point, only one other building in Misgav Am was damaged.
“The IDF has done its job,” she said. “I feel safe. I feel safe.”
Amit Davidpur stands at the Misgav Am observation point, which was destroyed by Hezbollah missiles during the war, on October 23, 2025. (Diana Bletter/Times of Israel)
Misgav Am spokesman Ofer Moskovitz, who also manages the kibbutz’s 400 dunams (100 acres) of avocado groves, was also at the observation center to speak with visitors. He said the center will be renovated next year.
Moskovitz said that before October 7, people lingered to marvel at the idyllic hills of southern Lebanon.
When an IDF commander once visited the center, Moskovitz said he said, “People see the beauty there, but I see Iranians.”
Now Moskovitz looked at the Lebanese village of Odaisseh, a former Hezbollah stronghold that was used for attacks against Israel.
“It was like a ghost village,” he said. “You never saw people. There was a school, but you never saw children.”
As a truck drove down the road leading away from the village, Moskovitz said: “They are trying to come back, but the IDF won’t let them near.”
Misgav Am spokesman Ofer Moskovitz on October 23, 2025. (Diana Bletter/Times of Israel)
As a farmer, Moskovitz said he was an optimist because he planted trees without knowing what the weather or conditions would be later. But when it comes to lasting peace, he is not so hopeful, he said.
“There will be another conflict in 10 years,” he predicted.
At that moment, there was an IDF warning on his phone.
“On Thursday, October 23, at 1 p.m., an attack occurred deep in Lebanon as part of the agreement to disarm Hezbollah,” Moskovitz read aloud. “At this point there is no change in the assessment of the security situation and no changes to civilian routines.”
Apparently reassured, Moskovitz put his phone away and continued the conversation.
