Hezbollah drones have been loitering over Haifa for months, evading Israeli defenses and picking off targets in a simmering conflict that is suddenly on the brink of war.
The country’s largest port, the navy’s brand new Komemiyut ship, the famous Iron Dome batteries and even the private offices of military commanders has been charted.
Still scarred by the 2006 war between the Jewish state and a Lebanese militant movement just a 40-minute drive north across the border, when hundreds of Hezbollah rockets were fired into northern Israel, Haifa is also bracing for conflict.
The mayor installed remote-controlled doors that automatically opened at public bomb shelters, the Rambam hospital prepared an emergency unit in a five-acre underground parking lot, and Ilya Kaluzhnyy, a recent immigrant from Russia, somewhat confused about what was going on, packed his safe room with water, batteries, and personal papers.
“I hope Iron Dome does its job,” he said, sweating after running across the Mediterranean on a hot Friday night. “It will do its job, right?”
After nine months of war on its southern border with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Israel is preparing for a conflict along its northern border.
Stronger, better equipped and battle-hardened than Hamas, Hezbollah has been fighting the Israeli army since October 8, when it began a low-intensity conflict in support of Hamas. It has resulted in the evacuation of 70,000 Israelis and more than 90,000 Lebanese from their homes. Hundreds have been killed in Lebanon and dozens in Israel, including civilians.
The conflict was kept below its peak thanks to US shuttle diplomacy and hesitation on both sides to avoid a full-scale war that would have devastated Lebanon and caused serious damage to Israel.
But two consecutive assassinations this week in Beirut and Tehran targeting senior Hezbollah and Hamas leaders — the first officially claimed by Israel, the second blamed on Israel — now threaten to upset that delicate balance.
Hezbollah vows to make “Israel cry bitterly” over July 30 assassination in beirut by Fuad Shukr, a senior commander in the militia.
Hours later, Iran – Hezbollah’s patron and Israel’s regional rival – also vowed revenge after the killing in Tehran. Ismail HaniyehHamas political leader. Hours earlier, Haniyeh had hugged Masoud Pezeshkian, the president of the Islamic republic, at his inauguration.
Taken together, these two threats would almost certainly lead to a massive retaliation against Israel, potentially expanding the scope of the conflict on Israeli territory and possibly bringing war to the doorstep of Haifa.
The United States has deployed warships while Israel has prepared forces and threatened retaliation, risking dragging the region into a conflict unprecedented in recent decades.
Watching their 18-month-old son Rafiq play on the grass, Hassan Jabareen and Rina Rosenberg pondered the situation in Haifa: a city with Palestinian and Jewish residents that, like their family, is once again on the brink of war.
During the 1948 war that led to the creation of Israel, some 70,000 Palestinians in Haifa fled to Lebanon for safety, eventually becoming lifelong refugees. Haifa was bombed in the 1967 and 1973 Israeli wars, and in 1991 by Saddam Hussein.
But the 2006 war was the worst, Jabareen said. In just over a month, hundreds of Hezbollah rockets hit Haifa, where most residents had fled after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called on Palestinians to flee.
Hezbollah today has a significantly larger and more sophisticated arsenal.
“Haifa is a symbol of the war between Israel and Hezbollah,” Jabareen said. “Haifa and Beirut — they are like sisters. If Beirut is attacked, Haifa will be attacked.”
The couple, who were married in the US Supreme Court by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg because Palestinians and Jews are not allowed to marry in Israel, are struggling to plan for shelter if retaliation leads to wider conflict.
Rina was unable to flee to Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital of the occupied West Bank, with Jabareen, unsure whether she would be welcomed there at a time of heightened tensions between Jews and Palestinians.
And given the range of Hezbollah’s missiles, and the fact that a Houthi drone from Yemen had exploded in downtown Tel Aviv a few weeks ago, she wasn’t sure where in Israel she should run. Jordan might be the safest place, she figured.
“It makes me feel like there is no safe place in Gaza, I feel like there is no safe place in Israel.“
In Haifa, Mayor Yona Yahav installed automatic doors for bomb shelters days after fighting with Hamas broke out in October, a city spokesman said. Underground parking lots have been converted into communal shelters, equipped with WiFi and generators, and smaller concrete shelters have been dropped into older neighborhoods.
“Haifa is ready,” was the mayor’s message. Palestinians in Haifa, who make up about a tenth of the population, disagree. Although Haifa is known as a model of peaceful coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis, Palestinian neighborhoods have much worse infrastructure than Jewish neighborhoods, said Raja Zaatreh, a member of the city council.
By his estimates, half of the Palestinian population does not have a bomb shelter near their homes. On popular Abbas Street, home to thousands of middle-class Palestinians, the local community center has been converted into a bomb shelter that can only hold a few hundred people.
“This time, compared to 2006, things will be even worse,” he said. “Things will be really bad — the way the state discriminates against Palestinians, the city is not well prepared. [to protect its Palestinian population]“ .
At Rambam, northern Israel’s largest hospital, lessons from the 2006 war are being applied, as doctors fight to save the lives of patients in unprotected wards, said spokesman David Ratner.
From there, the hospital built an underground car park where the two lowest floors could be converted into a fully functioning 2,200-bed hospital within 72 hours. Special pipes were installed for oxygen lines and walls were set up with special ports for medical equipment.
On October 8, the hospital called in the Navy to help convert one of its floors into a 1,100-bed emergency hospital. Within six hours, every patient in the hospital and 150 elderly patients from nearby hospitals could be transferred there, while the remaining beds could be reserved for trauma patients.
Staffing the hospital was not an issue either. As the situation on the northern front deteriorated, virtually all airlines stopped flying to Israel, so “the airlines made the decision for us,” Ratner said. “There was no way to leave Israel now.”
