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An uneasy quiet greets Mideast truce

BY MICHAEL ROTHFELD | Newsday Staff Correspondent

August 15, 2006

MAAYAN BARUCH, Israel - The afternoon was quiet except for the breeze. For the first time in a month, family and friends gathered outside yesterday on this kibbutz within view of the Lebanese mountains without fear of a rocket attack.

They milled around, talking softly as they waited on a hilly dirt road leading up to a shady grove: lean, young soldiers with acne, M-16 assault rifles slung over shoulders and military-issue pants hanging low at the waists, and older, rounder kibbutzniks with veiny cheeks burned apple red from years farming in the sun.

Then Haran Lev's coffin arrived in the back of an Israeli army truck. His father, Gabriel, a burly, bearded man who works in the factory on the kibbutz, stepped out of his car and walked over. Vered Lev came next, sliding fingers over her 20-year-old son's coffin, blanketed by a blue and white Israeli flag. She held her hands there until the the truck rolled off, up to the cemetery.

"You are the love of my life," Vered, 46, cried later, after Haran was buried under the branches of olive trees. "Don't forget me!" Soldiers fired shots into the air.

Haran told his parents he would return safely from fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and they believed him. He was killed with three other soldiers when their tank was hit by a missile Saturday at about midnight, 32 hours before a cease-fire.

Israel woke up yesterday without the sounds of Israeli artillery and missiles shooting over the border, without fire and smoke from Hezbollah's rockets on its landscape.

The truce had an uneasy quality, as parents buried children and communities remained desolate because Israelis worried the peace would not last.

In Kiryat Shemona, a mile from the border, traffic lights that blinked yellow for weeks went back to normal and some people sat at outdoor cafes, but most stores were still closed.

"The silence is hurting my ears," said Efrat Agra, 52, of Snir, a northeastern kibbutz.

In Shear Yeshuv, a nearly empty community, Menashe Hoshiar, 70, and his wife Batya, 61, sat on their porch. They've lived with conflict for 38 years, and stayed through the war to tend to livestock. The quiet didn't impress them.

"Today is the same as yesterday or any day," he said. "We just sit on the porch. The difference is yesterday we did it with fear."

By 5 p.m., Amram Sabag, 57, an economist from Dishon, had already spent four hours in a field of tanks. His son Yochai, 24, a reserve soldier, had just come out of Lebanon. Amram and his wife, Pirhiya, took turns hugging their son.

"I was climbing the walls," Amram Sabag said. "Physically and mentally, I feel better."

The day before, a Hezbollah rocket landed in Maayan Baruch, sending friends who gathered outside the Levs' home running indoors. The kibbutz, a commune of 400 people that grows avocados and raises chickens, was founded in 1947, a year before Israel became a country. About 20 members have died in wars since then.

Haran and his entire tank crew were killed Saturday when they climbed a hill in Lebanon, attempting to protect another Israeli tank, and were hit by an anti-tank missile.

Haran, who grew up on the kibbutz with a younger sister and brother, liked to be by himself as a boy, and had an offbeat sense of humor. He often won his kibbutz's costume contest on the holiday of Purim. One year he was a homeless man. Another he dressed as Siamese twins. He even showed up as a bomb.

"Everybody got very angry at him, because it wasn't a great time in Israel then, as now," said Daniella Sommer, 44, a family friend. "He had his own ideas."

Nine months ago, after high school, he joined the army for three years of required service. His parents saw a change, an acceptance of responsibility. He came home to get a sewing machine to help make bags for the soldiers, and brought them back a box of ice cream. A week before his death, the last time his parents saw him, he took fellow soldiers' clothes to the kibbutz laundry run by Vered.

"The army made him grow up very fast," Gabriel Lev, 50, said. At the start of the war, Haran's unit was in the West Bank, but he itched to fight in Lebanon. He believed he had to protect Israel from Hezbollah, a goal his father prays this peace deal will achieve.

"I hope I didn't lose my son for nothing," Gabriel said. "Not for something that in the next two years will come back with another war."

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