Israeli town living underground

Those left in Kiryat Shemona are hiding in sordid shelters with nowhere else to go and no means to get there

BY MICHAEL ROTHFELD | Newsday Staff Correspondent

August 11, 2006

KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel - The other families who lived in Dov Sinai's bomb shelter left this town a mile from Lebanon a few days ago. Since then, he has been alone with the noise of Hezbollah rockets landing on the streets above him.

During the day he stays in the bunker, down two flights of concrete from the grounds of his government-subsidized apartment building on Hayarden Street. At night, he flits upstairs, shaves and eats, and runs down again.

"This isn't life," Sinai, 52, said, wearing a stained blue T-shirt and sweatpants after waking Tuesday at 11 a.m. "This isn't living."

A month into Israel's war against Hezbollah, nerves are fraying in Kiryat Shemona. The few thousand people who remain in this town, normally home to 24,000, sit underground and listen to the never-ending sound of Hezbollah rockets landing and the Israeli artillery firing over the mountains.

On Tuesday, a group of men nearby on Hayarden Street emerged from their habitat, home to 40 people, for a little bit of daylight. They smoked a few cigarettes at a picnic table surrounded by garbage. Their children played down below in the shelter, where the walls were decorated by multicolored handprints and the air was thick with the odor of human waste. The pump for the septic tank was broken.

"We are not here by choice," said Prospero Ohaion, 38, who is on disability and has a wife and three daughters, ages 7, 12 and 15, in the shelter. "We're here because of a difficult economic situation and because the government doesn't evacuate us."

The mayor, Haim Barbevai, says 9,000 people have stayed in Kiryat Shemona, where many residents work in factories on nearby kibbutzim, the communal farms that dot the countryside. But locals believe there are no more than 6,000 people remaining - mostly those who have nowhere else to go and no means to escape.

City officials said they evacuated 800 people this week and have slots for 1,000 more, but many of them may have to return after a few days in the center of the country. Danny Kadosh, the city's chief of staff, said there are limited rooms in hotels and hostels, and some people do not want to stay in places such as schools. The city is now installing air conditioning in some shelters, he said.

"We're trying to do the best we can," Kadosh said. "People are a month in the war. They are suffering from a lot of stress in the shelter."

The streets are mostly empty except for Israeli army vehicles and a few cars speeding past storefronts hit by rockets. At the city's emergency center, operators take thousands of calls from people complaining about a lack of food and access to medical care.

The mayor, holed up in the center most of the time, said he can't use his cell phone because it doesn't stop ringing. On Wednesday several residents confronted him near City Hall.

"A few people were very frustrated and said they wanted to hit me," Barbevai said. "I said, 'Go ahead, if it makes you feel better. I won't call the police.' I'm not running away from anyone, not from Hezbollah and not from any of our citizens."

On Wednesday, Sinai sat on his bunk in the shelter, next to the sofa cushion he uses as a pillow. His 14-year-old son, Asaf, is in a shelter across town with Sinai's ex-wife, and they are rarely able to speak. Sinai said he has not left because he doesn't want to give in to Hezbollah. But he also says the options for leaving aren't appealing.

"You can go if you want, but what are you going to do when you get there?" he said.

At the other shelter, Ohaion said he couldn't sleep inside anymore, because of the smell. But his wife, Pnina, 33, and three daughters stay. A Katyusha rocket hit near their apartment a few days ago, and now their middle daughter, Liraz, can't sleep.

"The fear gets bigger and bigger," she said. "I'm afraid of something, and I don't even know what it is."

The shelter's shower had no hot water, and it could be run only by pulling a rope down with great strength and holding it. An unrefrigerated carton of milk sat on a table. Children bounced around on floors caked with dirt. When a man from the neighborhood, wearing his army uniform, came to check on the conditions, several women started yelling at him. He said he'd told city officials about the septic tank.

The next morning, officials showed up and evacuated about 20 of the 40 residents, including the Ohaions, to a kibbutz near Tel Aviv.

"The kids are calm. The kids are in the ocean," Prospero Ohaion said yesterday by telephone. "If there's a slam of the door, the kids are afraid."

He hopes they will be able to stay until the end of the war.

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Those left in Kiryat Shemona are hiding in sordid shelters with nowhere else to go and no means to get there

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