Northern Israel border city is a ghost town scarred by war
The streets are deserted, the malls, stores and businesses long shuttered, and the pockmarks of war are everywhere.
Even for Israel’s northernmost border city long known for bearing the brunt of rocket attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon in decades past, as well as earlier notorious Palestinian terror attacks, the nearly 10 months since the outbreak of war following the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre have been an anomaly.
“I’ve been through all the wars here over the last half-century but never have we faced something like this,” says Kiryat Shmona policeman Nahum Cohen, 54, a lifelong city resident. “Never have we been away from our homes for such a long time.”
It was on Oct. 8—one day after the single worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust in the form of Hamas terrorists who infiltrated the southern border with Israel and slaughtered 1,200 people, wounded thousands and kidnapped another 250—that the Lebanese terror group began raining down missiles, rockets, and later, drones on northern Israel, prompting the Israeli government to order the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis from cities and towns in the area back in November.
More than nine months and 7,000 projectiles later, the area remains barren—the landscape battered and most of its inhabitants remain holed up in hotel rooms and accommodations elsewhere in Israel as security forces man the town in their absence.“To run a city police station under fire is very strange, but to do so when nearly all the residents are gone is virtually unheard of,” Kiryat Shmona police chief Arik Berkovitch tells JNS. “Nothing prepares you for this.”
In direct eyesight of Hezbollah
Situated on the slopes of the Hula Valley under the mountains of Lebanon, this city of 25,000 known as the “town of eight” for the death of eight Jews, including the famed Zionist activist Joseph Trumpeldor in the 1920 battle of Tel Hai in the Galilee, is in direct eyesight of Hezbollah perched just above, giving the roughly 3,000 mostly elderly or infirm residents who remained or moved back no time to take cover when rockets are fired at this hard-hit city.
“In most cases, you hear of an incoming attack by the sounds of two or three explosions,” Kiryat Shmona police officer Loae Fares tells JNS during an interview on Wednesday. “In the best situation, you hear the sirens and the boom simultaneously.”
Fares, who serves as the head of Israel police operations in the city, recounts that after working the day in the deserted city, he goes to his own borderline Druze village of nearby Horfesh, which decided unanimously not to evacuate despite the security threats.
“It’s really sad to come to work every day and barely see a human being outside,” he says. “Then after running from house to house to rescue people from these missiles, I myself go home as a civilian and find myself having to hug my 6-year-old daughter, who suffers from fears and anxieties from the sound of the sirens.”
‘We’ve never seen anything like this’
The streets in this border city are lined by the damage caused by the hundreds of projectiles that have fallen since October. Craters on the city’s main road—Herzl Boulevard—are quickly repaired to allow for police and rescue officials to drive freely, but the damage is everywhere. Homes, bus stops and businesses alike in this now mostly lifeless city all bear witness to the ongoing attacks.
The police chief said that both the quality and quantity of the missiles and rockets as well as the drones are unprecedented.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” he states simply.
The rockets—fired in a variety of types and sizes—carry anywhere of up to 150 kilos of explosives, according to a city police bomb-disposal expert.
“Everybody is constantly calling to ask to check in on their homes,” recounts Israel police officer Shlomi Ben-Hemo, 49, who took JNS on a patrol of the city on July 24, and who also checks in on and assists the elderly and infirm closeted in their homes.
A strike at any moment
An eerie silence punctures the hot and dry afternoon air. Even the generally omnipresent stray outdoor city cats are nowhere to be seen. A car or two sped by, including one bringing food donations for the elderly who have stayed on, and another from the Chassidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement that handed out ice-cold energy drinks and Messiah stickers for the soldiers and police officers on duty in the blazing afternoon sun.
“We could never imagine it would be like this,” Ben-Hemo, a lifelong city resident, relates as he fields calls from his family who are evacuated inquiring about his safety.
After scores of missiles fired at the city on Tuesday evening were successfully intercepted, the threat level on Wednesday was on medium level two of three with concern that Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress that afternoon could serve as a prime time for a fresh attack.
In the end, the evening passed peacefully, but security officials stayed on alert for a strike that could happen at “any moment,” particularly following any successful Israeli strike against Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon when the terror group routinely responds with a larger than usual barrage missiles on northern Israel.
‘I get goosebumps thinking about it’
The Israel police officer points to one apartment building that became the target of a recent direct hit with four children still inside the antiquated safe room, hands on their heads and trembling on the floor when he came in.
“I get goosebumps just thinking about it,” he says.
Unlike in southern Israel, which has become an epicenter for wartime tourism this year for people coming to witness the sites of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, the situation is altogether different on Israel’s northern border.
“Whoever doesn’t have something to do here shouldn’t be here,” Ben-Hemo says.
Another house down the street was hit twice in one week; a home and a military base on the edge of the city—in eye view of a town on the Lebanese border—also bore the brunt of rocket fire.
Nor are the wounds just physical. Ben-Hemo says his 15-year-old daughter said she is too afraid to ever come home even after the war ends, while his wife is weary that without a military operation against Hezbollah on the border, the situation will not be peaceful in the long term.
“We’ve been through this in our childhood,” says city resident Yaniv Azulay, 47 who stayed behind to work in moving in a city shed just opposite the site of a fatal missile attack, as he ticks off the various wars, and military operations of the decades past. “What can I tell you? There are difficult days. We pray.”
Even the memories of wars past, including the month-long Second Lebanon War in 2006, when residents evacuated their home, and a notorious city massacre exactly half a century ago in which Palestinian terrorists from Lebanon killed 18 residents, including eight children, have either paled in comparison or faded to what is now Israel’s longest war since the 1948 War of Independence.
“My dream and all of the police officers is to see the children come back to the city when things get back to normal,” the city’s police operations officer says.
“We don’t know how long it will take, but until then, we will be here.”
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