Puffs of smoke were still rising from a storage facility a day after a barrage of rockets fired by Hezbollah pounded Kiryat Shmona, the northernmost Israeli city near the border with Lebanon.
Refrigerators stored at the site were charred and mangled, a small sign of the damage Hezbollah has inflicted on northern Israel since the Lebanese militant group and the Israeli military had escalated their attacks against each other over the past week.
“Kiryat Shmona has turned into Hezbollah’s playground,” said Guy Hayun, 45, the security coordinator for the city over the past year.
Hezbollah started firing rockets and drones at northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas, its ally, a day after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 in Israel. Since then, Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in tit-for-tat attacks, forcing tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes.
Hezbollah has said it will not stop firing on Israel until the war in Gaza ends. The group has fired 9,300 rockets at Israel since the start of this conflict, killing 48 people as a direct result of a strike — half civilians and the rest security personnel — according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. Kiryat Shmona has been targeted with the greatest number of strikes.
Israel has scaled up its attacks on Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Iran, bombing thousands of targets affiliated with the group in Lebanon. Israel’s political and military leadership hope to force Hezbollah to stop firing on Israel, enabling its residents to return to their homes.
The attacks in Lebanon — which have included exploding communication devices used by Hezbollah and striking commanders and weapons stores — have killed more than 600 people, including women and children.
Despite the danger, some people have chosen to stay in Kiryat Shmona, which had a prewar population of around 24,000 people. Approximately 2,000 to 3,000 remain, according to the security coordinator. They include older residents, as well as essential workers such as firefighters and medics and a few small-business owners.
“We want to be able to feel safe here again,” said Noy Ohana, a 25-year-old student who chose to return to the city. She enlisted in the reserves as a commander in a makeshift operations room that serves as the security nerve center of Kiryat Shmona, monitoring the damage and risks from the rocket strikes.
When sirens went off on Wednesday, followed by the sound of huge explosions, Ms. Ohana rushed into the spacious command room to assess the damage by looking at large screens of live-streamed CCTV footage from across the city.
Minutes later, four emergency squad team members wearing Israeli military uniforms and tactical vests sped off in a vehicle to check if any property had been directly hit; they returned half an hour later with metal parts they said were the remains of a missile intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome aerial defense system.
“Before the war, we were able to turn this area into a growing tech hub and attract young professionals,” says Nisan Zeevi, 42, who managed an impact investment fund up until a year ago. Now, he is serving in the emergency response team of his village, Kfar Giladi, a few kilometers north of Kiryat Shmona, and is worried that life there will never return to what it was.
Mr. Zeevi is a member of a resident group called Lobby 1701, a reference to the U.N. Security Council resolution that was supposed to establish a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah.
The day before, he said on Wednesday, they met Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the U.N.’s special coordinator for Lebanon, in Jerusalem and demanded that all the nearby Lebanese villages be evacuated. Otherwise, he said Israelis won’t be able to feel safe in their homes, fearing that Hezbollah might not only launch rockets, but also raid the towns, similarly to how Hamas attacked Israel’s southern towns on Oct. 7.
An Israeli military spokesman, Maj. Doron Spielman, said this was not the position of the army and that residents had “lost their faith in the Israel Defense Forces” as of Oct. 7 and would return to the towns when this trust was restored.
At the entrance of Kfar Giladi, Bilal Najam, 26, was on his way to a nearby military base after being suddenly called up for duty, a sign, he said, that a ground invasion could be coming.
“I hope that I’ll be able to contribute to the security of the residents of the north,” he said.
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