Kiryat Shmona: Israel’s northern city is a symbol of the threat Hezbollah poses - analysis

Ariel Frish, the deputy head of security in Kiryat Shmona, shows a site on a street where a Hezbollah rocket impacted. The crater has been mostly covered today but the splash of shrapnel spreads out on the street in a pattern, expanding until one can see where it also damaged apartments all around. This is one of many rocket impacts in Kiryat Shmona over the course of eight months of war.

Frish provided a look at the challenges the city faces today. The city of more than 20,000 residents continues to be mostly deserted. Several thousand people may have returned, but when I was there this week there were very few residents to be found. In fact, the sight of a person walking in the street was so rare, it seemed strange to see anyone. It felt more like one of those movies in the future where people wake up in a deserted city.

The tragedy that has unfolded here is symbolic of northern Israel in general. Along the border communities that were evacuated, some 80,000 residents had to flee in October when Hamas attacked and there was fear of a similar invasion by Hezbollah.

Thousands have returned, but like Kiryat Shmona, the overall trend is that people will not come back until they feel safe. The authorities, such as Israel’s Defense Minister, IDF Chief of Staff, and Prime Minister continue to vow that things will change in the north and people will be able to return.

“Since 1969 we’ve been struck by more rockets than anywhere else in Israel,” says Frish. However, there was a lull after the 2006 war. Many years came and went without the feeling of threats or rocket fire.

“We paid for the quiet here in the last 17 years. Fifty percent of the city doesn’t have proper shelters. You can get up to ten seconds to get to shelters because of the short distance from Lebanon. Most of the time we hear the booms before the alarm and there is time to reach shelter. [To be safe here during the war] you would need to live in the shelters. We were trained to live in shelters and provide community services in shelters,” says Frish. He presents a situation that would be difficult for residents if they remained. There aren’t enough shelters and there’s not enough time to get to them.

The kinds of weapons Hezbollah has

The threat today is also changing. Hezbollah has a variety of types of rockets, missiles and drones. It has the Falaq-1 rocket which has a 40kg warhead, and the Falaq-2 which Hezbollah claimed it fired for the first time on June 8. That rocket has a warhead that is larger, between 60kg and 120kg and can fly up to 11km. Hezbollah also has the Burkan heavy rocket that it has used recently.

It has precision strike drones and it uses anti-tank missiles along the border. Kiryat Shmona is close enough to the border that it is within range of all these weapons. “We understood the current threat is not just rockets but larger missiles and rockets and the invasion is a real threat,” says Frish.

He looks every bit the hardened security coordinator who understands the shadow that looms over this city. He’s carrying a rifle as he shows several people around the city, explaining the recent attacks and how things have unfolded.

At one point Frish drives to an abandoned kindergarten. It is in a community that once would have been full of life. Now it's quiet. In the distance one can make out the foot of Mount Dov and the Golan which frame the Huleh valley.

Kiryat Shmona is built on the western side of the valley. The kindergarten we come to once would have afforded a view of this pretty valley. Now the weeds have taken over. One has to wade through a mountain of leaves just to reach the gate of the school. A rocket impacted at the school. It fell at this site at 4:30 in the afternoon, a message from Hezbollah that it could target this site when parents were picking up kids. There were no kids because people were evacuated.

The message of Hezbollah is that it knows when schools let out, it could cause massive casualties if it wanted.

“The decision to evacuate saved a lot of lives but it is a win for Hezbollah,” says Frish. This sense that Hezbollah is winning is one of the tragedies on display in northern Israel. The evacuation saved lives but every day that goes by makes it harder for people to return. And every day the weeds grow larger and the plants begin to creep over the tiles and stairs of kindergartens and school yards.

Here in Kiryat Shmona, the Sukkah from the fall of 2023 is still up at the kindergarten. It is a visible reminder of how life here stopped in October 2023, just as it did in the evacuated communities near the Gaza border.