In Haifa, life is sirens and shelters
About half of Israeli city’s residents have fled south
An Israeli policeman escorts a woman and children after a rocket exploded in Haifa on Tuesday.
HAIFA, Israel, July 27 - At the port of Haifa, the parking lots are empty and the docks are vacant. Long chains with hooks at their ends dangle from tall, silent cranes, swaying gently in the Mediterranean breeze. The only sign of life is a white security vehicle making lonely laps.
Nearby, crane operator Nissim Benbenishty, 62, has stopped at the Dagon grain facility to boost the spirits of a co-worker. Of Dagon's 85 employees, only three, all security personnel, are working. The rest have left town or are staying close to home, where they can be with their families and dash into a bomb shelter at the first whisper of an air raid siren.
"Even during normal times, the slightest spark will send the building sky high," he explains. Haifa residents have worried since the current conflict began that a missile strike on the silo could devastate the surrounding area.
In the past two weeks, the radical Shiite militia Hezbollah has fired more than 60 rockets from southern Lebanon at Haifa, Israel's third-largest city and largest port, killing nine people and seriously injuring 13, according to Mickey Rosenfeld, a spokesman for Israel's national police. Since then, about half of Haifa's 270,000 residents have fled south, hoping to get out of range, Rosenfeld said.
"I don't feel good. I don't feel good," Benbenishty says. "We are surrounded by Arab countries that want to annihilate us."
When the sirens scream, he says, people dash to the shelters, and afterward his wife, six children and four grandchildren grab their cellphones to make sure everyone is accounted for. "Our phone bills are going to be huge next month," he says.
Next to the Dagon Silo, the Haifa train station is closed. There is little traffic on the main road connecting Haifa to Tel Aviv, 50 miles south, and most storefronts are shuttered tight.
Amir Ardet, 23, an Israeli Arab minding his family's bakery, waves his hand over platters of sweets and breads. "Everything is delicious, but we have no customers," he says.
"The whole area is office buildings and government workers, and they are either sitting at home or have run off to Tel Aviv, and all the port workers took vacation," he says.
Resigned to their fateThat has left Haifa with a core of people who seem resigned to their fate.
"What can you do?" Ardet says, echoing a familiar refrain. "If I die, I die."
That is not the attitude adopted by Adki Kaplun, 64, his wife, Luda, 61, and their granddaughter Yulia, 10, immigrants from Ukraine who came to Israel five years ago in search of prosperity and now doubt the wisdom of their move.
They sit on plastic chairs in the covered parking lot of their apartment building, near the stairwell to the bomb shelter in the basement. Next to them are handbags with water, food and important documents.
They live on the eighth floor of the building, the elder Kaplun explains, "and since there are lots of sirens, and it's hard going up and down every time they fire at us, we just stay here all day."
As if on cue, a siren begins to screech. Kaplun jumps like he's touched an electric wire, and fear shrouds his face. He screams that everyone must rush to the basement, and people follow suit, from all over the building, down the stairs, through two large steel doors and into the sweltering storage area fitted out as a bomb shelter with a single fan, a few beach chairs, some crayons and a deck of playing cards.
Last Friday, says Annie Nissim, 23, "my husband and I went into town, we heard a siren and ran into a bomb shelter, and when we came out, a rocket had landed right where we were standing when we first heard the siren." Nineteen people were injured, she said. "Since then, we take the sirens very seriously."
Shared traumaIn the shelter, people are talking in Arabic, Russian and Hebrew. Many are immigrants, Nissim says, and their shared trauma and trips to the shelter -- "as many as 12 a day" -- have pulled them all together. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else," she says.
People start wondering if the alert may be over, but Kaplun anxiously waves everyone back from the open shelter doors. Others arrive, wait a few minutes, then leave when they decide it's safe. Finally, Kaplun resumes his perch outside.
"I want to leave Israel. I just want to get out of here," he says. "Why should I lead my life running around scared that a bomb is going to hit me?"
Just down the street, the famous Bahai Gardens are closed, like so many of Haifa's landmarks. The gardens climb up Mount Carmel in 19 colorful terraces bedecked with marble fountains, conical pines and white rose trees.
Tending the islands of purple petunias and bright pink impatiens, Fade Kanboura, a gardener, seems to symbolize the cultural and religious mix for which Haifa is renowned. He is a Catholic, working for the Bahais, in a Jewish state under attack by radical Muslims.
"Everybody's a target," Kanboura says, laughing at the thought that Haifa's Jews might resent their Arab neighbors for the Hezbollah strikes. "A rocket cannot tell the difference between a Jew, an Arab and a Christian."
No one has anything against the Arabs" who make up about 10 percent of Haifa's population "or the Arabs in Lebanon -- only against Hezbollah," says Moshe Batish, 52, the owner of a curio and antique store in a posh neighborhood at the top of Mount Carmel.
A billboard advertising plays and concerts, since canceled, has been plastered with handwritten placards: "Stay strong and brave," "Stop, smile, everything's for the best," and "The whole world is a very narrow bridge -- the important thing is not to be scared."
20 guests in 222-room hotelAt the Dan hotel, although it is high season, only 20 guests are staying in the 222 rooms, says Berthe Yogev, the room manager. The lobby is empty, the bar is closed, and each place in the cavernous dining room is set, waiting for the first customer.
Nearby, the Educational Zoo is shut, manager Eti Ararat says.
"The animals are locked up in their sleeping quarters because the areas where they usually roam during the day are behind glass, and if that breaks from the Hezbollah bombings, then all the predators such as lions and tigers and bears will go on a rampage through Haifa," she says.
At Carmel Beach, two deeply bronzed men have the seashore to themselves and are playing an aggressive game of paddle ball. Usually at this time of the year, there's hardly space to spread a blanket here.
"How many days can you stay home? One? Two? We are not afraid of Hezbollah" or its leader, Hasan Nasrallah, says Simon Levi, an unemployed 33-year-old who spends every day at the shore but bristles at the term "beach bum."
"Israel invented security," he adds. "When I hear a siren, I run to the sea and go swimming."
Cabin feverShachaf Sabag, carrying a nine-foot fishing pole and red pail, arrives with his 4-year-old son, who is carrying a net. Like many in the city, they have cabin fever: no kindergarten, no summer camp, no activities at all.
"I'm not afraid, I'm worried. Everything is crashing down," says Sabag, 30, who works for Israel's prison authority. "Everything is closing down, people are losing their jobs, and people are afraid this will go on for who knows how long. Some people have even sold their homes and left."
In the distance, sirens start to wail -- a muffled moan that rises and falls on the sea breeze. Sabag puts his arm around his son's neck and tousles his hair. Nothing to fear, the gesture says.
Down the beach, Levi jumps into the water.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
