Even before Hezbollah guerrillas and their legion of boisterous supporters rushed to the border fence less than four miles away, residents of Kiryat Shmona were on the move.
Knowing that a security collapse was a sure thing — and not wanting to wait and see if the guerrillas would use their new positions on Israel’s doorstep to launch missiles — residents piled into cars Sunday and Monday and joined the long line of vehicles leaving the northern Israeli town.
According to one report, more than 16,000 of the town’s 22,000 residents had departed by Tuesday — a mass exodus that surprised no one.
“The people of Kiryat Shmona, they didn’t even need to wait for the news,” said Carlos Goldberg, who lives on a kibbutz about seven miles to the south of the city. “They smelled this situation even before it happened.”
Goldberg spoke Tuesday in a dramatic 15-minute telephone call from Israel to San Francisco, where a dozen lay leaders of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation hung on his every word.
They were gathered for a meeting of the agency’s Israel and overseas committee, but before turning to the agenda, everyone’s attention was on the speaker phone. Kiryat Shmona, in Israel’s northern Galilee, is the JCF’s partner city.
Some of the leaders let out sighs and gasps as Goldberg described his country’s latest predicament.
“It is war, and it is nothing,” he said. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”
On one hand, no missiles had yet been fired into Israel. “So this is very good,” Goldberg said.
But on the other hand, the ground-breaking sound of Israeli artillery guns firing into Lebanon and air force shells being dropped into Lebanon (to provide cover for the withdrawing troops) was clearly audible in Kiryat Shmona, and Christian Lebanese refugees were flooding into Israel by the thousands.
“People are saying one of two things,” Goldberg said. “Either after one or two weeks of uncertainty, things will calm down and it will be a whole different ball game.
“Or things will deteriorate, and then who knows?”
Goldberg is a member of an Israeli-based JCF group called the Amuta. Formed 15 years ago, it is a committee of volunteers who advise the JCF on worthwhile projects in the Jewish state.
A resident of Moshav Ramot Naspali, Goldberg was relaying his thoughts and observations late Tuesday night from the bomb shelter of a regional council office outside Kiryat Shmona. Talking about the possibility of war breaking out, he said, “My opinion is according to what I know of Hezbollah, and they are a very smart organization.
“My guess is that they will complete a peaceful takeover of the other side [southern Lebanon]. With thousands of [Muslim] civilians flowing into the villages that [Israeli soldiers] left, it means that Hezbollah has a responsibility to them to stay back and not start a war.”
Regardless of what happens, many people in Israel’s north were irate this week that their safety has been trifled with because of Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s pullout.
The protection of a 9-mile deep “security zone” in southern Lebanon was gone after a 15-year presence, and the frontier was suddenly in sharp focus. No longer was there a buffer to separate Israel from Hezbollah guerrillas.
Perched on a hill not far from the border town of Metulla, some Israelis came from as far away as Tel Aviv to watch history in the making rather than on TV, peering across the Good Fence where Lebanese villagers were waving Hezbollah flags and chanting “God is great.”
“Through the fence you can see them,” Goldberg marveled. “Only a couple of meters beyond the fence.”
The situation has left many Kiryat Shmona residents quite nervous.
“This whole city should be evacuated and turned into an army base,” Ilana Aderi told a reporter Wednesday after emerging from a night in a Kiryat Shmona bomb shelter. “No one should live here.”
Kiryat Shmona, which has had strong ties to the JCF over the past two decades, has known its fair of rough times.
Because of the town’s proximity to the border — less than two miles to the west and slightly more than three miles to the north — residents are well-acquainted with trips into bomb shelters. In fact, since some Hezbollah bombings last summer, 250 families have “left for good,” Goldberg said.
The Northern Command of the Israeli Defense Force ordered all residents of confrontation-line communities to take shelter this week, but Kiryat Shmona residents took flight instead, turning the city into a ghost town.
“The official data is that 16,000 have left, but the truth is that even more have gone,” said Goldberg, a school principal and former paramedic in the Golani infantry who immigrated to Israel from Argentina in 1972.
Local officials fear the situation will prompt a permanent exodus.
Scores of residents have reportedly put their homes up for sale, and many families have delayed registering their children for school, apparently because they are unsure they will still be living there when school begins again in September.
“Nothing is clear because of the uncertainty,” Goldberg said. “Nobody knows what to do.”
Kiryat Shmona Mayor Haim Barbivai called for firm retaliatory action to be taken against Hezbollah if necessary, even if it means that residents would have to remain in bomb shelters for a month.
The events of this week have further decreased morale in Kiryat Shmona and other northern settlements, where the economy has been shaky.
In fact, just last week, the Israeli government tried to reassure residents of continued aid for development by approving a $1.6 billion package for economic, social and educational needs.
Now, the streets are virtually empty except for soldiers, Goldberg said. “In fact, those that stayed behind are those that have no financial capability of spending money for a hotel.”
But even those who departed are angry. “It’s not only the situation and not only that they have to leave ,” he said, “but it also costs them a lot of money and they don’t get to work these days, either.”
The JCF’s relationship with Kiryat Shmona started two decades ago with Project Renewal, a program of the former United Jewish Appeal designed to raise living standards in Israeli development towns.
The relationship continued after Project Renewal ended, mainly through the Amuta, and was strengthened recently with the launch of Partnership 2000. The JCF is now partnered with the larger northern Galilee region.
John Goldman, president-elect of the JCF and the current chairman of the Israel and overseas committee, leaned toward the speaker phone Tuesday and told Goldberg that the JCF was willing to do whatever it could to help.
“On behalf of the entire committee, our thoughts and prayers are with you,” he said.