‘We must finish the job’: despite living on the frontline, northern Israelis try to maintain normality

Daniel Dorfman, owner of the Ayuni restaurant in Metula, Israel, which he just reopened before the war. Photograph: Jason Burke/The Guardian

On the main street of Metula on Thursday morning there was one thing everybody agreed on: the night had been “difficult”.

The sirens had fallen silent only a few hours earlier when military authorities were sure there would be no further waves of attacks with rockets and drones on targets across northern Israel launched by Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant Islamist movement, and its sponsor, Iran.