After bloody drone strike, Galilee Arab town finally gets first of promised bomb shelters
Mazra’a mayor, Fuad Awad, put in his request soon after the war began; the shelters will help some of the 3,000 residents who have no protection
Reporter at The Times of Israel
MAZRA’A — The Arab Israeli town of Mazra’a received the first of its five allotted temporary bomb shelters on Thursday, more than nine months after Mayor Fuad Awad first requested them.
The shelter, with four more on their way, arrived two days after an Iron Dome interceptor missile malfunctioned during a Hezbollah drone attack and impacted the Route 4 highway just outside the entrance to the town in the Western Galilee.
The attack wounded 19 people, including a 27-year-old man who remains in critical condition at Galilee Medical Center.
Six soldiers were lightly wounded after one of the Hezbollah drones impacted the Shraga Camp about a mile away. The troops were taken to a hospital for minor injuries, including ringing in their ears from the blast.
“The situation is very dangerous,” Awad told The Times of Israel, looking exhausted, his eyes red-rimmed.
At the time the attack occurred, a little before 1 p.m. on Tuesday, officers from the Home Front Command were briefing Awad and the municipal staff about how to handle emergency situations if Hezbollah and Iran attack Israel. In the middle of the discussion, the town’s sirens went off.
Tensions have soared in the Middle East following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Teheran and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in the Dahieh district of Beirut last week.
Both Iran and Hezbollah have vowed retaliation, prompting worries of a major escalation that could snowball into a full-blown war.
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 against the Hamas terror group there.
So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 25 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 18 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries. The IDF reports some 400 Hezbollah operatives have been killed in counterstrikes.
Bustling commercial hub
The town of Mazra’a with some 5,000 residents is located between Nahariya and Acre, about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from the Lebanese border, and about 2 kilometers (a little more than 1 mile) south of the evacuated zone.
The town, which is mostly Muslim with a few Christians, has expanded over the years, becoming a bustling commercial hub for the area. Cafés, bakeries and restaurants draw shoppers, especially on Saturdays, when many stores in other towns are closed.
The older part of town is a cluster of stone houses on winding, narrow streets that abut an ancient aqueduct.
According to the Home Front Command instructions, people have 30 seconds to get to a protected area.
Houses in Mazra’a’s new, upscale neighborhood all have reinforced rooms, as required by law. But some 3,000 people, about 70% of the residents, live in the old section of town, built before the 1980s, without safe rooms or public bomb shelters.
Awad said he asked for temporary shelters soon after October 8, when Hezbollah started firing, and again after drones fell in the fields nearby Mazra’a in June.
“We were promised we’d get shelters but nothing arrived,” Awad said.
That is, until Tuesday’s attack, which again made the need glaringly obvious.
“We didn’t hear a siren, just an explosion,” said Ahmd Dabah, whose family butcher shop is at the entrance to the village. “Then we heard screams and lots of smoke.”
“There’s nothing to protect us,” Mazra’a resident Nasrin Sroji told The Times of Israel.
“The new shelters are good, but how can they be enough for the whole area of the village?”
Sroji, who is Ba’hai, is a “sabra,” she said, born in Nahariya. Her husband is a Muslim from Mazra’a. If there’s a war, she said she’ll go back to her family home with its protected room; her husband will stay with his elderly mother, although they don’t have a safe room in their house.
“People say to rely on God but we have to use logic and find a way to protect ourselves,” Sroji said.
Hezbollah doesn’t care if it hits Jews or Muslims
“Hezbollah doesn’t distinguish between Jews and Muslims,” said Ibrahim Zina, who grew up in Mazra’a and now owns an auto repair shop in Shavei Zion, across from Mazra’a, with his brother Haled.
He said they were working in the shop on Tuesday when they heard “the sirens, the booms and the explosions.”
The impact of the malfunctioning Iron Dome interceptor damaged the highway and burned trees. According to eyewitnesses, drivers got into accidents as they panicked. Shrapnel pieces were found scattered in the nearby avocado groves.
“We live and work together,” Zina said. “When the sirens went off, we were all in the bomb shelter together.”
He added that Hezbollah is a Shiite faction, and “we’re Sunnis, and they hate us even more than they hate the Jews.”
Zina’s brother Haled said that the Israeli government has “forgotten the north, and forgotten the Arab citizens in the north.”
The ties between people in Mazra’a and the surrounding towns have been strong “for 80 years,” he said.
His father, Saleh, worked with the dairy cattle of Shavei Zion, raising eight children, one of whom is a doctor and another a retired qadi, a Muslim religious judge.
Everything changed
Since the drone attack, Hend and Fikri Yehie said they and other parents no longer let their children play in the recently built soccer field.
“It’s too dangerous,” said Yehie, standing in front of his house in Mazra’a’s new neighborhood.
“This is the most beautiful country in the Middle East but there’s no peace,” he said.
Right after the Hamas attack on October 7, when 3,000 terrorists murdered some 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted 251, Yehie said he went to his job as a gardener in Shavei Zion. A volunteer who was guarding the front gate “looked at me hard,” until he explained who he was.
Yehie said the man apologized afterward, and now sends him “happy holiday” WhatsApp messages.
No school, yes school
Eeman Nasra said that the first thing one of her nephews asks in the morning is if there’s school or not.
“The past nine months have been very hard on our souls,” she said.
When the attack occurred on Tuesday, she was with her 1-year-old great-niece.
“She cried and I cried,” Nasra said.
After doing some shopping, she stood near the newly arrived bomb shelter and said, “I’m happy for the people on the street.”
The first bomb shelter will be placed near the Kupat Holim, the local health clinic. The other four will be placed on different streets.
“One day I hope we’ll get through this,” she said.
