Tensions Rise On Border As War Looms

Doctors prepare for casualties, people flee their homes and apprehension hangs in the air as threat grows of conflict with Hezbollah

- Peter Beaumont and Quique Kierszenbaum

Beneath the 800-bed Galilee Medical Centre in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya, treatment is being conducted in an underground complex.

About 7km from the border with Lebanon, a frontier visible from the hospital's car park, the doctors are aware that in the event of an escalating war their facility will be on the frontline.

A suite equipped with monitors and screens will act as the nerve centre in the event of a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah, a prospect that looms ever larger amid rising hostilities and exchanges of fire across the border.

In charge of the emergency preparations is Dr Tsvi Sheleg, an ophthalmologist whose unit was hit by a missile during the 2006 war. His planning reflects a crisis that has long been building to this point, he said.

"We started preparing for this twoand-a-half years ago. We met with the northern and home front commanders where they described the number of missiles Hezbollah had acquired." It is not only hospitals that have been preparing for a potential widening of the conflict.

Last week Israel's religious services minister, Michael Malkieli, in charge of burials in Israel, told the rightwing Channel 14 his office was preparing for "bigger things in the north", adding: "There are some things you don't say on air." While the border has seen almost daily exchanges since 8 October, when Hezbollah began firing in support of Hamas, the threats have escalated sharply on both sides as the months have worn on.