After Hezbollah strike on Nahariya, residents say government abandoned them
Drone hits apartment of members of urban kibbutz who moved to the city out of idealism; now they say they have to deal with their own shock before they can help others
Reporter at The Times of Israel
NAHARIYA — The high-rises of Nahariya’s new neighborhood shoot up out of what once was farm fields. In just a few years, hundreds of new residents have flocked to the area, renting apartments with stunning views of the city, the sea, and the rolling green hills that form Israel’s border with Lebanon six miles away.
The buildings went up fast and always seemed to stand tall, almost as if in defiance of the thousands of Hezbollah rockets aimed in their direction. But on Monday afternoon, just hours after a drone launched by the terror group hit a building, the blackened, damaged wall it left behind almost seemed like a sign that the northern city’s 64,000 residents were all-too-easy targets.
Although no one was hurt, the drone hit rendered two apartments unlivable. The attack also had a ripple effect, sending waves of terror through the neighborhood, whose residents felt a sense of foreboding that, after almost-daily bombardments of Kiryat Shmona and dozens of other northern communities for the past 11 months, Hezbollah was beginning to target their city.
Since October 8, the day after Hamas’s cross-border massacre started the war in Gaza, 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.
So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 26 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 20 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
“We feel the government has abandoned us and just let the war go on,” said Tal Masad, a member of urban kibbutz Ruth, who lives two floors down from the damaged apartment, where two other kibbutz members reside. The attack destroyed the bathroom, but “luckily, the couple and their 6-month-old baby weren’t home,” Masad said.
They are part of the Hashomer Hatzair movement’s “urban kibbutz” network, which boasts 15 such projects around the country. The members are currently renting 10 apartments close to one another in the neighborhood. They moved from around the country to Nahariya last September, armed with idealism, hoping to help the community, launch initiatives that include informal educational programs, and foster civic participation along with political and social justice activism.
Masad said the members would hold a meeting on the evening of the attack. Asked if she knew of any kibbutz plans to help neighborhood residents, she said that first “we have to deal with it ourselves.” After, she said, they would talk about “what we want to do.”
Shaky quiet
As road crews cleaned up the shattered glass around the high-rise in the early afternoon, some of the building’s residents stood around outside, appearing dazed and shaken. One woman, who asked that her name not be used, smoked a cigarette and said the explosion was so loud that her apartment shook and her baby “cried hysterically.”
Slowly, the neighborhood, with its newly constructed playgrounds, seemed to return to an unsettled quiet.
“This is not a situation that anyone can get used to,” said Alina Avshalom, a mother of four who lives down the street from the damaged building. “All the residents in the north are anxious.”
She said that her 9-year-old son, Aviel, attends fourth grade at a school less than a half-mile from the drone strike. The students were “instructed that in the event of an alarm, they should go to the wall and put their hands on their heads because it’s impossible to get a large number of children down to the first floor in 15 seconds.”
In a video announcement soon after the attack, Mayor Ronen Marelly spoke calmly to the city’s residents, urging parents to let their students stay in school until the end of the school day. But that did not stop many parents from rushing to get the children, Avshalom said, causing traffic jams and even more panic.
Avshalom does not have a car, she said, and had to “think twice” before she walked over to her son’s school, frightened that she could be injured in another drone attack.
“Only people who work far away didn’t come to pick up their kids,” she said. “I didn’t want my kids to be among the few left in school.” She added that “everyone sends their children to school every day with heavy hearts and great fear.”
Third Lebanon War
Just down the road from the neighborhood, Prof. Masad Barhoum, director of the Galilee Medical Center, said the hospital, which has run most of its facilities underground or in protected areas since soon after October 8, is “preparing for the Third Lebanon War.”
During the 2006 Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah fired close to 4,000 rockets into Israel, resulting in the deaths of 49 Israeli civilians as well as multiple soldiers. Barhoum said the hospital has been readying for the next war since the last one.
Dr. Maron Haj, a thoracic surgeon who works at the hospital, said he was seeing patients when he heard his apartment, one floor below the urban kibbutz, was hit in the attack.
“Everything in our apartment was ruined,” he said as he stood near the building, gazing up at his apartment. He said that he had to go get the family dog, and then he and his wife would have to find somewhere else to stay.
“We can’t live there,” he said, and expressed frustration that “nobody from the government” called to “take responsibility” or to “try to help us.”
The members of the kibbutz are not politicians, Masad said, but “when it comes to fear, it doesn’t matter if you’re on the right or the left. Citizens want to live in security and not fear.”
Omer Sharvit and Emanuel Fabian contributed to this article.
