Kiryat Shmona has borne the brunt of Hizbullah's three-week barrage and most of its residents have left, writes Jonathan Finer
"We are surviving, that is all," said Anastasia Friedman, as yet another warning siren blared through this shell-shocked northern Israeli town.
Beyond her ground-floor window, shattered two days ago, sat a half-dozen abandoned cars, roofs caved in, doors pierced by hundreds of small metal balls. Piles of trash covered the sidewalks, some gathered in tell-tale craters.
Too agitated to sit, Friedman gestured and spoke about her son who spent all day in town as rocket after rocket fell; about a recent wave of robberies; about arriving here from Belarus four years ago with no idea what to expect.
The noise stopped. She smiled. And then, a sound like a thunderclap knocked her forward. Shards of white plastic blinds hit her back. She ran to her porch, stepping over a small gray cat, bloodied and taking shallow breaths. Asphalt was torn from the street, and water cascaded from a broken pipe.
"This is craziness," said Friedman (54).
Forty-three rockets fell on Kiryat Shmona on Thursday, including one about 30ft from Friedman's front door in a downtrodden hillside neighbourhood along Eilat Street. Like much of northern Israel, the town is almost entirely abandoned. More than three-quarters of its residents left weeks ago for cities south of here, and out of rocket range.
As in other vulnerable towns along the Lebanon border, those left behind are a mix of immigrants and elderly, disabled and poor, or those who simply have nowhere to go.
To date, nearly 30 Israelis have been killed in the random shelling of the north, but somehow no one has been killed here.
Close to the border with southern Lebanon, Kiryat Shmona has borne the brunt of Hizbullah's three-week barrage. Since July 12th, police say, 485 rockets fell in or around the town, more than anywhere else.
On Eilat Street this week, people said they felt imprisoned in their own homes.
Large communities of immigrants, first from Morocco, and later Russia and the former Soviet republics, made their homes on these blocks, shuttled by the government to the country's frontier.
Saada Azriel (62), came from Morocco "young and pretty" 30 years ago, she says. "Now, I am old and alone."
She stayed behind when her son and his family left for Tel Aviv two weeks ago. Partially paralysed from a stroke six years ago, she stumbles around her small apartment. Because she lives on the second floor, she says she can't make it to the basement bomb shelter and almost never leaves.
"If I was healthy maybe I'd have chosen differently, but I don't like to bother anyone," she says.
Two doors down, Chasan Simon (31), with the black clothes and bushy beard of an Orthodox Jew, sat on a bench with friends.
He had left town for Afula with his wife and two children when the rockets began to fall. But he ran out of money, he said, and began to beg on the street.
Eventually his family moved in with his in-laws, and he came home. "I was depressed. I fought with my wife and family," he says. "I couldn't sleep. I had to come back."
Residents complain angrily about their bomb shelter. It is squalid and tiny, with only a dozen bunk beds, most of which have no mattresses. There is no air conditioning or TV. The concrete floor is uncarpeted.
"The situation in Kiryat Shmona is very bad," says Shlomi Vaknin (41), a day labourer in a town where most businesses are shuttered. "In Tel Aviv, there is opportunity, here there is nothing. All we get is war, rockets and no work."
When the rocket struck 30 minutes later, Eilat Street was empty. Seconds later, residents streamed from their homes to survey the damage. Three police cars arrived, the officers clad in green flak vests and helmets. They shouted at residents to go inside. No one listened.
An ambulance arrived, and a woman shouting nonsense was loaded into the back. Mayor Haim Barbivay drove up, and residents grew more agitated.
"Haim, get us out of here," one middle-age man shouted. "If you can't me, at least take the old people or the sick people. Do something!"
"We can't evacuate everybody," he said. "I don't know what you want me to do. We give you food. We will give you anything you want."
Another warning siren wailed, and the streets cleared again. The mayor drove off. Inside a shelter, a dozen people stood along a wall, waiting in silence.
"That's it. I've had enough," said a shirtless Maman Cerny, leaning out the door with his hands in the pockets of his running shorts. "I've been in this crap for 20 days. Tomorrow, I am leaving." - (LA Times-Washington Post service)