Israel’s northern metropolis prepares for war

The Fajr-3 rocket that slammed into the ground just outside Yosef Cohen’s home on Sunday brought Israel’s war with Hizbollah to his quiet street in Kiryat Bialik, blowing out doors and windows, blasting tiles off roofs and leaving splinters of glass embedded in his eye and face.

But the impact of the 150kg warhead, which incinerated cars and left houses on Cohen’s street pockmarked by shrapnel, did not change the 76-year-old’s conviction that Israel’s dramatic escalation of its 11-month war of attrition against the Lebanese militant group was the right move.

“Hizbollah is all the time trying to push us to the sea. They have been trying to do it forever,” he said, sitting by his bed in Haifa’s Rambam hospital with his left eye encased in a protective covering.

Israel’s escalation was “the right answer”, he added. “It’s a pity we didn’t do it before, because we could have avoided some losses.”

The missile that landed in Kiryat Bialik, a town in the urban sprawl around Israel’s northern city of Haifa, was one of about 200 fired by Hizbollah on Sunday as hostilities between the Iran-backed group and Israel threatened to boil over into the full-blown war that many have feared since the two sides began exchanging fire almost a year ago.

For 11 months after Hizbollah initiated the exchanges on October 8, firing rockets at Israel in support of Hamas, the conflict between the two sides simmered at a relatively low intensity, confined largely to strikes in a thin band of land either side of the Israeli-Lebanese border.

But in recent days, Israel has dramatically escalated the fighting, insisting it will continue until the 60,000 Israelis displaced by the months of exchanges are able to return to their homes in the north of the country.

It has assassinated a string of senior Hizbollah commanders, and on Monday launched an intense bombing campaign targeting the militant group’s weapons stores in Lebanon, which has killed more than 600 people.

On Wednesday, the military’s chief of staff told Israeli troops to prepare for a possible ground operation in Lebanon as the US, France and several other countries raced to secure a 21-day ceasefire.

Hizbollah has also intensified its barrages, on Wednesday firing a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv for the first time. Most of its rockets have been intercepted by Israel’s sophisticated air defences, but some have slipped through, injuring several people — including two others on Cohen’s street — and underscoring the risks of a bigger clash.

“[The rocket strike in Kiryat Bialik] changed a lot,” said Ami Aziza, who lives on the same street as Cohen. “People think that the war . . . is on the border, it’s in [the northern town of] Kiryat Shmona. But look, it’s here, two metres to the side and [the missile] is in my garden.”

Across Haifa, which was targeted heavily by Hizbollah when the two sides last fought a war in 2006, many others are coming to a similar realisation. The city’s beaches have been closed, some businesses are shuttered and normally busy restaurants near the city’s Baha’i Gardens are deserted.

On Sunday, in the space of eight hours, Rambam hospital moved about 600 patients from wards above ground to protected facilities in a cavernous underground car park that was built in the aftermath of the last war and was designed to be converted for medical use at 72 hours’ notice.

Amid the uneasy quiet, some people were still trying to go about their lives as normal. In the garden of one half-empty restaurant on Ben Gurion street, a small group of diners celebrated a birthday. At a nearby table, a woman lingered over a drink, taking photographs of herself and her miniature dog.

Further down the street, a group of elderly Palestinian men drank coffee, largely ignoring the distant growl of Israeli fighter jets and the thud of interceptions of Hizbollah missiles as they discussed previous rounds of fighting and how the hostilities had affected intercommunity relations in the city, which is home to Jews and Palestinians.

“In war, both sides lose,” said Simon, a 70-year-old Palestinian who did not want to give his second name while talking about the war for fear of getting into trouble with Israeli authorities. “It is stupid.”

But among Haifa’s Jewish majority, most people who spoke to the Financial Times expressed support for Israel’s massive offensive, even if it raised the risks of a full-blown war that would upend life for the city’s roughly 300,000 inhabitants.

“It is impossible that [60,000] Israeli people are not in their homes. Something had to happen. Our government was very hesitant about what to do. [Now] they finally decided,” said Haim Ador, a veteran broadcaster who was undergoing dialysis in one of Rambam’s underground wards. “I think that if we suffer, we suffer in prayer that it will be better.”

Alejandra Alvarez, a nurse at Rambam, said she was pinning her hopes on Haifa’s shelters and air defences to protect people in the event of a bigger conflict. “We’re more stressed. And we can’t think about the future. We’re living day by day. But we got used to the situation,” she said.

Others were more fatalistic. Waiting for a bus outside the hospital, Daniel, who works in a nearby shop, said he would like Israel to do more against Hizbollah, even if this meant that it stepped up its attacks on the city.

“Maybe some day it will happen. But what can we do?” he said. “I think everyone is scared now, it’s war. In five minutes a rocket can fall here and change everything. But I prefer to think about life, not about death.”