The loud “baa” of a curious sheep feels ridiculously, laughably incongruous; the only other sounds are the bone-shaking booms of the IDF and Hezbollah exchanging artillery in the near distance. Before you join the road to Kibbutz Metzuba, just over a mile from the 30-foot wall that signals the border with Lebanon, a yellow sign warns of the danger of anti-tank missiles. But it is not just tanks they hit: in January, a mother and her son were killed as they drove home to pick up some of their belongings.

Standing proudly on the greenest part of a mainly arid land, the orchards here are filled with avocado and banana trees, their fruit lying unpicked or decomposing on the ground. One labourer from the area who dared to stay was recently shot from inside Lebanon; it is not worth the risk. Since October 7, 18 Israelis — 11 of them IDF — have been killed on this border, while 70,000 of its residents are now refugees in their own country. “Everyone from here has been evacuated,” Moshe Davidovich, a local mayor, tells me. “As you can see, it is an empty and sad place.”

Six months on, while all eyes in the West are on Gaza and the fall-out from Israel’s relentless war to oust Hamas, in the Holy Land there is more concern about what will happen on its northern border. For Israel is fighting a war on six fronts; in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank, as well as against the Houthis, the threat from Syria, and the even greater threat from Iran. On Thursday, anticipating retaliation following the killing of Iranian generals in Damascus, the IDF halted all leave. And nowhere are its fears more pronounced than in the north. How long, many wonder, until one of its daily skirmishes erupts into a full-blown war?