Day in the Life of Wartime Northern Israel
This is what it's like to live in Haifa as tensions and military operations between Israel and Hezbollah have significantly increased during the last few days.
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This is a guest essay written by Sheri Oz of Israel Diaries.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
I want to let you in on a little secret.
I started this essay last night. Just couldn’t type out more than the title.
I expected to get up full of energy this morning and write it up during my first coffee and have it all done and ready to check for spelling mistakes and such by 10:00 A.M.
Writing is usually so energizing for me, so satisfying. I love searching for exactly the right word. I love reading what I have written, hearing in my head the sometimes well-put-together phrase that makes me proud of myself.
And together with this, tears escape from my eyes, sometimes one at a time, sometimes flowing a whole bunch of them at once, sometimes fogging my eyes, leaving me wondering how much crying is in me.
I ascribe what is happening to me now as the result of stresses from the scenes of October 7th and the follow-up war in Gaza, with all its losses of beautiful young Israelis and horror for the hostages not yet home, the stresses of the re-emergence of fractures in Israeli society that had come together as one for a brief wondrous period of time after October 7th, stresses of the months of war of attrition in Israel’s north that is so draining on everyone, stresses of waiting for it to burst forth into overt noisy warfare so we can get it over and done with, fear of what will happen to us as we are getting it over and done with.
First, a bit of context. Yesterday, IDF Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari opened his statement to the Israeli public:
“Since October 8th, Hezbollah has launched over 9,000 rockets, missiles, and UAVs targeting Israeli families, homes, and communities. In the past week alone, more than 700 rockets and UAVs have struck deep inside Israel, forcing hundreds of thousands of citizens into bomb shelters. For years, Hezbollah has been planning to replicate in northern Israel what Hamas did in the south on October 7th — an invasion, infiltration of civilian communities, and the massacre of innocent civilians. To accomplish this, they devised a strategy called ‘Conquer the Galilee.’”
Here is a summary of yesterday’s attacks. Details are from a number of sources and I hope to be as accurate as possible:
4:45-4:54 – Three sirens in southern Golan in response to one drone that crossed into Israel from Iraq. Successful interception.
6:31, 8:36, 9:35, and 11:30 – Two, six, 10, and four sirens in Upper Galilee, all instances turned out to be false alarms.
12:19 – One siren in Confrontation Line. Details still under review (for an unstated reason).
12:24 – 25 sirens in the Upper Galilee, Lower Galilee, and Confrontation Line; 25 drones and rockets mostly intercepted successfully but there were a number of “nefilot” (projectiles that were unsuccessfully intercepted and landed) in open areas.
12:43 – 16 sirens in sites across he Lower Galilee, Center Galilee, HaHamakim, and the Confrontation Line; 10 nefilot in the Lower Galilee area.
13:17 and 13:23 – Two sirens in the Confrontation Line; false alarms.
14:30 – 11 sirens in two regions in the Confrontation Line communities; false alarms.
15:26 – Alarm in one site in the Confrontation Line; false alarm.
16:15 – 32 sirens sounded in Lower Galilee, Upper Galilee, HaAmakim, HaCarmel, HaMifratz (towns and kibbutzim north of Haifa), and the Confrontation Line. 10 missiles identified, some successfully intercepted and some fell in open areas.
16:45 – 11 sirens in the Center and Lower Galilee regions; 25 missiles, some intercepted and some fell in open areas.
17:02-17:04 – 25 sirens in sites along the Mediterranean coast north of Haifa up to just below Nahariya and four sirens in the Confrontation Line; 15 missiles in the former and 25 in the latter; one false alarm. Numerous interceptions and nefilot in open areas.
17:15 – 23 sirens in Samaria communities (on the east side of the Green Line); all 10 missiles fell in open areas.
17:20-17:23 – About 45 sirens went off in communities in the Lower and Central Galilee, Wadi Ara, HaAmakim, and HaCarmel; 35 missiles, many intercepted, some fell in open areas.
17:41 – Some 40 sirens went of in HaMifratz, HaCarmel, HaAmakim, Wadi Ara, and Center Galilee; five missiles identified, some intercepted, some fell in open areas.
18:04 – 40 sirens in HaAmakim, Wadi Ara, HaCarmel, Center Galilee; 5 missiles identified, some intercepted, some fell in open areas.
18:56-19:00 – About 70 sirens went off in Center Galilee, HaAmakim, Wadi Ara, Upper Galilee, HaMifratz; 25 missiles identified, most successfully intercepted, nefilot in open areas.
19:43 – About 26 sirens went off in various neighbourhoods of Haifa (including my own), in HaCarmel communities, and HaMifratz. Five missiles were identified and either intercepted or fell in open areas; one landed near Haifa University.
After that, Hezbollah called it a day. He started up again at 2:00 this morning, but that already was a new day.
In all, there were about 380 sirens yesterday, sending Israelis, Jews and Arabs, running for shelter. Of these, 37 were false alarms; 211 missiles and drones were either intercepted or fell in open areas.
One report said there were some injuries from shrapnel but no details were provided. This stands in contrast to three injuries and one fatal car accident when 85 missiles were launched into Israel on Sunday.
Someone in my apartment building just slammed a door real hard and my heart dropped — it sounded like a boom high in the sky. Car doors slamming shut will do this, a truck going too fast over a speed bump will do this.
Ah.
Those triggers that I remember from previous wars and had already overcome. Those little noises that generally go unregistered by our conscious minds now make us (well, me) stop in our tracks and question their origins.
Hypervigilance is the term for it.
More than 200 missiles and drones into Israel on one day is a huge amount, especially in view of the fact that Hagari said there were 700 projectiles launched into Israel the previous week.
Now that Haifa schools have joined the northern schools that are closed, my grandkids are here all day as well. I will not leave them alone as long as there is any chance of an alert.
My son-in-law was supposed to be home yesterday morning so I made important plans in Hadera. His work called him in unexpectedly and the only solution to my unavailability was for the kids to go to their grandfather in Haifa and, because he won’t have the dogs, they were put in daycare in a kennel in Isfiya, a Druze town just outside of Haifa.
I returned to a blissfully empty home at about 14:00 and two hours later, the bombardments began to hit areas farther south than Hezbollah had previously targeted. They seemed to be aiming everywhere except Haifa.
It was intense, and I contacted friends to see how they were doing. Some have shelters in their building basements or a mamad (a shelter in one’s apartment) and others stand in stairwells, at least one floor above the ground and two floors below the highest floor. If the stairwell has windows or an external wall, that is not even a great solution. Two friends sought shelter with family nearby.
My grandchildren came home at about 17:00 and my daughter drove to Isfiya to get the dogs. At 17:41, when I checked where the sirens were going off, I saw that Isfiya was one of the places. My daughter was there picking up the dogs. At the time, I did not know if she was in the car with them and I was worried about how she could handle that potentially very dangerous situation.
She told me that the alarm sounded when she was at the kennel collecting the dogs. There was no shelter so they just waited it out inside the kennel yard. No protection, nothing. Not much better than being caught on the road.
As you can see in the list of attacks above, between 500,000 and a million people (or more) were simultaneously scurrying off to shelter during the attacks that took place when my daughter’s family was home with me.
Then, at 19:42, when my daughter and her husband were out with the dogs, the siren went off in my neighbourhood in Haifa. My grandkids, 8 and 11, were calm and briskly came to where I had told them our safe “spot” was in the apartment.
I live on the ground floor of a two-story apartment building. None of the apartments have a mamad and there is no bomb shelter.
My living room is an open space surrounded on all sides but one by walls to other rooms and the wall between my apartment and my neighbor’s. The entrance to the kitchen and sunroom is wide and without a door, but the window in the sunroom is about 12 meters from the spot where I sit (under a support beam) and at such an angle that if it does shatter, the shards will not come anywhere near me.
I feel safe enough; if a missile lands in my area, there is a good chance that we will feel little other than the building shaking and perhaps things falling off shelves and broken windows. If one lands beside my building or in my yard, there can be serious damage to my apartment, but I should be safe in the inner space with no external walls. On the other hand, if a missile comes through the roof, I would have to be very lucky not to get hurt. Shrapnel from an intercepted missile may damage the apartment above me but not get to me.
Imagine that you live in such an apartment and multiply that by thousands for all those Israelis who have neither a bomb shelter nor mamad and no safe stairwell in which to sit out the alerts. Calculations for how to be safest have to be made and, waiting for Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah to decide whether or not to hit Haifa, I, and many like me, could only pray that either our neighborhood would not be attacked or that we would be safe enough in our little corners.
The incoming-attack alert was weak, loud enough to be heard and for us to be sure it was meant for us, but for some reason, not the bone-chilling soul-vibrating ups and downs that I hate so much. My grandson looked up from his tablet with a knowing look and got up calmly and walked to our safe spot. My granddaughter appeared from nowhere at the same time. I pulled up the closest chair after having brought my thick winter blanket from my room. They sat on the floor at my feet.
I covered the three of us with the blanket and told them that if there were things falling off the closest shelf or plaster from the walls or whatever, it would not scratch us. We counted the booms (from the Iron Dome) and I told them these were likely interceptions. They were quite loud. The kids were curious about interceptions and nefilot and what happens when a missile lands. The conversation was relaxed.
Pretty soon there was a phone call from their father. I told him we were in a tent and the kids laughed. There was no anxiety, perhaps incomprehensible to many readers given that we were well aware that someone was aiming missiles at us and we had to be in a safe place. When 10 minutes had passed, they threw off the blanket and went back to what they had been doing before that moment in another dimension.
Had the kids not been with me, I would have been watching some TV news program with talking heads interpreting what we were going through. It was better with the kids there, laughing and talking under a blanket tent.
Not knowing what the next hours would bring, everyone had showers, ate dinner, did bedtime ritual as if nothing had happened and nothing was going to happen.
And the house went dark and quiet as everyone but me went to sleep. I put on a movie on my smartphone to keep my mind occupied as I worked on a macrame piece. And when I was sufficiently weary, I went to bed too.
Nasrallah let us sleep through the night. Us, but not everyone in the north. Sirens went off at 02:30, 03:00, and then more frequently since 07:00 in various places. Just an hour ago, about 30 sirens sounded in places near Haifa, but not in Haifa.
I feel like I have it easy. I cannot imagine what it is like to have sirens every day or almost every day, and several times a day. But this is what it was like for me, yesterday.
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That was very educational for those of us elsewhere. You are so brave. Stay safe. Thank you.
Israel, We are with you, through-out The Western Nations, both Jew and Non-Jew alike. So Stay strong. Yes, there will be many days of Strife ahead. But Israel and America are Mighty, (as is Europe). So Israel and The West will win. We will win. So Stay Strong Sheri, Stay safe, and G-d Bless. Am Israel Chai.