No time to seek shelter, residents in north Israel after Golan strike

Israeli security hold back demonstrators during a visit by the Israeli Prime Minister two days after a rocket crashed killing 12 youngsters in the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli annexed Golan Heights, on July 29, 2024. (AFP)

• “Before, we felt safe, we didn’t feel danger,” said Amal Al-Shaar, 46, who accompanied her 12-year-old son Adam to the Galilee Medical Center
• “We’re the only hospital to be functional below ground or in a protected area since October 7,” said director Massad Barhum

NAHARIYA, Israel: The war with Hezbollah that residents of northern Israel feared since the start of the Gaza conflict appeared more likely after a deadly rocket strike rocked the annexed Golan Heights.
There, in the Golan Heights bordering Nahariya’s Galilee region and occupied by Israel since 1967, 12 youths were killed and dozens wounded Saturday by the rocket that hit a soccer field in the Druze Arab town of Majdal Shams.
“Before, we felt safe, we didn’t feel danger,” said Amal Al-Shaar, 46, who accompanied her 12-year-old son Adam to the Galilee Medical Center in the coastal town of Nahariya while he received treatment for his injuries from the strike.
“We paid a high price with our children’s lives, we paid with the blood of our hearts for this war,” she said.
Below the ground where Adam and Amal were and in what used to be the hospital’s underground parking lot, certain departments were relocated to protect them from future rocket attacks.
“We’re the only hospital to be functional below ground or in a protected area since October 7,” said director Massad Barhum, who made the decision for the transfer the day of Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
As early as October 8, Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite movement supported by Iran, began to fire rockets at Israel in support of Palestinians and of its ally Hamas, which rules Gaza.
Since then, cross-border exchanges of fire between Israel’s army and the group have become almost daily, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a “severe response” to the Majdal Shams strike blamed on Hezbollah.
Tuesday, another Israeli civilian was killed by a rocket in the area, according to the army and paramedics, leading the military to strike back inside Lebanon where it says it has been aiming at Hezbollah’s infrastructure for weeks.
Tens of thousands of Israelis who lived close to the border were evacuated shortly after the start of the war in Gaza, but in Nahariya, people remained.
This created a “new border” where Nahariya is on the frontline, said Barhum, “along this entire new border, it’s us.”
“When there is a war, it will be here. Missiles could hit here,” said the 64-year-old Arab-Israeli, adding that his hospital is “ready to hold for seven days” without any contact with the outside world.
Strings of small Israeli flags have been hanged between the various departments as a sign of support.
In the hospital’s neonatal unit, the first department to have been relocated underground, newborns are under high protection.
Down there, only the incubators’s humming break the silence, as the sound of air-raid sirens cannot travel through the ground.
“We’re safe down here, far from the world,” said Vered Fleisher-Shefer, the unit’s director, who said she refuses to “live in fear.”
Like Nahariya, the nearby town of Maalot is so close to Lebanon — about 10 kilometers (six miles) — that residents will have just a few seconds to seek shelter when sirens warn of incoming rockets.
“We’re not even inside the (bomb) shelter when we hear explosions... that’s the scary thing,” said teacher Florence Touati-Wachsstock, who move there more than a decade ago.
“That’s what happened in Majdal Shams, and they’re even closer (to Lebanon),” added the 47-year-old mother of five.
“For almost 10 months, we’ve been expecting a real war with Lebanon, even more so these past few days with the attack in Majdal Shams,” she said.
Now she is reassessing her plans for the future.
“Should we stay, should we go, when will we know that we need to go, we have no idea of what can happen this evening, or tomorrow,” she said.
On Tuesday night, Israel carried out a strike on Hezbollah’s stronghold in the suburbs south of Beirut, targeting what the army said was the commander responsible for the Majdal Shams attack.
A source close to the Iran-backed militant group said that senior commander Fuad Shukr was the target but that he “survived the Israeli strike.”