For Israeli troops on the northern border with Lebanon, the government’s strategy of avoiding full-scale war with the Hezbollah fighters just a few hundred meters away is embodied in the pages of a 68-year-old training manual.

“The Rifle Department,” first issued in 1956 and hastily reprinted in the wake of the mass mobilization that followed the attack on southern Israel by Hamas terrorists on October 7, teaches soldiers old techniques of static defense, said Lt. Col. Dotan Razili, a home front brigade commander in the north.

“The IDF usually is an attacking force. We take the initiative,” he told reporters in Hanita, one of a string of kibbutzim along the northern border that were evacuated in the days following the October 7 attack and now stand empty.

“We had to teach units how to start defending,” he said, a battered-looking copy of the manual in his hand.

The book, one of the Israeli army’s first-ever training manuals, teaches soldiers and junior officers, more used to modern high-tech warfare, classic infantry techniques like how to dig foxholes that can be occupied for weeks at a time.

“We got better at it, because we trained and we moved our forces and we built posts and we’re more ready,” Razili said.

While Israeli troops have been engaged in heavy battles in the southern Gaza Strip, the forces in the north have been engaged in a lower-intensity cross-border standoff with Hezbollah fighters during which each side has fired on the other without ever moving to full-scale war.

The two sides last fought a major war in 2006 but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have repeatedly said they do not wish to go to war with Hezbollah, while warning that Israel would be ready to go on the attack if it felt it necessary. There have been similar statements from Hezbollah leaders.

How long the uneasy standoff can last is unclear. Exchanges of anti-tank missiles, mortars, air strikes and machine gun fire have already reached levels that in other times might have triggered a much heavier response from both sides.

Fighting erupted in the south on October 7, when some 3,000 Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking another 240 hostages.

Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.

So far, the skirmishes on the border have resulted in four civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of nine IDF soldiers. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.

Hezbollah has named 161 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. In Lebanon, another 19 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and at least 19 civilians, three of whom were journalists, have been killed.

Tens of thousands on both sides of the border have been evacuated, with more than 96,000 Israelis now in temporary accommodation and many of the farms along the northern border tended only irregularly by workers who come in during the day.

Roads up to the border are largely deserted, with troops at checkpoints checking vehicles traveling north and roads marked by the tracks of heavy armored vehicles.

Hanita, a kibbutz founded in 1938 under the British mandate, with a population of some 700, is a pretty community of houses in a wooded area within a few hundred meters of the border. The roof of one of the houses was destroyed by a mortar and apart from soldiers and the household cats left behind by their owners, it now stands largely empty.

Near the border itself, occasional bursts of machine gun fire or mortars are heard regularly and occasional signs of damage to houses from Hezbollah rockets or mortars can be seen.

“We’ve had a lot of action with Hezbollah. They’re firing at us almost every day around this area,” said a senior officer, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

Another officer said Hezbollah fighters had fired at least 800 Kornets, wire-guided anti-tank missiles, at Israeli positions since the start of the war as well as drone strikes such as the one that hit a military command post on Tuesday.

For its part, Israeli forces regularly hit Hezbollah positions with air strikes and artillery, and this week a senior commander of the elite Radwan forces was killed, although Israel has not claimed responsibility.

For the moment, however, the Israeli soldiers standing guard in the north say their orders are to fire only when they perceive a direct threat.

“I’m holding myself because I understand the situation and we are here until the government will say otherwise,” the officer said. “Yes, it is difficult but we are managing.”