In the past few weeks, various IDF units have been carrying out training exercises meant to prepare for combat on the ground in Lebanon, the most recent held by a reserve paratrooper unit. On Friday, the IDF chief of staff visited the northern border and met with senior commanders there. Hizballah, meanwhile, continues to launch explosive-laden drones and rockets into Israel, and Israeli jets continue to strike targets in Lebanon. The constant attacks, and fear of infiltration or even invasion, have depopulated a strip of northern Israel. Not the village of Jish (ancient Gush Halav), however, whose Aramean Christian residents refuse to abandon their homes, which lie just over two miles from the border and in the sites of Hizballah artillery.

Cnaan Lidor writes:

Unlike most of their Jewish neighbors in neighboring towns, Jish’s 3,000-odd residents have largely stayed put throughout the current escalation of hostilities with Hezbollah, which led to the evacuation of some 60,000 people from communities near the border.

Jish is an oasis of vibrancy and normalcy amid a largely deserted area. The axis of communal life here is the church and its daily services. Religiously, the church is Maronite. . . . Culturally, though, many of the churchgoers are Arameans, and, uniquely, some prayers in Jish are delivered in Aramaic.

The community’s day-to-day language is Arabic and the village has a mosque and a sizable Muslim minority. . . . As with Bedouins and Druze, enlistment to the army is non-compulsory for Arameans—but it’s a popular choice. Many Arameans consider themselves closer culturally, religiously, and ideologically to Jewish Israelis and Judaism than to Arabs and Islam.

“Only under a Jewish sovereign state can we even hope to live as free men and women. . . . This is survival for us, just as it is for you,” said [a local leader, Shadi] Khalloul.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.