On a rainy evening I sit in my apartment in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona with Shirley Israel, a 25-year-old computer science student at Tel Hai College here. The topic of discussion is traveling to Tel Aviv by bus–an increasingly dangerous journey in the context of the now nearly year-and-a-half-old Palestinian Intifada that has seen several terrorist attacks on Israeli buses.
“You know,” says Shirley, “I need to go to Tel Aviv this week, on Thursday. And Thursday is the hot day; all of the attacks happen on that day. And that’s why I think about going on Wednesday night to Tel Aviv, sleeping at my friend’s house, and coming back Friday morning. I even thought about flying, too. It’s scary.” Ultimately she decides to postpone the trip and remain in Kiryat Shmona for the week. “After all,” she says, “this is the safest town in Israel.”
A short time ago, such a statement could only have been uttered in jest. If there is one word that Israelis associate with Kiryat Shmona, a working-class town some 22,000 residents located roughly five kilometers from the Lebanese border, it is undoubtedly “katyusha.” The people of Kiryat Shmona have a long and intimate acquaintance with the Soviet-developed katyusha rocket. From their use by PLO guerillas based out of nearby Lebanon in the 1960s and 1970s, to their more recent use by the Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim militia Hezbollah, Katyushas have long rained terror upon the citizens of Kiryat Shmona and the neighboring kibbutzim and moshavim.
Katyusha attacks are so integral a part of the local history that you would be hard-pressed to find a single resident of the area around Kiryat Shmona who hasn’t spent at least one night in the miklatim, the underground shelters. Indeed, most residents have spent much more time than that in the shelters. In addition to the frequent menace from above, the north of the country has also been the site of some of the most deadly cross-border terrorist incursions in Israel’s history, including a hostage standoff at nearby Kibbutz Misgav Am in 1980.
But Shirley was completely serious in characterizing the region around Kiryat Shmona as one of the safest in the country. And many Israelis these days would probably agree with her.
In May of 2000, the Israeli military ended its 18-year presence in Lebanon. Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon took the Israeli army all the way to Beirut, but it withdrew soon afterward, limiting its presence to a “security zone” just north of the Israel-Lebanon border. This “security zone,” which extended some 15 kilometers north of the Israeli border at its deepest point, was intended to protect the residents of northern Israel from terrorists operating from Lebanon. The Israeli military presence in southern Lebanon, however, provided Hezbollah with the pretense to harass Israel’s northern communities with katyusha fire.
After Israel’s complete withdrawal from the “security zone” in May of 2000, the katyusha attacks on Kiryat Shmona ceased. Since then, Hezbollah has restricted its attacks to Israeli military positions, including the October 2000 kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers from their outpost on the border, frequent shelling of Israeli outposts in the Har Dov region of the Golan Heights (also known as Shebaa Farms), and occasional anti-aircraft fire aimed at Israeli fighter jets and surveillance planes along the border. Though the anti-aircraft fire is at times quite loud, and shrapnel has fallen on Kiryat Shmona and surrounding communities, there have, as of yet, been no casualties.
Meanwhile, ever since the Intifada broke out in September of 2000, much of Israel has become accustomed to constant terror attacks. There have been multiple large-scale suicide bombings within Israel, shooting rampages in major Israeli cities, mortar and sniper fire on Israeli towns and neighborhoods adjacent to the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and constant attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers in the Occupied Territories. In much of the country, Israelis suffer pretty much round-the-clock fear and anxiety.
The Upper Galilee region, of which Kiryat Shmona is the unofficial capital, has been spared from most of the recent violence. Ironically, the region owes its present good fortune to its location. Kiryat Shmona and the surrounding communities are geographically isolated, located in the narrow valley between Lebanon and the Golan Heights, far from the current sources of terror in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Shirley moved to Kiryat Shmona three years ago to attend school at Tel Hai College. Shortly after arriving in Kiryat Shmona, Shirley got a taste of the local lifestyle, in the form of a 1998 katyusha attack. “You can’t forget that,” says Shirley. “You will always remember. I once saw a katyusha fall next to the mall. And I just can’t forget the smell, the sound, people running. It’s something that you will always have with you.”
Today, with katyushas no longer whistling above Kiryat Shmona, and with much of the rest of the country now living in fear of suicide bombers and shooting attacks, one of Israel’s hot spots now seems like an island of calm. The irony of the situation is not lost on young residents of Kiryat Shmona like Shirley. “I think the people here feel more safe than the people in Tel Aviv,” says Shirley, “because we’re so far away here. That’s what’s funny. Once it was the hottest place in Israel, and now I feel safe here. Friends used to call us up here and ask, ‘How are you? Are you okay? Are you in the miklatim?’ and stuff like that. And now we call them more. Now we ask them how they are.”
“It really has been a big change in the last year,” says Gili Tzoran, a 17-year-old resident of nearby Kibbutz Hulata. “When there were katyushas, this area was the dangerous area of the country, and people were afraid to come here. All the hotels here in the North were empty. Now it’s different. We don’t have the katyushas anymore, but now there are the terror attacks, mostly in the center of the country.” Gili cites the stigma that has long been attached to Kiryat Shmona because of its unique security situation. “When I travel around the country, Kiryat Shmona is really known. People would always think ‘Whoa, Kiryat Shmona,’ because they associated it with danger.” Now, she says, the situation has changed completely: “Now we are the ones afraid to go to Tel Aviv.” Says Assaf Segal, a 27-year-old resident of Kibbutz Dafne, “It’s more comfortable here now.” Vis-à-vis the rest of the country, Assaf characterizes the atmosphere in the North as “a lot more secure.”
As a result, it is not uncommon these days for residents of the North to stay home for the weekends, rather than visit family and friends to the south. Any travel from the Upper Galilee to the center of the country entails potentially long bus rides, oftentimes through Arab Israeli population centers that saw wide scale violent protest at the outbreak of the Intifada. Hitchhiking, long a favored mode of transportation in Israel, is now out of the question for many people. Just as Shirley decided to stay in Kiryat Shmona for the weekend rather than brave the highways, many young residents of the Upper Galilee are simply reluctant to travel outside of the area.
“I hear people talking about going to Jerusalem, and I just don’t feel safe traveling there right now,” says Bella Levin, a 22-year-old Tel Hai student. “Now when I take the bus, I’m always looking around for who looks suspicious.” Bella avoids going through the northern town of Afula at all costs. Afula, the site of a major bus hub, is situated in close proximity to Palestinian Authority-ruled towns and has been the site of several shooting attacks.
Roni Hainebach is a 27-year-old resident of Kibbutz Shamir, and runs a center for immigrant and worker rights in Kiryat Shmona. She, too, is reluctant to leave the area for fear of terrorist attacks. “I travel because I have family
in the center of the country,” says Roni. “So I have to go there. But to tell you that I’ll go on buses there, or that I feel free to go to a mall or central shopping center, I certainly don’t.” Roni describes herself as feeling “very free and comfortable and sure” in the Upper Galilee. In central Israeli cities like Tel Aviv, however, she says she can’t help but feel paranoid.
Pini Hassin and Boris Rabkin are also reluctant to travel to the center of the country. Pini, a 27-year-old originally from Katzrin on the Golan Heights, and Boris, a 23-year-old born in the former Soviet Union, are both students at Tel Hai College and have lived in Kiryat Shmona for several years. Both say they feel totally safe in Kiryat Shmona, but when traveling outside of the immediate area, their sense of security goes out the window. “Oh, that’s different,” says Boris. “When I say I feel safe, I’m talking about here in Kiryat Shmona, without leaving. If I took a bus, I don’t know what could happen.” Pini agrees: “You are in danger every time you go from here to Tel Aviv.” Says Boris, “What happens in Tel Aviv, we don’t feel up here.”
For the most part, these young residents of Israel’s northernmost communities seem to be appreciative of the newfound quiet in the Upper Galilee. But they are guarded when discussing the future; few of them have any real confidence that things will remain quiet forever. The Israeli army’s withdrawal from its “security zone” in South Lebanon restored some sense of security to these people, but the irony is that now the Hezbollah guerillas are closer than ever.
Now residents of communities situated directly on the border, such as the town of Metulla and Kibbutz Misgav Am, literally share a fence with Hezbollah-friendly villages in South Lebanon. And despite the United Nations having verified the complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory, Hezbollah continues to foment anti-Israel feeling among the local Lebanese population, as well as target Israeli military outposts on the northern end of the Golan Heights. Under these circumstances, the relative quiet on the northern border could well prove temporary.
When asked if things will remain quiet for the foreseeable future, Assaf takes a lengthy pause. “I don’t know,” he finally says. “The situation is fragile. Any second it could break.” Pini and Boris are similarly skeptical of chances for a long-term peace in the North. Says Pini, “When there were katyushas, most of the balagan [mess] was right here. When the katyushas ended, the problems moved to the area of the territories. Now here, it’s all quiet…But it’s definitely a temporary quiet.”
Although he is thankful for the cessation of katyusha attacks, Pini describes the Hezbollah as now feeling “a lot closer,” which, he says poses a whole new set of problems. He cites the kidnapping of the three Israeli soldiers as an example of the threat posed by Hezbollah’s closer proximity. Says Boris, “Hezbollah is now on the fence. They’re here. Really side by side with us.”
Many in the Upper Galilee would prefer not to think about that reality, but rather to enjoy the all too rare feeling of calm that prevails in the far north of the country. Shirley Israel refuses to contemplate the possibility of renewed violence on the northern border. Instead, she is thankful for the quiet. But she understands perfectly well that she and her neighbors are the lucky ones right now–that their feeling of relative security is the exception in Israel, rather than the rule.
In 1998 there was a short katyusha barrage that sent most of Kiryat Shmona’s residents into the shelters. To escape, Shirley decided to drive to her hometown of Kiryat Atta, an hour-and-a-half drive to the south. “On the way down,” she says, “we heard on the radio that Kiryat Shmona was okay and that everyone was to hozerim l’shigra–return to normal. So we said to ourselves, ‘Now we can return to town.’ But our friends with the car didn’t want to return so we hitchhiked back to Kiryat Shmona from Kiryat Atta. We hitchhiked all the way back and it was like noon when we got back. At 2 p.m. they told us to go back into the shelters. That’s the life we used to live.” Would she do the same today–that is, hitchhike home to Kiryat Shmona from Kiryat Atta given the current security situation? She responds, “Ma pitom?! Not on your life.”
(Note: Interviews for this article were conducted in mid-January.)
