HAIFA, Israel, 24 July 2006 — “I feel like a bowling pin,” a tense Israel Amdurksi says after the latest rocket attack on this northern Israeli port killed two civilians yesterday.
The casualties bring to 10 the number of Israelis killed in Haifa since the start of the Lebanon crisis.
“We have become a game of pins. They are playing with our nerves,” the 64-year-old says.
Like his neighbors, Amdurski heard the six booms as rockets fired from Lebanon by the Hezbollah militant group detonated in Israel’s largest industrial city.
But even though one fell a mere hundred meters away, Amdursky came outside again nonetheless.
“I am afraid, but I don’t want to give them the pleasure of keeping me inside for too long,” he says.
Tamar Elizarof, 24, remains shaken by the attack — the second barrage to have killed people in Haifa, but just the latest in a string of rocket attacks on the city since Israel began its offensive against Hezbollah on July 12.
“It doesn’t matter where you are. They can fall anywhere,” she says in a frail voice, surrounded by hot bread in her bakery.
“In any case, if your time has come, you die and that’s it.” Unmarried and with no children, Elizarof says she often thinks of death, but that this does not deter her from coming to work every day.
“I have nothing to lose, so I may as well open the shop. Being at the bakery or at home, it’s the same,” she says.
On the side of a road, near a column of thick black smoke, an elderly woman has stepped out of her car. Pale and shaking, she can hardly speak.
“That could have fallen on me,” she murmurs. Her daughter hugs her, trying to calm her down.
Dorit Schnabel is in the front office of her travel agency in the city. There is not a customer in sight — an unusual occurrence during the summer months when Israelis usually make their vacation plans for September.
“A dangerous game. Russian roulette, call it what you want,” she says nervously.
“But the fact remains that Hezbollah makes us jolt like rabbits, forces us to hide for cover, makes us shake with fear. We can’t continue living like this.
“And there is nothing to say that in an hour I will be alive,” Schnabel adds, lowering her eyes.
Meanwhile the warning sirens wail anew and people run for cover. A smiling bartender points to a decoration on the wall of his cafe. “It’s against the evil eye,” he says. “It will protect us. There is nothing to be afraid of here.”
One car speeding down the road has a large “No Fear” sticker on its back door. The young driver smokes a cigarette, but every so often he also raises his eyes to look at the sky.
