In Shuttered Border Towns, A Decision to Stay or Go

Pinchas Aplaton stayed in Margaliyot, on the Lebanese border, to tend crops when his family -- and almost everyone else in the town -- evacuated. (Photos By Samuel Sockol -- The Washington Post)

MARGALIYOT, Israel, July 18 -- Living in the shadow of an Israeli artillery battery, whose volleys have rattled their windows day and night for nearly a week, almost all 300 residents have fled this farming village that clings to a rocky ridge on the Lebanese border.

Pinchas Aplaton and his son Gal, a soldier home on leave, were among a handful remaining behind Monday, forced by economic necessity, they said, to tend their tidy rows of tomato and eggplant crops during the summer harvest.

Aplaton's wife, Irit, his daughter and two other sons left a day earlier on a bus bound for Netanya, a city 80 miles to the south and, until now, beyond the reach of rockets that have rained on northern Israel for nearly a week.

"Once we saw this was heating up, there was no choice but for the women and children to go," Pinchas Aplaton said, puffing his cheeks and shaking his head as yet another outgoing round resounded from a nearby hill. "So, for now, we live apart."

Later that afternoon, at the sprawling boarding school in Netanya where she and her children are waiting out the crisis, Irit Aplaton said she was "worried half to death" about her husband. In a period of less than 24 hours, they had spoken at least a dozen times, with most conversations lasting about as long as it takes him to say, "I'm still okay."

The snapshot of the Aplatons' life Monday is a window on the experience of thousands of Israelis living under bombardment across the country's north. According to military sources, about 50 percent of residents in this region, which includes Haifa, the country's third-largest city, have evacuated since cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon began last week, after the group captured two Israeli soldiers in an ambush.

Hundreds of business are shuttered, leaving downtowns eerily empty.

That departure rate is even higher in the string of tiny border towns that for decades have weathered periodic conflict. Pinchas Aplaton was born here 50 years ago and manned an antiaircraft gun during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. For years afterward, he recalled, rocket attacks were routine. When the Israeli army withdrew after an 18-year occupation, he said, he and other villagers worried that violence would surge. It didn't.

"It was quiet for six years. Now, they take the soldiers and the rockets start flying and we're back in the middle of a war," he said.

To shelter themselves from the rocket fire, Pinchas and Gal, who returns to his post in the West Bank next week, now sleep in their basement, on the stone floor of a room that until last week they rented as part of a small bed-and-breakfast. They said they take comfort in the fact that unlike many of the tens of thousands of Lebanese forced from their homes by the violence in recent days, his wife and family are so far living comfortably, after climbing aboard a regional government bus Monday and heading south.

The Israeli government is funding a broad range of programs for displaced Israelis, and private citizens in safer regions are advertising widely on the radio and Internet, offering shelter for those in need.

One Web site established last Friday has already received more than 650 postings from those offering to house people who want to leave the north. Volunteers seem almost to be competing to attract potential housemates, with some offering to give up their bedrooms and others boasting of pools or large back yards.