The three anti-tank missiles that smashed into the council office were the last straw for Eitan Davidi.
The council leader in Margaliot, a small Israeli town near the border with Lebanon, which faces off against Hezbollah daily, cut off contact with Israel’s government and told the troops who had converted an empty red-roofed agricultural settlement into an army barracks that they had to leave.
Teetering on the edge of the UN armistice line with Lebanon, Margaliot has decided to fend for itself after nearly eight months of intensifying warfare with the Lebanese militia. “We are closing the settlement’s central command, and the settlement’s gates,” Davidi told reporters. “There is no entry or exit to the settlement, not to anyone — including the army.”
• Rafah
