Golan Communities Outraged After Local Couple Murdered In Hezbollah Attack: ‘Writing Was On The Wall’

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Golan Heights residents expressed outrage on Tuesday night after a local couple, residents of Kibbutz Ortal, were killed in their car when it took a direct hit from a Hezbollah rocket.

The dead couple were identified as Nir and Noa Baranes (both 46 years of age), who are parents to three teenage children.

Ynet reported that  Hezbollah targeted the area with a heavy barrage of at least 40 rockets after an official in the group – the former bodyguard of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah – was killed in a drone strike attributed to Israel, near Syria’s border with Lebanon.

Communities in the Golan have been under fire from Hezbollah for the past several months but have not been instructed to evacuate or provided means to compensate them for the losses they incurred, including heavy losses from tourism-based industries. The constant rocket attacks have also caused widespread brush fires and  damage to property, and businesses are failing during nine months of fighting.

The difficulties incurred by the estimated 50,000 residents of the Golan (about half Jewish and half Druze) have raised harsh questions about the government’s lack of strategy in the north against Hezbollah as the war drags on.

Katzrin Mayor Yehuda Doa on Tuesday said he told political leaders his region is at war. “I looked the decision-makers in the eyes and told them I came there to demand compensation for businesses lost and returned home to the horrors of sirens and interceptions in the ongoing war,” he said. “This is our reality, our routine, and the government is being negligent in the face of this brutal enemy. The only option to beat terror is by force.”

“The writing was on the wall,” Golan regional council head Uri Kelner said. “In the past weeks we’ve called out to the government repeatedly to break the cycle and tonight we saw the result of delaying decisions with hundreds of rockets landing and endangering the lives of civilians.”

A forum of civilians evacuated from the north also called on the government to take action after civilians were killed. “The right to live in security is basic,” the forum said. “Without a strong north, Israel is not strong. We ask the government to work with us and put an end to these events immediately.”