There were few signs of life this past week on Sprinzak Street in Israel’s northernmost city, Kiryat Shmona, which sits about one-and-a-half kilometres from the border with Lebanon.
Amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia backed by Iran, some residents were holed up in their homes. Others relocated to a dismal underground bomb shelter, a relic from decades past, with spartan metal bunks lining the walls.
About 18 men, women and children from the public housing project above were living, eating and sleeping in the bunker’s two bare, uninviting rooms. The only modern conveniences seemed to be air-conditioning units and a new fridge in one corner, provided by city hall.
Given the city’s proximity to the border, early warnings of incoming fire are at most measured in seconds. Often there is no warning at all.
“I am scared to take a shower; I haven’t showered in three days,” said Yasmin Twito, 40, a mother of four who moved her family into the bomb shelter on Sprinzak Street. She said she had occasionally rushed back to her apartment to cook some food and quickly bathe the children, two at a time.
The cross-border fighting began days after Israel and the US attacked Iran. Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel on March 2 in support of Tehran, opening up a new front in the expanding conflict.
That prompted waves of devastating Israeli bombardment on Lebanon and persistent rocket attacks from Hezbollah on Israel.
The nights have been particularly terrifying in Kiryat Shmona, families in the bunker on Sprinzak Street said.
Kiryat Shmona sits in a part of Israel called the Galilee panhandle, a finger of Israeli territory that juts into Lebanon, and has long been a symbol of national resilience. It has suffered decades of attacks and incoming rocket fire, first from Palestinian militant groups in Lebanon and then from Hezbollah.
The last time the fighting near the border heated up, after the attack led by Hamas on southern Israel in October 2023, the Israeli government decided to evacuate Kiryat Shmona’s population of about 25,000, along with another 40,000 residents of the country’s far north.
“Nobody is leaving their land and their home,” the country’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement on February 28, the day the war with Iran began.
The situation has left people in Kiryat Shmona confused. Many said the decision to evacuate in 2023 was necessary amid fears that Hezbollah commandos would infiltrate the border and kill and kidnap people, as Hamas gunmen had done in southern Israel.
Some were ambivalent about the government’s direction for this conflict, reluctant to flee but also afraid to remain in their homes. A few said that given the tenuousness of the ceasefire, it was a mistake to tell them to return to Kiryat Shmona last year.
“It was wrong to bring us back without protection,” said Twito, the mother of four. “We aren’t pampered; we survive. We try to be strong, but my soul is wounded from every side.”
New York Times News Service