In 1977, I lived and worked for two months in Israel, on Kibbutz Dafna, a small settlement in the Hula Valley in the northern Galilee. This is a lovely and lush area. Dafna is surrounded by orchards, fishponds, fields, and woodlands, and a stream called the Banyas, one of the sources of the Jordan River, runs nearby. The kibbutzniks are proud of how they turned the area, once a malarial swamp, into a fertile farmland. Mt Hermon and the Golan Heights tower above the valley.

Dafna is a border kibbutz. I could easily walk from there to the border with Lebanon, just a few kilometers away. Although I was there at a relatively peaceful time, sights and sounds of war were always present. The sound of machinegun fire was almost always present. It came from the Lebanese hills just to the north, where Druze Arabs and Christian Lebanese militia were skirmishing. Now and then, when the unrest came too close to Israel’s border, Israel responded. Mortars fired and fighter jets screamed low overhead. These are frightening sights, even when you know the firepower isn’t meant for you.

At that time, though, there also were heartening signs. I sometimes walked the three or four kilometers to the border town of Metulla, where, in those days, there was a gate in the security fence between the countries. Under an agreement between the two countries, it was then possible for Lebanese workers to come into northern Israel on daytrips to work at jobs in nearby towns. One could sit on a shady café patio across from the gate, watching the Lebanese workers pass in and out of Israel through the gate.

Watching the traffic through the gate, it was easy to see that relations were friendly between the Israeli gate guards and the Lebanese visitors. Mostly, people seemed to know each other and to greet each other by name.

It seemed to me then that ordinary Israelis were trying hard to establish peaceful relations with their neighbors. I worked at Dafna at a time when the English economy was hard-hit, and many lower-class British young people were also living as temporary workers on Israeli kibbutzim such as Dafna. They routinely used harshly racist expressions to refer to the Arab residents of Israel. But though most of the Israeli residents of Dafna had endured many years of shelling from Syrian gunposts on the Golan Heights above them, and wars with neighboring countries, I never once heard any of them use such expressions.

I imagine that it would be hard to find such signs of hope in that border region today, where fighting between Hezbollah and Israel still shows no signs of abating. Today, it would be easy to conclude that peace won’t be possible there, at least not in our lifetimes. But then, nothing ever happens quite according to our expectations. An unexpected factor emerges, something gains ground or something else loses ground, and events begin to turn in a new direction. We can all hope--for both the Israelis and the Lebanese--that the turning will be in the direction of peace, and that it will begin soon.