‘This was a peaceful town. Everything has changed’: the Israelis under Hezbollah fire

In southern Lebanon, Israel has launched an unprecedented barrage of airstrikes, killing hundreds as thousands flee. In the small town of Kiryat Bialik in northern Israel, however, an eerie silence prevails – one occasionally interrupted by sirens and the thundering explosions of Hezbollah rockets and missiles being intercepted by air defences.

Some of the missiles get through. At about 6.30am on Sunday, Ami Aziza, 40, had just enough time to usher his family into their safe room, a fortified space found in many Israeli homes. Three seconds later, an Iranian-made Fajr-3 rocket struck their small street , lined with low-rise homes and flats, leaving a crater and setting vehicles ablaze. Three people were injured.

“If the rocket had fallen two metres further, it would have destroyed my house,” said Aziza, as he, along with other residents, tried to clear the debris of the strike from his home. “This was a peaceful town. And we want to go back to our normal lives, to our work. We want our children to go back to school. We want a diplomatic solution of this conflict. Since this new war with Lebanon started, everything has changed.”

In the aftermath of the 7 October attacks, Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas in Gaza, has traded almost daily fire with Israeli troops along the Lebanon-Israel border. But in a significant escalation of the conflict, Israeli warplanes this week carried out one of most intense bombardments since the end of the 1975-90 civil war , while Hezbollah responded with its deepest rocket attacks into Israel since the start of the Gaza war.

Since then, Kiryat Bialik, situated along the long arc of Haifa Bay and one of four towns and two neighbourhoods north of Haifa known collectively as the Krayot, has found itself under increasing threat.

“In the Bible, the Lebanese are our cousins,” said 61-year-old Ilan Itach, who, along with his nephew, son and daughter-in-law, spent hours locked in the safe room of his flat on Sunday as a result of explosions that preceded the rocket’s impact on the street outside his home. “After the strike, one of my six-year-old granddaughters said to me: ‘Grandpa, why don’t they like us? What did we do to them? How many gods are in the sky?’ ‘Only one,’ she told me.”

In one of the buildings in Kiryat Bialik, a large Israeli flag hangs from the roof, riddled with shrapnel. On the street hit by the rocket, dozens of soldiers from the Home Front Command were being briefed by their captain on the emergency measures to take in case of another attack, while air raid sirens echoed across dozens of cities, from Haifa to Nazareth, from the Upper Galilee area to the southern Golan Heights.

The prospect of a third war with Lebanon, following the conflicts of 1982 and 2006, is on the tip of almost every political observer’s tongue, as Israel continues its “extensive strikes” on Hezbollah targets – including attacks in the southern suburbs of Beirut for the third day in a row and the fourth time this week.

“We know we will endure numerous casualties on the home front,” said Ofek Cohen, whose grandfather lost an eye and sustained injuries all over his body from the Hezbollah strike. “But we are confident and determined to continue the fight. If we do not put an end to it now, we will face even greater suffering at the hands of Hezbollah.”

Cohen’s grandfather, Joseph, 77, was taken with three other injured people to Rambam hospital in Haifa, which on Sunday was ordered by the health ministry to relocate hundreds of patients from wards to a vast two-level underground parking facility with space for 1,400 cars. In less than eight hours, the hospital staff transferred approximately 700 people, including cancer patients and pregnant women.

“We have an infectious diseases ward, operating rooms, a paediatric unit, a dialysis ward, a unit for the injured, and even an obstetrics department, as well as an air filtration system in case of a chemical attack,” said the hospital’s spokesperson. “We cannot take any risks during the current escalation with Lebanon, whose border is just 30 kilometres away. During the 2006 war, no one thought that a hospital would need a shelter, yet three missiles landed very close to the facility.”

By Tuesday, four babies had been born in the underground car park.

Joseph Cohen sat on a bed in what until last week was a parking space with a bandage over his face where his eye once was. “When I heard the siren, we went down to the first floor to enter the safe room,” he said. “First, my nephew, daughter-in-law, and son entered, and I, who was supposed to enter last, was a metre away from the fortified room when a massive explosion threw me into the air.”

He described the situation in Lebanon as “a war even crueller and longer than the previous one”, but said that in Israel “everybody was ready for it.”

He added: “Hezbollah has been trying to push us to the sea for years. The response of the Israeli government is not only right, but it’s a shame we didn’t launch an offensive in Lebanon earlier, because we could have avoided many losses.”

Outside the hospital, Haifa, with its beautiful mosques and breathtaking views of the Mediterranean, is close to deserted. The military has mandated the closure of the beach and restricted outdoor gatherings to 30 people.

In a city that for decades has been Israel’s model for what a “mixed” Jewish-Arab city could be, relations have become strained since the attack on 7 October, with Palestinian Israeli citizens being subjected to pressure by the police and military.

Today, according to official figures, 33,000 Arabs live in Haifa making up 12% of its 280,000 population.

In the shade of an olive tree in front of a downtown bar, along the long Ben Gurion Avenue, a group of elderly Palestinian people were chatting in the warm hours of a Tuesday afternoon. Some of them have lived in Haifa since before the foundation of the state of Israel.

“I’m a Palestinian Christian, and I live in the same house where I was born in this city,” said Simon, 70. “Until 7 October, we lived together in peace with Jews here in Haifa. But now, you feel the tensions in the air. Today, coexistence is as difficult as avoiding raindrops. If you write something about the war or say something, the police will come to your house. Israel is stronger than the people it is currently fighting.

“But in wars, there are no winners,” he added. “There is only one side that loses more than the other.”

• This article was amended on 26 September 2024. An earlier version spelled Kiryat Bialik as Kiriat Bialik.