by Canaan Lidor
Following a barrage of rockets to the suburbs of Israel's third city, residents maintain their routines as they calmly brace for war.
Having spent most of Sunday indoors
following the explosion of a rocket outside her home near Haifa, Nicole
Ir decided to treat her daughter to some shopping in the nearby Kiryon,
one of Israel’s oldest, largest and most visited shopping malls.
When
they arrived, however, Nicole and Carolina, 9, had to stand in line for
30 minutes. Because of Sunday’s escalation in rocket fire from Lebanon,
management had limited to 100 the maximum capacity of visitors to the
sprawling shopping center, which normally has thousands of shoppers at
any time.
Those waiting dismissed or ignored the warnings by the security staff that it was unsafe to congregate at the entrance.
“That’s
right. So let us into McDonald’s already!” one man told the security
guard loudly, in a Russian accent, drawing chuckles from the rest.
The
scene captured a widespread sentiment in Haifa’s environs, where
previous conflicts and decades in Hezbollah’s crosshairs have inspired a
defiant resilience in locals. They are unimpressed by the terrorists’
threats and confident in Israel’s ability to triumph.
Ir, 42, moved to Kiryat Bialik with her
family only two years ago from Petah Tikvah near Tel Aviv. Over the past
year, her daughter has “become used, sadly, to the emotional strains of
living under rocket threat,” her mother told JNS outside the mall.
Nicole’s 18-month-old baby, meanwhile, “cries incessantly when the
sirens go off,” she added.
On Sunday, Nicole’s family was among
the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who huddled together in safe
spaces due to a major rocket barrage launched by Hezbollah, one of
hundreds of such barrages since Hezbollah began attacking Israel in
support of Hamas on Oct. 8. As in previous cases, Sunday’s attacks
triggered Israeli strikes in Lebanon, as Israel and Hezbollah teeter on
the edge of all-out war.
In Sunday’s conflagration, three people
were lightly wounded when a rocket hit a row of houses in Kiryat Bialik
about a mile from the mall. A 17-year-old motorist died in a car wreck
that coincided with the attack, and an Arab Israeli in his 60s suffered
light shrapnel wounds in Nazareth.
The Kiryat Bialik Municipality covered up
the gaping holes in the worst-hit building with a giant Israeli flag as
soon as firefighters declared the area safe.
The attack was
unusual both in terms of volume—over 100 rockets within a few hours—and
range, penetrating some 30 miles into Israeli territory.
Since
Oct. 8, Hezbollah has launched thousands of rockets and missiles into
cities and towns near the border with Lebanon. To avoid loss of life,
Israel evacuated the residents of the border area to state-funded
accommodations shortly after the outbreak of war. Some 60,000 evacuees
have left Israel’s north, many of them to Haifa and its environs. The
Haifa Municipality is not aware of any significant flight by residents,
spokesperson Eliran Tal told JNS on Sunday.
Hezbollah has
largely avoided striking Haifa proper, likely for fear of Israel’s
response. Israel, meanwhile, has refrained from carrying out extensive
strikes in Beirut, maintaining in this way a limited-scale conflict that
has raged between Acre and Sidon since Oct. 8, the day after Hamas
invaded Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting another 251,
triggering a regional conflagration.
Hezbollah’s overstepping of
those boundaries followed strategically and emotionally painful blows
dealt to it by Israel last week, including the killing of 13 of its top
officers in a targeted airstrike in Beirut on Friday.
On Tuesday
and Wednesday, thousands of pagers and other pieces of gear used by
Hezbollah operatives exploded, killing at least 12 and wounding
thousands in what Hezbollah called an Israeli sabotage operation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
said on Sunday that Hezbollah had received “a series of blows” that it
“could not have imagined.” If Hezbollah hasn’t understood the message, I
promise you—it will,” he added.
Haifa and municipalities to its
north have either canceled their at-school activities, transferring
them to online platforms, or limited them drastically pending shelter
capacities. For the first time since Oct. 7, Haifa’s beaches were closed
Sunday and the Home Front Command forbade gatherings by more than 30
people in open terrain and more than 300 inside buildings.
Sunday’s
escalation caught families like Nicole’s fully prepared, she said. “We
stocked up on water, dry foods, preserved goods, games and videos,”
added Nicole, who lives in a modern residential building where each
apartment has its own reinforced rocket shelter.
Such amenities
can make a significant difference in the lives of locals who may need to
live in or near shelters for weeks on end, as they did during the 2006
Second Lebanon War. Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets into Israel
that summer, as the Israel Defense Forces pumelled Lebanon for close to
two months.
Hezbollah is believed to have increased its arsenal
considerably since then. Haifa alone is projected to take thousands of
hits in an all-out war scenario despite the Iron Dome and other rocket
interception systems deployed around the city.
Nicole Ir is not
considering leaving, she said. “Why would we? Every corner of this
country is within the range of some rocket. Either we make a stand, or
we run forever,” she explained.
The rockets have not made Ir
regret the decision to move to Kiryat Bialik, where real estate prices
are approximately half that of comparable assets in the center. The gaps
in pay and opportunities between the affluent center and the poorer
north, however, “are the bigger issue,” she said.
Inside the
desolate mall, most of the shops were closed. The staff of the local KFC
branch, which did open, played indoor soccer at the food court because
they had no customers.
“It’s kind of a weird feeling, but it’s
also convenient because this place is way more relaxed this way,” said
one shopper, Tzofia Vaknin, 18. She came because she needed clothes
before returning to southern Israel, where she is performing her
national service as a teacher. Her friend, Neria Shimon Amar, lives very
near where the rocket hit in Kiryat Bialik, he said.
“The house
shook, the children cried. But the rest of us basically shrugged it
off,” Amar said. “The People of Israel is strong and will triumph. I
know our brethren in the Diaspora have our back. I know they have it
tough, too. And we need them to stay strong,” he told JNS.
In
nearby Kiryat Haim, Haifa’s northernmost neighborhood, the rocket sirens
brought back memories for Vered Edery, a hairstylist and mother of
four. She had experienced the Second Lebanon War in this at-risk
neighborhood, a prominent target for Hezbollah both because of the
symbolism of hitting Haifa and for the industrial and military
facilities around it.
Edery was scheduled to go on a cruise on
Sunday, but it got canceled because of the escalation. “Better this
way,” said Edery, who has multiple grandchildren, all living in the
Haifa area. “I wouldn’t have wanted to be away from my family right now
anyway. It’s all part of God’s plan!”
Far from considering moving
away, Edery recently bought a bomb shelter, which she had placed in the
backyard of her semi-detached home. Like most structures in Haifa, it
does not have a built-in sheltered area.
Amir Vosko, a father of two from Kiryat
Yam north of Haifa, lives in an apartment building with a shared bomb
shelter on the basement floor. He, his wife Nitzan and their son and
daughter live on the first floor, “which means we can get to the shelter
quickly,” he noted.
The children “feel the stress and the
initial panic when the alarm sirens blare, but then they look at us,
they see us behave calmly and they relax,” said Vosko, 37. A fire safety
consultant who is a member of the city council and a former consultant
to the speaker of the Knesset, he doesn’t rule out having his wife and
children, who both attend elementary school at a nearby kibbutz, move
southward “if there’s a major escalation,” he said. As for himself,
Vosko said, “I’m not going anywhere. My roots go deep, I’m staying right
here to help my fellow residents the best I can.”
The escalation
caught some Haifa residents abroad, including Oren Yuval, a 49-year-old
father of five who lives near Haifa University, one of the Middle
East’s tallest buildings that, in previous rounds of fighting, has been a
high-quality target for Hezbollah.
Yuval, an electrician and
plumber, is in the United States with his wife for medical treatment for
his son. Their four daughters were supposed to stay in Haifa with their
grandparents from the Tel Aviv area, but have moved in with their
grandparents following the escalation. “It’s very difficult to be away. I
wish we were back there already,” an unemotional Yuval told JNS.
Back in Haifa, Eyal Levkovich, 42, has no
intention of changing the opening hours at his Goldmund Books bookstore
in Haifa’s Hadar neighborhood.
“During ‘difficult’ times, I’m
often asked whether we’re open,” Levkovich wrote on Facebook about his
store, which doubles as a popular alternative music venue and a hub for
Haifa’s intellectual scene.
“So here’s my policy: We’re open
every day 9 a.m.-11 p.m. but only until [Syrian President] Bashar Assad,
[Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah and [Iranian leader] Ali Khamenei show up
to buy a copy of [children’s author] Noam Horev. If that happens, we’re
closing up.”
Canaan Lidor
Source: https://www.jns.org/haifas-hardened-locals-shrug-off-hezbollahs-escalation/
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